Page 42 of Crashing Into Me
KAYDEN AND MAUREENstood on a plot of land overlooking most of Hamby. She had her arm linked in his, and Kayden couldn’t help but smile at her.
“This is a beautiful place to build a house, son. I wish you many years of happiness in it.”
“Thanks, mom,” he replied, surprised at the new attitude she had. He turned to her and looked into her eyes.
“What is it, son?”
“Why the sudden change of heart? Why now?”
“I guess when you spoke the other night, I really listened for the first time.”
She unlinked her arm and looked back over the landscape. “It wasn’t fair of me to hold what happened to your brother against you for so long. I understand that now.”
He looked at her and believed what she was saying. Her face relaxed as she looked over the land, and although his mother was still a pretty woman, her age was starting to catch up with her.
“So you’ll come to the wedding?” he asked her.
She looked at him, not sure what to say. Surely she couldn’t tell him that Lana was gone by now; it would foil all her efforts.
“Of course I will. I only want to see you happy,” she said as the crocodile tears dripped down her face.
He wiped them away and gave his mother a huge hug, lifting her off the ground and spinning her.
“Kayden!” She screamed, startled, “Stop that this instant!”
“I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that, Mom,” he rested her back down. “Lana is an amazing woman, she really is. She’s smart and so kind—” he started, and looked down in his mother’s face, “She’s the completion of me, and I don’t know where I would be without her.”
Maureen smiled, but inside she felt a pang of fear for the first time when it came to her son. If he ever knew the lengths she went to, he would never forgive her, and she truly would lose him and everything she had planned for the future. She just had to make sure that never happened. Maureen turned her head back toward the view of the town as Kayden continued to fill her in on his plans for the house. He spoke of plans to build a gazebo for the wedding and of wanting to create a garden like the one Paula had in her yard. He was enjoying his time with his mother for the first time in ages and couldn’t wait to get back to Lana and tell her the good news.
PAULA AND GARRETwere buckled in their private plane, preparing to take off as Paula watched her laptop screen in horror. There was her mother, setting up her best friend in an attempt to ruin her! And Kayden had no idea. She snatched the headphones out; the look of disgust that crossed her face was obvious.
“What’s the matter, honey?” Garret asked.
“We have to get to Hamby now,” she replied.
She wanted to call her brother right that second and tell him everything she learned, but she knew that wouldn’t be enough. She needed the evidence, and she wanted to be there to present it to him herself. Paula opened the laptop up again and hit fast forward to watch the rest of the footage of what was happening in her vacation home. She couldn’t be more ashamed that her own mother could be so calculating and evil!
Of course, she held a grudge against Kayden herself for a while, but she loved her sibling and only wanted the best for him at the end of the day. If that was Lana, then so be it. She closed the DVR feed and clicked the web browser on her desktop. In the search engine, she typed “Rachel Brown, Hamby, GA obituary” and waited for the results to appear.
15
lies that live here
Kayden Capshaw thought he knew heartbreak. He'd lived with the gaping wound of his brother's death, a constant, dull ache beneath his ribs. But nothing, absolutely nothing, had prepared him for the icy, suffocating blow that slammed into his chest the moment he walked into the silence of the house and found Lana gone. His gaze, sweeping the familiar space, snagged on the polished granite countertop in the kitchen. There, glinting under the recessed lights, was the ring. The one they had picked out, a simple band with a singular diamond that had promised forever. Now, it lay abandoned, a cold, mocking testament to a future that had vanished.
She left no note, no text message, nothing. The profound silence of the house pressed in around him, heavy and absolute, as if she had been erased, never even truly there. He pivoted, his movement jerky, to his mother, Maureen, who stood rigid by his side. Her face was a mask of carefully constructed distress, her eyes fixed on him with a troubling mixture of feigned concern and something he couldn't quite decipher.
“I don’t understand,” he growled, the words raw, tearing from his throat. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
He waited, a desperate plea in his voice, for his mother to offer an explanation, a lifeline.
“She wouldn’t just up and leave me!” The last words were a roar, echoing off the high ceilings, shattering the fragile quiet.
Maureen visibly trembled, a subtle tremor that ran down her slight frame at the sudden eruption of his booming voice. Her eyes, wide and glassy, welled with tears, but behind them, a frantic thought wrestled with her composure.Had she made a grave mistake?Witnessing the agony on her son’s face, the violent range of emotions that contorted his features, pure, unadulterated devastation, was like watching a person flail in the depths of a dark, unforgiving sea, about to drown. This was not the carefully managed grief he usually displayed; this was primal, untamed.
“I… I don’t know what to say, dear,” she mumbled, her voice surprisingly small, almost a whimper. “Women are… rare creatures.”
Kayden’s head snapped up, his own grief momentarily eclipsed by a flicker of suspicion. He stood now, towering over his mother, whose petite frame seemed to shrink under his sudden, accusing shadow.
