Chapter Thirty-Three Her

Chapter Thirty-Three Her

Seven Months Earlier

A month before my twenty-seventh birthday my mom showed up at my office. The assistant job at the flooring center wasn’t anything

special. I answered phones, did the filing and ordering, and generally tried not to draw attention to myself. It was honest

work for low pay.

I’d picked Dublin, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and home to golf clubs, parks, and a yearly Irish festival, because the small

city struck me as a place my mother would never visit. Comfortable but not fancy or shiny enough for her. Looked like I was

wrong.

Wearing a pretty green dress and heels so high they bordered on indecent, she entered the office and stared down at me. “You

couldn’t run from me forever, my dear daughter. You didn’t think I’d track you down?”

A woman could hope.

“What are you doing here, Mom?” Near me. In the building’s back office. In Ohio.

“Looking for you.”

And just happened to stumble into Ohio? Don’t think so. “Is your husband with you?”

“We are no longer together, a fact you would know if you stayed in touch.”

That explained the timing of the visit. She was bored and when she got bored her thoughts turned to me and old schemes. Probably

also meant she needed money. “If you’re looking for something to do you could take up knitting.”

“Don’t act like you don’t have a brain in your head. I raised you better than that.”

No way was I touching that last part. “I’m working.”

“You can take a break.”

“Addison?”

Of course my boss picked that minute to stroll in. He’d been at lunch for two hours with some business friend he wanted to

impress. Now he’d walked in, and I had a mess.

Mom shot him a big smile. “Hello. I’m Lizzy Jenkins. Call me Lizzy, please.” She put one hand on her chest and rested the

other on his arm. “I know you’re a busy man but is it okay if I take Addison away from work for a few minutes? I promise I’ll

keep it quick.”

He frowned but didn’t grumble, which was a nice change. “Is everything okay?”

“We need to have a quick mother-daughter chat.”

His eyes widened. “You’re her mother? Can’t be.”

Here we go. Mom had his attention now.

She pulled a little closer to him, never breaking contact with his arm. “Well, aren’t you sweet?”

The light in his eyes showed he’d been dazzled. “Addison didn’t share that she had such a young and vibrant mother.”

We were deep in it now.

“She told me all about you and what a good boss you are, but she forgot to tell me what a sweetheart you could be. Handsome, too.” Mom stepped back and looked him up and down. Launched into full flirting mode. “Very impressive.”

He laughed. “You’re something. Aren’t you, Lizzy?”

I was always stunned that this scam worked. The false flattery seemed obvious. Mom had developed schmoozing skills that she

could snap on and off at will. My boss was her latest and most disturbing conquest.

“Addison, why have you been hiding this lovely man from me?”

Because I’d learned early to hide all boys, male teens, and men from her. Fake fawning was Mom’s go-to move. Didn’t matter

if the guy was the mailman, our neighbor, her coworker’s husband, or my high school math teacher. She attracted members of

the opposite sex and basked in the attention they heaped on her.

My boss waved a dismissive hand in the air. “There’s no problem. Take a half hour break.”

He got angry when I took more than twenty minutes for lunch, but this was fine. Typical.

Mom squeezed his arm one last time before breaking contact. “It was lovely to meet you. Daniel, is it?”

“Call me Dan. And stop by any time, Lizzy.”

She threw him a wink as he walked out the office door.

I had to hand it to her. The way she weaponized that charm was a thing to behold. I’d had a front row seat to this type of

performance my whole life. Repetition didn’t make the act any less astonishing. “Flirting with that guy? Really?”

She snorted. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“I need this job, Mom.”

“You have a job. Richmond Dougherty. It’s past time you made contact.”

The same name I’d heard for years. Mom’s greatest prey. The golden goose she expected me to pluck. I’d done my own research

on him and no thank you.

“Why go after him now?” The real question was why, after all this time, couldn’t she let this go?

“You know why.”

To get her revenge on Richmond. I was the pawn in her vengeance game.

“I asked you to step up years ago and instead of talking to me and working on a plan, you ran off,” she said.

As fast as I could but clearly not as far as I needed to go. “That was a hint.”

“Don’t get fresh with me.” Her sweet smile disappeared along with the lightness of her tone. “Others might appreciate your

sarcasm. I don’t.”

She made me this way, but fine. I tried logic. “Richmond is a big deal. He has powerful friends and gobs of money. Getting

into his circle will be close to impossible. I’d have to do surveillance for months to find a way in.”

“Which is why you should have started this before his reputation became so entrenched.” She toyed with the nameplate on my

desk then sighed. “There’s nothing we can do about your choices now. The delay probably is better anyway because he won’t

see you coming.”

She ignored the fact Richmond reached hero status long ago and held on to that crown with a clenching grasp. “He might be

untouchable.”

“I didn’t gift you that face and that body for you to talk like that.”

That was as close as she’d ever come to a compliment. Of course, it was more of a reflection of her than a statement about

me.

“You’re going to make me say it.” She walked around to my side of the desk and leaned against it. Closed the space between

us. “You owe me.”

Her favorite phrase. The source of her conditional love. She didn’t care what her martyrdom cost me. Her only goal was to

get her way. “Mom, please don’t do this.”

“I sacrificed my body and my youth to bring you into this world. I had opportunities and a life, and I gave up both for you.”

She kept sighing and shaking her head. Put on her full I’m-so-disappointed routine. “And how did you pay me back?”

“I’m sorry I was born.” That was the only thing I hadn’t apologized for before now.

“I cleaned up your mess because I wanted to. It was my job. But the risk is still out there. Anyone could figure out what

you did, and what I had to do to save you. Think about what your life would turn into then.”

My mind flashed to the blood and the knife. “That wasn’t my fault.”

“You had a choice that day.”

When I closed my eyes I could see his body on the kitchen floor. “I was ten and terrified.”

“And I stood up for you. At great loss to me, I might add. We had to move. I had to find another apartment, another school

for you, another job. All because you overreacted.”

The words hovered between us like a snarling beast. But she wasn’t totally wrong. Seventeen years ago, for a very brief period, she stepped up. She forfeited the life she’d picked for herself. She literally covered up a murder for me.

I acted in self-defense but Mom never bought that reality. Her first husband hadn’t wanted kids. He’d made that clear. He

hinted that it would be fine if she sent me somewhere or if I disappeared forever. I knew he wasn’t kidding.

In her mind, that one act of protecting me—staging the dead body in an alley and making it look like a robbery gone wrong—showed

her love for me. Maybe it did. Maybe that was all the genuine feeling she could muster for me or the sum total of what I deserved.

I didn’t have the energy to examine the situation too closely.

“This request isn’t only about me. Richmond needs to pay for what he did. He killed my dreams.”

By “her dreams” she meant Zach Bryant. The boy caught in the crossfire at school that day twenty-seven years ago. The one

Richmond didn’t plan to kill. Mom’s teen obsession.

The father I never knew.

She clasped her hands together in front of her. The fake diamond band she wore caught the light. “I told you the night I moved

the body for you that one day I would need you to do a little thing for me in return.”

Sacrifice my future and risk my life for her quest. “It’s not little.”

She shrugged. “Big or small, your time is up. You’re safe now but the police won’t overlook a murder, even an old one, if

they know about it.”

Blackmail.

She leaned forward and smoothed a hand over my cheek. The gesture, so close to loving and affectionate, always made me yearn for more. Made me regret that I couldn’t be who and what she wanted. Reminded me that giving birth to me meant her dropping out of school and surviving a brutal beating by her stepdad.

“Addison.” Her voice turned sweet with all evidence of our verbal sparring gone. “My beautiful daughter. It’s time for you

to fulfill your destiny.”

I tried not to lean into her touch. I’d read enough self-help books about breaking the cycle to know this toxic relationship sucked the life out of me. That my loyalty to her wasn’t reciprocated. Still, I craved her

acceptance. The idea of experiencing just one day where she appreciated me without expecting something in return... well,

that wasn’t going to happen.

She wasn’t going to let this go either. She’d been pushing me to act since high school.

I stopped mentally running and accepted my sick fate. There was no other way to move forward. I had to go through this to

be free of her. “How am I supposed to pay my rent while I’m hunting down this destiny?”

“Consider that an incentive. The sooner you get to Richmond Dougherty, the sooner paying your bills won’t be an issue.”