Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 97369 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97369 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
I stare at the phone and then at her.
“Where’s her father? He wasn’t at the funeral. I haven’t seen him since the day he dropped me off at my brother’s trailer.”
“Indie …”
“Milo, what happened to Ty?” Her eyebrows squish together. “What did Fletcher do?”
He’s my out.
She would never know.
He’s the person Rae and Indie suspect. And he’s dead. The truth never has to come out.
The truth always comes out.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I shake my head. “He said … he said you spread your legs for him.” I can’t look at her. If she lied to me, if he raped her, I don’t know how I’ll handle it. I don’t want her to see it in my eyes.
“I … I … god, Milo … I was so scared. And I just wanted to get away. I didn’t know where he was taking me. So I …”
My gaze slowly lifts. Where is she going with this?
Tears fill her eyes as she slowly shakes her head. “I said he could …” Streams of tears race down her face. “I said I’d have sex with him if he let me go,” she whispers.
No. This … this makes no sense.
Her words come out like a verbal panic attack. “He didn’t touch me. Nothing happened. He wouldn’t. He was a cruel man who hit me, but he wasn’t a complete monster. He took me to my brother’s. Why? Why would Fletcher kill him? He …” She sobs. “He d-didn’t d-do anything. It’s m-my fault Fletcher k-killed him. And now R-Rae doesn’t have h-him.”
I ease my phone out of her hand and shut it down. Kneeling on the floor, I brush the hair away from her face and hold it in my hands. And I let her see the emotion in my eyes, the unshed tears I’ve had for Ty. “Fletcher didn’t kill him.” My thumbs brush along her cheeks. “I thought he raped you. He wanted me to believe that he raped you.” I blink, my eyes burning with regret. “Why, baby? Why would you say that to him? I. Thought. He. Raped. You.”
Realization ghosts across her face. More tears fill her eyes and her lip quivers. “No, Milo,” she whispers. “N-no.”
I lay my head in her lap, my arms around her waist, and I let a lifetime of bottled emotion and fear of weakness release from my body.
And it hurts.
It hurts so fucking much.
I cry for my parents. Archer. Annie.
I cry for Ty.
And I cry for the part of Indie that will always feel like she, too, has blood on her hands.
“I’m … so … sorry, Indie girl.” My body shakes.
So does Indie’s. Her fingers comb through my hair over and over. Then she bends forward and rests her head on mine, her lips at my ear. And with two words, I know that this will pass. I know we will survive.
“My Milo.”
42
THE ART OF FORGIVENESS
INDIE
“I charge eight hundred an hour. The clock starts now,” Jolene says when I walk into her office. She doesn’t look up from her computer behind her minimalist glass desk.
Shelves of leather-bound law books.
Framed licenses.
And modern artwork.
No pictures of their family, not even her son.
This office is as sterile and impersonal as Jolene.
I help myself to the chair opposite her. “Why do you hate me?”
Her fingers are still on the keyboard while she lifts her gaze. Long, fake lashes blink several times. “You slept with my husband.”
“No.” I shake my head a half dozen times. “You’ve always hated me.”
She grips a pen, squeezing it until her knuckles whiten. “What’s the deal, Indiana? Did Milo leave you already? Are you lonely? Do you need a friend?”
I wait to respond, letting her live in the echo of her vile words.
She slaps the pen down on the desk and huffs. “I have work to do.”
“Did you know I wasn’t an impostor? Did you know I was the child Fletcher conceived with an escort in his private jet over the state of Indiana?”
Her expression morphs into confusion. Her hand touches her neck, gaze averting to the side. When our eyes meet again, she shakes her head.
“What was my crime? Conception? Birth? Being the innocent four-year-old child sold for a million dollars?”
After a minute or so, Jolene’s attention returns to the computer screen, and her fingers resume their furious typing.
“Jolene, I’m sorry for every awful thing I’ve said to you, thought about you, or done to you.” I don’t need her to apologize or say another word. She is Benjamin’s mother. She will be in his life. He deserves to be surrounded by love. He didn’t make the choice to come into this world. He’s worthy of a life infinitely more significant than the impersonal conception with which his life began.
When I reach the door, Jolene clears her throat. “She adored you,” she whispers.