Cursed be the Wicked (30 page)

I repeat the facts inside my head.

Liz loved Ben.

Ben loved Mom.

I look over at the man standing across from me and it makes sense.

And Mom loved Jack.

He’s saying he didn’t kill Dad.
Ben
. But maybe he did, he said himself he still has holes in his memory of the night he confronted Ben.

Maybe Mom loved Jack so much, and felt so bad about what happened between them, that she covered it up for him and took the blame so he wouldn’t go to jail.

It makes sense.

Liz may be a bitch, but that doesn’t make her a liar. I’ve known Jack what, a week, tops? They both have feasible stories if I’m being honest. I just need to figure out which one of them is lying.

Something I plan to do before the night is over.

Chapter 18

Light

Finn and I get Jack to the closest late night restaurant and order him a meal. I leave money on the table to cover the cost. It’s all I can give him right now. Later is another story.

After he’s squared away, I leave to go do a little more research on what happened between him and my family fifteen years ago. I’m hoping Mom will have some solid answers somewhere inside her vaguely written journals.

I want to find something exonerating her from the murder of the man I spent my entire life thinking was my father.

On the other hand, if it turns out Jack’s guilty, I’m not sure what’ll happen next. If Mom took the fall for this guy, he’s going pay for what he did. Hopefully I won’t try to commit murder again to make that happen.

A million things run through my mind as we make the drive over to Mom’s place.

My place
.

Finn is staring at me from the passenger’s seat. She knows I’m not sharing pertinent information with her. I can hear her, inside my head, giving me shit about it even though she’s not saying a single word right now.

So I tell her.

“Jack’s my father.”

She doesn’t say anything. Then I finish the thought.

“According to Liz.”

She turns and watches the road in front of us, like she’s thinking back on something.

I keep rambling. “I need some kind of confirmation. It’s crazy.” I turn and look over at her. “Right?”

Her eyes drop. “I’m not sure, Coop. Crazier things than that have happened.”

The need to barrel forward and get to the bottom of everything is powerful for me as I drive. As I try to figure this all out, my mind is spinning and I can’t seem to grasp hold of one particular thought to start from.

As we pull up to the old house, I find that thought. Or feeling, rather. Deep in my gut.

Something’s wrong.

Finn feels it too, and she’s already out of the car, staring up at the second story window that used to be my room.

She nods and before I can ask her what the hell that was all about, she waves to me.

“Come on, we’re late.”

“What?”

The front door is open and I run to catch up with Finn as she enters the house.

Inside it’s dark except for the light of a fire that’s burning in the front living room’s fireplace. It’s quiet except for the tearing of paper heard every ten or fifteen seconds.

Finn makes no move to stop my aunt as she destroys one of my mother’s journals. She simply stares at her, sadness peeking out from behind her eyes.

When I make a move to do it myself, she puts a hand on my arm. I turn to her, baffled. Finn slowly moves her head from left to right, silently encouraging me to take my next steps with caution.

I nod and move quietly, closer to where Liz is standing in front of the fireplace, speaking to herself. Or maybe not so much.

“You ruined everything,” she whispers as she pulls another sheet of paper from the book she’s holding.

“Deserve what you got.”

I say her name as gently as possible. “Liz?”

She says nothing, just tears the sheets and drops them onto the logs of the fire, watching them burn.

I try again. “Liz, what are you doing?”

Another piece of paper falls into the fire, causing the flames to jump and I retreat slightly. She doesn’t seem to notice we’re here as she talks to the burning logs in front of her.

“Stupid girl.”

I try to see what’s written on the pages. I’ll never get them back and if I don’t stop her soon. I’ll have nothing to go on anymore.

“Think you’re so smart. Even now. But I’m smarter.”

Finally, I grab her wrist to stop her from destroying anymore of my mother’s words.

Her head snaps up and she looks over at me, angry. Then, as though she realizes I’m not who she thought I was, she settles down a bit.

“Cooper, what are you doing here?”

“Why are you throwing Mom’s journals into the fire, Liz?”

Anger flashes in her eyes again when she answers me.

“Because she’s a liar!”

I pull the book out of her other hand and check the date on the outside. It’s from the year Ben
died. The year I turned fourteen and found out my mother was clinically insane.

It’s funny, I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember believing it as truth. Not now.

A loud pop from inside the fireplace snaps me back to today and toss the book to Finn. She catches it, then slips away to check on the rest of the journals upstairs. Who knows how many books Liz has torched already.

Now my aunt’s expression changes as she diminishes into herself. I’ve taken away her purpose for being here and it seems to have brought her back from some alternate plane of existence.

She falls back into a chair that sits too close to the fire, watching the flames subside.

“I loved him so much,” she says. I immediately know who she’s referring to, thinking back to just a short while ago and the conversation Finn and I had with Jack.

She means Ben.

“So much that I let him marry my sister, because I knew it would make him happy.”

Liz loved Ben.
It plays inside my head over and over again. Fact checking what Jack had to say isn’t proving to be too difficult. I’m not really sure how I feel about that.

Finn appears from the hallway and gives me a shake of her head that says there aren’t many of Mom’s journals left as she clutches the few she found in her arms. The jolt that realization sends through my chest isn’t an easy one to deal with.

Liz makes no sense whatsoever as she babbles on for the next few minutes and yet, somehow, I know what she’s telling me.

“Lived with it well enough . . . until that last night he called
me
. Wanting
me
. Not
her
. But it was too late by then. Jack had been there. Beat him bad.”

“Thinks I’m stupid.” She glares at the fire again, like it has a mind of its own and the flames rise up in response to her.

“Took him home to Maggie. I was gonna give her a piece of my mind. Show her what her
precious
Jack had done to her
husband
but she didn’t answer.”

Finn’s closer now. Her eyes flit from Liz to me and back again. She’s holding onto Mom’s journals for dear life.

Liz is practically singing her words now, lost in thought, lost in another world. I want to hear the end of this story but she seems to veer off in another direction.

“Didn’t think you were even home,” she spits.

“Liz,” I try to pull her back from wherever she is and the flames jump again. I snatch my hand away from the heat. I don’t know what to do; I’m anxious to get this woman to spill her guts, and I’m about to grill her about what happened to Ben when Finn comes to stand beside me.

She puts a hand on my arm and I settle down inside.

She grounds me.

“Stupid, stupid girl,” Liz sings.

My head spins when she says it. This picture of my aunt turning a light off, just as our eyes meet, flashes before my eyes but then it’s gone just as quickly as it appeared.

Quietam,
I remember her saying to me once.

Liz continues. “Ben didn’t care where she was, just wanted to go to bed. With me. But he was a mess, so
I
helped him up the stairs.
I
cleaned him up,
I
kissed his wounds.
I
told him it would be okay.”

I remember something. Only it’s not a memory. Not for me, anyway. I can’t quite see it, but it’s right there in front of me, just out of my reach.

My aunt and my father, in another room, speaking hurriedly about something. I panic.

“Aunt Liz?”

“Quietam, Cooper
,”
is all she says as she holds her hand out toward me.

“Time to leave her, I told him.” Liz tells the flames as they flicker and die, flicker and die. “But he refused. Said
I
was a stupid girl. Why would he leave the better one?”

Ben would never leave Maggie.

I hear muffled voices from upstairs and look to Finn to see if she hears it too. She gives me a small smile and squeezes my hand. Maybe she doesn’t hear it. But when I look up those stairs again, I swear I do.

“Get outta here, Liz,”
and then, “
I don’t want her seeing you here.”

Liz’s eyes are pools that reflect nothing as she talks to the fire. The flames are raging now and I look around for a poker to spread the logs around as Liz rants on.

“Only reason he stayed was because as much as he hated
you
, he hated Jack more.”

She cackles and I think about what she’s saying.

“He knew how much it must have
killed
Jack to see him with Maggie and their precious baby.”

I turn. There’s an evil grin forming on her face and I want to smack it off of her.

“Coop? You okay?” I hear Finn asking. That’s when I notice I need to sit down. My knees buckle but I press a hand against the wall to keep me standing.

My aunt demands my attention. She’s looking straight at me now, instead of the fire. “How stupid is that? To be with someone you don’t even love out of spite?”

She’s angry. I remember another time when she was angry like this. Something that makes no sense for me to remember but there it is.

Upstairs, in my parent’s old bedroom.

“You’re a weak man, Ben Shaw, you always were.”

“I said get outta here.”

I see his face, he is disgusted with her. Her expression becomes tight with outrage. Ben reaches for her, to shove, but stumbles back a few steps.

“NO, you get out!” Liz screams. She lunges forward and pushes him. The next thing that happens is all too familiar to me of late.

There’s a crash. Glass is shattering everywhere and my dad is falling backwards through the bedroom window.

“Aunt Liz?” I’m in the hallway, watching everything.

Liz flies to my side. The next thing I know, her hands cover my ears as I lay in bed now. I close my eyes as she repeats the word over and over again to me.

“Oblivisci, Cooper,” my aunt whispers in hushed tones, her words shaky from the tears she’s shedding. “Oblivisci.”

Everything inside my head goes black after that and I hear the glass shatter again from upstairs. I look toward my parent’s bedroom. Then back to Liz.

My heart is beating a million times a minute. I try to swallow but my throat is dry.

“Coop?” It’s Finn. But I’m too focused on my aunt to respond to her right now.

I list the facts one more time.

Liz loved Ben.

Ben love Mom.

Mom loved Jack.

Then there’s one more I think of that I hadn’t before.

Jack loved Mom.

Jack wouldn’t have hurt Ben. Not if he thought it would hurt Maggie.

But Liz...

“You killed him,” I choke out.

“What?” she spits.

“You killed Ben. You pushed him out the bedroom window.”

Finn’s mouth falls open slightly.

“You saw,” she says, bewildered by something.

I nod.

I look to Finn while Liz starts to defend herself. Liz screams, interrupting my thoughts. “Your
mother
is a liar!”

My head snaps back to my aunt. “She didn’t lie, Liz, she didn’t tell me.”

“Well whoever said it is-”

“No one said it.” I tell her what I somehow know to be true, just like that. “I remember.”

“He fell out that window!” she insists, then starts to explain herself to me as she rocks back and forth. “I only hid him away so Jack could be blamed. He was the last one to see him but they didn’t buy into that story,” she says, then gives me this evil grin.

“They all thought you did it.”

“What? You’re nuts, they cleared me when-” I stop because I know exactly when they cleared me. Liz says it out loud before my mind can get there.

“Maggie thought it,” she tells me. “It’s why she let them think she did it. She couldn’t very well let her precious Cooper go to jail now, could she?”

“What?” I don’t understand what she’s telling me at first but then I think about the next day and how odd Mom was acting when I asked where Dad was. How she couldn’t even look at me.

She thought I did it.

“You’re twisted, you know that?”

She grabs her hair and pulls. I notice the flames inside the fireplace spitting upward and out again, higher than before.

“Coop, I think we need to go.” Finn grabs my arm but I snatch it away.

“You let them take Mom. You let her take the blame.” My voice shakes with anger and I’m tormented by the fact that I let myself believe it all these years. That she died thinking I believed it.

“Of course I did,” Liz laughs. “She
killed
him. It was
her
fault.
She
cursed him by not loving him back,
she
cursed him by loving Jack more than life itself and
she
cursed him by keeping
you
.”

A few stray embers from the fireplace jump out at her words and one of them lands on the rug next to her. Smoke turns into orange flames that spread quickly as it catches fire.

“Shit, Liz, watch out,” I tell her and then run to the kitchen to get water or something to put it out.

A scream brings me back into the room. It’s Finn. She’s watching Liz just stand there as the fire reaches toward her and lights her clothes a blaze. I look around for something to smother the flames with, finding nothing. I had washed and put away all the sheets covering the furniture and there were no drapes.