Montana Cherries (15 page)

“She wanted it to look that way,” Cord told her. “But I was there. It wasn’t an accident.”

She stared at him. “You
saw
it happen?”

“No. I—”

“Then how can you even say that?” She was equal parts mortified and scared.

“We’ve talked about it before,” Gabe spoke up, his voice grim. “When you look at the facts, she did it to herself, though we doubt she intended to go so far as to kill herself.”

So many thoughts spun through her head all at once. She landed on the one she could best deal with. “You’ve talked about it before,” she repeated. “Meaning, all of you. Without me?”

They’d all known Gabe was leaving, they’d clearly known Jaden wasn’t coming home, and they’d also talked about their mother’s death. Without her. Had they ever included her in anything?

She’d thought they were a team.

Yet clearly they weren’t. Not with them keeping everything from her.

She shook her head again, her hands shaking in her lap, and Cord pulled her to his side.

“It came up a few years ago,” he explained gently. “Most of us had reason to wonder, but we’d kept it to ourselves, because it sounded so crazy. Until Jaden told us what he’d learned.”

Her eyes were so dry she couldn’t blink. “What was that?”

“Narcissistic Personality Disorder,” Jaden said from where he now stood by the fireplace. “Our mother was a classic example.”

Gabe crossed his arms over his chest, but he didn’t say anything.

“You’ve forgotten what she was like, Dani.” This came from Nick. “After you came home, you went into a kind of frenzy to keep everything going, wanting the house to be perfect, us to be perfect. You wouldn’t let anyone say a negative thing about her, so none of us ever questioned how things had been.”

“Not that we would have questioned anything out loud,” Nate added sarcastically. “We were masters at never admitting the obvious. She taught us well.”

“I don’t understand,” Dani whimpered.

“Narcissistic Personality Disorder is more than simply being self-absorbed,” Jaden explained. “Almost everyone has moments of narcissistic traits—being conceited, selfish—but our mother went beyond that. Hers was a mental disorder in which she had a deep-seated need to be the center of attention. All the time. At the cost of anyone and everyone around her. And she accomplished this by employing a lifetime of manipulating those closest to her.”

“After the funeral,” Nick jumped back in, “you went nuts if we didn’t put her on some sort of pedestal. It was as if you couldn’t remember what she’d really been like.” He gave a little shrug and glanced momentarily at his feet. “Or maybe
we
were the ones remembering incorrectly—or so we thought. There were a lot of unvoiced questions for a long time. So instead of pushing back against you and all that you were doing for us, instead of bringing up memories of things we weren’t even sure had happened, it seemed easiest to go along. We took our anger, and shoved it out of the way. And we let you do your thing.”

“But it ate at us,” Cord finished.

Dani remained close to Cord’s side, but she looked over at Gabe. He had yet to contribute to this absurdity. He didn’t agree with this, did he?

“So, you all knew from the beginning,” she began, quickly sorting through everything that had been said, “or
believed
from the beginning . . . that Mom killed herself, yet you didn’t think it was important to share that with me?”

“It was that whole don’t-talk-about-how-messed-up-we-are thing,” Nate explained.

“I don’t know what you mean by that.” She shrugged off Cord’s arm and stood.

“I mean, we were the perfect family in public, Dani. Always. Mom looked the part. Hell, she played the part. The town believed in her sainthood. But at home? When the doors were closed? She fucked us all up.”

Dani couldn’t do more than stare at the phone.

“Even Dad,” Jaden added. “For narcissists, it’s all about them. She didn’t have the capability to be empathetic toward any of us. Her world revolved around her, and her actions were based purely on getting what she wanted. We had to earn her love, yet that was impossible. It was worse with you because you’re a girl—in direct competition with her as a woman.”

Dani narrowed her eyes at Jay’s words. She hadn’t been in competition with their mom.

“I think even as small kids,” he continued, “us younger brothers picked up on the fact that you got the worst end of things. You were her direct target. But it’s not like she left the rest of us alone. Narcissists need everyone in their lives to revolve around them. They’re known to pit siblings against each other to keep the focus on themselves. If you don’t know if you can trust your brother . . .”—Jaden glanced at Cord and Gabe—“then you’ll turn to your mother. Even a mother who twisted the facts whenever it suited her, simply to keep a cohesive family unit from forming, to make sure she was always the center of attention.”

Had their mother done that to them?

Was that even possible? They
were
a cohesive family unit!

But . . . it hadn’t always been that way.

Dani eyed Gabe then, who remained standing, arms crossed, several feet from her. He returned her stare, but didn’t utter a word. He’d been their mom’s favorite. She remembered that with sudden clarity. He could do no wrong. It had led to jealousy between them. Fights. Dani had hated him for a long time.

Had that carried over into his college years?

She couldn’t remember. She only knew that at some point things had righted themselves between them. She’d thought their fights had come from the stress of all they had to handle together, but had it actually been latent rivalry built up by their mom?

Bits and pieces of other arguments flashed through her mind. Some between her and Cord, others as heated debates between Cord and Gabe. There had definitely been a time when the three of them hadn’t gotten along. But wasn’t that normal teenage behavior?

Finally, Gabe lowered his arms and loosened his stance. “Don’t you remember how hard you tried to please her?” he asked. His words were spoken with only the tiniest hint of softness, and Dani could sense it was his way of reaching out. To help her see these “facts”?

“No.” Dani shook her head. What they were saying wasn’t right. Her mother had loved her. She’d loved all of them.

“You could make straight As in school,” Gabe said, “but it wasn’t all perfect hundreds, therefore you let her down. You won Miss Cherry Blossom, but she was ashamed of the dress you wore. Said it wasn’t respectable and didn’t represent a true Wilde. You—”

“Stop.” Dani held a hand up in front of her. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

“She always claimed to have headaches,” Nate said from the phone. “You had to take care of her. And us. You raised me, Nick, and Jaden, Dani. From the beginning. Never her.”

“I—”

She was so confused.

“She pretty much stayed in bed the first few years of Jay’s life,” Nick added.

Dani closed her eyes as memories began to creep in, but she didn’t like what she saw so she opened them again.

“Psychosomatic and emotionally needy,” Jaden added when her gaze landed on his. “She faked illnesses to get what she wanted. She required attention to be directed her way. Always. But, she never handed any out. Why do you think I went into psychology? I had a mother who never mothered me. I needed to understand why.”

She pressed a hand to her mouth as more pictures tried to push into her head. She didn’t want to remember. She didn’t want to know.

Cord moved to her side, but she jerked out of his reach, backing blindly away from all of them. She couldn’t breathe. Nothing she’d done had ever pleased her mom. She remembered that now. Nothing. Her mom had hated her.

Yet, after Dani had come home from that trip with Aunt Sadie, her mother had decided that she and Dani should be best friends. At first Dani liked it. If her mom was her friend, that had to mean that she finally liked Dani. Maybe even loved her.

Only . . .

“Oh, God,” she moaned as more memories surfaced. The things that had been shared with her about her parents’ relationship. She couldn’t block the visions out. “No.” She shook her head slowly. “NO.” She wrapped her arms around her stomach and rocked in place.

Her brothers had all gone quiet, and she forced her eyes open once again. Each one of them stood, pain painted across their faces.

“We need to call Dad,” Gabe said.

“Does he know too?”

Every one of them nodded.

“God,”
she moaned again. “Why have you all kept this from me?”

“We were protecting you,” Gabe answered. He had a phone in his hand. “We did the best we could.”

“Stop it!” she shouted, throwing her arms up. “Just, stop it. I never needed protecting. I shouldn’t have been excluded from things.” She pointed a finger at Gabe. “And put that phone down. I’m not ready to talk to Dad yet.”

He paused before slowly lowering the phone.

“Why do you think suicide?” She had to know.

All eyes turned to Cord.

He swallowed, then
he
moved off to stand by himself. His face was the hard steel he’d perfected over the years, but now the light had even gone out of his eyes. He looked like the shell of a person that Dani felt, and that scared her even worse. Whatever he was about to say, she instinctively knew it was why their mother’s death had hit him the hardest. It was why he’d changed. And likely why he’d never change back.

“The first time she hurt herself was when you went to New York,” he said. “I found her,” he added. “I always found her.”

Always?

Dani felt sick. She sank to the couch and pulled her feet onto the cushion. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she listened with horror to the stories her brother told.

Her mother had sliced the tip of her finger off that first time. They’d rushed her to the hospital, and the doctor had managed to save it. She’d wanted to call Dani to come home, but their dad wouldn’t let her. She’d screamed at them for days to call Dani. Her dad had even removed the phones from the house until Dani had returned.

“That’s when Aunt Sadie quit taking me places,” she muttered to herself. “And coming to visit.”

Cord paused, his eyes shifting to Gabe, and Dani suddenly realized another truth. She’d questioned for over a year as to why their aunt had quit visiting. She’d asked her parents—had even gone to her brothers for answers. No one had a clue. Or so they’d claimed.

But now she could see that they had, in fact, had a clue.

Their mother had hurt herself because Dani was off having fun, then the source of that fun disappeared from their lives. Every last one of them had likely known
exactly
why Aunt Sadie quit visiting.

Yet not a single word was ever uttered to her.

Had their mother accomplished that, too? Keeping Sadie away, as well as keeping her brothers’ mouths shut?

Probably. If everything else they were saying was true . . .

The second “accident” had been after Dani’s graduation, Cord explained.

Dani remembered. “Mom didn’t make it to the ceremony because of a headache. Then she had an allergic reaction to a new medicine she’d taken. She had to go to the hospital.”

“Where they pumped her stomach,” Cord explained. “She’d swallowed a bottle of pills about five minutes before I was supposed to pick her up. She knew I’d find her in time to save her.”

“We canceled my graduation party and spent the night at the hospital.”

“All of us making
her
the center of attention. Just like she wanted.”

The rest of her brothers remained silent. It was just her and Cord now, sharing what they remembered.

“The third time was the wreck,” he stated flatly.

“You found her.”

“She knew what time I’d be coming through there.”

Surely her mother hadn’t been that scheming. “But why do you think . . .” She quit talking. Her brothers were smart. Whatever Cord was about to say, she knew they hadn’t come to the conclusion lightly. Her mother had committed suicide while trying to screw with their heads. And Dani had revered her for years.

She had no idea how she’d been so blind.

“She’d hit someone else,” Cord said. “Totaled this other car. When I got there, Mom was sitting in the driver’s seat, the air bag having deployed due to the tree she’d run into, and her seat belt locked into place. She was angry. She couldn’t get out of the car because of the seat belt not releasing, and the air bag had left white dust on her outfit and given her a nosebleed. Also, her purse was on the floor and she couldn’t reach it. Therefore, she couldn’t ‘fix herself’ before the ambulance arrived.

“When she saw me, she informed me that the other car wasn’t supposed to be in the way, then she said, ‘Call Dani. Tell her to come home.
’
” Cord shook his head. “I refused.”

Their mother had called the day before the accident to ask Dani if she would come home and take care of the kids if anything ever happened to her. Dani had never told anyone about that phone call because their mother had also begged Dani to fly home that weekend. She’d claimed a migraine coming on.

Dani had refused. She’d been invited to her first party as a college student, and she hadn’t wanted to miss it.

Nor had she any desire to travel cross-country for her mother.

She remembered that conversation clearly now. She’d been thrilled to finally be away from home—away from her mother—and the last thing she’d wanted to do was come back and spend the weekend being made to feel less than enough.

Only, if she
had
come home, their mother would still be alive today.

She sat, unblinking, arms still hugging her knees, alone on the couch. Her mother had manipulated her until the end.

And she’d killed herself because of it.

“I went to check on the second vehicle,” Cord continued his story. “I stayed with the other driver because she was young and pregnant and Mom seemed fine, but mostly because I was angry and I didn’t want to go back over there. When the ambulances arrived, I watched the EMTs head to Mom’s car. They began working on her, but then they just stopped. She’d died while I wasn’t looking. Traumatic aortic disruption. The impact with the seat belt and air bag had caused a rip between the aorta and the heart, and she’d quickly bled out.”