Page 275 of Chaos has a Name
She took a deep breath.
That rage was painful because even in the end, she couldn’t save Wyler. She’d have to kiss him goodbye, and put him in the ground. Then, she’d have to take care of the people who were left behind.
And she wasn’t strong enough anymore.
All the years of this stripping away her soul had made her weaker when it came to losing family.
“Then, I end up working out of a place I hate, and your sons hate. We end up coming back to a location where all of our lives were shattered. Chris had to stare down Cyra’s death, and the time he spent here watching me move on. Callen had to comeback to a place that trapped him for thirty-some years, and a place where he had to endure sexual assault as a child.”
Now, Wyler had tears. They slipped down his cheeks as he listened to the anger, and accepted it.
She was right.
Elizabeth needed to get it all out. If she was going to get her bearings, and the storm would pass, she’d need to vent and then regroup.
It was the only way.
“Ethan had to come back and face a place where he’d been betrayed by his father, and grandfather. By a place that allowed him as a teenager to be ripped away from the only home he knew and put in foster care. To this day, he doesn’t tell anyone what he endured, and we don’t ask because his heart is still damaged over that. He was taken away and his father never showed up to stop them, Wyler. You made him, and passed him off like you’re trying to do with TJ.”
Her lower lip quivered.
Oh, Christ.
She was right.
He was doing that to Ethan, and he’d not even considered it. He was making him raise his brother, when he’d been abandoned himself.
“Then, he has to come back to a place that haunts him. A place where he woke up as a boy and went in to see his mother to touch her cold, dead bodyALONE. He had to run to Timothy’s in the snow to tell the man his mother was dead! Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked.
Elizabeth knew security was all over the place. Not far away, Muriel was guarding the base of the tree, but she knew Demeter was around too.
And she didn’t care.
Fuck it.
This needed to be said.
“And now, you abandon ship again.”
Oh, he was aware that what he did hurt them. At the time, no, but now…absolutely.
He really fucked up.
Elizabeth was pacing in the treehouse.
“Then, I have to face down the demons. The very short time I had with Timothy before theBURDENof this family was dropped on me—instead of the next oldest member. I had to take on fixingEVERYONE.”
That hit him hard.
They had dumped this on her.
It never occurred to Wyler that it leap-frogged over him onto someone who didn’t need the extra burden.
Elizabeth was to the point.
“It wasn’t fair then, and it certainly isn’t fair now. You ran all of your goddamn life, Wyler, and people cleaned up after you. Your son who had to collect you at the bar, watch you puke, and save you from your stupidity. Your other son who had to stay away from here because coming back here reminds him of the day they took him away.”
She kept going because she was so angry she could spit fire.
