I grinned and reached for Vlad, who came so willingly one would think that we spent more time together.
We didn’t.
Because Mavis and I hated each other.
At least, I hoped I had her convinced that I hated her.
Because if she got even one inkling that I didn’t hate her, I wouldn’t be able to keep her nosey little ass out of my business.
And my business was failing fast.
Vlad, the little boy that had a hold on my heart on one side, while his mother had a hold on the other side, leaned into me and placed his head atop of my failing heart.
“I need you to show me how to do this driveshaft thing,” she ordered me.
I couldn’t stop myself from showing her.
A couple hours after they left, I wasn’t the least bit surprised to find her getting arrested, either.
I couldn’t stop myself from racing to her rescue, even though I knew it was the worst idea ever.
Thirty minutes after arriving at the police station to Mavis going at it with Heather Trudell, a reporter, I all but dragged Mavis to the car.
“The nerve of that woman,” Mavis fumed. “Publishing my sister’s information. Putting her in the path of a madman. And then having the nerve to blame it all on us!”
Mavis’s sister, Fran, had an article published about her in the newspaper about being an eyewitness to a string of murders that’d been going on in Paris over the last few months—a serial killer was in our midst.
And Heather having published that article had put Fran in danger.
Mavis, being Fran’s protector, hadn’t liked that.
Not at all.
I understood, of course, the need to protect those that you loved.
But Mavis had to have a cooler head than she was exhibiting. She had a kid after all.
“You need to learn to prioritize,” I found myself saying. “You have a kid at home. You need to be thinking about Vlad. And what would’ve happened had you actually been arrested? The hospital would have grounds to fire you.”
Mavis stayed stubbornly silent.
But it was my last words to her that had her seeing red.
“You need to grow up, Mavis. Grandmother isn’t here to bail you out anymore,” I continued, not realizing how volatile the situation was until I got a good look at Mavis’s face when I pulled into her driveway and put the truck in park. “You need to start considering what’s best…”
I turned to look just as Mavis got out of the truck.
She walked to the back, reached inside after opening the door, and extracted her son’s car seat from the seatbelts that I’d hooked it into the car with.
Closing the door quietly, she never once looked back, and I realized that I’d probably just accomplished what I’d been trying to make happen for a very long time now.
Kick Mavis out of my life for good.
CHAPTER 10
If you’re going to get on my nerves, do it by getting on one of the 8000 in my clitoris.
-Mavis to Murphy
MAVIS
I made it into the house, got my son settled for the night, and closed the door quietly before I slid down the length of the nursery’s closed bedroom door and dissolved into a mess of tears.
Vlad was still screaming.
He did this every single night.
It didn’t matter whether I picked him up or rocked him to sleep. Vlad liked to cry.
He liked crying even more when I was the one putting him to bed.
My tear-filled eyes made it nearly impossible to see past the hallway that I was at the end of.
I couldn’t see my bedroom door that was directly next to Vlad’s. I couldn’t see the bathroom door.
I couldn’t even see the carpet, I was crying that hard.
In fact, I was so entrenched in my pity party of one that I didn’t realize that someone was in my house. Let alone that someone was close enough to me that they could literally pick me up off the floor.
I went to scream, an automatic response to having arms wrap around you when you didn’t realize that there were another set of arms in your house, but the smell of burnt motor oil and pine hit me like a sledgehammer.
Once I knew that it was Murphy’s arms around me, I only cried all the harder.
Everything poured out of me.
All the shit that had leeched into my life over the last year and a half poured out of me once I had a strong set of arms to help me cope with the pain.
• • •
MURPHY
It was, quite possibly, the worst idea ever to be in her house.
But, after my parting words to her, I hadn’t been able to get over the finality in which I’d said them.
Hadn’t been able to think about leaving this life with one of the only people to ever take care of me, to wish me well, mad at me when I went.