Page 90 of The Reckoning
“Richard, please,” she says, reaching for his arm. “You can’t possibly believe?—”
He shrugs off her touch. “Tell me!!”
I’ve never seen my mother cornered before. She’s always so composed, so in control. That image is long gone with four pairs of eyes drilling into her.
Like a rope, she’s unraveling at the edges. There is no escaping the truth.
“It was a long time ago,” she says finally, straightening her spine. “Ancient history. We have more pressing matters to deal with right now.”
“It’s not ancient history, not to me,” Richard says, his voice deadly quiet. “Not when it comes to my wife.”
There’s a muffled thump that can be heard from upstairs, followed by urgent whispers. Mother’s head snaps up, her eyes narrowing. “Who else is here?” she demands.
“Just some of Aries’s old dormmates,” I say quickly. “It’s a public campus, you know.”
Aries moves farther into the room, positioning himself between Mother and the staircase. “Let’s focus on what matters. Patricia, what were you saying about our mother’s death?”
“I wasn’t saying anything,” she snaps. “I have nothing to say. It was an accident. Stop accusing me of something that I had nothing to do with.”
“The autopsy report says otherwise,” Arson counters. “No head trauma. No indication of anything, not that the boat hit her when she went into the water. Just…drowning. A champion swimmer who somehow couldn’t save herself in ten feet of water?”
Richard’s face has gone ashen. “She…she hit her head…yes.” It sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself now.
“Right, and who was the first person to come and find you, Father?”
The room goes so still I can hear the old grandfather clock ticking in the hallway. Richard turns slowly to face my mother, his expression a mixture of dawning horror and disbelief. “Patricia.” Her name is barely audible. “You were there that day. You said you went looking for her before she went down to the boathouse.”
Mother’s mask slips completely, revealing something cold and calculating.
“Goodness. Fine. She was going to ruin everything,” she says, her voice oddly detached. “She found the files, Richard. The trial data. The side effects Hayes Pharma was covering up. We had an argument, and she told me she was going to go public with the information.”
The color drains from Richard’s face. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying your precious wife was going to destroy everything we built,” Mother continues, her voice taking on a fervent quality that makes my skin crawl. “So I did what needed to be done.”
“You killed her,” Arson says, the words hanging in the air like a physical presence.
Mother doesn’t deny it. “I protected our interests. Our future. She was going to take the boys, Richard. Take them away from us.”
“From us?” Richard repeats, his voice hollow with disbelief. “She was my wife. The boys wereoursons. There was nous, Patricia.”
“There would have been,” she insists, a desperate edge creeping into her voice. “Once she was gone. We could be together. Build the company. Raise the boys as our own.”
“Jesus Christ,” Richard whispers, staggering back as if physically struck. “You’re insane…you killed her because you wanted what she had?”
“I did it for you,” Mother says, reaching for him again. “For us. For Hayes Enterprises. She was going to ruin everything.”
Richard recoils from her touch like it burns. “How?” he demands, voice cracking. “How did you do it?”
“It was easy,” she says, and the casualness of her tone sends ice through my veins. “A little something in her tea before she went down to the boathouse. Something from the lab. It causes temporary paralysis of the limbs. All I had to do was follow her down and wait for it to take effect. Even I couldn’t have planned that she’d jump into the water, or that the kids would be down there. I really didn’t do anything. She did it all herself.”
The room goes deathly quiet. I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t process the cold calculation in my mother’s voice. This woman raised me. Tucked me in at night. Held my hand during doctor’s appointments. All while hiding a monster beneath her perfect facade.
“You watched her drown,” Arson says, his voice eerily calm. “Your friend. The mother of the children you claimed to love,but that’s not the worst. The worst part is, you let us watch her drown. You let her kids watch her die.”
“It was a necessary evil,” she repeats, but there’s a frantic quality to her now, her usual composure fracturing under the weight of her confession. “I figured the trauma would keep you in line. I couldn’t risk any of you destroying things further.”
“You’re mad!” Richard pulls his cell phone from his pocket. “I…I can’t—I need to?—”
