Beg For Me (Morally Gray Book 3)

An hour later, after Mother is softly snoring in the guest room upstairs and Harlow has gone back to her own bed and to sleep, Carter and I sit at the kitchen table, sharing a glass of gin.

“So,” he says.

I exhale in a gust. “Yeah. So.”

“Your mom’s here.”

“Yup.”

“I get the feeling that’s not a frequent occurrence.”

“And that feeling is correct.”

“Do you go to her place?”

“Not if I can avoid it. She lives with my brother out in Ventura.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

I ponder that, gazing up at the ceiling. “Thanksgiving, the year before last. She wasn’t in a wheelchair then. And the lights were still on. She still recognized me.”

“That must be hard for you.”

He watches me as I swirl the gin around in the glass and work on unraveling the knots inside my head.

“It might be better this way. If she doesn’t know who I am, she won’t lob grenades at me. Maybe I’ll tell her I’m the house sitter. That should be safe.”

So far, I’ve told him everything my brother said tonight when he arrived and during our prior conversations. His take is that there’s much more to the story than what Will is telling me. Whether that’s correct or not, the fact is that I’m taking over my mother’s care now.

God help us.

“I have a woman who watches Harlow after school, in the hours before I get home from work. She’s scheduled to start coming in when the fall semester starts, but she’s not a nurse. I’ll have to find someone qualified to come in during the day. And I’ll probably need to get one of those hospital beds with the safety rail on the sides so she doesn’t fall out of bed in the middle of the night and hurt herself. We’ll put it in the living room.”

“What about an assisted living facility?”

I shake my head. “They cost an arm and a leg. Will sent me links to a few places. The cheapest was more than ten thousand a month. I have no idea how people afford it.”

He glances down at his glass, fiddles with it in silence for a while, then glances back up at me. I see the wheels turning behind his eyes.

“You’re thinking I should sell the guitar collection.”

“No, I’m thinking you should accept a gift from someone who admires you.”

“Who? And what gift?”

“Me. And a gift in the form of financial assistance.”

When I make a face, he says, “Remember that salary of mine I told you about? That’s not even a drop in the ocean compared to what I get annually from my trust. Or the royalties and dividends from my various investments. Or the cash flow from the properties I own. Or the—”

“I get the picture. You’re rich. Thank you, but no.”

He lowers his lids and smiles at me. “Ah, her ladyship’s stubborn pride again.”

“Yes, it’s my damn pride. She’s my mother, and she’s my responsibility. I appreciate the thought, but I’m not taking money from you.”

He takes a leisurely sip of his gin, gazing at me over the rim of his glass, then shrugs. “Okay. Suit yourself.”

We sit in comfortable silence for a while, until he asks what I’m doing for the rest of the weekend.

“My girlfriends are coming over tomorrow night with their kids. We’ll just hang here and order take-out.”

“That sounds fun.”

I don’t reply because I’m not sure how much fun it’s actually going to be. I’m afraid Val and Ev will spend most of the evening bashing Carter, and I’ll spend it defending his honor, and everybody will leave angry.

“What will you be doing?”

“Aside from pining over you and obsessing over you every second?” He thinks for a moment, then smiles. “Nothing. Just that.”

I reach across the table and take his hand. “You’re pretty amazing, stable boy. I mean it. Thank you for helping tonight.”

Running his thumb back and forth across my knuckles, he murmurs, “Anytime, your ladyship. Anytime.” He holds my gaze for a moment, then knocks back the rest of his gin and stands. “I’ll let you get some sleep. And try not to worry about your mother. It’s all gonna work out.”

He kisses me softly on the lips, then heads out, leaving me alone at the kitchen table wrestling all the demons inside my head.

There’s a split second in the morning when I wake up that I don’t remember last night, and I feel happy. Then the goblin of reality pounces out, screaming, “Gotcha!” and I want to hide under the covers all day with a bottle of tequila.

I get up instead.

After a shower and a few bracing mugs of coffee laced with a heavy-handed pour of Bailey’s Irish Cream liqueur, I check on my mother.

She’s still sound asleep.

God is showing mercy on me.

Harper’s still asleep too. Typically, she doesn’t roll out of bed until around eleven on a weekend morning. So I leave both my responsibilities to their rest and conduct a frantic online search for local home care companies who can send out a qualified nurse or health care assistant for Mom.

The websites are slick and beautiful, which means their price tags will be high.

Nevertheless, I call around and leave a few messages. I’m in the middle of dialing another company when Mom walks into the kitchen and sits down at the table across from me.

Clear-eyed and calm, she says, “What’s for breakfast?”

Stunned, I slowly set my cell phone down. “You can walk?”

“Of course I can walk.”

“Don’t say it like it’s obvious. Will rolled you in here last night in a wheelchair. Carter had to carry you upstairs to bed.”

She smiles at me. In the morning light, she looks years younger than she did at midnight, hunched over in her wheelchair.

“That young man is very strong. And your brother’s a nincompoop. But you already knew that. What’s for breakfast?”

I spend a moment trying to remember if I swallowed any psychotropic drugs recently, but as I don’t do drugs, the effort is futile. “I’m sorry, I’m having a problem computing this. Do you know where you are?”

She scoffs. “Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’ve lost my marbles.”

I shake my head in astonishment. “So you know this is my home? And I’m your daughter?”

“Oh, please.”

“You say that like you weren’t acting completely clueless last night!”

She smiles. “Sometimes a fox has to outfox the other foxes.” She spots the bottle on the counter. “Ooo, is that Bailey’s? I’ll take some with my coffee.”

Outraged, I stare at her. “Mother!”

“There’s no need to shout, Sophia.”

“Faking physical incapacity is…is…”

“An occasional necessity when your caretaker is someone like your brother. I don’t know where I went so wrong with that boy, but I can’t believe we’re related. If I didn’t give birth to him myself, I’d never believe we share genes.”

My voice rises. “You also faked mental incapacity. Was that a necessity too?”

“How else was I going to get him to kick me out? If I acted perfectly lucid, I’d still be living there!”

I sputter, “This is…this is unbelievable!”

“No, what’s unbelievable is that your brother tried to steal all my money to pay off his gambling debts.”

We gaze at each other across the table, her smiling pleasantly, me squinting at her in disbelief, my head spinning.

“Gambling debts?”

She chuckles. “Oh, yes. He’s in debt up to his eyeballs to some very unsavory characters. Big and mouthy. Terrible manners. Tracked dirt all over the carpeting. Anyway, they came to his home a few times, trying to collect. Then, he tried to convince me that I should redo my trust to put him in charge of the finances. So I had my attorney draw up some documents to sign.”

She smiles, pleased with herself. “Only the documents didn’t give him any power. They took it all away. Do you know, he was so sure of himself, he didn’t even bother to look at what he was signing?”

“Wait. Wait a second. What trust?”

She ignores that. “All that nonsense he told you about going to Paris with his girlfriend was just that. Nonsense. He planned on taking my money and running from the goons who are after him. Disappearing and leaving me with absolutely nothing!” She clucks. “The ingrate. Your father must be rolling over in his grave.”

“Mother! The trust! What trust?”

She looks at me as if I’m being uncouth and unreasonable, then sniffs.

“The family trust your father and I set up before he died. All our assets are in it. Granted, it’s not much. We were never wealthy people, but there are a few bank accounts, some bonds and whatnot. Enough to ensure I don’t die a pauper. And, of course, some money set aside for my only grandchild’s college education. She really has grown so much since I last saw her!”

When I only sit there gaping at her with my mouth hanging open, she sighs.

“I suppose I’ll have to get my own coffee.” Standing, she heads over to the counter. “Would you like another cup?”

I prop my elbows on the table, drop my head into my hands, and groan.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

When she sets a full mug in front of me and resumes her spot across from me at the table, I drop my hands from my face and glare at her. “You can’t stay here with us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t live alone.”

“Can’t or don’t want to?”

She peers at me over her coffee mug as she sips.

“Mother, I’m trying very hard not to curse at you. Please don’t make it harder for me.”

Tilting her head to one side, she considers me for a thoughtful moment.

“You think I was a bad mother because I wasn’t nice to you. But I was very nice to your brother. Look how that turned out. I will apologize for one thing, though. That girl you brought home one Christmas when you were in college…what was her name? Sally? Annie? I don’t remember. Anyway, I made a funny comment, but I could tell she was hurt. Not everybody gets my sense of humor.”

I look desperately around the room. “What the hell is happening? Am I being recorded? Is this some joke video you’ll post on the internet for likes?”

“Have more Bailey’s, you’ll feel better.”

“You know what? No.” I shove my chair back and stand, glaring down at her. “This is bullshit. You can’t come into my home and pretend you don’t know me and act like you have dementia, then casually announce you’ve been hoodwinking my brother to get him to kick you out. Not only that, but you apparently have enough money to take care of yourself, you just don’t want to.”

In her pajamas, Harlow wanders into the kitchen, yawning. “What’re you yelling about?”noveldrama

“Your mother’s upset with me, dear.”

“How come?”

“Lots of things, but it boils down to that I didn’t tell her I loved her enough when she was little.”

“You never told me you loved me when I was little!”

She’s unmoved by my outburst. Holding my furious gaze, she says calmly, “Yet here you are, all grown up and successful, living a beautiful life. In comparison to your older sibling, who was showered with unconditional love, yet who turned out to be as useless as a rabbit turd.”

I say flatly, “Don’t you dare say that I should thank you for not loving me.”

“I’ve always loved you, Sophia. I just didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. What children need is discipline and consistency, like in the military. The more softness you show them, the worse their character becomes. It was clear by the time your brother was six that I’d done everything wrong with him, so I changed my approach with you. It was all very calculated.”

“Like your fake dementia and your fake frailty?”

“Exactly.”

After a long, tense silence, Harlow says, “Wow, Grandma. That’s some bogus shit.”

I might need to reduce her grounding from two weeks to one. “Language, Harlow.”

My mother scoffs, waving her hand in the air. “Oh, you young people and your tender little psyches. I wasn’t raising a wimp, I was raising a warrior. And I succeeded!”

I laugh. It sounds demented because that’s exactly how I feel.

“Classic. That’s just classic Carmelina! Blame your shortcomings on other people and twist it around so it’s their fault in the first place. It’s a miracle I made it to adulthood without severe psychiatric disorders!”

Without a whiff of irony, my mother says, “You’re welcome,” and takes another sip of coffee.

I glare at her for a moment, then grab the bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream liqueur, dump my coffee into the sink, and fill the mug to the rim with booze.

When Harlow asks if she can have a taste of it and I say no, my mother scolds me for being overprotective.

I calmly go upstairs to my bedroom, close the door behind me, and scream.