Page 44 of Accidentally Marrying the Prisoner
SEVENTEEN
MIRABETH
“Where is all my furniture?” I murmur, slowly walking through the room. “She’d kept it just like I left it in case I ever needed to move home.” I slide my fingertips across the new, custom maple wood furniture. “What is all this?”
“This is our baby’s nursery furniture.” Conrad thumbs the ridges of the little fat kittens—which look suspiciously like Merlin—that are carved into the crib’s railing. “We finished them just yesterday.”
I nudge the old-fashioned rocking chair back and forth with my toes. “We?”
“It’s the set we’ve been building at work. I’m the one who carved the kittens. Your mom commissioned them.”
Tears form at the corners of my eyes as I take in the gorgeous furniture that must have cost a fortune…and is exactly what I would have picked out if I could afford it. “But why would she have it all delivered here if she’s going to sell the house?”
My brows lift when Conrad hands me an envelope that he found on the changing table with Mom’s name on it. Thinking Mom must have left it for me to find, I slide my index fingerbeneath the flap that’s lost most of its adhesive over time, but I jump when my phone rings from the pocket on the side of my hip before I can read what’s inside.
I put my phone on speaker when I grind my teeth and answer, “What do you want, mother?”
“Let me inside, honey,” Mom says sweetly. “I can’t fit between the boards.”
“No. Fudge you.” It’s the worst thing I’ve ever said to my mom, and I end the call, cutting off her cackle.
I skip after Conrad when he heads down the hallway and picks up the hammer to start pulling the nails from the boards blocking the entry. Though Mom had managed to tug the quilt down over the window and unlock the front door, I had nailed enough boards across the doorway to keep anyone but a small child from squeezing between them.
“Don’t you dare, Conrad, or I’ll never, ever, ever have sex with you again,” I tell him, pointing my finger to scold him. The nerve of this man to betray me at a time like this!
“Yes, you will,” he says with a sexy smirk, discarding the first, then the second of the four boards.
I shake my head so fast that my hair whips my face. “No way, José.”
Conrad yanks me toward him, causing me to stumble into his hard chest. “We both know you’ll do what I say because you’re a good girl who loves it when I make you take my?—”
“Lord knows I want a grandbaby, but I don’t want tothinkabout how that baby was made.” Mom plugs her ears with her fingers, singing, “La la la,” while Garth pulls up and parks his rockabilly, cherry-red, 1950s pickup at the curb.
I stick my tongue out at my mom, really wishing she hadn’t cut Conrad off, my core fluttering, even though I’m still pissed that he’s taking down the boards. Conrad looks like he’d catchmy tongue with his mouth if I hadn’t thrown up not too long ago. It’s a dang shame.
Once Conrad gets rid of the third board, Mom and Garth step over the fourth. “Well, that was all very dramatic,” Mom says, looking around at all the destruction with a sigh.
“You told me you were going to sell our house!” I yell, pushing in front of Conrad. “How did you think I’d react?”
“Certainly not by throwing Garth’s flowers through the window after storming out and driving like a bat out of hell before I could finish saying ‘now I can sell the house to you’,” Mom says.
Ok, so me either, since just a few days ago, I would have silently stewed and hidden. I had no plan when I told Conrad to pack up our apartment, other than that I was going to findsomeway inside the house before confronting Mom…through the barred door, of course. I still wanted to hide.
Mom grabs my hand and pulls me down onto the couch beside her and her freaking new husband—my new stepdad, I realize. With Conrad settling on the cushion to my right, Mom drops her large purse on the coffee table, straightens her spine, and pointedly looks at the envelope I’m still holding.
“Open it, honey,” she says.
With her knees pressed to mine, Mom looks on expectantly, her features softening as I slide the folded sheet of notebook paper and one-dollar bill that had been included from the envelope. I begin reading out loud through my tears:
Kyra,
My stunning, stubborn, hilarious Kyra. Every day, I’ve fallen more and more in love with you since you jammed that ridiculous, large IV needle in my arm three timesbefore you finally found my vein after I accidentally slashed my calf on the chain link’s rusty metal wire. By now, I’m sure you’ve figured out that all my increasingly frequent “accidents” were in fact intentional, all so I could visit the pretty nurse who instantly captured my heart and soul. I’ll always be amazed and grateful that you chose to look past my prison uniform to see the man I was inside. You gave me a beautiful life and daughter, and the kind of love I thought a man like me didn’t deserve after the mistakes I made.
A part of me wants to be selfish and keep you all to myself long after I leave this world, but I love you too much to ask that of you. Instead, I ask that once you’ve grieved and healed, you find a partner you can give your whole heart to, just as you gave me, and who will, in turn, give you his whole heart, just as I gave you. And when you do, I request that you give our beautiful daughter and her future family the option to buy the house where we built a lifetime of happiness. $1 should be sufficient.
With all my love,
Forever yours,
