Page 31 of Twisted Fate

“But, honey, Joe told us you were doing great, that this was your house.” Heather started but then looked over at Steve with eyes full of guilt.

“Ah, it’s Joe. Joe told you. Great.” Keily shook her head with annoyance. “Go on, get out before I call the police.”

“It’s not your house.” Heather countered. “And those are my grandchildren up there. I have a right to see them.”

“No, you don’t. Not a single right.” Keily pulled her phone from a pocket on her dress and started to dial the local police, still listed in her contacts from her run-ins with Joe in the past.

“Fine, fine, we’ll go,” Heather muttered something under her breath but Keily didn’t care what the other woman had to say. “Come on, Steve.”

“Y’all take care now, and have a nice drive back to Florida.” Violet drawled with thick sarcasm. “Don’t bother coming right on back. You aren’t welcome here anymore.”

Keily smiled over at her sister as she put her phone back in her pocket, proud of the young woman waving at their parents, now scurrying out of the door.

“I didn’t know that would feel that good,” Keily said to Violet whose eyes were shining with pleasure.

“Me either. But I’m glad I was here to do it with you, Keily.” Violet answered and took her sister in her arms.

It was a nice place to be, wrapped up in her sister’s arms, Keily decided. Even if the arms she wanted to be wrapped in were Logan’s. Maybe someday. Maybe.

15

Logan

Logan was lost in his office the next day. He wanted to spend time with the girls, but he had to handle problems at work that needed his attention. Financially, he could sell the whole business right now and have enough money for several lifetimes, but that wasn’t what he ultimately wanted. He liked what he did, he liked employing people, and producing new and innovative self-defense products. Things would calm down now that Zoe was home with them, and maybe he’d find a way to balance all of this. After all, it was the age of technology.

Once the girls were older and more independent, he’d have little to fill his time with anyway, so he’d find someone to stand in as he’d done in California and cut back on the time he spent on work for now. They needed his attention right now, as did Keily. She was shaken by her mother’s visit yesterday, although she seemed relieved at the same time.

She’d told him it was a final break with her past when he went in to visit her the night before.

“She took so much from me, Logan, not just money. My childhood, who I was, who I wanted to be, and did it all for a nasty habit that she won’t get help for. It’s better she’s gone, for good I hope.” Keily was on her bed, arms around her knees again, as if to protect herself from any harm her mother could cause, rather than relaxed as she’d been the last time he was in her room.

“That’s all I need to know, then. You don’t want her in your life, or the lives of our girls, that’s fine with me.” He didn’t add that his own parents hadn’t even bothered to email him back when he’d sent them one set of pictures. He’d stopped contacting them once he realized no reply was coming. There was no point in trying, they just didn’t care and that was simply how it was.

“They have Rosa and Violet, as well as Avery and Judith. That’s enough.” Violet had forced a smile but the pain behind that smile still tugged at the strings of Logan’s heart.

His thoughts were interrupted by the doorbell going off for a second day in a row. Even Rosa and Violet didn’t ring the doorbell anymore. They knew they were welcome and just came in, usually straight up to the nursery. If it was that woman again…

He muttered under his breath about asshole parents and how he’d never be like that with his own daughters as he walked out of his office to answer the door. When he saw Keily’s mother, dirtier than the day before, her hand clutching at the doorframe with dirty black fingernails, Logan cringed.

“I will call the police if you do not leave, right now.” He said, not realizing he was repeating Keily’s words from the day before.

“I just wanted to talk to you. You’re my baby’s man, right?” Heather, that’s what her name was, he remembered now, tried to elbow her way in past him but he stood firm.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m her man or her gardener, madam, you aren’t wanted here. You were told that yesterday.” He glared down at her tiny frame, her gray eyes, Keily’s eyes, haunted with insatiable need and full of hungry greed. Not Keily’s eyes at all, he thought, these were the eyes of nothing but avarice.

“But listen, I just need a couple of thousand dollars, to get back to Florida you know? Keily broke my heart yesterday, you know, and I just need a little bit to get me by. I’ll pay you back.” The words rushed out of the dark-rimmed lips, probably a lack of oxygen, or damage from her drug habit, Logan noted without pity. This woman had made Keily the girl she was, had turned her into a snotty little snob, and had taken so much from her. He had no pity for her at all.

“No, leave.” Logan nodded his head towards the cheap car outside the door and looked back at her dispassionately.

“But I never tried to hurt her, you know? I don’t know what she’s told you, but I made her who she was. I made her a queen.” The woman stood a little straighter, but the weight of decades of drug abuse soon pulled her back into a slouch. “I made her who she was.”

“I know, I remember how you turned a bright, charming, friendly young girl into a malicious, snotty, young woman that sneered at those she thought were beneath her. I saw how you pinched her at school assemblies, when she didn’t want to strut and preen for an audience and only wanted to go home. I remember one particular incident where she threw up, because she was sick, and you slapped her and made her come out on the stage anyway. We all saw it, Heather. All of us, but you were so oblivious you didn’t realize that. I know now you were probably too high to notice, but we did. So don’t play innocent, proud mother with me. You’re anything but. Now go, before I really lose my patience.”

“But, man, I really need some cash!” Heather almost screeched, losing her patience. “That bitch owes me for all the money I spent on her.”

“Oh, you mean the money you stole off of her? Let me tell you now, Heather, I know what you did. You will never, ever come near my daughters, you will never corrupt them, touch them, or anything else. I will not give you a dime and if you were never to contact us again, that would be awesome. So, I’ll ask you once again, as politely as I can, to fuck off.”

“Fuck you, whatever your name is. Logan, that’s what Joe said it was. Fuck you, man, and fuck that bitch too.” Her ugly face twisted and for a second Logan thought she was going to spit at him. She seemed to realize that would be the worst mistake she could make when she looked him in the eye.