Jesse shifted back and forth from foot to foot and waited for Avery Hernandez to answer her front door. She was here. Jesse knew that she was. There had been movement behind the peephole in the fancy front door. Not only that, but someone had left the side entry garage door open and Jesse could see that every single car was inside. So, unless Avery had called a taxi—unlikely, in Jesse’s opinion—then she was inside the house trying to pretend like she didn’t know that Jesse was outside.
Well, it’s not going to work.
Jesse pushed on the doorbell until she heard the mechanism buzzing. The gong-like chimes bonged throughout the house at a deafening level. “I know you’re in there, Avery!” Jesse shouted. “I can see you moving around behind the door! Just open up. I’m not going until you do.”
“I’ll call the police!”
Finally. A response. Not a great one, but at least it was an acknowledgement that proved Jesse wasn’t losing her mind. Avery was indeed behind that door. Jesse took a deep breath and wondered how to incite the woman to open up.
Just then, a very interesting thought occurred. Jesse got right up to the peephole so that all Avery would be able to see was the inside of Jesse’s mouth. “Are you going to call your friend Paul Weatherby? You know, that guy who managed to not only get rid of your rival once and for all but also managed to unearth your dead husband’s long-lost love child.” Jesse paused to let that sink in. “I’m sure that he would be really thrilled to talk to you as well as to introduce you to Adam Connolly.”
The locks on the door clinked so loudly that Jesse wondered if the woman was actually trying to claw them off. Finally, the door swung open. Jesse started to speak again but nearly choked on her words when Avery grabbed her by the T-shirt and yanked her inside the house.
Jesse stared in shock as Avery actually glanced out the door from left to right as though she were trying to determine if someone might have heard what Jesse was yelling. Then Avery swung around, put her hands on her hips, and glared daggers.
“Well, then,” Jesse said wryly. “I suppose we’ll just dispense with the greetings and the condolences and all of the other bullshit.”
“What are you thinking?” Avery snapped. “You cannot shout that kind of thing right outside my house! You’re going to make me the laughingstock of the neighborhood!”
“Actually, I can say whatever I want.” Jesse looked down her nose at Avery. This woman had been her mother figure for almost a decade, and this was the treatment she got? Sometimes life just sucked. “Just like you can stand there and put an unnatural amount of emphasis on the last word of every single sentence even though that does absolutely nothing to make your meaning any clearer.”
Avery looked taken aback. She sputtered a bit and did not manage to come up with a real sentence for several moments. Good. Jesse wanted her off-balance. There was absolutely no good way to bring all of this up. Jesse would have liked to sit down, have a cup of tea or something, and talk like grown women about the past and how crazy and painful it could be sometimes. Unfortunately, Jesse had a bad feeling that Avery would rather stab Jesse in the eye than sit down and have tea with her.
“What do you know about Adam Connolly?” Avery finally demanded. “Who told you that name?”
Jesse figured she could give as good as she got. “Who told you that name? How do you know about him? Adam Connolly is your husband’s middle son. He was born to my mother. How is it that you know all about him? And if you do, why were you so worried about the medical examiner allowing paternity tests?”
“I didn’t want him to be able to confirm it,” Avery said stiffly. She folded her arms over her chest and managed to give Jesse a look of disdain down her nose even though Jesse was several inches taller. “He can claim whatever he likes. That doesn’t make it true.”
Jesse stared at this woman. It was difficult to imagine that she had ever lived on a ranch. She was the picture-perfect pastel grandmother. Her short blond hair was cut into a perfect pageboy. Her fingernails and toenails were both painted the same blush shade as her cardigan sweater, and her sandals had probably cost more than Jesse’s best pair of boots. Who was this woman? She had been citified quite thoroughly, and Jesse was almost certain that she was absolutely thrilled with the results.
Avery Hernandez loved her sons. That much was true. She loved her grandchildren. She was a woman who had been wronged repeatedly by the man she had married. And that was after he had taken her to the middle of nowhere for a life she hadn’t even expected to lead. Avery had thought she would be a rich rancher’s wife. She just hadn’t had any clue what that would mean.
“Have you ever seen Adam Connolly?” Jesse asked bluntly.
Avery shifted uncomfortably and plucked at the pearl buttons on her sweater. “Well, no. But that doesn’t matter.”
“You’ve never even seen a picture, have you?” Jesse would have paid money to see Adam walk in here with his trademark Hernandez insolence and arrogance. “Because if you had, you would know that a paternity test is really a formality. And by the way, you can do a DNA test using one of Adam’s brothers in order to determine paternity. It’s this weird little thing we call forensic science.”
“You’re such a little shit,” Avery spat. She narrowed her blue gaze and pointed at Jesse. “I gave you everything! You ungrateful girl! I gave you a home and a mother who loved you. I tried to help you be a woman—a real one.”
“As opposed to what?” Jesse was so done with this guilt trip. They’d been down this road a dozen or more times. “Being the kind of woman who attracted your husband?” Jesse said ruthlessly. “Like my mother was?”
“Shut up!”
“No!” Jesse pulled the handkerchief-wrapped ring from her pocket. She brandished it in Avery’s face. “Explain this away, Avery. Try to tell me that this is my fault too!”
“That’s mine!” Avery shrieked. She made a grab for the ring, but Jesse pulled it out of reach just in time. “Those are mine!”
“Then why are my mother’s initials on the handkerchief, and why was this the engagement ring that my father—Rawling Collins—gave to my mother? You stole them, Avery! Why would you do that? You stole my mother’s things and her journals.”
The blood drained from Avery’s face. “Where are the journals? Those are mine! You have no right, Jesse Collins. No right at all!”
“Excuse me? How do you even pretend to figure that to be true?” Jesse could not begin to understand how this woman’s mind worked. “How can you say that something is yours just because you stole it from someone’s home after they died? Those things were mine. Not yours. They’re mine because those were my parents and my home, and you destroyed my ability to understand what was happening because you took something that didn’t belong to you.”
“You’re a liar. Just like your mother.”
“No.” Jesse waved her hand in front of Avery’s nose. “My mother might have been a lot of things. But she was not a liar. She told the truth in those journals. And let me tell you, Cal is reading that journal about Adam and about Joe to your other children as we speak. Do you hear what I’m saying to you? We all know about Adam. We know about Joe and Amelia. We know everything. There’s nothing left to hide, so why don’t you stop worrying so much about what everyone else thinks and focus on your own family?”
“You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” Avery pointed in Jesse’s face. Her expression was ugly, and she looked almost angry enough to spit. “That woman owed me! Do you get that? She owed me because she tried to steal my husband and nearly got away with it!”
“I don’t deny that you have every right to hate my mother,” Jesse said quietly. She had to be fair. If she had been in Avery’s shoes, she would have hated Amelia too. Jesse’s mother was the “other woman.” “She didn’t behave very well when it came down to it. Personally, I can’t believe that she got involved with Joe at all. He was a lot older, but maybe that’s what attracted her to him. I don’t know.”
“Like mother like daughter,” Avery said snidely.
Funny, but that didn’t hurt. Jesse only shrugged. “Guess so. Huh?”
“Your mother was a whore.”
“Your husband was a liar.” Jesse shook her head. “I’m being honest here. I’m not defending my mother. But you need to be honest too. Joe Hernandez was a lot of things, but we all knew he was a big talker.” Jesse paused for a moment to see if Avery was going to pull the sainted dead husband bit, but that didn’t happen.
Avery lifted her chin again as if she was a queen and Jesse was some peasant coming to beg. “We don’t know what he told her.”
“Actually, we do.” Jesse stared at Avery and wondered if the woman was really that far into denial. It was probably possible. “You read those journals. You know what he told her, because she wrote it down.”
“It could have been lies!” The protest was shrill and reeked of panic.
Jesse sighed. “Why would she lie? What reason could there possibly be for Amelia to lie in those pages? You read it. I know you did because the things are worn out! You sat there and read and reread them like some sick novel. So, don’t sit there and tell me you think it was some fabrication. Why would she lie?”
“So I would think the worst!” Avery insisted.
“Oh, yeah, that’s exactly why Amelia would lie in a journal, Avery.” Jesse let every sarcastic feeling in her heart drip from her words. “My mother knew she was going to die, so she left those journals deliberately to torture you because she could see into the future and she knew that you were going to steal them along with her jewelry box and her most treasured personal items. That just makes a ton of sense, Avery.”
Avery was crying now. It was sad. Jesse could not even begin to imagine what the woman was going through. “Your mother was trying to hurt me! She wanted my husband, and she wanted me to be miserable!” Avery sank into a little French revival-style chair that sat beside an equally delicate-looking console table in the foyer. “Your mother hated me. I know she did.”
“Have you ever hated anyone just because they hurt someone that you love?” Jesse asked quietly.
There was a long pause. Avery’s hands were clenched primly in her lap, and she looked as though she was trying to be ladylike even in what was obviously her memory of the lowest point in her life.
“Of course I know what that’s like,” Avery whispered. “I hated Joseph Hernandez for hurting our sons over and over again. I remember when Met came to me and said that he had seen his father with some two-dollar hooker at a motel in town. I felt like killing Joe. I could have happily sent him off with Amelia then,” Avery said bitterly. “But she was dead.”
There was something about that comment that jogged a memory loose in Jesse’s brain, but for now, she had another point to make. “Don’t you think that’s the only reason why Amelia ever hated you? Joe told her over and over again how miserable you made his life. And it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. That’s what he told her. So, why would she not hate you? Why would she not want to take him away from you so that she could make him happy?”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Avery said bitterly. “You’re trying to make me feel sorry for her.”
“No. I would never expect you to do that.” Jesse shook her head. “My mother hurt you. She might have done it under some kind of promises or pretenses from Joe, but he’s not around to explain himself anymore.” Which brought Jesse around to her next question. “Did Joe know about Adam? Is that how you knew his name?”
“Yes.” Avery pursed her lips. “He knew about Adam. He found Adam not long after Amelia died. He kept saying that he wanted to reconnect with the one person who connected him and his precious Amelia.” Avery’s bitter smile spoke volumes about how she felt regarding that relationship. “But Joe got an unpleasant surprise when Adam completely shot down any attempt on Joe’s part to speak with him.”
“So, how did you find him, then?” Jesse had a feeling that this was more important than any of them knew. “How did you locate Adam?”
“It took years,” Avery said slowly. “Joe hired a private investigator, and the woman took forever to find Adam. I guess by then he’d been given back to the state.” She rolled her eyes. “I bet his parents got sick of him. God knows what that combination would be like!”
“Actually, his parents got divorced.” There was no reason for Jesse not to believe what Adam had said on that topic. It wasn’t like the guy had any real incentive to lie about that. “So, Joe hired a female private detective?”
“Yes.” Avery seemed to be coming back to herself. “You need to stay away from Adam. You need to stay away from my family, Jesse Collins. You Collins women are kryptonite for Hernandez men.”
Somehow, Jesse couldn’t really fault Avery on her choice of words. It did sort of seem that way from a certain perspective. Sometimes life was far more complicated than it needed to be.