Page 48 of Reckoning

Meyer

I scrolled through my emails at every red light, typing out half-assed replies, and by the time I pulled into the parking garage at the office building, I’d made enough of an effort to disguise the fact that I’d gotten drunk the night before and swallowed a handful of pills. Keeping my head down, I powered through the lobby, kicked everyone out of the elevator, and rode to the top floor with no interruptions. I blew past my assistant without saying hello and slammed the door to my office shut. Finally, I could take a deep breath. But the exhale caught in my throat as I saw who was sitting in my chair.

The leather creaked as my harrasser walked around the desk and across the short carpet to me. Stopping only inches away, Eva Sheppard raised her arms and embraced me.

I froze in place, back stiff as a board as the small woman held me tight.

“I’ve missed you, little lamb.” She sighed as if relieved to hold me in her arms. As if she wasn’t the one who let me go in the first place.

My mouth opened to confront her, tell her not to call me that, but she leaned back to look at me as she stroked my face.

“You’re not doing very well, are you?”

I rolled my shoulders, shrugging off her touch. “I’m doing just fine. You should worry about yourself. How did you get in here?”

There was no mirth in her smile. “I learned a lot of things in the years I lived in your home. One of them was how to move around unseen. I’ll be all right.”

I brushed past her to my desk, facing the windows that looked over the city to try to gather my breath. “I’m not giving her back.”

“You never were very good at sharing.”

“You have no say in such things anymore.” Feeling composed enough to turn around, I sat heavily in my chair. I pulled my laptop out of my bag, but I couldn’t bring myself to open it. “I’m busy here, Eva. Say what you have to say and get out.”

She sat in the chair on the opposite side of my desk, looking for all her bravado as if she would break at any moment. She was thinner than I remembered, not that I’d seen her in years.

“Is my daughter all right, Meyer?” Her voice cracked on the word daughter, but she quickly swallowed and regained her composure. “I need to know if she’s okay.”

“She’s fine.” My throbbing headache had nothing to do with my hangover and everything to do with my clenched jaw. The anxiety I’d staved off so far this morning was flooding my senses too fast for me to handle. Darkness nipped at the edges of my vision. My stomach turned as if ready to collapse at any moment. I had to get her out of here.

“Will you give her something for me?”

Surprised at the request, I looked up to see her holding forth two envelopes. The one I could see had Madeline’s name printed on top, a heart drawn around the name. “Who’s the second one for?”

That sad smile again. “You.”

I put my head in my hands and breathed in through my nose before exhaling through my mouth. This was too much. If I didn’t get her out of here, I was going to break down, and this time in front of the very people who should never see me as anything but bulletproof. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say, Eva.”

She placed the envelopes on my closed computer. “What happened, Meyer? Did he hurt you?”

He never stopped hurting me. “It’s none of your business anymore.”

“Did you hurt yourself?”

Tears burned in my eyes, but I blinked them back. I couldn’t cry in front of her.

“You know that’s how he found me, right? All those years ago?”

“I never asked you to come visit me at the hospital.” When I woke up with my wrists wrapped in gauze and cuffed to the bed, Eva was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding my hand. Conrad didn’t show up for two more days. He said I was old enough to make my own decisions, suicidal or not.

“You needed me.” She pulled my hands away from my head, clutching my fingers. I couldn’t meet her eyes, but I knew if I did, I’d see the same expression that had been on Madeline’s face before I left her to come here, still so obviously agitated and unsteady that even a woman I hadn’t seen in over half a decade could tell something was wrong. “You needed someone, and I knew he wouldn’t come.” She sighed. “Then a few weeks later, he appeared at Madeline’s birthday party. Joseph wanted to move again, but Conrad would have found us, so I convinced Joseph we should stay. I don’t regret visiting you because you needed me there. You’re my baby, Meyer.” She stood slowly, her small form looming over me in my chair. “But if you hurt my daughter, I will come for you.” She bent her head to look me in the eye. “Do you believe me?”

I do. “How do you know I haven’t hurt her already?”

“Because I raised you.”

I snorted and snatched my hands away. No more of this mothering shit. I was barely holding on as it was; I would not be collapsing into her arms and sobbing like a child. “Not long enough.”

She sighed and interlaced her fingers. Her hands trembled slightly. “You have no idea how hard it is to hold myself back right now, Meyer. I want to choke you with that tie until you bring her back to me. But as I said, I love you—”

---