Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 111520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 446(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 446(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
The back of the bench had the words, For My Theodora carved into the top slat.
I went around the bench and sat down next to Vaughn. I leaned into him so my head was resting on his chest. He put his arm around me.
“Was this her spot?” I asked.
Vaughn began playing with my hair as the slight ocean breeze blew it around. I could feel a slight tremor in his hand.
“She’d come out here and walk every day, even when the weather was bad.”
“Will you tell me what happened to her?”
“It was a few days before Christmas. Luca and I were in the living room in the townhouse our parents owned in the city. Our mother had wanted to do some shopping, so we’d gone there for a few days. The plan was to spend Christmas out here.”
“You said your mother spent more time at this house, right?”
“Right,” Vaughn murmured. “Luca and I went to public school, she did all the cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping herself, even though our father had hired people to do all that… she just wanted to live a quiet life. It wasn’t even really this house that she loved – but the water, it called to her.”
“Like trees called to you,” I said.
He chuckled, the sound of it rumbling beneath my ear. “Yeah, like that.”
“What about your father?”
“My father,” Vaughn murmured. “He liked winning. He liked knowing people were afraid of him. Power was his drug and he was a full-blown junkie.”
I sighed because I’d heard Remy use that term to describe himself when he’d been hooked on drugs before moving to Seattle. He’d been clean for two years, but I knew it was something he still struggled with on a daily basis. I didn’t understand addiction, but I understood power. Vaughn’s father may not have hurt kids the way Father and Brian had, but he’d gotten off on having that power over someone or lots of someones.
I had a pretty good idea of who was included in that list of someones.
“Did your father live here with you?” I asked.
“He’d make the commute sometimes, but it wasn’t unheard of for him to spend several days in the city. Every once in a while our mother would go to him and leave us with a sitter, but it wasn’t very often. If it hadn’t been Christmas, I doubt we’d have been in the city that day.”
“What happened?”
“She was getting some shopping bags out of her trunk. Luca and I were in the house… I was old enough to watch him. She called us to come help her. We were in the process of getting our coats on when we heard this loud bang. Then another.” Vaughn let out a harsh laugh. “Luca and I thought it was a car backfiring… we actually told each other it sounded really cool because it’d been so loud.”
I reached up my hand to search out Vaughn’s where it was resting on my shoulder.
“I saw her first, but I wasn’t fast enough to stop Luca from coming around the car. Her eyes were open and there was just the smallest amount of blood coming from this tiny hole on her forehead. But there was so much of it beneath her head and back. I started screaming for help and tried to shake her awake, but Luca, he just… he just stood there like he didn’t understand what he was looking at.”
Vaughn was silent for several seconds before saying, “It was one of our father’s business rivals. Our father had stolen from him and the man had lost everything. So he took our mother’s life, his wife and child’s, then his own.”
“I’m sorry, James,” I said as I sat up so I could look at him. But he was staring at the ocean.
“My father had never been a particularly soft man,” Vaughn said. “But he buried what little kindness he’d had with her.”
“You said he promised your mother he’d always look out for you.”
“No, I said he promised he wouldn’t get rid of me.”
I felt my throat close up. “What does that mean?”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” I said.
He looked at me and then reached out to touch my face like he had to be sure I was really there. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“He used to tell me and Luca that no one could ever take anything from him again. It was bad for business. That pretty much became the family motto after that.” Vaughn’s eyes drifted to the ocean again. “He had two sons so he figured he’d make use of that. Luca learned the business side of things because he was the ‘real’ kid and my job was to make sure no one stole from him or our father ever again.”