Mistaken Identities (22 page)

Chapter Four

Bryce prowled his house like a caged animal. Frustrated because of the lack of clues to where Kim was and a sense of helplessness. Then there was Stasia who caused in him a range of emotions, but the biggest of them was gut-wrenching lust.

When Stasia had stormed back inside the bed and breakfast, he sat in his car for half an hour glaring at the door wondering if she would come back out, but when she didn’t, he drove away. It was now after nine and he knew she had to be back at the hotel. She had probably had dinner and was out in the city, enjoying the nightlife in Charlotte.

Instead of driving home when he left the bed and breakfast, he’d gone to check on his mother. She still lived in the McDowell house, but after he found out what went on under that roof he could no longer stay there. Kim had left too and he couldn’t blame her for never coming home or visiting their mother. She’d known everything that had gone on but never did anything and for awhile he wanted to send her to jail as well. But then Bryce saw her weakness, saw the fact that she loved his father so desperately that she put up with his evil. His mother was so scared to be alone that she would knock herself out with sleeping pills early so she wouldn’t have to hear him leave the room in the middle of the night. In effect, his father had broken his mother as well.

The house was filled with dark memories of physical and mental abuse. It needed to be burnt the hell to the ground and then the earth salted so nothing could grow there. But while his mother lived, he had to make sure she had her home. It was the only one she knew.

As usual, when he got out of the car he could smell pies and wrinkled his nose in disgust. He grew to hate the dessert and what it stood for. Every damn week since his father had been in prison she would take one up for him. Bryce would eat any other treat, but put a slice of pie in front of him and his stomach rolled in revulsion. He walked through the kitchen door and saw his mother’s in-house nurse filling out paperwork at the kitchen counter and the housekeeper dusting. Jackie gave him a slight wave and he leaned by the counter to talk to her. Jackie was a no nonsense woman and when he hired her to live with his mother, she pitched a fit. But Jackie put a stop to it really quickly and even though they snapped at each other like two hissing cats, he knew his mother would be lost without her.

“Hey, Jackie, how’s she doing?” Bryce asked.

Jackie put her hand on her plump hips and shook her head. “She’s being difficult, hasn’t been taking her meds for the Parkinson’s and has been sneaking the sweets even though she has the diabetes. She fainted in church last night and then claimed she forgot the diabetic glucose tablets you got her. She sure got her attention.”

Bryce rolled his eyes. He knew that his mother did it for the attention because she was denied it most of her adult life by her husband and wanted pity in any way shape or form. “I’ll talk to her, Jackie.”

“No need.” She waved her hand and went back to filling out paperwork. “She’ll do what she wants to do and nothing will change that. Any news on Kim?”

He shook his head. “No, but Stasia came home to help us look for her.”

“Stasia Copeland?” Jackie said amazed. “Never thought I’d hear that name again. So the issue with the burglary was cleared up?”

“Yeah, Dani was the one behind it,” he answered.

Jackie frowned and shook her head. “That girl was trouble from before the womb. Glad to know Stasia came back. Is she staying?”

“I highly doubt it,” he answered.

“Can’t say that I blame her, still and dirty waters run deep in this place,” Jackie commented. “Go visit your mama and I’ll get back to work. You staying for dinner?”

“No, I just can’t in this house,” Bryce said apologetically.

“Can’t say I blame you either,” Jackie gave him a sort of sad smile and went back to her task. “Too much sorrow here. I stay because she needs me, but the house moans in its grief, and the shadows talk. When she passes, I’m leaving this house and never looking back.”

Her words gave him goose bumps and he had no doubt her words were true.

“And I thank you for it,” Bryce said. “I’ll go visit with her for a minute.”

“She’s in the parlor. I told her I’d take the pies out.”

Bryce walked through the house, the polished floors and mahogany smelled of lemon-scented polish. The framed pictures of generations of his family hung on the walls. As a boy he had often stood and stared at those pictures, wondering what their lives were like, but he’d long stopped caring. Now, he could see the sickness that his father had in many of the pictures. He cut ties with his ancestors long ago.

The grandfather clock ticked eerily from the parlor. He walked through the open double doors and found his mother was sitting in her chair—a small dusty rose-colored high back antique chair. A small square table that held a lamp was next to it and beside that was his father’s leather recliner. He remembered growing up, they would retire to the parlor after dinner and this is how his parents would sit, with the table separating them and watch television. He looked at the TV and saw that she was watching one of those home renovation shows with the volume low. She didn’t even notice he was there until he bent over to kiss her cheek. The smell of her rosewater perfume assaulted him. She was a throwback to when Southern women accepted their lot in life and did it with quiet dignity, even to the point of putting up a block in her mind that her husband was a monster.

“Hey, darling boy, when did you arrive?” She smiled up at him.

“Just now, Mama. How are you? Jackie said you got sick in church,” Bryce said quietly. He sat in the love seat that was closest to her chair. He refused to sit in the leather recliner.

She waved her hand gently. “Oh, she needs to just stop. It was the heat of the afternoon. You know the sun drains me.”

Right.
Bryce gritted his teeth to her feigned weakness. “I’ve seen you in the gardens pruning those rose bushes on the hottest days of summer, Mama. Take your meds and remember you take insulin.”

“Don’t scold me, Son,” she pouted.

He resisted the urge to curse. “Mama, I’m not scolding. Dr. Harper gives you meds for the conditions you have. It’s take your meds when Jackie gives them to you or move to an assisted living home where they’ll monitor you twenty-four seven.”

“You’d make me leave my home?” She looked at him and tears shimmered in her eyes.

“In a heartbeat if you don’t take your meds, Mama,” he answered.

“Very well, I shall take my medicine,” she answered shortly and her lips thinned showing her displeasure.

“Still no word on Kim,” he stated flatly. He knew she wouldn’t ask.

“Who, dear?” she said innocently.

“Kimberly McDowell, your daughter,” he snapped. “The apple of your eye. The daughter that your husband raped repeat—”

“Enough!” Her voice was shrill. She took a deep breath. “I’m sure she’s fine, dear.”

“You’ve been saying that all your life, haven’t you, Mom?” Bryce said. “Even when you knew what was going on.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve got pies in the oven. I told your father I’d bring him a pie next time we visited him in that place you put him.” She pressed her hand into the soft velvet of her chair to stand and leave.

Bryce stopped her from getting up with a simple hand over hers. The action caused her to look at him and he spoke softly, “You don’t have to run, Mom, I’m leaving. I love you, but I can’t watch you put that sick man in front of your children, in front of Kimberly.”

“He’s all I have,” his mother said.

“No, you
had
us,” Bryce answered quietly. “I’ll find Kim, but she won’t come back here. I’m going to make sure she is happy and I will make up for where you let her down. One of us has to, in this fucked up family, one of us has to.”

He stood and walked to the door.

“Bryce, you’re mama’s baby,” his mother called to him.

“No, I’m my own man, you just never figured that out,” he answered.

He walked out the way he came and passed Jackie still standing at the counter. He kissed her cheek. “Bye, Jackie, call me if anything goes wrong or if she needs anything.”

“I’m assuming that we won’t be seeing you much anymore,” Jackie said.

“I can’t for the life of me understand why she takes him pies and visits him—the man who destroyed his own daughter,” Bryce said.

This time Jackie put down the pen she had been writing with and sighed. “It’s all she knows and his sickness became hers. She thought that to keep him she had to let him have Kimberly, thus letting Kimberly go. This family has been around from the time she and I were both children. Your mother married into the one thing she wanted. The McDowell legacy was what she coveted and she wasn’t going to give that up. This proclivity your father had for his daughter is not the first time something like that has happened. But in those days people didn’t speak of it and your mother is holding true to the stigma.”

“Well, it ends with her. I refuse to carry this diseased past into any future I have,” Bryce said with determination.

“A future with Stasia?” Jackie asked bluntly.

He never knew anyone could see how he felt about Stasia. Cole thought he just wanted to be between her legs, but he could see Jackie knew it was more than that.

“Am I that obvious?” He gave a soft laugh and ran his hands through his hair. “If not Stasia, even so, I’m ending this cycle. When Mom passes, this house and everything inside it is yours.”

Jackie looked at him in surprise. “Don’t go making crazy decisions now, Bryce McDowell. This is your home—yours and Kimberly’s.”

“I don’t want anything in here and I can guarantee that my sister doesn’t either,” Bryce answered. “It’s all yours, Jackie. The paperwork will say so and you can sell everything or burn it to the ground for all I care. When Mom is gone I’m never coming back to this house. I’m never driving back up this hill.” He kissed her on the cheek again and gave the older woman a quick hug. “You’ve been more of a mom to us than she ever was. Call me if you need me.”

“Be safe, Bryce.”

Her goodbye was to his back as he went out the door.

That was hours ago and now he was at his place so antsy he was almost climbing the walls. It was driving him crazy picturing Stasia in some hot little number or, hell, in jeans and a tank shirt she’d still be very hot. Would some guy be dancing close with her and getting lost in those deep chocolate brown eyes? Would she invite him to her room and they’d be a mass of tangled sheets and sweaty bodies? Fuck no, he’d break someone’s damn nose before that happened. He found his shoes and sat down to put them on.

Stasia may want to fight it and, yes, she had a lot to be angry about, but from the time he sank into the sweet depths of her sex and felt her shudder and cling to him from the inside, she was his and he wanted nothing more. He would stake his claim and she’d understand that the past didn’t dictate their future. He grabbed his leather coat off the back of the sofa and was heading out the door when his cell phone rang. He answered with a terse hello.

“You may want to come down to
Howl at the Moon
.” Cole was on the other end of the line.

“Why should I? In fact, why are you at that place?” Bryce wanted to know. His first stop was going to be
Cosmos
.

Howl at the Moon
was a bar in the middle of the EpiCentre. It was a fun place but boisterous and mainly filled with people looking to hook up. Cole was devoted to his sister so hearing that he was there made him a bit curious and angry.

“Cool your jets, dude, I wanted a drink and a little noise. If not, I’d go crazy at my place thinking about Kim,” Cole explained. “I could’ve been here and gone if I wanted to hide it from you, but that’s not why I’m calling. Stasia is here and she’s the life of the party.”

“Did she see you?” Bryce picked up his speed as he left his condo. He lived in one of the new contemporary buildings built between Caldwell County and Uptown Charlotte. It would take fifteen minutes to get uptown, maybe twenty if you tacked on trying to find parking.

“Oh, yeah, she saw me, all right, had a drink sent over and raised her glass to me,” Cole said. “She also danced on a table and got behind the bar to make shots. Well, she’s the same little troublemaker from her teenage days, huh?”

“Don’t even go there. You never saw her do anything,” Bryce snapped.

“Yeah, well, her style of clothes is still Ruby House tramp,” Cole retorted.

“I wonder what Kim would say if she knew how you were talking about her friend,” Bryce answered. “At Piper’s Glen today, Mrs. Eden told me it was Stasia who looked out for Kim, even when you were hooked on for her but too shy to ask her out and I was clueless she was being molested. Call Stasia what you want, but she was there when we weren’t. How she dresses or how she acts should not be a direct cause of how she is seen and treated. By the way you’re talking can you see why she wants out of this place? Nothing ever dies here and I’m sick of it.”

“Consider me chastised,” Cole muttered but Bryce heard no remorse in his voice. “I didn’t have to call you, but, whatever, let her make a complete fool of you in public. If you’re sleeping with her, you won’t be the only one.”

“Cole, I love you like a brother, but I just may punch the shit out of you when I see you.”

“Uh-huh, whatever. I need a ride home; I’m wasted.” Cole hung up the phone.

Bryce dropped his cell on the passenger’s seat next to him and considered going MIA like Kim. His life was spinning out of control. Between his sister missing, Cole and his sucky attitude, Stasia who pretended that she wasn’t hurt but she really was, a mother who baked pies and pretended that she was still in social standing even though everyone knew what his father had done, they were just driving him crazy and he’d had it up to his neck with all the bullshit. It was time to clean house, open the windows to air out the damn skeletons in the closets.

He found a parking spot and took the stairs two at a time heading into the EpiCentre and took the secondary escalators to
Howl at the Moon
. He could hear the pulsating beat from outside but when he pushed the doors open and walked inside the wave of sound hit him.