He stood there, silent, because he knew he had no defense. That there was nothing he could say that would change anything.
“I agreed that I wouldn’t run away and I’m not. I’m not running. But I am leaving.” I pulled the ring off my finger and put it down on the counter.
And then I walked out his door.
24
VERONICA
I drove away. Not sure where I was going. Not back to the ranch. It was empty and cold and sister-less. Dog-less.
I called Bea on speakerphone.
“What up?”
“I need to come to your house.”
“Austin? Why? It’s, like, the middle of the night.”
“I just do.”
Something in my voice must have tipped her off. “I’ll be here,” she said. “Drive safe.”
The door was open when I got there and I slipped in as quietly as I could, but still the dogs freaked out.
“Shhhh,” I whispered to them, patting them and rubbing them and bathing them in my tears. “Hello. Yes. Hi. I missed you, too.”
“Ronnie?”
Bea was there, dressed for bed in pj’s with a big blue sweater over top. She had a spoon in her hand and I knew without having to ask it had recently been in a pint of Rocky Road ice cream. And that she had another one for me in the freezer.
She was covered in dog hair.
I wanted to be covered in dog hair.
“What happened?” she asked. She jumped over the couch and pulled me into her arms.
I didn’t have a black eye. And I didn’t have a Chihuahua and a couple of grand stuffed in my purse. But I couldn’t answer questions. Not yet. If I opened my mouth I’d start screaming. Or sobbing. All I could do was shake my head against her shoulder.
And my sweet sister said nothing else. She put her arm around me and led me upstairs to her bedroom. Mine was empty. Most of my stuff had been moved to Clayton’s condo. She tucked me into her bed, between the two dogs, and fed me Rocky Road.
“Just tell me,” she whispered when we got to the bottom of the pint. “Do I have to go murder him?”
“No,” I sighed. I didn’t really know how to say that what he’d done wasn’t actually that bad. It was manipulative and low, but in a way he’d done it for me.
But it wasn’t enough.
It just wasn’t enough.
What was wrong with me? I wondered. Did I demand too much? Or was I just that unlovable?
Thelma, as if she read my mind, rolled over to lick my face and then she put her big head under my chin and sighed.
The next morning Bea was leaving for work just as I was getting out of the pile of dogs in the middle of the bed.
“You have a job?” I asked her. “Where?”
“I’m working in a catering kitchen, but it’s only for two months and then I need to find something else,” she said. She paused in front of me, her hands on my shoulders. “The fridge is full of cheese and white wine. I expect when I get home to find you drunk and stuffed with Brie. And then we’re gonna talk.”
That seemed impossible but I nodded.
Ronnie left and I padded over to the fridge in my dirty clothes with my dirty hair and inspected the cheese selection. Not bad. Any other day I’d have dived right in. But I was too…broken for cheese and wine. I was too numb for anything but crawling back into bed with the dogs, who welcomed me with thumping tails.
Knocking woke me up. Real knocking. Like it’s-an-emergency knocking, which the dogs added to with it’s-an-emergency barking. I scrambled out of bed and raced downstairs.
“What?” I snapped, throwing open the door. “What happened?”
The woman in the expensive suit walking to the curb, and the nice BMW sitting there, turned around.
“Madison?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”
“Being sent on the worst scavenger hunt ever,” she snapped and stomped back over to me in her perfect heels. “Despite this being miles beneath my paygrade, Clayton sent me to deliver this.” She held out a thick stack of papers in one hand and in the other was the faded jewelry box.
“I don’t want it,” I said.
“He thought you would say that. So I’ve been instructed to tell you that he is handing over King Industries.”
“To whom?”
“To you. Why else would I be here?”
“That’s incredibly convenient,” I said. “And it’s not going to work.”
“He had me draw these papers up a week after your father died. You came to my office that day, remember? To see what you could do about the will? It’s all in there. You can check the dates. I’m here as his lawyer to verify his actions. This was his plan all along, to hand you the company when your brother did not show.”
I glanced through the paperwork and the date on it was January 15th. The funeral had been on the fourteenth. Oh, God.