Page 89 of Take Her

“Yeah,” I said, tentatively. “I am.”

She eyed me with one eyebrow cocked. “Is there a boy—or a girl? I’m equal opportunity, I just want to know they’re taking care of you?—”

“They are,” I said.

“And they know that you’re the most precious girl in the world?”

I laughed. “You’re only saying that because you only have sons and grandsons, Dolly. But trust me—they’re doing all right.”

“Good,” she said, taking a long sip of her tea before rocking back. “I can’t believe you haven’t come home all this time. You didn’t need to run so far away.”

“Half-run, half-shoved,” I said, trying not to sound bitter. Half-caged, by my past.

We chit chatted for the better part of an hour about her kids and my schooling—the parts of it that mattered—just getting caught up, and it was like nothing had changed between us, except that we were both a little older.

“I see your dad on TV sometimes, you know. He’s still very handsome.”

“I’d tell him you said so, but we both know it’d only go to his head.” She gave me a snort of agreement. “What was it like, working with him?”

She shook her head. “You’re the one working for him now. I was just the help.”

“But you were there a lot.”

“When you weren’t trying to set me up with one of the security guards—trying to get us both fired,” she teased.

“You’re the one that let me read romance books,” I protested. It was her fault I’d fallen into them and their stories head first and I’d never come back out.

“Well, I can be honest with you now, as an adult—they were a good way to shut you up,” she said with a laugh.

I’d never struck myself as a talkative child—but maybe around her, I had been.

Because I could be.

If only I’d managed to see through Freddie’s lies and say something. But when things started, if I talked, it was going to kill him—something I believed, having seen him stagger into our living room, gut-shot and bloody. And then it’d segued when that didn’t work anymore, to him threatening to kill her, and he was right about that—losing Dolly would’ve truly hurt me.

My mother was like a ghost who haunted our mansion, walking from room to room in a blurry haze, with only intermittent periods of sobriety, usually after my father yelled at her. Dolly was the only adult present—and only half of the time, because she went home every night—that counted.

And when Freddie was worried that wouldn’t work anymore—he threatened to kill me.

Which was when Rhaim had saved me.

“Everything else from back then—it sometimes feels blurry,” I told her. “What do you remember?”

It was as close as I could get to asking her for the truth. I just wanted some acknowledgement that the weight of my past wasn’t mine alone.

Even if finding out that she knew what my uncle was doing to me would’ve damned her.

She took a moment to think and stroked her smooth cheek in thought—I really needed to find out what her skincare regimen was, because she looked almost the same to me. Then she reached over to hold my hand, and I could see every vein across her bones beneath her thin, elderly skin. “I remember you trying to set up me and Rio, which was ridiculous; I was old enough to be his mother. But you told me that Rio was waiting for me down by the boathouse—and he was really good looking,” she said, with a lopsided smile. “You convinced me to. So I did. Just like you wanted. Even though he never showed up.” She shook my hand a little. “But I never told anybody, Lia, if that’s what you’re asking.”

I held her hand tightly back. “Thank you.”

“I don’t know what got into you. Either it was an accident,” she said, biting her lips. “Or you must have had your reasons.”

My reason was a six-foot man who always wore a suit who kept visiting my house.

And when I couldn’t get him to stop—I’d decided to burn my house down around him.

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