I started getting anxious on the drive back to the hotel because I knew I couldn’t put off talking to her. I had one chance to explain my issue and hope it wouldn’t upset her or make her walk away. If I didn’t I was playing with fire. Cole had been right—the longer I waited, the better the chance shit would get ugly.
When we arrived back at the hotel, I quickly took Daisy’s hand and took her up to my room before she could say a word. I was anxious that she’d ask to go back to her own room and that couldn’t happen before I talked to her.
I opened the door and switched on the lights before guiding us to the couch. She let out a sound of pure pleasure as she kicked off her chucks and plopped her feet on the coffee table, crossing one ankle over the other. Leaning her head back against the couch, she yawned before lifting her left arm up to check her watch.
“Ugh,” she groaned. “I can’t stay long. I need to go pack since we’re up and out of here at noon.”
I frowned as I considered her words. I hadn’t even thought of it, to be honest. I was lucky—I didn’t even have to look to know my dirty laundry had been taken care of and all of my shit was packed except for what I’d wear on the plane and my toiletries. I contemplated using her need to pack to put our talk off before realizing all I’d merely be doing was kicking the ball down the road.
“Listen, before you go, we need to talk.”
Her eyes widened as she looked over at me apprehensively. “That sounds ominous.”
“I hope not,” I answered, “but I do need to tell you something I really wish I didn’t.”
She sat up straight and swallowed hard. “Jesus, Tyson. If you don’t want to do this anymore or if you want to fuck other—”
“No! No, Daisy, it’s not that at all,” I assured her. “I want to fucking be with you and only you.”
I wanted to punch myself in the nuts for bungling shit so badly before I even got started.
“Okayyyy,” she drawled. “If it’s not that, tell me what’s going on.”
I took a deep breath and rolled my neck on my shoulders before I threw a fuck it and dove in.
“I’ve got some anxiety issues and because of them, I can’t sleep with other people in my bedroom. I can only sleep if I’m locked in and by myself.”
I don’t know what I was expecting, but her reaction wasn’t it at all.
Instead of flipping her shit, she expelled a long breath and shook her head at me.
“You just scared the bejesus out of me,” she chastised. “I was prepared for something awful.”
“It is awful,” I insisted. “It’s also really goddamn embarrassing. It took forever to get to the point where I could have the guys in the room when I slept and even that was always questionable. I never even considered having a woman in my bed, until you. I want you there, Daisy. Believe me, I do. I just can’t right now and it fuckin’ kills me because I can’t give you that and you might say fuck it and move on.”
She reached over and took my hand in hers. “Tyson, you telling me you have anxiety about sleeping with people in your room isn’t a reason for me to say fuck it. This isn’t a deal breaker.”
I thought I knew how much I didn’t want her to bail on me, but I’d barely cracked the surface. Only when she said it wasn’t going to happen did I realize how truly gutted I’d have been if she told me to grow up and go fuck myself.
“Fuck me am I glad to hear you say that,” I answered.
“You never need to be afraid to talk to me about anything,” she said. “Besides, we’ve just started—”
At a loss for words, she waved her hand.
“Whatever it is we would call this,” she finished after a pause.
I shocked the hell out of myself when I said, “I’d like to call this a relationship.”
Sure, I’d been feeling it, but actually having the balls to say it was a feat and a half. She looked surprised in the few seconds that passed before she smiled.
“Yeah?” she asked softly.
“Hell yeah,” I answered firmly.
As we smiled at each other like two lovesick fools, I threw my head back and laughed.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“I’m almost thirty and I’ve never had a girlfriend before. This feels monumental.”
“I wish I could say I’d never had a boyfriend before,” she admitted.
My curiosity piqued, I asked, “Why?”
She answered simply, “I made bad choices.”
Ah, I thought, she’d been cheated on.
“So your exes weren’t faithful?”
She grimaced. “If only that had been the issue,” she said flatly.
“What did they do?” I asked, mentally wondering how much work I’d have to do to find the fucks who had hurt her.
When she didn’t immediately respond I pressed. “I really want to know.”
She wrinkled her nose and made a face before she laid it out.
“Here’s my history in a nutshell. When I dropped out of high school and left home at eighteen, I moved in with my boyfriend. He was twenty-four and told me he was a club promoter. Several months later I found out he worked for the strip club his dad owned when he brought me in for a job interview.”
My jaw was clenched so tight I thought it might shatter. “He made you strip?”
She shook her head firmly. “Nobody makes me do anything. He tried, but I wasn’t having it. I went back to his apartment, packed my shit and moved in with one of Dusty’s friends. She helped me get my GED before I moved back to Harmony for a few months to regroup.”
“You said relationships as in plural,” I pointed out when she didn’t immediately continue.
She sighed and fidgeted on the couch before carrying on.
“I wound up going to LA and enrolling in community college for a business degree. Two years later I met a guy and we started dating. He was the exact opposite of the club promoter, so I thought I was in the clear. He worked a regular office job and seemed to be the straightest of arrows. Turned out that wasn’t the case at all. We were five months into our relationship when he took me out for Valentine’s Day dinner. Right in the middle of dinner the FBI showed up and arrested him for hacking into government servers and selling the information to a militant group that was planning to crash the US market.”
I gaped at her in shock. That was some seriously fucked up shit.
“I spent the following three months being hounded by the FBI and Homeland Security as they went through my life with a magnifying glass. Every job, every place I’d lived, every dollar in my bank account, my emails, my phone records. It was beyond invasive and completely humiliating. Worse than that, they also gave my family the same treatment. My mother was mortified and is still angry. Everyone else was supportive of me, but… it was embarrassing. The icing on the cake was being forced to run up a ton of attorney fees to deal with it. It took me a year to pay that all off.”
“Jesus, Freckles. I’m so fucking sorry. You didn’t deserve any of that.”
She shook her head. “No one deserves that. Anyway, after enduring those two disasters I’ve been off the dating circuit for two years. And now,” she grinned, “I’m with you.”
I needed physical contact with her so I reached out, lifted her up and pulled her onto my lap.
“I’ve got issues a mile fuckin’ long,” I told her honestly, “but I can promise you a few things. One, I don’t hack shit. Two, I’d kill a motherfucker before I let them see you naked. I’m not going to lie, cheat or steal. I’m in this and I’m not going to fuck it up. You’re safe with me.”
She cupped my cheek, rubbing her thumb across my stubble. “You’re safe with me, too,” she vowed.
I had to hug her tight so I could hide how affected I was by her words. When we pulled apart, she looked at me and grinned.
“However,” she said in a joking tone, “if you persist in leaving hickeys for everyone to see, I’m going to have a dyin’ duck fit.”
I sputtered out a laugh. “What the heck does that mean, woman?”
“It’s a Southern-ism,” she answered, like it made all the sense in the world.
“Okay then,” I chuckled. “I’ll try not to do it where people can see it again.”
“Try hard,” she retorted cheekily.
As I laughed she lifted her arm and checked the time. “I really have to go,” she announced. “If I don’t get packing I’ll be up all night. Trust me, a sleep deprived Daisy is not a party.”
I quite literally detested the notion of her sleeping what felt like a million miles away from me on a completely different floor, but there was nothing I could do about it. It just felt wrong. I walked her back to her room and reluctantly said goodbye after kissing her until we were both breathing heavy. I was ready to fuck her into next century but forced myself to pull back because I knew she really did need to pack.
When I got back to my suite, it felt cavernous and lonely. I found comfort in holding the pillow Daisy had slept on the night before because her scent was on it. Still, it took me forever to fall asleep.
I was yawning as my friend’s mom pulled up in front of my house after a day spent with Robbie and his family riding jet skis and kayaking. It had been a blast and even though I was a little sunburnt and a lot exhausted, I was happy. Summer had gotten off to a rocky start but now, six weeks later, things were finally going well.
I got out of the car and closed the door behind me, then leaned in Robbie’s window to talk to his mom.
“Thanks for the ride, Mrs. McCleary.”
“It’s no problem at all,” she said kindly. “We loved having you. Tell your dad to call me if he needs any more help with your brother. I’m always around and more than happy to lend a hand whenever and wherever I can.”
“I will. He’s really thankful for all you’ve done since Margaret went away,” I said.
“That’s the beauty of lake life,” she laughed. “We’re all for one and one for all.”
As I walked to the front door, I thought about how much I wanted to stay at the lake house with my dad. I didn’t like living in New Jersey with my mom and her fiancé Laird, but she refused to let me live with Dad full time as long as “that woman” was in his life. With Margaret finally out of the picture, I was hoping I’d be able to talk my mom into letting me stay. It wasn’t like she really cared if I was around or not.
I was feeling really hopeful about my chances as I opened the door. Turning around, I waved at the McClearys and watched as they drove away. Stepping inside the house, I flicked on the living room light and wondered why my dad hadn’t left it on for me. He was normally right on top of that.
I shrugged it off, certain he’d probably fallen asleep when he put my brother, Jason, down for bed. Working full time, dealing with a toddler and keeping track of my sister, Alexandra, and me all by himself had to be exhausting. Still, in the past few weeks he’d been able to relax more than I’d seen him do in forever. He was no longer as keyed up as he was when Margaret first left.
Once I’d locked the door, I headed down the hall to the bathroom to put some after sun lotion on my burn. I hit the switch as I entered the bathroom, then stopped dead in my tracks. I blinked several times, telling myself I couldn’t possibly be seeing what I thought I was.
Every time I opened my eyes, everything was still the same. I screamed as I dropped to my knees and yanked my brothers tiny body from the bathtub full of water. The water was cold and so was he. I knew immediately that he was gone—there was no question about it, not really—but I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.
“Wake up, Jason! Wake up!”
Water soaked my clothes as I tried to get him to wake up, to no avail. I rose from the floor on shaky legs with him still in my arms, jostling him into one arm so I could grab the door handle to get us out. Flinging it open, I raced down the hall screaming for my father.
“Dad! Help! Dad, Jason—something is wrong! Daddy! Help me! Please, help me!”
I was twelve years old, terrified, and screaming for my daddy. I’d never needed him as badly as I did in that moment.
The door to his room was cracked and I kicked it open with one foot, screaming his name as I did.
“Dad, wake up! Wake up!”
I barely stopped to hit the switch on the wall with my elbow as I continued running toward his bed. I thought things couldn’t get worse than finding my two-year-old brother dead in the bathtub.
I was wrong.
My father had been shot in the head while he slept. His skull wasn’t intact anymore and there were chunks of brain on the white pillowcase he was lying on. Like with Jason in the bathtub, I knew he was dead. There was no question, but the mind is a strange place when you’re in crisis. My synapses were misfiring as I ran to the bed and laid Jason down on it as gently as I could. I ignored the utter lack of color and weird bloated quality of his skin as I patted his arm.
“Hold on, buddy, please, just hold on for me.”
I ran around to Dad’s side of the bed and pulled the sheet back so I could see if he had a pulse. That’s when I saw the knife. He hadn’t just been shot. He’d also been stabbed, multiple times. His chest was practically one giant open wound. Still, I checked the pulse at his neck, praying for a miracle.
There were no miracles to be had.
“This isn’t happening,” I wailed. “This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this can’t be real. It’s only a dream. I just need to wake up.”
I chanted it over and over, but nothing changed. I was still standing over my fathers body and my brother was still lifeless on the end of the bed. It was a nightmare, but not a dream.
It was right then I realized with all the screaming I’d been doing, my sister hadn’t woken up. We joked she was a heavy sleeper, but I knew if she was able, she’d have come to help me once she heard the noise.
The walk back out of my dad’s room and down the hall to Alexandra’s felt like it took a hundred years. Each step felt like I was taking it with lead weights on my feet. As I got closer to her room, I realized the door was open and the light was on. I was relieved. Maybe she’s not even here, I thought.
The last of my hope died a painful death when I walked in and found my ten-year-old sister on the floor, lying in a pool of blood. Enough blood that I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she wasn’t alive, either. Still, I checked. As I got close to her, I noticed there were bloody handprints on the carpet and her dresser. I realized she hadn’t died quickly.
I turned her over to check for a pulse and let out a scream of absolute fucking terror when I did. Her throat had been slit and one of her favorite polka dot socks had been shoved into her mouth as a gag. There were multiple slashes on her arms and hands. She’d fought whoever had done this to her.
It finally hit me that I needed to call the police. I looked around Alexandra’s room but didn’t see her cordless. Standing from the floor, I made my way down the hall to the kitchen. I started to tiptoe as I did, afraid the killer was in the house with me, but then I got furiously angry. If he was in the house, I was going to kill him myself.
With great purpose, I picked up speed and raced toward the kitchen, anxious to get a big knife and the telephone. I’d defend myself and call the police. That plan went out of the window when I walked into the kitchen and found Margaret and what little was left of her head, at the table.
A knife was in front of her and a gun was right next to her on the floor. The back of her skull was open from where a bullet had exited.
That was when I knew it wasn’t a burglar or some stranger who had killed my family.
It was my stepmother.
In front of her on the table was a half eaten plate of her favorite food, chicken parmigiana. Next to it was a plate with remnants of apple pie.
My eyes darted disbelievingly back and forth from the food to what was left of her head. She’d killed my family and then sat down for her last meal. She’d murdered and then shrugged it off to eat.
I cried then, great big gasping sobs that physically hurt. I couldn’t get the visions of my family out of my head, not even for a second. I ran to the sink and threw up until there was nothing left but bile.
She’d killed my family. I’d known she was crazy but never once had I imagined she’d murder her children or my father.
I don’t remember calling 911 but I’ll never forget watching as one of the detectives ran out of the house to throw up on the front lawn. I heard the officers talking about skin being under my brothers nails, which meant he’d struggled, too. They said the only person who hadn’t known what was happening was my father. Him, she’d killed in his sleep. It was the children she’d forced to suffer the most.
I remember listening to a social worker on the phone with my mother as she told her she needed to get to the Poconos immediately. My mother never asked to speak to me so she could make sure I was okay. The only parent I had who’d ever truly loved me was dead, along with the rest of my family.
It was in that moment I realized Margaret’s final act had been another bit of cruelty. She’d known I’d be the one to find them, knew she’d taken everything I loved away from me.
I was totally alone, left behind in a dark world that offered only pain.