Bittersweet Wreckage Read online

  “You have options.” Those nebulous options for all pregnant women revolved in my head. “I won’t tell you what to do. If you decide to keep it, I’ll make sure my mom won’t kick you out.” I’d never held such conversations with my mother. She’d let my sex education classes at school do her job. I hoped I hadn’t made false promises to Jade. “I take it you told Ax and he wasn’t exactly stoked?”

  “He said it was my fault, that I didn’t take my pills.” Her hands balled. “But I never missed one, not even through this shitstorm. He didn’t want to deal with all my drama,” she did air quotes, “anymore or to keep traveling back and forth between Santa Cruz and San Jose, and he sure as heck doesn’t want a baby. He doesn’t have money for an abortion and wouldn’t give it up anyways.” Sobs wracked her again and I hugged her.

  Abortion. The word lingered on the periphery of my mind. “Do you want an… abortion?”

  She sniffed into my shoulder. “I don’t know. Will you take me to a clinic to double-check and talk options? Please don’t tell your mom or Jesse yet.” Her tiny fingers with their chipped black nail polish gripped my arm. “Please, Ivy. I’ll do anything you say. I won’t say a word to your mom about you and Jesse.”

  My mind-blowing afternoon had taken my thoughts off Mom and Jesse and what we needed to hash out. “Look, we need to tell my mom and Jesse. No more holding things back like Dad did. If we keep this up, we’ll all burn beyond recognition. And I mean emotional and mental scarring.”

  Fidgeting, Jade stood, letting my words sink in for a moment. “Okay. But let’s get confirmation at the clinic first.”

  She washed her face while I returned to my room. I was wistfully looking at a picture of Jesse on my cell when she plopped onto the bed beside me.

  “You’re good for Jesse. You treat him better than the skanks he’s dated. I’ve never seen him so gaga over anyone.”

  I smiled hesitantly, not wanting to believe in Jesse and me any further. “I thought we skeeved you out?”

  “At first. I know you’re not blood related. I saw how much you helped him grieve. I was a little jealous,” she said shyly. “I wished it was you and me grieving together at times. I felt weird talking to your mom, knowing my mom was the other woman.”

  “We’re sisters now. That’s all that counts.” I bumped my shoulder against hers.

  “Friends?” Shy wonder filled her voice again, astonishing me.

  “Friends and sisters forever.” I twisted locks of our hair into a weave. Soft blonde and straw black. As different as we were. “Only if you slather conditioner in your hair.”

  “Whoa, dudes. You kidding me?” Jesse intruded upon our weird bonding moment. Standing in the doorway, he became the sun orbiting us and my insides warmed.

  Neither Jade nor I moved away from each other. My new motto—no more secrets, no more lies—flew out the window. Jade’s condition had to remain a secret until we had pink-plus-sign confirmation. I owed her my word.

  Jesse spun around and left the room, then came back.

  “What’re you doing, dork?” Jade sat up.

  “Had to make sure I wasn’t blinded by a mirage. You two alive and sitting on the same bed at the same time without throwing punches.” He flung himself on my beanbag chair, stretched out his long legs, and crossed his ankles. “Tell me what I missed. No skipping bullet points.” He avoided looking at me. That suited me, since looking at him reduced me to a melting pile of crap of the bull kind. I had promised him my confession, and I still planned to keep that promise. First things first.

  “Ax dumped me,” Jade replied. “Vine was helping me make sense.”

  Jesse’s eyebrows quirked into the cute little wings stretching toward his hairline. “Yet, you never listened to my sense about him.” He tossed a stuffed black unicorn at her. “Was Vine helping you say goodbye to your stupidity?”

  “You’re a guy. I needed a girl’s slant. Unless you plan on donning a dress and a wig, you don’t qualify.” She bounced the unicorn off the top of his head. “Plus, you’re my overprotective big brother. Ivy hates me. I knew she’d give me an unbiased opinion.”

  “Ivy?”

  “It’s her name. You should know, dork. You call it out in your wet dreams.”

  He dipped his head and picked up a broken chain I’d lost in the carpet, winding it around his fingers. “Bite me, Morticia Rock.”

  And we were full circle to Jesse and me. An awkward silence drizzled us in an almost touchable tension. I knew then what I had to do.

  I jumped up and gave Jesse a quick peck on his mouth. “I need to show you guys something.”

  Jade, Jesse, and I sat in a circle on my bed and I dropped my cell phone at the epicenter of us.

  Bright flecks of curiosity lit up Jesse’s eyes. “What’s going on?”

  “I need to confess or I’ll blow. I’d hoped all this would disappear on its own. I regret keeping this from you, and I think you’ll understand why. Promise me you’ll keep an open mind and not do anything rash.”

  A fearful grimness stiffened him against the headboard. He tightened his hand around his leather wristband. “I guess.”

  “After everything else, how bad can it be?” Jade gripped her wrist too.

  “Bad.” I inhaled a deep breath. “I think my mom set the sailboat on fire.”

  “What?” Jade’s strangled voice rose. “Your mother killed my parents? That’s why she took us in, because of her guilt?” She folded in on herself and wilted to the bed in a bundle of black.

  I put my hand on her arm and squeezed comfortingly. “Calm down. I can’t stand being like Dad with the lies and secrets. That’s why I’m giving you the scoop.” I gave her a meaningful look she accepted with a short nod. Her trembling vibrated up my arm.

  All my secrets tumbled out. “I was tossing the hoodie in the trash the night you found me with the trash bin, Jesse,” I finished. Sweat beaded my forehead. Jade cuddled against Jesse’s side, both of us looking to him for a response.

  Several torturous moments later, Jesse said, “I can’t believe you’ve suffered with this. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I smoothed my finger over my dragon ring, taking my strength from the good luck symbol. “How do you tell your boyfriend or half-sister that you suspected your mother killed their parents? I didn’t want her to go to jail, then we’d all wind up in foster care.” Burying my face in my hands, I broke down in a heap of lifeless limbs. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  Jesse pulled me against him, holding onto both me and Jade. An exodus of confessions bound us together that day. Knees touching, we sat in a circle on the bed for the longest time, Jesse and Jade studying Mom’s text messages and the insurance policies I’d snagged, and asking more questions.

  “We need to confront her.” I kept scratching my arm to defray my nervousness. “Detective Santiago left messages while we were in Tahoe, so maybe the case is closed now.” I shrugged hard. “Bottom line, I need her to explain it all. It’s killing me.”

  “I want to know too,” Jade said.

  I took her icy hand in mine. “You will. I won’t hold back anymore. Promise you won’t go to the police or anyone on your own? We sort this out here first. Tonight.”

  She nodded. “Okay. You too, Jesse.”

  “Agreed.” Awe in his eyes, he took his sister in. She’d turned a one-eighty in a mere day. “I’m glad Ax dumped you. You’re too good for him.”

  I chuckled. “Like minds.”

  “No, it’s common sense.” He smiled, a poignant smile teaming with promise.

  Jade touched our entwined hands. “Jesse, I need to tell you something too. Promise you won’t go loco on me?”

  Groaning, he drug his fingers through his tousled hair. “Now what?”

  “I’m… pregnant.”

  A thick and tense silence hovered over us, like waves curling over our heads. Jesse and I traded looks and I shrugged my hands. He knew then what had drawn Jade and me together earlier, and why she didn’t tota
lly freak out about my mom and my suspicions. And he knew not to tangle with us as we determined Jade’s fate. Another reason why Mom couldn’t go to prison. We’d need her if Jade decided to keep the baby. What a tangled and mangled web we’d all woven from the bittersweet wreckage of Leo Lynwood’s legacy.

  Chapter 32

  Jade and I decided to go to the clinic while we waited for Mom to return home. I wanted all the crinkled and torn cards on the table that night. Jade went to her room to change. Jesse gave us space and his patience. I loved him more for it, although I still wasn’t sure where we were headed. Mom and Jade took precedence, and whatever happened between us and the women in the Palace of Misfits could bind Jesse and me or destroy us as a couple. I wanted off the roller coaster for good. I might eventually escape my father, but I would never be able to escape myself ever again. And I didn’t want to, but truth set me free.

  Jade entered my bedroom, dressed in a dark purple T-shirt and denim shorts over the palest legs I’d ever seen. She wore a newish pair of purple flip-flops. Only her hair remained black and she still wore her nose ring. I was stunned at how much we looked alike absent all her Goth plaster.

  “Who are you and what’ve you done with my sister?” My eyebrows hiked north.

  She shrugged. “Goth was Ax’s thing.”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  She spun her beaded wrist bands around her wrist, a motion so like Jesse’s, my breath hitched. “’Cause I look like you?” Her eyes narrowed, and I grinned. “Thanks. Guess I can’t cover up the tattoos.”

  “Did Ax make you get them?”

  “No. I’ll talk you into marring your perfect royal skin.” She pressed a finger into the small of my back. “A dragon wrapped around a sword.”

  “No friggin’ way.” The idea intrigued me, though. I’d always wear my dragon to protect me and bring me good luck. Mom would just die if I got a tattoo, if she managed to live beyond that day.

  We set off to the women’s clinic, a light teasing banter calming our nerves inside my SUV.

  “What did Dad say after you got your tattoos? He would’ve skinned me alive.”

  “He never saw them. Mom told me to keep them covered up or he’d kill me. I used to wear fingerless gloves when he was home.”

  “Aha.” I play-punched her arm. “I knew we’d find common Dad ground.”

  One fine thread weaved us together beyond our blood. Hope existed in that thin fiber. If Mom didn’t kill us all in a raging house fire.

  The clinic, in a commercial area on the outskirts of downtown San Jose, flipped our reality upside down. Girls and women of all ages and states of pregnancy or non-pregnancy waited in the dim reception room. The sunny yellow trim bordering buttery walls extended an invitation to life and change. Teenagers glanced at us curiously, ammunition for their rumor mills. Jade whispered her name at the reception desk. The room didn’t resemble the toy-scattered pediatrician’s offices I was used to visiting. This was serious business. In a moment of brilliance, I wrote my name on the intake sheet for birth control pills. I didn’t know where my relationship with Jesse was traveling, but it wouldn’t end up in an accidental pregnancy, at least not by my fault. The point-zero-one percent margin of error was out of my control.

  Two hours later, Jade and I drove away from the clinic, my pill stash in my purse and Jade’s confirmation in her belly. By best guess, she was six weeks along. Pregnant before Dad had died. I truly believed all things happened for a reason, as clichéd as that sounded.

  Jade called Jesse to give him the news and sat contemplating her choices while I steered the car toward home and confrontations.

  “Abortion, adoption, or keep the baby,” I said, the words bumping off my tongue.

  “I can’t do the abortion. But I don’t want to be a teenage mother either. I want to go to art school after high school.” She began to cry again, a fountain of tears that never ran out of juice.

  “For a degree in creating voodoo dolls?” I teased to splatter the tension.

  “I already know how to do that.” A smile tugged at her lips. “For computer art.”

  “Really? I didn’t think you liked computers.”

  “Because you don’t know me.” She pulled a cigarette out of her pocket and dug for her lighter.

  “Touché. That ends now.” I plucked the cigarette out of her mouth and tossed the death stick out the window. “That ends now too.”

  “You going to college to be a princess and a cigarette warden?”

  “I already know how to be a princess.” We laughed and it seemed to lighten our moods. “Financial planning. I have a knack for money. I won’t end up like my mom, not knowing how to pay a bill.” I navigated the subject to her little bundle. “What if we talked my mom into agreeing to mother,” I did one-handed air quotes, “the baby. Would you keep it then?” If Mom didn’t end up someone’s prison bitch in an orange jumpsuit.

  She wiped her nose on an old natty napkin from my glove box. “Maybe. I just can’t see myself as a mom.”

  “There’s always adoption. The nurse said there aren’t enough babies for people to adopt. There’s the private adoption where you’re allowed to interview the couples. She said the waiting list’s a million miles long.”

  “Supply versus demand. I’ve become the hot Christmas toy everyone wants.” She flung her head back on the headrest. “I can’t go through nine months of torture only to give the baby up.” Paling, she held her hand on her stomach.

  I touched her left hand, which was gripping the armrest. “The nurse said you have a few weeks to think about the abortion option. Don’t make yourself sick over it.”

  Home was a beacon in the eye of the storm. We entered the house through the garage. Mom’s voice floated to us from the formal living room. The most useless room ever. Hmmm… good place for a nursery.

  “You ever been in the living room?” I asked.

  “Ax and I had sex on the couch once.”

  “Ah, crap. I need ear bleach.” And antibacterial spray.

  “Ivy?” Mom spied me turning the corner to the long front hallway that opened to all the rooms downstairs. “I’m in the living room.”

  Jade came abreast of me and we took slow, tiny steps toward a new chapter of life. I texted Jesse to meet us there. Mom sat alone, her cell gripped in her hands.

  “What’s up?” I swung my pendants on the chain. Jade crowded me, needing my physical support to walk the green mile to the bright, sunny living room of mauves, corals, and gold, Lynwood palace colors. Jesse’s footsteps joined us from behind.

  Mom swept her arm at Jade and me. “Two days ago you wanted to kill each other. Now you’re standing together.” She ushered us into the room, her arms windmilling. “Jade, you look so cute without all the black. I hardly recognized you.”

  I mashed my purse to my middle. Jade’s face screwed up and she pressed on her stomach, face green and looking ready to spew chunks. Jesse and Jade sat in the easy chairs placed around the couch in the center of the large room. Hello, intervention of all palace creatures.

  “What’s going on with you kids? You’re up to something. Honey, are you okay? Sit.” Mom waved her hand toward the Queen Anne chair. I obeyed before my noodle legs gave way and slid me down Alice’s rabbit hole. “What happened to break the wall between you and Jade?”

  I scanned her up and down, hardly recognizing her happy glow, her restored youth, her hair in waves framing her smooth tanned face, how much she’d changed for the better since she’d… killed Dad. Acid dripped into my gut and I contemplated spewing chunks too.

  All eyes bounced to me, as if expecting me to shatter into a million fragments of glass and spray the room in stinging agony.

  “Jade and I had an epiphany,” I said. “We get each other now. Right, Jade?”

  She did a bobblehead Chihuahua imitation.

  “What kind of epiphany?” Mom asked.

  “That sisters need to stick together, no matter what asshole fathered us,” I ret
orted. Jade and Jesse flinched.

  “Ivy,” Mom admonished. “There’s no need for name calling.”

  “Why not?” I shot daggers from my eyes and my sudden anger helped rid my stomach of the acid. “I’ve plugged in and realized how he stunted my life, how I missed having a boyfriend or girlfriends.” I glanced at Jesse then Jade. While I sank into a shell of emptiness. “Until he died and gave me freedom, a freedom bought with a king’s ransom.” He gave me a new sister and the forbidden love of my short life.

  Mom took my hand. “I’m plugged in now, honey, truly. Tell me what’s going on.”

  I glanced from Jesse to Jade. A warmth I’d not known in a long time filled me with the knowledge that I was no longer that lonely, solitary figure who’d bottled everything up. I welcomed their solidarity, their comforting presence as I embarked on another life-altering conversation.

  My palms sweated a fountain, and I wiped them on my shorts. I set my cell on the coffee table, all the evidence I needed.

  “Did you set the sailboat on fire?”

  Mom’s mouth opened in a large O. “What? Why would I kill your father?”

  “He was a brute to us. He had multiple affairs. You refused to leave him, so I thought—”

  She held up her hand, palm facing me. “I suffered in silence. I tried to do my best, you know I did. I loved your father too. There was good in him once.” She looked from Jesse to Jade. “They knew what a good man he was when he was around. I figured there could be good in him again once he was settled in his career. He was a great provider. I would never hurt him or Jillian Jerome. I didn’t even know about her.”

  “But I have evidence… I know you didn’t go to the canasta party. What about your text messages to someone named N? He said to meet you at the marina at eight. The canasta party was the next day, not that night.” She tried to interrupt, and I gave her the palm. I told her about all my suspicions. Drained, I sank back in the chair and waited for her to confess.

  She rummaged on the table in a stack of opened mail. “Detective Santiago mailed me the police report. They ruled the fire an accident. It started from a leaking gas tank and they suspect burning candles. Read it for yourself.”