I wrung my hands together. There was no expression on his face and his eyes were hostile. Never had I seen them icy like that.
“You’d been away for two years, Cade. Two years. What was I supposed to do? Let you waste the rest of your life here on this mountain? Take a good look around you, Cade. Is this any way to live? What is the point of living like this? All your money rotting in banks. I’m your mother. Ask anything of me, but don’t ask me to let you live here in this horrible cabin.”
“What did you do, Mother?”
“I hired her.”
His eyes narrowed. “As what?”
“I hired her to come here and show you that there is more to life than being a hermit.”
“She crashed her car.”
“I didn’t ask her to do that. All she was supposed to do was get here before the storm so you would be forced to let her stay for a few days.”
“And then what?” His voice was so quiet I had to strain to hear.
“I told her to use whatever means at her disposal to bring you back to civilization.”
“You thought having sex with a woman would do that?”
I could feel the heat rise up my throat. “Well, you used to like it.”
“So why did you come here, if she was supposed to be doing the job?”
“I found out something about her.”
“What?”
“These.” I held the photographs out to him. Right at the top of the pile was the one with the guy masturbating while she did her lap dance.
He took it from my hand and looked at the first one. I saw him flinch in shock. When he looked up, his eyes were bleak. “How did you come by these?”
“After I hired her, I became suspicious of her intentions. So I hired a private investigator, who dug up these photos. Most of them are open source.”
The photographs were crushed in his fist. He was breathing fast. “So you came running up the mountain to scare her away.”
“I was thinking of you.”
“Bullshit, Mother. Bullshit.”
“You can believe me or not, but I love you. Nobody will ever love you as much as I do.”
He appeared to be controlling himself, as he turned away from me and looked out of the window. “You better go back down the mountain before it gets dark, Mother.”
I realized that he was furious with me. Even when he was just a child, he got very quiet when he got really angry. My other son and daughter would shout and scream, not Cade. His fury was disturbing because it was so controlled. I could feel now his anger was barely leashed. It radiated out of him in waves and yet, to a complete stranger he would seem to be just polite and courteous.
“I’ll go, but promise me you won’t be mad at me. I was just trying to help. Maybe I was wrong to interfere in your life, but I had to do something. I was desperate. You are my son. I would do anything for you.”
“I’m not angry with you, Mother. I feel sorry for you. You will never understand. Now, please go. The roads get dangerous as dark falls.” He walked to the door, opened it, and walked out. I stood for a moment in the middle of the cabin. He would come around. He always did. He was my son.
Then I followed him outside. He was checking my tires to make sure the chains were still on and safe. My son loved me. One day he will forgive me.
She was not right for him. I knew that from the moment I met her. I knew I was playing a dangerous game and I was right. She was bad news. But I got rid of her. I stood at the driver’s side door.
“I’m sorry, Cade. I’m sorry it didn’t work out. She looked like such a nice girl. How could I have known?”
“Drive safely, Mother.”
I got into the car and he stood and watched me drive away. I watched him in the rearview mirror. He just stood all alone staring at the car as it disappeared from view. I must have driven for at least five hundred yards when I heard that terrible, terrible roar. It bounced off the mountains and echoed all around me.
I slammed my foot on the brake and listened, but there were no more sounds after that. A sob was torn from my throat. Dear God. What have I done?
That was my beloved son calling for his mate.
Katrina
I didn’t pay much attention to my ride back. I sat very still in the back of the car and gazed unseeingly out of the window. I kept imagining what Lynn would tell Cade. In my heart, I knew she was going to show him the pictures. How else would she stop him from coming to me? I tried not to imagine his face when she showed them to him, but I kept on seeing it. How disappointed he was. He had come to trust me and I betrayed him. He would think I slept with him because of the job.
If Lynn had not come I would have confessed to him.
In fact, I was ready to tell him in the morning, but he said to wait until later because he had something to tell me too. How I wished I had not agreed to wait. I should have insisted that we just get it over with.
Maybe he would have been angry but he would have forgiven me. He would have looked into my eyes and my heart and known I never meant him harm. It was not such a bad thing, what I did. I did it for my sister. I never meant to hurt him, but now that Lynn was in charge of framing the story, I would have no chance.
By now she would have painted me as some cheap whore.
Oh, those pictures.
I buried my face in my hands. If only I had told him this morning. I would have told him that I never meant to sleep with him. The agreement I had with his mother was simple. All I was supposed to do was attract him. Make him feel he was missing something by being on the mountain. Make him want to re-start his life in the city.
Never was sex part of the equation, but I couldn’t help myself.
I was so insanely attracted to him. He was so different from the cold, sophisticated, beautifully dressed, perfectly coiffured man in the photograph that Lynn showed me. In that photo, I saw an extremely handsome man, someone so completely out of my league that I even said to Lynn when I met her at that hotel that I didn’t think I could bring someone like him back from the edge of a self-imposed solitude, but she assured me that I had all the qualities that he admired most in a woman.
She told me she chose me from hundreds of photographs. At that time, I saw a totally different side to her. She seemed warm and friendly and helpful. I told her what the money was for, and she asked about my sister and showed what I thought was genuine concern. I even went as far as to think I was helping her. I wanted to do my best for her, but all that time she just thought of me as an expendable tool. Some throwaway dreg of society.
When we arrived at my apartment, Susie, my roommate was in. She was making one of her famous ham, cheese and French mustard sandwiches.
“My God, what happened to you?” she asked, as I came through the door.
I wanted to be strong, but the look on her face made me burst into tears. She left her sandwich and came up to me and hugged me. “Hey, hey, whatever it is, it is not as bad as you think, remember?”
I’d heard that line so many times, more than I care to. Every time something bad happened to us we told each other that, and it always made me feel better, but not this time. This time I’d really fucked up.
“I fell in love with him, Susie.”
“Oh shit.”
She went to the fridge, poured me a big shot of Vodka, and topped it with orange juice. “Here, get this in you.”
I took a sip, but it didn’t even taste the same. It felt cold and tasteless in my mouth.
“Want to tell me what happened?” she asked, plopping next to me on the sofa.
I nodded and poured my heart out to her.
“What a fucking bitch,” she said bitterly when I finished.
“I think you should leave it alone for about a month, and then you should make contact with Cade,” she said. “I don’t think those photos are as disgusting as you think they are.”
I shook my head. “You should have seen them, Susie. They were horrible. Truly horrible. When I’m at the club
, it feels normal, just another job, all of us are in the same boat, but those photos. They were the pits.”
“You know, people like that bitch, really make me angry. She thinks she’s better than you because you’re a lap dancer, but guess what, she needed you to get to her son. You were good enough for her then, weren’t you?”
“I feel so ashamed,” I whispered.
“Don’t you dare let her make you feel ashamed of what you did. Are you telling me you won’t do that all over again for your sister?”
I blinked at Susie.
“Well, are you so ashamed now of dancing that you won’t do it all over again for Anna?”
I shook my head.