Page 161 of Buried Too Deep

“So you bargained with him. Told him you’d tell the world about Jenny’s pregnancy.”

“I did. He tried to buy me off with cash, but my divorce lawyer told me that I’d already get half of your father’s money. I knew I’d be okay there. I bargained with him for you.”

She said “you” so fiercely that Sage could actually see his mother as she’d been all those years ago. “Thank you.”

Her eyes grew shiny. “I wish I could have done more, but like I said, Alan came prepared. If he’d taken those doctored photos of me to court, I would have lost you entirely.”

“He’s a bastard,” Sage murmured. Alan had been using him to further his own business needs for years. But he hadn’t realized how truly ruthless his grandfather could be with family. “He told me that you didn’t want me.”

“Never true,” she said with heat and finality. “Never.”

He smiled at her sadly. “I believe you, Mother. I’ve seen his manipulations firsthand. I thought he’d just gotten worse recently, but it seems that he’s been a bastard for a long time. I wish I’d listened to you when I turned eighteen.”

“What did he do to you?” she asked, each word laced with fury.

“Nothing.” Sage had done enough on his own and he felt…shame. It wasn’t an emotion he was accustomed to feeling. “What happened to the baby?”

Lisa lifted her brows, her stubborn expression telling him that she wouldn’t let him get away with keeping secrets from her. “She was stillborn. Or so Alan said. It appears that he lied.” She pointed to Sage’s phone. “Who is she?”

“Her name is Ashley Caulfield and she’s twenty-three years old.”

Lisa’s expression darkened, her cheeks flushing with unhidden rage. “He told Jenny that she had a stillborn child. He told his wife that. What kind of man does that?”

A selfish, cruel bastard. “He didn’t want his daughter to fight him over the baby,” Sage murmured. “So he told her it was dead. But that in and of itself doesn’t seem enough to have sent her to a mental health hospital. Not for all these years.”

“I personally think it was more the rape than the supposed stillbirth, but I’m sure both were intertwined. Plus Jenny was never…stable. She had mood swings and depression. I didn’t know it for what it was then. I just thought it was normal teenage stuff.”

“How long has she been in a psychiatric facility?”

“Since shortly after the birth, so twenty-three years. Your grandfather had her committed after she took some pills. Quite a few pills. She was in a coma for a while and wasn’t quite right when she woke up. Duller, was how I thought of her then. She’d always been depressed, but at that point, there didn’t seem to be anyone home, if you know what I mean. Her eyes were dead. The last time I saw her, she was so doped up, she didn’t even know me.”

“You went to see her in the psych hospital?”

“I did, a few times. Until the front desk told me I’d been put on a no-visit list, which made me so angry. It wasn’t like I could do anything by then. She didn’t even know me. Your grandfather actually filed papers to have my visitation with you revoked, too. I threatened to go to the press with Jenny’s whereabouts. He very smugly told me that he’d already released a statement—that Jenny had experimented with drugs and was now basically a walking vegetable. His words, not mine. He’d used it as an impassioned plea for parents to keep their kids away from drugs. He was fundraising off his daughter’s suicide attempt. I told him that I knew she’d been raped, and that got a reaction.”

Sage went still. “What did he do?”

“He hit me so hard that I fell down. He had to leave the room because it looked like he wanted to hit me again. Your grandmother came in, helped me up. Told me that I shouldn’t make him so angry, that he wasn’t nice when he was angry.”

Sage’s mouth fell open. “He hit her, too?”

“I don’t know. I’d never seen evidence of it, but it sure seemed like he had. Your grandmother said I should feel lucky that he’d only hit me. After all the cheating I’d done on your dad, I deserved worse. She said she’d seen the pictures and I was a harlot. I…broke. I told her everything, about my visit to see Jenny, about how she said she’d been raped. About how her husband had threatened me with those fake photos. Everything. I hoped she’d at least help her daughter, even if she didn’t believe me about the cheating, but that’s not what happened. At least I don’t think so.”

“She had a car accident and died.”

Lisa’s chuckle was mirthless. “That’s what they told everyone. Again, had to keep up that reputation of his. Your grandmother killed herself. Your father blamed me for that, too. Alan had told him that I’d continued to harass Jenny to get back at the family. He said your grandmother was so broken up about Jenny’s stillbirth, attempted suicide, and commitment to the psych hospital that she couldn’t go on. So she shot herself in the head. Alan called your father and together they covered it up. They put her body in her car and wrecked it. Set it on fire. Bribed an ME to ignore the bullet hole in her head. Your father got drunk one night when he came to pick you up after one of my visitations and he told me everything. But I had no hard proof. If I had, I would have filed for full custody of you.”

Sage flinched, thinking of Medford Hughes, of the gun found in his hand after he’d been murdered. He wondered if his grandmother really had killed herself or if Alan had killed her because she’d known about Jenny’s rape.

And there was still the question of Cora Winslow’s involvement. And the ominous-sounding meeting with his grandfather back in New Orleans. Sage needed to be getting back.

“I have to go, Mother. I have a meeting with Alan.”

“My offer to send you to Spain still stands.”

“Or Singapore or Australia.” He’d meant his words to sound light, but they came out far too serious. “Thank you. I’ll call you soon.”

The Garden District, New Orleans, Louisiana

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