RANSOM (16 page)

   “Believe it or not my life doesn’t revolve around you,” she snaps back.

   “I know it doesn’t, and I don’t expect it to. You just haven’t said nothing to me about him. And, what the hell kind of date are you going on at three o’clock in the morning?”

   She turns to me when we get to her car, and I fold my arms across my chest. I continue to stand like that, waiting on her to answer, but she just raises her eyebrow at me and gives me a knowing look.

   “Ok, never mind, I don’t want to know.”

   Her shoulders start shaking with a laugh as she turns to get into the car and drive me to my childhood home.

   I wake up to the smell of fresh coffee. I blink my eyes open a few times and see my mom sitting on the coffee table in front of me, holding a steaming cup of the black goodness. I sit up and instantly grab my head from the intense throbbing. “
Ahhh.”

   “Serves you right for getting drunk, then sneaking into my house in the middle of the night. You scared me half to death walking in here this morning to find you sleeping on my couch,” she says putting one of her hands over her heart.

   “I didn’t sneak into here, I used my key,” I explain, holding my keys up to her.

   “Here, drink this it’ll help with that hangover of yours.”

   I take the mug from her hands and take a long sip, and welcome the soothing burn as I swallow. After a few more sips, I say, “We need to talk.”

   “I’m all ears.”

   I spill everything about the last several months of my life. How Carl Donovan, the man that was supposed to be my saving grace, snatched all the dreams he gave me back. All of the repercussions from the accusations against me that ruined my career. After that, me wallowing in the pity of not being able to find a job, which ultimately lead to me having the brilliant idea to pay the bastard back. I don’t hold back. I even tell her about me falling for Sage somewhere along the way and knowing that the best thing I could do for her is let her go.

   I don’t think she blinks once through the entire story, and I can’t really tell what she is thinking. “I am so sorry, Momma. I know I let you down. I’m basically on borrowed time until the cops come knocking on the door to come and get me. I will do as much around here as I
can from now til’ then, and I will sell my jeep and give you the money so that you can take care of whatever you need while I am away.”

   “
Hosh posh. I am disappointed in the route you took, but you could never let me down. You have always thought with your heart before your mind. I also know that desperate men will go to desperate measures for the ones that they love, but honey I don’t need you to take care of me financially,” she confesses.

   “You have worked your whole life, sometimes two jobs at a time, to support the two of us. Sometimes you even did without so that I wouldn’t have to. You haven’t worked in two years because of your back, and are still too young to be drawing social security. Please explain to me how you don’t need me to help you financially,” I plead.

   Her face lights up with a big smile before she starts, “I did stop working because of my back, but I never said that I couldn’t afford to. Your whole life every extra bit of money that we got in that I didn’t account for was thrown into a savings account for you, for college.”

   “I got a scholarship so you didn’t have to use a dime of that money for me to go to college.”

   She pats me on my shoulder and takes the mug from me. “No, I didn’t,” she says as she walks into the kitchen.

   I follow after her. “Can I ask how much you ended up saving?”

   “You can. Doesn’t mean I will tell you.”

   “Wait! So you are telling me I have been helping you with bills and random things this whole time, and you didn’t need any of it. That’s low Mom,” I say, shaking my head.

   “Every dollar that you ever put towards
helping
me, I have put into a savings account with your name on it. I mean really, Lynkin, you should know your old mom better than to think I would ever take a hand out from anyone, especially my son.”

   “Well, damn,” I say stunned.

   “Language. Anyways, this is why I was so disappointed in you. If you would have just came to me and told me what had happened, we could have gotten through it together. You had money you didn’t even know about that could have gotten you by,” she explains.

   “It’s too late now. I’ve already messed up.”

   “You’re a fool if you think she is going to turn you in.”

   “What?”

   “Sage. The way that girl looks at you… I know a girl in love when I see one.”

   I’m not so sure. When she sets a new cup of coffee in front of me on the counter, I pick it up and look over the top of it and ask, “So, are you really not going to tell me how much you have stashed away?”

   Almost a week passes by, and I still haven’t had any cops show up to haul me away. I’ve been helping Mom with the garden and some nit-pick things around the house that she can’t do herself. I’m fixing some old boards on her porch when Mom comes back from getting the mail out of the mailbox.

   “Hmm, this one is addressed to you,” she says, dropping a small white envelope next to me as she walks into the house.

   I place the hammer down and reach for the envelope. It doesn’t have a return to address on it, just my name and this address. I rip it open and pull out a folded piece of paper. I unfold it and a smaller folded piece of paper falls out and into my lap, but I pay it no attention as I start reading the letter.

Lynkin,

I hope this letter reaches you. This is the only way I could think to get to you, but I have no idea if you are with your mother or not seeing as you just left me without so much as a goodbye.

Truth is, I wished you wouldn’t have. Now that I am back to this life, I would have rather stayed gone. I don’t see things the same anymore. Everything seems so, I don’t know, wrong, maybe. I want you to know that I will never tell anyone that it was you who took me. I fed them a line of crap about not ever seeing the man, and that he blindfolded me and dropped me off in the middle of nowhere when he realized they weren’t going to give in to his demands.

I hope your mother is doing well. I know you worry about her so much, but you shouldn’t. She is the strongest woman that I have ever met. Seeing as how I know you will anyways, I enclosed a little something in this envelope to help lesson your burden.

Love,

Sage Donovan

P.S. I finally achieved ‘rainbows and unicorns’ happy, and it was when I realized I love you. I hope one day you are able too also.

   Did see really just end the note with that? How the hell do you drop a bomb on someone like that? She obviously realizes me leaving her was the right thing to do, that the two of us can’t have a future together, otherwise she would act on her feeling and not just write me a damn letter.

   I look down at the check that she sent, and if my life were a cartoon, my eyes would have come out of my head. She wrote the check out to me for one hundred thousand dollars, but I can’t accept it.

   “What is it, Lynkin?” Mom ask from just inside the screen door.

   “It’s just some junk mail.”

   “Uh-huh, sure it is,” she says with a grin and walks off.

   I go to rip the check up when I stop and fix the small tear I have already created. Maybe I will return it to her personally.

Sage

I’ve only been home a week, one week, before everyone wants to throw Richard and mine’s engagement party in my lap. I’ve still not forgiven him for the first night I was back, and I refused to do any of the interviews with the press he has set up. Every single time I am in the same room as him, I wonder what the hell I have been thinking. I notice things I have never before, like how he tells me what not to eat, so that I don’t gain any weight. Or how he parades me around events like I am the most wonderful woman in the world, but if I try to give any input about advancing the business, he tells me to leave it to the men. He doesn’t take me seriously, and I know it’s my fault for being so compliant all these years.

   I look around the room at all the people milling around with their noses in the air, thinking they are all better than the next person that they talk to. The men are in constant dick measuring contest, ‘My boat is bigger than yours,’ ‘My car is Italian made,’ ‘My cigars are true Cubans,’ and the women are all trying to out-do the other with how much bigger their fake tits can get before they pop. It’s ridiculous. Wasted money on senseless shit they don’t need.

   Richard must have seen a business associate, because he excused himself half an hour ago and hasn’t come back. No doubt he is probably sitting in dad’s office, behind his desk, drinking himself silly, and imagining himself there soon. This is our engagement party, and I could care less that he is not by my side. Does that make me a bad future wife? Well, I don’t give a flying fuck if it does or not!

   I grab a glass of champagne from a tray that one of the waiters carries by. I finish the whole flute in one drink. I forgot how much I hate champagne, but it doesn’t stop me from grabbing another and downing it, too.

   “Are you aiming to get drunk and embarrass me in front of all of these people?” my mother says, rounding the bottom of the stairs.

   “Didn’t you know that my life’s ambition is to embarrass you, dear sweet mother?” I smart off to her.

Dad comes around the corner about the time she opens her mouth to pop back at me. “Lay off of her,” he growls into her ear before looking over to me. “Sage honey, why don’t you go find that
fiancé
of yours so that I can make a toast.”

   As he says it, he turns his eyes down the hallway and nods his head. When I don’t head off in a timely manner his eyes and jaw tense. I storm off past the both of them and walk
towards his office to find Richard, the whole time wondering why he even bothered with niceties. If he wanted me to go away, all he had to do was say so.

   Halfway to the door of my father’s office, I hear someone talking. I don’t think much of it, just brush it off as Richard bragging to his buddies about how he is set for life. The norm. However, when I open the door, the norm is far from what I got.

   There is a blonde sitting on my dad’s desk, with her back to me and legs spread upon. She is giving off commands to the man that I am guessing is on his knees in front of her.