CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
LIZZIE
“I hope he knows what he’s doing,” Fenella voiced my thoughts. We were in the kitchen, preparing dinner for Norah. She was on her way. She would be dining at our table, in our home, the place where I wanted only beauty and we were inviting the ugly in. “At least we have Fergus and your father here as well, more to hear her threats,” Fenella added.
I looked up from the potatoes I was peeling. “You think she’s going to threaten us too?”
“Why else come here?”
“Will we never be free of her?” I wasn’t really asking that question. For twenty years she was out of my life, twenty years when I was struggling to find my way. And now I had found happy, more happy than I ever imagined, and she comes crawling back.
“Trust that Brochan knows what he’s doing.”
“Why are we making a meal? We should have gotten those microwavable dinners, or bread and water.”
“Brochan was very specific.”
I glanced at my watch. “I better get dressed.”
I had just reached the door when Fenella called, “All will be well, you’ll see.”
I wasn’t so sure of that but I tried for a reassuring smile.
Brochan stared out the window, his hands in his pockets. He turned to me and the shadows were back. I hated seeing them. I had stopped by the library before I went up to change. “I know we’re cutting out the ugly, but this is ending only one way with your mother.”
“Why do this at all?”
“Because you know better than anyone she won’t ever stop.” He had warned the more savage part of him would want out. It was that part of him that spoke now.
“I don’t want that mark on you.”
“I’ve so many already another won’t make a difference.”
It wasn’t right. She was my monster, not his. I hated that love for me was going to have him walking right back into the dark.
Finnegan entered the library, my father on his heels. “There are a bunch of cars pulling into the drive.”
No one ever came here. Brochan was as startled as me by the news when he strode from the library and down the hall. I caught up just as he opened the door to what looked like most of the town. I saw Bridget and Blair, Bruce, Molly, Mrs. Wilson, the butcher and the grocer.
Fergus stepped forward. “We did nothing when you were a child. We heard the rumors, but we turned a blind eye unable to believe one of our own could be such a monster. Only Brianna had the courage to step up and do what was right. Only she tried to break the silence.” He looked behind him and saw the nods from the people standing in mass in our driveway. “Norah Calhoun is a monster.”
Agreement called out from the crowd behind him.
“She only has power because of our silence. It’s time to make some noise.”
I never before and never again would see the expression on Brochan’s face. It was as if the years had been stripped away and he was that young kid again, calling out in the dark for help and for the first time he heard voices calling back.
Fergus rallied. “Let’s show Norah Calhoun that if you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us.”
Brochan found me in the nursery sorting through pictures. The scene from earlier still caused my pulse to pound and my heart to sigh. Not that I thought it would help with our current problem. Even a town united wouldn’t stop the snake from slithering in. I hated to my core that she was coming here, that her ugliness was going to tarnish the peace we had found.
He reached my side and studied the pictures, touching one of him as a boy holding a worm. He had been adorable as a toddler, happy, sweet and curious. “Where did you get that?”
“Fenella. She has so many wonderful pictures of you.” I reached for one that I loved, a little baby Brochan getting his first bath.
“You’re not putting that on the wall.”
“Yes, I am. Your son’s will go right next to it.”
Any argument he had died. Tenderness looked back then he ruined the mood when he asked, “Are you ready?”
“No.”
“She’ll be here any minute.”
“Let her stay outside. It’s getting really cold tonight, maybe with luck she’ll freeze to death.”
He reached for my hand and pulled me from the room. “I don’t like this plan. I want it so noted,” I whined.
“It’s noted.”
“That had to have felt really good earlier.”
“More than I can say.”
We reached the great hall just as the doorbell rang. My stomach dropped. Finnegan went for the door as Brochan pulled me farther into the hall. It didn’t escape my notice he stood in front of me. Fergus and my father joined us. Fenella appeared too, a united front.
The door opened and all the years between then and now vanished. I was that little girl again facing down my monster. Norah Calhoun strolled into our home without an invitation, as if she belonged there. Without even looking at Finnegan, she handed him her coat. “I’ll have a martini, dry.”
My hands balled into fists. She hadn’t changed at all. That wasn’t exactly true. She was older. There was evidence that she was trying to fight father time by the stretching of the skin at her eyes, her lips were fuller than they had been in her youth. Her hair was chemically treated and her figure, always rail thin, was a little wide in her stomach.
“The gang is all here,” she sneered, her eyes landing on me. “Still struggling with weight I see.”
Brochan squeezed my hand because he knew I wanted to punch her.
“You should fire your plastic surgeon. Are you purposely packing on the pounds so you can inject the fat into you lips?” my father said evenly from my side. I lowered my head and bit my lip to keep from laughing out loud.
“Dinner’s ready,” Fenella called from the doorway.
Fenella had outdone herself. I didn’t understand why she would go to the trouble for a maggot. Brochan pulled out my chair, one right at his side, thankfully. It was only after I sat down that I realized we were missing a place setting, the one in front of Norah. Then I took in the offerings, juicy cheeseburgers, mashed potatoes with a pool of butter in the center and grilled cheese. My heart swelled. He’d remembered. I glanced at him; his focus was on Norah, but his expression was completely unreadable.
I whispered, “I love you.”
He reached for my hand under the table and gently squeezed it, but he never took his eyes off Norah.
“Figures I did everything I could to get out of this place and I end up right back where I fucking started. And if that’s not a big enough kick in the ass, my daughter has snagged herself a wealthy…” The way she eyed him made me feel dirty, “…man. I wondered how Elizabeth caught a man like you.” She glanced around the table. “But it was pity I see.”
She was being even more of a raging bitch than normal and I got that she was acting as she was as a defense, coming out of the corner swinging, but she was just such a cunt.
She dropped her elbows on the table. “Let’s get right down to it, shall we? The cottage was my retirement plan. As Brianna’s only heir I knew it would all come to me. My ex-husband deceived me with lies to get me to drop the suit and now I find myself in a position that I’m not comfortable with.”
“Poverty,” my father offered.
“I know the rumors about you, Brochan.” Ice formed in my blood as she continued, “I’m willing to keep my silence for a small fee.”
“Blackmail? How desperate,” Brochan drawled.
“Whatever works.”
“And what makes you think it’ll work,” he challenged.
“Life father, like son.”
His next words were spoken so softly, which made them even more terrifying. “What do you mean by that?”
“It was so easy. He didn’t want the baby, but then he shouldn’t have fucked her. Heather didn’t want to take advantage of the opportunity, but she was a stupid bitch. A hail Mary like that falls in your lap, you scoop it up.”
“Who didn’t want the baby?” Brochan’s voice had dropped to a deadly whisper, but she was too high working her manipulation to realize how much danger she was in.
I went numb because I was beginning to understand the connection.
She sat back and savored the moment before she said, “Your father.”
My heart broke as his body turned to rock. I squeezed his hand knowing how much her confession hurt him. She had blackmailed Brochan’s father, had held his infidelity over his head. Stoked the fires of his obsession and madness. She had helped create the monster that had made Brochan’s childhood hell.
“Your mother died and the money train stopped. Heather wanted to confess, had some stupid idea that he would love her, that she could step into his beloved, dead wife’s shoes.”
I had to speak up. Her logic was twisted, even then. “You are admitting you killed her?”
“I’m not admitting anything.”
Then a thought left me cold as I touched my own belly. “What happened to Heather’s child?”
She smiled but it wasn’t pleasant. “Last I heard he is currently in jail on two counts of attempted murder.”
Tomas. His jealousy made a horrible kind of sense; they shared a father but only Brochan lived in the castle. She lied to him, fostered his hate without sharing the horror Brochan lived in. She had manipulated him, turned him into one of her pawns. Another innocent, like Brochan and me.
“That’s how you knew of the inheritance,” Fergus said, turning my focus to him. “You kept your claws in him, turned him into your errand boy.”
Brochan added, “You filled his head.”
She didn’t even try to deny it. “Another opportunity. He was easy to manipulate, just like his mother.”
“Why?” I shouted. If I could get my hands on her…
“You never burn a bridge completely. Finlay McIntyre had been a cash cow, and now his son will be too.”
I wanted to reach across the table and strangle her. She didn’t care about anyone but herself. She really was a monster. But of all her crimes, knowing the part she played in Brochan’s nightmare was the one I couldn’t get past.
“How many times did you call Tomas, or write him, show him any kind of attention for him to so easily eat up your lies?” I asked.
She laughed. “Not a lot. The lonely can be quite needy. I did call his father before I left for the States, told him his other son was an orphan; would be left to the system. He didn’t care. He wanted nothing to do with him.”
Even through my fury, I felt fear because she had all but confessed. “How did you know he was an orphan?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
“You killed his mom, didn’t give a damn what happened to him, and then twisted him with lies. Wherever he ended up, he was in a far better place than Brochan.”
She waved that off. “I cared more about what happened to him than I did about you.”
“Why do you hate me so much?”
Something ugly moved across her face. “You were a mistake, a costly one. One I tried to correct.”
My blood ran cold. I didn’t immediately appreciate her cryptic comment. Brochan did. He moved so fast. He was around the table, pulling Norah from her seat by her hair. She wasn’t cocky now. There was fear in her eyes. “You hired him?”
“Hired who?”
“The mugger.” He released her like she was a disease.
It took me a second for his words to penetrate and even when they did, I still was having trouble understanding them. When it did finally sink in, I was sure my expression matched Brochan’s murderous one.
“You hired someone to kill me?”
My father was on his feet. “You did what?”
Shaken but still on her mission, she actually had the nerve to laugh. “I should have hired your lover. He wouldn’t have fucked up.” She strolled to the door on unsteady legs. “I’m staying at the Inn since my home was taken from me. I’ll wait there for your call. Five million dollars and I’m out of your life....” She looked back at us and smirked, “Until I run out of money.”
We’d never be free of her. I thought of the life Brochan had lived, all the ugly, all the pain, but he didn’t have to live in the ugly anymore. He had nothing but beauty awaiting him. I loved him so much that I was ready to sacrifice my own happy ending so that he would have his, with our son. I understood now the beast he spoke of, the savage part of man that stripped all of it away—right and wrong, black and white—who fed on only vengeance and a twisted kind of justice. I followed her and reached for the gun Brochan insisted I carry. A calm settled over me as my own inner beast woke.
“Mother.”
She turned. Understanding came a second too late. I pulled the trigger. Her body jerked back before landing in a heap, blood coming from the single wound in the center of her forehead. Bile rushed up my throat, the hand holding the gun shook. Brochan grabbed the gun, but I just stared at her lifeless body as my own convulsed. Brochan held my hair as I twisted away and hurled.
Even fearing the repercussions of what I had done, I didn’t have remorse for doing it. “I killed her,” I whispered.
Brochan’s big body trembled. “I would have handled it.”
“We need to clean this up,” Fenella and Finnegan were already on the move.
“We’ve got to get rid of the body,” Fergus said.
“You’ve got to have someone?” My father demanded of Brochan.
“We have to call the cops,” I insisted.
“No!” Brochan roared.
I touched his cheek, love for him pushing out everything else. “I don’t want to start our lives together by covering this up, having Norah hanging over us even in death, pulling our family into it. I know you can make it all disappear, but it won’t disappear for me. I did it. I’m not sorry I did it, but I have to face the consequences.” And that broke me because we had come so close, but my mother had the last laugh. With one shot, the foundation we had been building on crumbled.
I waited in the library. Now that the adrenaline had faded, I was terrified. I didn’t want to go to jail but I couldn’t find it in me to be sorry I killed her. Better me than Brochan. I touched my belly, tears welled at the idea of losing time with them while I did twenty-five to life for murder. My only solace was Brochan would have our baby to love. He wouldn’t be alone. He wouldn’t be in the dark anymore. The first visitor arrived mere minutes after the shooting, but soon most of the town was in our great hall. There was a heaviness in the air, Norah’s body was right there for all to see. I didn’t understand why they were here until the police arrived.
I hadn’t yet met the local police; it was so surreal I almost felt like laughing. I had never even gotten a speeding ticket and now my first time breaking the law, I commit murder.
He was older, in his sixties. He took in Norah before he moved into the hall. “All right tell me what happened here?”
Brochan stepped forward, “I shot her.”
“No!”
I jumped to my feet but before I could say anything more Fergus shouted, “It was me, Seamus, I killed her.”
I looked back at Fergus then Blair called, “No, I shot her.”
Bridget was eating a grilled cheese, but declared with a full mouth, “I killed her.”
“No it was me,” Molly exclaimed.
Mrs. Wilson was sitting on the sofa. She looked terrified to be in the werewolf’s lair, but her voice was very clear when she said, “It was me. I killed her.”
Seamus stopped writing and looked around. “Did anyone else kill her?”
My father stepped forward, so did Fenella and Finnegan. I couldn’t believe what everyone was doing. I had always wanted a place to belong, but I never imagined this. It felt so incredibly good, bittersweet because I finally found it and now I was going to lose it.
I inhaled then confessed, “I killed her.”
“Yeah. And I bet Santa Claus took a shot too,” Seamus muttered.
“No, it really was me.”
“What was she doing here?” he asked.
“She was pissed Brianna left her estate to Lizzie,” Fergus said.
“Yeah, I heard her say she was going to get what was hers, one way or the other,” A woman I had never met chimed in.
“You remember poor Heather. Norah was the last person to see her. Suspicious how that poor darling died and how fast Norah left town,” Mrs. Wilson said. “Bad egg that one.”
It went on for an hour. Seamus threw up his hands and walked over to Brochan and me. “Let’s talk.”
We moved to the library. He stepped in, looked around before leveling sharp eyes on us.
“I don’t know what happened here, but here’s what I do know. Norah Calhoun was on my list for Heather Craig’s death. I was never able to prove it even though I know she was responsible. Brianna Calhoun was a sweetheart and from all that I’ve heard, you are the spitting image of her.” His eyes moved to Brochan. “I didn’t believe Fenella when she came to me. I didn’t believe your father could do the things they claimed. I was wrong and I’ve had to live every day since with the knowledge that I did nothing.” He offered his hand. “I’m sorry.”
Brochan took it.
Seamus touched his hat. “It’s a clear case of self defense as far as I’m concerned. We’ll get the body out of here as soon as possible.”
I swayed not believing what I was hearing; Brochan dragged me against him and held me close.
Seamus started from the library but stopped and looked back, his eyes moving to my belly before settling on Brochan. “I’m guessing you’re pursuing another line of work.”
He knew too?
“Aye.”
“See that you do.” Then he walked out.
Hours later, the police had left, the coroner had taken Norah’s body and Fergus and the rest of the town had gone home. The house was asleep, but I couldn’t sleep. Standing in our room, I looked outside unable to believe what had happened. I’d watched all of it like I was standing outside of myself. I had killed her. I was supposed to feel some measure of remorse for that, but I didn’t. How the town had rallied. I still didn’t quite believe it. How Seamus had given me a free pass I believed even less.
Brochan came up behind me, his arms going around my stomach. “Are you okay?”
I turned into him. “I’m still having trouble believing it all happened, oddly not killing her. That felt real and right, but how the town stood up…for me. I don’t understand.”
He pressed a kiss on my neck. “Because they know what she was and what you are. It might feel wrong that you killed her, but right and wrong isn’t that simple and the town is smart enough to know it.”
I had thought similarly in the moment. Lucky for me they did too. They had given me my life, my happy ending. They may not have come through for Brochan as a child, but they had certainly come through for us. I changed the subject because it was going to take time for the events of the night to sink in and settle.
“Did you know the part she played with your father?”
His body responded first with how tense it grew. “No.”
“There is no excuse for what your father did to you, but I understand why he went mad. Already worried about Abigail’s pregnancy and then blackmailed on top of it, constantly reminded of his weakness.”
Brochan brushed his thumb over my lips.
“Maybe we should request leniency for Tomas. He was a pawn too.”
“You are a better person than me,” he whispered.
“That’s not true.”
He sounded a little incredulous when he offered, “I wonder if Brianna knew of the connection between Norah and Finlay.”
“You think it’s possible?”
“I can’t imagine she would have kept quiet about it, so if she did it wouldn’t have been until later, maybe even when she attempted reconciliation, but it’s an unbelievable coincidence that our parents had a shared history. That woman really was a witch.”
“A good one.”
“Aye, a good one.”
I rested my head on his shoulder. “It could be something else all together.” I looked up at him. “Maybe it was fate.”
Those beautiful eyes warmed. “Fate…that I can believe.”
Cait and I were in the white room. She and Ethan’s wedding was in the morning. They had moved into the cottage, but Cait didn’t want Ethan to see her until the ceremony. It had been a month since the Norah incident and though I had called Cait at the time, being here must have brought it all back for her.
“I can’t believe that bitch. I can’t believe she had the nerve to come here and blackmail you.”
I still felt no remorse. I had made peace with it. She couldn’t hurt me or mine anymore. I had told Brochan once sometimes it really should be an eye for an eye. After Norah, I appreciated better the truth of those words.
Cait reached for my hand. “Are you okay?”
“I am. I killed someone. Sometimes it sneaks up on me, but after everything she did, I’d do it again. She would have never stopped.”
“I agree. That must have been hard for Brochan watching you...”
“He wasn’t marking his soul for her. She was my monster to defeat, but let’s not talk about her. Your big day is tomorrow. You seem very calm.”
“After the last two months and all the work involved in selling our place, moving...the wedding is the icing on the cake, especially since you took care of most of it.”
“Fenella did most of it. She had so much fun planning. Wait until you see the fairy tale wedding she’s created.” Brochan wasn’t thrilled with all the nonsense, as he called it, but he was being a good sport about it.
“It’s good practice for yours,” Cait said, brushing her finger over my ring.
I didn’t need the big wedding, didn’t even really want one. A minister in the library sounded perfect. I just wanted Brochan.
I glanced at the clock. It was past two. “We need to get some sleep. Morning will be here before you know it.” We climbed into bed and shut off the lights. We lay in silence for a few seconds before Cait whispered, “Thank you for my fairy tale wedding.”
“You’re the godmother to my son, seems fitting you should have a fairy tale wedding.”
I knew her head turned to me even in the dark. Her voice broke. “I’d be honored.”
“Brochan is asking Ethan to be the godfather.”
“Oh Lizzie. Now I’m crying.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No you’re not.”
“You’re right. I’m not.”
Silence again before I said, “I’m so happy you walked into that diner.”
She reached for my hand. “Me too.”
Brianna’s barn was lit with lights. Large arrangements of flowers flanked the front where the minister stood. White chairs were arranged in rows and divided by the aisle that was adorned with a white silk runner. Cait looked stunning in her gown as she stood up front with Ethan speaking their vows. My eyes were on Brochan, dressed in his kilt, his were on me. The minister announced husband and wife and after their first kiss, they walked hand in hand down the aisle. We’d all be heading to Brochan’s for the reception. He pulled me up against his side and pressed a kiss on my temple before we followed the bride and groom down the aisle. Brianna had said there was magic here and all someone had to do was look to see it. I pressed closer to Brochan. He was my magic and I definitely saw him.