But Finn didn’t ignore the question. Instead, he hesitated for a moment, then finally spoke.
“Because he thinks your mom killed his mom.”
Chapter 18
I choked on my next breath. My head whipped to the side so fast something in my neck popped. “What?”
Finn glanced over at me, the eyes I was so used to seeing gleam with laughter clouded and heavy. They’d seemed that way for a lot of the semester actually. It made me miss the old Finn.
“His mom died nine years ago. She committed suicide.”
“Wait. What?”
My mind was reeling. I’d known Mason’s mom was dead. I remembered the look of intense, clawing grief that’d passed over his face when he talked about her once. But if she’d committed suicide nine years ago…
“My mom died ten years ago,” I choked out. “She got hit by a drunk driver. She couldn’t have—”
“Not like that.” He shot a glance at me. “Our parents knew each other when they were younger. You know that, right?”
I nodded. We had known each other when we were younger. The Princes and I. My mom hadn’t left Roseland until after Element Investments went under, until after she’d apparently turned on everyone she knew here. I’d probably been about four years old when she’d left, and I had no idea how my father fit into all of this. They must’ve met while she was still living here, but she’d obviously kept him a secret.
“Your mom left town a long time ago. But I guess before she did, she kinda snapped. She decided she hated Mason’s mom and did whatever she could to fuck with her head. I don’t know what happened, but it messed her up bad. A few years after Charlotte Hildebrand left town, his mom killed herself.”
“A few years?” I shook my head. “She killed herself years later, and he thinks it was my mom’s fault? Why?”
“Mace’s dad told him a little of what’d been going on after the fact, I guess. His mom was in therapy, on mood-stabilizing drugs, all that shit. But it wasn’t enough. Whatever your mom did to her stuck.”
I bristled. “My mom didn’t—”
But the words died before I could finish the sentence. I didn’t know what my mom had done. I’d barely known her, and all my memories of her were filtered through a child’s love and innocence. The picture that’d been painted of her by literally everyone who had known her in Roseland was the same—that of someone who had gone from loving and open to spiteful and full of hate. She’d gotten into drugs and alcohol, and I had to wonder if any or all of that was due to my dad’s influence.
But had she really been that cruel? Left such lasting marks on her one-time-friend’s psyche that the woman had eventually killed herself?
My stomach turned, and I had an overwhelming impulse to run back to my dorm, pick up the framed photo of my mom that sat on my desk, and stare at it until it gave me some kind of fucking answers. Not that I needed to see it—I knew that photo like the back of my hand, could picture it clearly in my mind’s eye. Her soft brown hair, so close in color to mine. Her hazel eyes, which were warm and thoughtful and just a little bit sad.
The woman in that photo didn’t look like a killer.
Then again, the Princes looked like fucking movie stars, and Jacqueline looked like a perfectly poised society lady.
Looks could be deceiving.
“That’s why Mason hates me. Why he didn’t want me here,” I breathed softly.
“Yeah.” Finn flipped on his blinker before turning onto the Oak Park campus. The grounds were quiet as he pulled into the lot. “It’s fucked up, Tal. The whole thing is fucked. Her death messed him up. He… he was the one who found the body. He was only eight.” He turned off the ignition and looked over at me. “But that still didn’t give us any right to fuck with you.”
I gazed at him, a thousand thoughts bouncing around in my head. Anger. Shock.
Guilt.
But that was fucking stupid.
Even if it was true, and my mom had been that awful to her friend, I hadn’t done it. I hadn’t even known about it. I wasn’t responsible for Mrs. Van Buren’s death or Mason’s pain.
“You’re right. It didn’t.”
I sucked in a deep breath as I finished speaking, suddenly finding it hard to get enough oxygen in the confined space of the car. My fingers scrabbled for the door handle, and I pushed it open, stepping outside into the blessedly cool night air.
Finn didn’t say anything else. He grabbed my bag from the back seat and carried it for me as he walked me back to my dorm. When we stopped in front of Prentice Hall, he looked down at me, his blond hair shining in the dim light.