—TWENTY-FIVE—

 

Ren took one deep breath and then another in an attempt to quell the nervous stomach that was now rising up her throat and threatening to come out in vomit. She hadn't spoken to her mother in years, and now with all of this additional bad blood and distance between them, she couldn't imagine it would be any easier.

It had been hard enough to talk to Anita before her father's death but afterward, it was nearly impossible. She was one of two Anita's at that point—either entirely despondent and non-responsive or volatile and aggressive. Ren could have lived with the quietness of her mother's depression but it was the tiptoeing on eggshells around a volatile Anita that ended up pushing Ren out of the house just weeks before her high school graduation. She wanted to stay close, for Kerri, and visited as frequently as she could stomach until she made her move and took her sister.

Sheriff Montgomery appeared in the hallway in front of her and cleared his throat to wake Ren from her trance.

"She's ready."

Ren had asked Dane not to come along. He was already behind on everything at the ranch but further—if she couldn't have Kerri with her, the only person she felt her sister was safe with was him. Anything she could do to avoid exposing her sister to the toxicity of their mother was the least she could do.

The late afternoon sun cast long shadows of window blinds on the floors of the sheriff's department. They had been here early this morning to finish taking statements from the kids, recognizing that the previous day had been long and exhausting for everyone involved. They had confirmed that Anita had tracked down Kerri's cell phone number and had been texting under the guise of being a teen aged boy in Three Rivers who had seen her at one of the gymkhana days Dane had taken the kids to. Kerri, appreciating the attention, had fallen hook, line and sinker and revealed the house address. After that, it had just been a matter of Anita waiting until the adults were gone to make her move.

Through all of this, however, they could maintain that Anita had not committed a crime against Ren or Kerri, and that was the loophole through which the sheriff had been able to admit Ren to speak to her mother this afternoon.

With trepidation, Ren rose and followed Banks down a hall to a small room. Deputy Collins was standing in a corner and in the middle of the room, handcuffed to a small table, sat Anita Maddock. Ren hadn't truly laid eyes on her in long enough that her appearance was a shock.

Her wild mahogany hair had frizzed into a halo around a gaunt face, over plucked eyebrows, injected lips. She'd lost probably forty pounds since Ren had last seen her. Altogether, she looked like a different woman with only one exception. Her eyes held the same all-consuming, jealous expression they always had.

Ren kept her distance for a few moments, hesitantly standing several feet behind the chair that had been seated across the table from her mother. As so many times before in the last twenty four hours, her instinct told her to run, but she stamped it down, along with the bile that rose in her throat.

Letting a long breath out through her nose, she pulled the chair back with a scrape and sat herself on the edge of it, poised for a quick departure if necessary. A litany of questions and accusations stormed her brain, threatening to tumble over her tongue but those, too, she held at bay, waiting. Her mother finally broke the silence.

"Ren, sweetheart." Though her word choice was clearly an attempt at endearment, her tone gave away her disdain.

"Anita." She addressed the woman formally, the time to call her 'mom' had expired with each unkind word and act of physical harm her mother had inflicted on her over the years.

"Oh sweetie, you know I prefer you to call me mama."

Her confidence bolstered by her mother's fine form, Ren relaxed just an iota. This sharp, difficult Anita was a familiar one; one she could handle. She ignored the other woman's comment and straightened, preparing for the rest of the conversation.

Anita leaned forward across the table, narrowing Ren in her sights.

"Why are you here?"

"Shouldn't I be asking you that question?" Ren resisted the urge to laugh.

"I missed you...wanted to try to make things right."

This time, a short burst of laughter did escape Ren and she leaned back in her chair, shaking her head and crossing her arms over her chest.

"You've always been a terrible liar."

There was a time when Ren had believed every lie Anita had said, desperate for a mother who cared for her, loved her the way a mother was supposed to. It had not been the short trip down the long flight of stairs that had sent Ren running from the house so many years ago, but the tearful apology that came after. Anita loved her, she was sorry. Ren had finally reconciled that the physical and emotional abuse spoke volumes to the contrary.

"Really, Anita...why now? When you were so desperate to get rid of Kerri the last time I saw you that you tried to kill her?"

The older woman looked momentarily flummoxed by Ren's onslaught, but regained her footing easily.

"All I want is to be close to my daughters. A mother can want that, can't she?" It was almost theatrical the way she carefully composed her eyebrows to knit together, tears welling up in her eyes, ever the victim.

"A mother can want those things, but you haven't been a real mother in a very long time."

"You aren't her mother, either."

These were the words that finally stung Ren. Every part of her life for the last four years had revolved around keeping Kerri safe, providing for her, and raising her into the young woman she'd become so proud of.

"That's true." It wouldn't make any difference to argue this point with Anita, because she could go down a road bearing the burden of proof and neither one of them would enjoy visiting parent teacher meetings filled with excuses, a whole week's wages spent on clothes Kerri would only outgrow a couple of months later, 'the talk' about her sister's changing body and recurring nightmares of cars and garages for two years. They were things that, at 20, Ren had been as ill prepared to handle as Kerri was to experience them. "But these days, the donation of nine months in the womb doesn't necessarily make you a mother anymore."

Despite the difficulty of the last four years, Ren had never felt any bitterness about having to care for Kerri—just for the way Anita had damaged the young girl's psyche. It was hard not to release the anger rising in her throat as her mother attempted to claim the role Ren had played for so long.

"We could have a better life, Ren. I could be a mother, a real one. There's money...fifty thousand. Your daddy left it in your name for when you turned twenty five. We could get that money and be a family again." Anita's emotional words barely concealed her desperate tone. "I just wanted to bring us together...I could get Kerri and then I knew you would come."

It took Ren more than a moment to digest the words she'd heard. Discerning the root of the matter—there was money and Anita wanted it—was a much easier task than processing the fact that her father had thought of her and left the money without ever telling her. It was a one-two punch; the rage for the way her mother had shattered her peace here in Three Rivers and keening grief at the mention of her father's desire to take care of her long after his death.

Her stomach roiling, Ren held no illusions that her mother's desire to have the money that was rightfully hers was so they could be a family again. The cosmetic enhancements to Anita's face she'd noticed were only the beginning. It might be as easy to fall into the fairy tale with Anita as it was to fall into the one she'd submitted to with Dane, but the end result for this one would be disastrous. No amount of money could repair their broken family unit. There wasn't a single ray of hope to salvage it.

She wished she could feel sorry for the woman her mother had become, but Ren could only be grateful she'd made the right choice to take Kerri from her in the first place. She hoped she would be able to keep her, protect her from the clearly unstable monstrosity before her.

Had her father known how things would go after he died? Briefly, she wallowed in a long wave of grief, missing him more than she ever had. The Ren who had arrived in Three Rivers mere months ago, having struggled for the last four years would have taken the money and run. She could put a lot of distance between them with fifty thousand dollars, but now that she'd tasted happiness as a part of the Baylor family, she knew she would never be happy. Above all, her father's wish was for her to be happy, and even in death, he could provide that. With the money, maybe she could stand and fight for what she wanted out of life for once. It was a strange thought. Thank you, Daddy. I love you.

"So that's why you came all this way, now. To take what daddy left for me?" When she put it to words, it enraged her. She wanted to leap across the table and strangle the woman who offered her best impression of a sad smile to the daughter she had been taking from her entire life.

"I don't want to take it from you, I want us to have it."

Tempering her words carefully, Ren rose.

"You won't have it. And you won't have Kerri. I can promise you that. I'm done giving to you with no return. I have a life here and I'm done running. You can't take any of this away from me." She wanted to believe everything she was saying the same way she wanted so badly to believe Dane when he'd held her through the night and told her things would work out in their favor but she was quaking on the inside.

Anita's face abruptly changed from benevolent matriarch to screaming banshee, pounding her cuffed fists against the tabletop.

"You stupid spoiled bitch! Declan gave you everything, everything. There was nothing left for me! I deserve this for putting up with you, you ungrateful, needy little whore." Rage darkened Anita's features. "I saw that house. You're already going to have everything you want, you filthy slut! All you do is take from men and you leave nothing for other women!"

It took everything Ren had to maintain her composure as she backed away from the table, reluctant to turn her back on the viper that had once been her mother. Deputy Collins took a step forward, touching Ren's arm lightly.

"Mrs. Maddock, that's quite enough." His voice was authoritative and firm, but Anita kept screeching, incoherent now. At the door, Ren turned and took one final look at the woman. She had no idea how she was going to fulfill the promise she had made to her mother, but she knew she had to try.