“What happened to them?”
“My father died from a heart attack and my mother . . . she’s still alive. I just pretend she isn’t because she’s a very entitled woman. She sees or thinks of me and only wants money.”
I nodded. I didn’t know how to respond positively to that, as she was one to talk about entitlement. Lola pulled away and grabbed her wineglass again, sipping slowly, and for a moment I could feel for her. I’m not completely emotionless, you know.
With our parents, we could relate. Though the situations were different, and it was her fault mine were taken away from me, we grew up as teens in a cold world without parents, and that was never easy for anyone.
So, I decided to ask her a question—one that I’d hoped would change my mind about her. It wouldn’t change my motive, but maybe it would change the way I felt about her in the long run.
“I have a question,” I said as a warm gust of wind bristled by. The sun was sinking now, replacing the daylight with inklings of night.
“Yeah?” Lola’s eyes latched on mine.
“Do you have any . . . regrets?”
“Regrets?” she repeated, confused.
I nodded.
“Like . . . with life in general or with my parents?”
“For anything,” I said firmly. I needed to calm down. I couldn’t get too defensive or she’d likely catch on. I relaxed my shoulders a bit.
She seemed surprised by that question and sat back in her seat, swirling her wineglass so the liquid moved. “Well, I do regret not being there when my father died. He’d called me the day he passed. I was sixteen, but I didn’t want to see him, so I stayed at my cousin’s house often so I could avoid his drunken mishaps.”
Okay, and?
“But I chalk that up to something that was meant to happen. He was unhealthy. Ate lots of red meat.” Well, that explained her vegan diet. “Other than that, though . . . no. I don’t have any regrets. Everything I’ve done and have gone through was either supposed to happen or was a lesson in my life. I don’t regret those things.”
Wow.
Wait. Was this a joke?
She had to be kidding, right, Marriott?
All I could do was stare at her. I mean, she couldn’t have been serious. So, she didn’t regret killing two people? She didn’t regret covering it up and lying about it? Paying off the police so her name wouldn’t be put in the system so no one would ever know and confront her lying ass about it? I knew that was what she’d done. She paid them. Why else would Detective Shaw have been so unyielding about her name? He was bought.
I pushed back in my chair a little too abruptly, and Lola’s forehead creased with confusion as she looked up at me. “Are you okay?” she asked, her face etched with concern.
“Yeah—I’m okay. I think I just really need to lie down. My head is throbbing.”
“Of course, Ivy. Don’t let me hold you up. Go ahead.”
I turned and walked away quickly, through the kitchen and up the stairs to the guest room. I shut the door behind me and pressed my back to it. My breath came out heavy and hard, and for a moment it felt like the room was spinning around me.
I needed to get my breathing under control. Get myself under control. What was that thing you used to make me do, Marriott? Count to ten and then think of my favorite song?
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I felt silly doing it, but I had to admit it worked. Then I hummed “Glory” by Dermot Kennedy and slowly opened my eyes.
The song stopped. I took a look around the guest room. I wanted to break every single item in it, from the shiny, dust-free lamps to the floor-to-ceiling mirror on the wall.
That bitch had no regrets about what she’d done. None. But I knew she did it. I could see it in her eyes. There was no way she felt nothing . . . and I was going to prove it. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but I would make her confess. That lying, stuck-up bitch.
I shut off all the lights in the room and walked to the window, watching Lola pick up her wineglass and the half-full bottle of wine as she stood on the deck. She carried them away from the table with a small smile on her lips.
Did she not realize just how similar she was to her father? He was a drunk, and all she did was drink. No matter how much she tried to escape it, she would always have parts of her parents in her. Things like that were engraved in your DNA. No matter how hard you tried to run from it, a person would always develop the habits of their parents.