Bittersweet Wreckage Read online

  “Ground me? Smack me?” A snicker rolled up my throat, halting in somber land. “He can’t hurt us anymore. Not from wherever he lives now.”

  Mom struggled to a sitting position, her head lolling against the cushions, more crumbs falling off her stained T-shirt onto the floor. “Heaven. He’s in heaven.”

  I pushed up from the chair. “Doubt it. He’s probably very hot, slaving in the lava pits, and stumbling through a heat wave to find his elusive martini.”

  “Ivy,” Mom berated. “That’s not funny.” Her eyes swam, and I regretted making light of the dead. Truth hurt. I didn’t want to hurt anymore. I didn’t want Mom to hurt ever again.

  I dialed delivery pizza from our hidden menu in the junk drawer. “You’re right. I don’t know anything.” Like how he’d never had a clue about forgiveness and sins even though he’d grown up Catholic, or had at least phoned it in during his childhood.

  When I returned to the family room, Mom had vacated her home away from home. Water trickled down the pipes from her bathroom above the family room. I opened the French doors to let in the cooling evening breeze, and fresh-mown lawn replaced the stench of my rotting mother. The air conditioner kicked on, and I ignored the quiet whoosh, the dollars flying out the doors. No Dad to rant about wasting money. Soon enough, the money situation pledged to rear its ugly head. For that night, I didn’t give a hoot.

  The refrigerator overflowed and I decided to toss out the less savory meals. Ugh. Other than a turtle pie and breadsticks from my next-door neighbor, Mrs. Wellington, I was sick to death of casseroles and mixed salads. If one more person brought over a frozen meal couched to look home-baked, I’d toss my cookies all over their shoes. However, the thoughtfulness of these strangers wasn’t lost on me, and I found no fault in the goodness of people’s hearts. They were people we’d probably never see again now that the Master was six feet under. Mom didn’t have any friends beyond the corporate wives and Mrs. Wellington. Maybe now we’d spread our wings and fly the nest for greener hunting grounds.

  I lounged in the recliner, waiting for the pizza, thinking about Will, comparing him to the mystical Jay. I remembered Will as a quiet, solicitous boy from the Christmas party. I had no clue he was interested in me. Nervous excitement tingled up my back. Two interested boys in one week. I’d hit the lottery in the world of boys.

  The pizza delivery brought Mom down the stairs, refreshed and smelling of lavender vanilla. Not her usual ritzy floral perfume. Wow, had she tripped the light fantastic? Relaxed and unfettered, we scarfed our pizza and breadsticks, washing dinner down with the taboo cherry cola. I was going to stock the refrigerator with cherry cola. Since I hadn’t had time to paw through the stuff from Dad’s office, I held off on having the finance conversation. Nor did Mom bring it up. As I cleared off the table, she wandered away, and I assumed she’d dig into the couch again, maybe find dessert between the cushions.

  “Mom, you want pie now or later?” Our evening boded well for a new routine, once Mom pulled her shit together and torched her doormat. Giddiness overcame me as I dreamed of a lazy, relaxing summer.

  The doorbell rang. “Please. No more lasagnas.” I wiped my hands on a dishtowel and tossed it on the counter.

  As I rounded the wall to the wide hallway running the width of the first floor, splitting into the foyer in the middle, Mom said, “Hello.”

  “Hello. Are you Alice Lynwood?”

  “Yes.” Mom sounded shaky and weak. “Who’s asking?” And weaker. I kicked my butt into gear before she did a face-plant on her way to Drugvilla.

  “Anita Bryce, Santa Cruz County Child Protective Services.”

  My feet froze to the tiles, stuck as if I’d become a stick in a Popsicle. What did CPS want? Had the police discovered Mom had lit the sailboat on fire? Are the cops in the front yard ready to arrest her for murder times two? Did they come to take me to a foster home dungeon crammed with some old woman’s minions? Do I run? With the air too thick to draw in, I slipped to my knees onto the floor.

  Chapter 9

  The voices faded off as my world tilted further off its axis. Ready to bolt to the ill-used back staircase to pack a bag and run, I rose on unsteady legs. But my knees stuck to the floor, unable to budge no matter how much I twisted the stick.

  “I’d like to talk to you about your husband’s other children,” Anita Bryce said.

  Shock broke apart the ice encasing my feet. Other children? Kristen? Wait a hot minute! She’d said Santa Cruz County. We lived in Santa Clara County. What did that mean? Rising off the floor, I waggled my brain cells into action and dashed into the foyer as Mom slid to the floor in a dead faint. I lunged forward, catching her under her arms before her scrawny butt splintered on the stone floor.

  Anita Bryce stepped inside and lifted Mom’s legs as I hefted her by her shoulders. Silent, we carried her to the couch in the family room. Home away from home, the center of the Drug Queen’s kingdom.

  I combed Mom’s wavy hair off her forehead, noticing for the first time that she hadn’t taken care to dry her hair straight the way Dad preferred.

  The African American woman whipped out a business card and set it on the table. “Hello, I’m Anita Bryce, Santa Cruz County Child Protective Services.”

  I nodded, acknowledging her presence. “What do you mean, other children?” I dredged up the nerve to ask, unsure whether she’d talk to a juvenile. I crossed my arms over my chest, imagining myself squeezing into an atom to slip beneath the crumb-infested rug.

  “Will she be okay?” Anita opened a manila folder, compassion lining her plain, long face, slaying the surprise widening her brown eyes. “Are you Ivy?”

  “Yes and yes.”

  “I can tell you a little, but I’ll need to speak to your mother. Maybe you can help prepare her.”

  “Sure.” I waved at a recliner. She sat while I parked it in the chair closest to the couch.

  Anita pulled out her notes, recited things I knew about the fire, ensured I had a handle, then said, “The police ID’d the woman on the boat as Jillian Jerome of Santa Cruz. They matched dental records to obtain her identity. Her car was also found parked in the marina lot.” She flipped pages in her folder, the crinkling paper the only sound in the room. “She had two children, Jesse and Jade Jerome, who are also Leo Lynwood’s children. Your half-siblings.”

  My vision wavered. I felt sucker-punched. Pizza and garlic sticks prepared to launch up from my stomach. Going postal sounded real good.

  “Are you all right?” Anita’s voice carried from far away.

  A flurry of motion dizzied me. Anita rushed to me, and a bottle of water from the bar fridge appeared in front of my face, flinging me back to the moment.

  Grateful, I gripped the bottle. “Thank you.” I took a few sips of cold reality.

  “Why don’t I contact your mother tomorrow?” She clutched her folder and grabbed her purse from where she’d dumped it on the floor.

  “No!” I sprang up, wincing at my overly loud voice “She can’t handle this mess. She’s still distraught over my father’s death and learning he had a mistress.” Slut-shamed and taste-testing drugs every day, this new shitstorm promised to kill her. “Tell me what you can. I’ll help smooth it over.”

  We returned to our seats. Mom snoozed onward, oblivious to the tempest blowing down her tenuous new foundation. At least she wasn’t snoring and thoroughly embarrassing herself in front of a complete stranger and harbinger of bad news.

  Once again, I bolstered my nerves, pretending to prepare myself for one of Dad’s firing squads, hiding pieces of my mind in the inner recesses of my brain to suffer through his abuse without destroying the other pieces, or my fractured soul. My universe of one.

  “As I said, your father and Jillian Jerome had two children. They’re orphans with no living grandparents or other relatives we can locate. CPS has them in custody and they’ll have to enter the foster care system.”

  Well, aren’t you just a friggin’ ray of sunshine? I kep
t waiting for the reason for her visit, or a reason why I should care about these kids. It hadn’t fully registered that they were related to me. Me, not Mom. My mother would have nothing to do with a reminder of Dad’s unfaithfulness served up with a side order of disrespect and humiliation.

  My back rigid, I succumbed to my fury. “What does this have to do with us?”

  “We want to explore your mother taking in the kids.” Her expression never wavered as my eyes rounded and my mouth hung open.

  Steam billowed from my ears, horns sprouted on my head, and I became… Dad.

  “Could you be any more delusional?” I left the couch and towered over her. “You expect my mother to take in these little bastards? A daily reminder of my father slut-shaming her?” In the world series of stupid, Anita had hit a home run.

  “They’re your half-siblings, and they’re not exactly little.” She maintained her composure at my verbal umbrage as though she foisted off bastard children on the unsuspecting or jacked-up people’s lives every day.

  “How old are they?” How long had my dad been banging Jillian Jerome?

  Anita perused her notes again. “The boy is seventeen and the girl fifteen.”

  Another round of outraged shock took a spin at me. I tossed the water bottle onto the coffee table and scrubbed my face. “Are. You. Serious?” I’m going to die or kill something. Oh, wait. The thing I wanted to kill was already dead. I wanted to sift his ashes over the local dumpsite and let him lord it over all the other cheating bastards scattered into the stinky piles of discarded garbage.

  Dad had cheated with this Jerome woman for as long as I’d been alive. Mom swore she had no idea such relationship existed for any length of time. Clueless, much? With all the trips he’d taken to Northern California and other places from our homes in Seattle, Dallas, Vegas, and Los Angeles, had he lived with his other family? Had he showered the Jerome children with love instead of Kristen and me? Had I suddenly awoken in a new life and a side step to another kind of hell?

  A warm hand alighted on my shoulder. “I know this must be a shock. I’m sorry to be the messenger. We work hard to keep families in a cohesive unit if possible before we place children with foster families where they might get split up.”

  I spun on her. “They’re not my family.”

  “I understand it’s a blow.” Anita squeezed my shoulder, dropped her hand. “I need to speak further with your mother. Please have her call me tomorrow.”

  “Get real. She won’t give a rat’s ass about these bastards.” I was searching for elusive cocktail straws. “Teenagers? This will destroy her. She’s not fit to take in these kids at the moment.” I wanted to spew out how unfit my mother really was with the pharmacy stocked inside her. Yet I didn’t want to push my luck and find myself on the receiving end of a foster family.

  “They’re your half-siblings, Ivy.” Anita’s soothing monotone droned on. “They matter. I don’t condone what your father did to you or your mother or to them, but these kids are hurting too. They’ve lost both their parents. Please keep an open mind. I know you don’t make the decisions for your mother. You’re a smart girl, and I hope you can help her understand what’s at stake here. I’ll call her in the morning.”

  Anita left me sitting next to Mom in stunned disbelief. My shot nerves crackled as I seethed in silence. An hour later, full darkness draped the room in an oppressive blanket. Our palm tree owl let out a piercing screech outside, shaking me into motion. Passed out, stoner Mom slobbered onto her shoulder. Disgusted, I flicked lights on and locked up the house. I wanted to call Mariana and rant and rave, ask her to cram the marbles back inside my brain. I needed someone to talk to so badly I even contemplated calling Kristen.

  Anita Bryce didn’t understand what was at stake for us, a life absent the insanity of all things Leo Lynwood. Bringing Jesse and Jade Jerome into our lives served to destroy everything in our looming midst. I breathed easier, knowing Mom would take a drug overdose before she welcomed her two-timing husband’s bastards into our home.

  “Ivy?” Mom pushed against my butt plunked on the couch where I’d sagged in my unrelenting disbelief. “What’s going on?” She struggled to sit up. “Oh, no. No.” She shrank onto the couch, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Is it true?” she blubbered.

  Numb, I moved to the recliner, arms wrapped around myself. “You got that right. His home-wrecker whore popped out two of his kids.” Tears clogged my words. “How could he do that to us? To you? I hate him more than I ever believed I could.”

  “I’m so sorry. I never knew. He hid this from me.” Mom began sobbing so hard, I thought she’d snap every bone in her spine. I let her. We both needed release. “You can hate him all you want. Right now, I want to bury him alive.”

  “Good.” We sat crying out our hatred and frustrations. Very little sorrow streamed out on our tears.

  Mom hiccupped and her sobbing eased. She wiped her tears on the sleeve of her T-shirt and kneeled by my recliner. “I hate myself for allowing him to put us in this situation. How dumb did I have to be? He had me so wound up, I wanted only to escape to oblivion and ignore the signs. All I wanted were the pills to make me feel better, to make me stop living the lies for a short time. Oh, Ivy. His death has made me realize what a blind idiot I’ve been. For what? For what?” She flung her arms in the air.

  Stunned, I listened to her confession, wiping my own tears off on my T-shirt. I hugged her, and her spinal bones did crack. We began to laugh until we were hysterically rolling on the rug and panting to catch air. I picked crumbs out of my hair. Ants were preparing to storm the door. Maybe cutting back on maid service was a bad idea.

  “Your father was always looking for better. Where else than in the circle of rich bitches he made me befriend to better my station?”

  Whoa. I never knew she loathed the wives of the corporate bigwigs at Dad’s company. Did she mean Dad had been bagging a corporate wife? In that moment, I knew for certain the person known by the initial N was not among the catty Housewives of Idiot Tech.

  We lay on our backs, blonde hair weaving together in a golden mantel. “Tell me what the CPS woman wanted.” Mom linked her hand with mine. “Hit me.”

  “Her idea has disaster written all over it. She wants you to take them in.” I braced for her outrage or at least another meltdown. Only her tightening grip gave any indication she’d heard.

  “They have no relatives?”

  “No. Dad and the bitch were only children, all grandparents dead.”

  “Ivy.” Mom sighed in her half-hearted attempt to scold me.

  “Well, she is a bitch. She screwed a married man. For a long time. The boy is seventeen and the girl is fifteen.”

  Her hand clenched mine until she may have done permanent damage. “Seventeen years?”

  I withdrew my hand and rubbed life back into it. “At least.”

  She crumpled again, the river of tears overflowing the banks of her eyes.

  “I told her you’ll call tomorrow.”

  Mom nodded. “How about pie to sweeten our newest night of horrors?”

  “Now you’re talking.” I vaulted up, held out my hand to help her up. She went to the downstairs bathroom to wash up while I dished out two ginormous pieces of turtle pie, topping them with a triple shot of whip cream. I licked my lips, wanting to marry that pie, or at least drown in it.

  We talked no more about the Jerome children, Dad’s whoring around, and Mom’s inane stupidity. Instead, we ate our pie and watched a life-destroying zombie flick that made our lives look like cake in comparison. By the time eleven o’clock rolled around, exhaustion bogged down my limbs. I picked up Anita Bryce’s card from the coffee table and handed it to Mom.

  She pocketed the card. “I’ll straighten out this mess.”

  Relief engulfed me, making the turtle pie a sweet pile of heaven in my belly. Only a part of me speculated where Jesse and Jade would land. I didn’t recall seeing them at the funeral performing their duties as grieving child
ren. Did I want to meet them? My curiosity dazed me, and I buried all thoughts of these strangers who had no place in my life. Or did they?

  Sleep took a long time coming. My mind refused to shut down from the baffling knowledge that the Jerome kids and I shared the same blood, no matter the identity of our parents. Could I walk away from them? Or spend the rest of my life in blissful ignorance?

  Hadn’t Dad ever speculated the craziness that would ensue if either the Jeromes or Lynwoods found out about the other? What had driven his lies or consumed him to maintain two families and hide it from the world? Desire or lust? Love? Arrogance to the nth degree? Blissful ignorance marched on a feeding frenzy in my head.

  I awoke late morning, my head pounding from the chaos and sleeplessness. Mom’s bedroom door hung ajar, and I assumed she was glued to the couch in Pharmaceuticals Paradise. When I plodded downstairs to down my own painkillers, silence and an empty couch greeted me. Foreboding flogged me and I pressed my hand to my mouth. Taped to the coffee maker was a note, which read, “Went to Santa Cruz. Back later. Love, Mom.”

  “Oh no, she didn’t.” I reread the note again, nailing it into my pounding head. “All she had to do was say no to Anita Bryce on the phone. Hell to the no.” A cold brush skimmed up and down my spine, ratcheting up my foreboding. Shoot me now and free me from stroke zone.

  Chapter 10

  Waiting grew excruciating, especially since I had Mom’s phone. Hoping she’d maintain her lucidity was merely one worry. Did she cruise to Santa Cruz to witness the scraps of her husband’s infidelity in living flesh? I rubbed my aching temples. Die, misery, die.

  After cleaning the house until I could lick dinner off the floors, I concentrated on sorting through Dad’s office stuff. I zipped through the flash drive and discovered a million dollar life insurance policy and a million dollar Accidental Death & Dismemberment policy, both payable to Alice Lynwood. “Thankfully, he didn’t leave it to Ms. Home Wrecker Jerome.” I also found his will, with no mention of the Jeromes.