Page 72 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
“There’s not one decent Mexican restaurant in New York City.”
“There’s not one decent anything in New York City.”
We both know whom we’re talking about, but continue on as if we don’t.
“The fields look good.”
“Eh. The company you hired to work them is very good. Too good. I have nothing to do all day, just sit here and watch myself grow old. Hard to sit around and do nothing so much.” Her gaze, still warm but, God, so penetrating, never wavers from my face. “You know.”
Yes, I do know. Seven months I sat around and did nothing inside this house. Seven months of enforced solitude, pacing and staring at the walls and trying not to go insane while Parker’s baby grew big inside me. My father wouldn’t allow me out of the house until after the pregnancy was over. Said the shame was too great. Said it was the shame that made him drink and drink and drink.
Near the end, he couldn’t even bear to look at me, stopped coming home at all most nights. That’s when I first began writing, during those endless black nights when I could hear my mother crying softly in her room, when every second was an hour, every hour a lifetime, every tick of the clock pure torture to my ears.
I started writing to escape the terrifying feeling that I was going mad.
I take another swallow of my soup. “How’s church?”
My mother shrugs and looks away. Lines radiate from the corners of her eyes, are etched in deep parentheses around her mouth. Her hair is gathered in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. A few rebel strands have escaped and curl around her face, glinting silver in the afternoon light.
“I still go. But me and God, we have our differences. I don’t talk to Him so much anymore.”
Somewhere outside in the distance, a dog barks. It’s the loneliest sound I’ve ever heard.
“I keep telling you we can move you, mama. There’s no reason to stay in this house. There hasn’t been in years.”
The hopeless shrug appears again. “And go where? And do what? Eh, I can’t start over, mija.”
There’s a slight emphasis on “I.” It gets my hackles up. “And what would you have had me do? Stay here with you, after…”
My mother reaches across the table and clasps my hand. “No. It was right that you left. At least one of us escaped this place.”
We sit in silence as the dog continues to bark. Then, because she’s my mother, because she knows me so well, she knows without asking why I’ve come, and what it is I need to do.
“She’s big. You won’t recognize her.”
I stare at the bottom of my soup bowl, watch as it begins to slowly waver, and then blink rapidly to clear my eyes. “You still go by the school?”
“Only on really bad days.” She pauses. “I went after I saw the picture of you and…him…in the newspaper.”
She won’t say Parker’s name. She hasn’t since the day I read the letter he mailed me and didn’t stop screaming until the paramedics arrived and gave me a shot.
When I glance up, there’s a new, harder edge to my mother’s mouth. A steely glint in her eyes. “So? What’s happening?”
I don’t have to ask what she means. I sit back in my chair and push the bowl away, ready to give my report. “I’ve got him where I want him. I found his safe; I’ll get into it. Tabby’s working her angles, looking into him and his family. It won’t be long before we have something we can ruin him with.”
With blistering vehemence, my mother says, “His father—look into that son of a whore! He’s as dirty as they come!”
Startled, I stare at her. To the best of my knowledge, my mother’s never met Parker’s father. It was always made perfectly clear that my relationship with Parker was as much a shame to the elder Mr. Maxwell as my pregnancy was to my own father. We were the poor farmers with the wrong color skin; they were the privileged elite. My biggest crime was not knowing my place. Her reaction makes no sense to me.
“Why do you say that? I mean, I agree with you, but…did you ever meet him?”
A fleeting look of hatred disfigures her face. It’s gone almost as soon as it appears. She stands abruptly and goes to the sink. Over her shoulder, she says, “No. Of course not. But I hear things. The way he treats his workers, things like that. He has a reputation as a ruthless bastard.”
She opens the cupboard, takes out a glass, fills it with water from the tap, and drinks the entire thing down without stopping for a breath.
I watch her, noting the stiffness in her shoulders, the slight tremble in her hand.
“Why are you so upset?”
