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| Lear gives Rebecca a jailhouse visit |
It was late evening; the sun had set deep over the hills beyond the mainland of Maine and Rebecca Lockwood-Lord-Casador sat in a small wooden chair staring up at a clock from behind the bars of her small Welshport jail cell.
She watched as the second hand of the clock ticked away minute by minute. She felt like Marie Antoinette awaiting the executioner leading her over to a guillotine. As the door to the jail opened the executioner never came -- only Rebecca's lawyer nephew Lear Lockwood with papers for her to look over and sign.
Rebecca smirked, quietly waiting for him to say something first.
"Aunt Rebecca, how are you doing? Has everything been ok?"
"Are you asking me how my accommodations have been? Look around. It's the Waldorf-Astoria!" Rebecca joked. "This isn't my first time in a jail cell, Lear, and I'm fine." She added, recalling when Jacob accused Rebecca of being his mysterious shooter in Village Park that left him in a coma years back.
"I just want to be sure you're going to be ok. What ever happened in the past -- this is different.” Lear then reached for the papers and help them up. “I have your confession for you to sign. Constable Ryan had it officially documented — it's now ready for your signature."
Rebecca stood up from her chair and came over to Lear at the bars. She extended her hand and he passed her the papers. She looked them over, slowly, meticulously, making sure every word on those papers were hers, and only hers.
"Well, it's very different to read it all back in your own words." She said, her smirk quickly vanishing into the creases of her face as it all set it.
"Is it really all true?" Lear asked.
She nodded. "Your aunt Rebecca has truly fallen into a very dark place, wouldn't you say?" She said to Lear as she reached for his pen.
He handed it to her but did not let go before a he warned her.
"I want you to be sure that you understand, Aunt Rebecca, that when you sign this, you're agreeing that there will be no trial and you're allowing a judge to make the decision on your punishment. You killed a person and several people became ill, this could give you a very long time in prison."
"Lear, listen to me very carefully. I don't care what happens now. My horrible mistake took a woman's life and for what? For Caspian? A man who has already signed divorce papers and is leaving me and has nothing left to give me? No. I need to take what has happened for what it's worth and deal with what I have done. Asha Hoffman's family deserves at least that."
Lear smiled, he felt it was the first time he was truly seeing the aunt he cared for and the aunt he knew as a child the person who was strong and good-willed and never took anything from anyone. Somewhere, she lost her way. Perhaps, Lear wondered, if it all went away when Albert died. The click of hope turning to despair at the end of someone's life had to change one mentally, he thought. But he would never truly know.
Rebecca signed the confession and handed Lear back both pen and papers.
"On a bit of good news, we finally know exactly who Cora is." Lear said. "She is my sister Maggie. It turns out, the person responsible for her illegal adoption with my father was someone close to us all. This person admitted to helping my father in exchange for money that he needed to pay off debts."
Rebecca's smirk returned, she raised her brow and returned to her wooden chair. "You must be very happy, I wish her all the best. Give her my love."
"I am, yes. Although she's decided to stick to using her Coraline as her name, but other than that I hope that we can all get something back after all these years of thinking she was gone."
"Yes, I'm sure it is a very comforting thought to have you sister back." Rebecca replied solemnly.
"I was hoping that would cheer you up under the circumstances, but I guess nothing can really do that, not even the news of your niece's returning home, can it? I'm sorry." Lear replied.
"Not at all, I'm very happy for Maggie -- Coraline, I mean. So many people with different names I sometimes forget who goes by what." She joked, noting Welshport citizens often using names. "But I am happy for her. I just feel I should just stay out of any family celebrations after what I've done. I'd be just a sad reminder of the tragedy I caused."
Before Lear could reply, a voice sounded from behind them both. "What have you done!?"
Lear turned, Rebecca too, it was Charlotte. Her face seemed warn from crying. Her eyes swollen and her mouth trembling with the truth of her grandmother's guilt. She rushed over to the cell; Rebecca's lips trembled with emotion as her one true love Charlotte had grown so much over the months. She was now a young lady standing before her.
"Charlotte, darling, oh my darling, girl! What are you doing here?" Rebecca shouted, rushing to the bars, reaching through them and hugging her granddaughter.
"I heard what happened. Everyone is talking about it but I had to come see you, I had to come ask you if it was true. How can it be? You wouldn't do that to Dr. Hoffman, would you? Why? Why would you do such a thing?"
"Charlotte, I never meant for anyone to die, I swear that on my own soul, that part was an accident."
Lear gulped, hearing the truth again still shocked him.
"But you did mean to poison her and those other patients?" Charlotte asked. "Why???"
"Selfish reasons." The grandmother admitted but gave no more insight.
Charlotte let go of Rebecca's hands as they had still held each other through the iron bars. She turned to Lear who was placing the signed confession into his briefcase.
"You're going to help her, right? She can't stay in here." Charlotte said.
"She's confessed Charlotte, she requested no trial. I have to do what she asks."
"Lear you can't be serious! My grandmother isn't thinking clearly, look what she's done! We can't just let her go to prison." Charlotte begged not realizing a confession was as good as a conviction.
"Darling..." Rebecca began before being interrupted by Lear.
"She absolutely is in her right state of mind now and has taken responsibility for this. I think you should listen to what she wants and understand that this is actually better, not just for her, but for Asha's family, your family and the company. Aunt Rebecca's actions have cast a very dark shadow over Lord Publishing, and I commend her doing this quicky, you should too." Lear suggested.
"Is that true?" Charlotte asked turning to her grandmother. "You're just going to take the what punishment the judge hands you?"
"Charlotte, she has to." Lear replied
It slowly sunk in to the young woman. It was over.
Rebecca stood there, almost like her own ghost. The conversation about her slowly took her out of her own body and she could only stand and not speak. She became pale. Vacant. She stared off into the distance between Lear and Charlotte thinking about her future when suddenly she could see a shapely shadow forming. It walked into a dim light just outside the corner of the room. She could see the face forming into the face of her dead husband Albert.
He smiled at her coldly. His face had withered into something she wished she had never seen. Something sickly and wrong and from her own nightmares. He shook his head in a patronizing manner shaming her for her crime.
Rebecca stepped back from the bars as Lear and Charlotte's voices seemed to disappear into the vision of Albert. His neck, she could see, had a noose around it. He loosened the rope and lifted the loop over his head and threw it into the jail cell. The ghostly ligature floated over and through Lear's body and into the jail cell and fell at Rebecca's feet.
Rebecca backed away from it and fell into the small wooden chair in her cell.
"Grandmother? Grandmother, are you alright?" Charlotte's voice begged.
Rebecca made no connection to the young woman's cries.
"She seeks you still." Albert said of Charlotte. "Hoping something good will come of this. But nothing good comes from nothing good. Rotten. Spoiled and tainted for all the world to see. Nothing good comes from nothing good Rebecca. You're nothing good."
"STOP IT!" Rebecca shouted at him. "STOP IT NOW!"
Lear and Charlotte looked at each other, they didn't understand what Rebecca was talking about, they could tell that the stress, the anxiety and guilt was taking over her. They needed to leave her to rest. She was exhausted. Broken. The world crashing at her feet and never to return the way it was before.
"Take this." Lear said, tossing a small packet into the room. A sleep sedative wrapped in a paper bundle tired with twine. "It'll help you sleep."
Rebecca did not move or pick up the pack she only stared out of her cell at Albert's ghost.
"What's wrong with her?" Charlotte asked, her tone soft and childlike, finally sounding her age.
"She'll be alright." Lear answered, unsure of his own words. "We just have to get her through to the judge's decision."
"Decision? I thought there was no trial?"
"Judge Banning will still decide her punishment." Lear whispered. "We should go."
Charlotte nodded but grabbed the bars with her hands and looked in at her frightened grandmother one last time. Rebecca looked back seeing her only granddaughter standing next to the taunting spirt of her dead husband who moved his index finger to his lips shushing his wife.
"Sleep now." Charlotte said. "I love you."
As Charlotte finally let down her guard, her mind opened up. She then sensed a presence. Something strange in the room that she hadn't felt when she was trying to get through to Rebecca. She turned to the side and in her mind she could see something, a light but glowing in a way that felt inside-out. Not bright, but burning within a dark orb of some sort. She reached for it and Rebecca screamed for her to stop seeing that Charlotte was reaching for Albert's ghost.
Charlotte reached and felt it, she saw the face of a creature, not Albert taunting Rebecca from the other side of the bars.
Charlotte gasped and lifted her hand up pushing the creature, became visible to all and began gyrating and laughing all the way back; back, back into the shadows.
"AWAY!!!!!!!!!" Charlotte shouted.
The thing obeyed and left in a taunting wind of laughter.
"What in hell was that!?" Lear shouted seeing something incredible before his very eyes.
"Albert! It wasn't Albert!!" Rebecca shouted.
Charlotte looked back at her grandmother; tears were in her eyes. "No, no, it wasn't. Pick up the packet, Grandmother, take what's in there and sleep. You need to sleep."
Rebecca, shocked at what she just saw, listened this time and did as she was told.
Charlotte grabbed Lear, looped her arm through his and began their exit.
"Charlotte, what just happened?" He asked.
She held him close and whispered, "You don't want to know."
****
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| Cora & Aaron’s wedding |
The next morning seemed to come in a wash of spotty sunny skies with the occasional white fluffy cotton clouds clustering in bunches. There was no ominous storm coming, just an early spring day that felt cool like fall but sunny enough to keep the chill off the Atlantic at bay.
It was the day of Aaron Hamstead and Coraline Taylor Murphy's wedding, and the guests were already arriving at St. Catherine's church, dressed in the best attire. The men in their top hats and tales, the women in large hats and paste taffeta dresses. The happy occasion, however, was not immune to the cold truth of what had happened just weeks ago with the death of Asha Hoffman.
Nothing made that clearer, that Nik and Danielle's arrival - together.
Outside the church under a guard of large beech trees, Danielle replaced her lace gloves slowly after she and Nik exited the cab. People entering the church whispered at the couple who were making their first appearance together since the tragedy. Even though news had swiftly come that Nik and Danielle had nothing to do with Asha's death yet gossip and disapproving eyes made things awkward.
"We shouldn't have come." Danielle said. "No, I shouldn't have come."
"Stop that, Coraline invited me and a guest. She's been almost like an aunt to Gabriel, I couldn't just not come and celebrate with her. If she felt it would have been inappropriate she would have said so. She knows, just like everyone else by now, that Rebecca did all of this. Not you or I."
"Such a beautiful day for a wedding." Christopher said, walking up with Genevieve and Morgan.
They all greeted each other, the men shaking hands, the ladies double kissing. They were a group of town outsiders in a sense. One couple the spitting image of a tragic romance that they all believed died on Bellmore Beach, the other more recent paramours connected to shocking poisonings at the hospital. Seeing them all together made the entering guests salivate with intrigue.
"Looks like we're not the favorite couple to whisper about anymore." Geneveive said. "I don't wish it on you, but it does feel better to have eyes look elsewhere." She admitted.
"It's awful, I can't imagine how you both lived through it." Danielle answered
"We're still living with it." Chris said. "I wanted to also apologize for what happened, my mother's involvement in Asha's death and how she tried to see it that you two were held responsible. I-- I don't even know what to say."
"Something in her snapped." Nik replied. "It wouldn't be the first time. I'm just glad Justin was able to convince her to admit what she'd did before it got any worse."
"Rebecca hasn't been herself since -- well -- since Caspian's you know." Genevieve replied.
Danielle's body twitched with discomfort, her mind quickly rushing to the story of her father Viktor, known as Caspian, had his history of darkness. The literal demons of his past almost destroying so many lives. Rebecca, as they all saw it, was his first victim as she had never been the same since the demon brainwashed her.
"I wish I could have been here before all of this happened." Danielle said, the shade of the tree branches splattering a pattern of shadows over her light green dress. “Maybe I could have stopped him all those years ago.”
"Honestly, there may have not been anything you could have done." Nik replied. "None of us knew what was going to happen at any point in this tragedy, from beginning to end and we all have to understand that. I think about this too; what Rebecca did but also what Asha did, what she hid, and the truth we'll never know."
"What truth?" Chris asked.
Nik gave Danielle a look who took a deep breath in, finally more secrets revealed.
"It wasn't that Danielle and I didn't want to make our relationship known. We did, but Asha was hiding something from us all that I needed to get from her. She lied about the child my mother and Caspian conceived. She told us all a boy died at birth, but in truth, a girl was born and she and Gregory took that child and gave it away to another couple somewhere. We don't know who, we don't know where. We just know they both lied. Gregory died with that secret, and now, so has Asha. That was the whole purpose of me trying to keep Asha close to me without revealing that I'd fallen in love with someone else. Asha lied, she did something awful and lied to all of us about it. She certainly didn't deserve the fate she got, but I can't say that she didn't put herself in a terrible place because she continued to keep those lies. I feel horrible saying that out loud, but it's true."
As the story settled into Chris and Genevive's minds, an uncomfortable shill went up Chris' spine. He felt he strong choke hold of shame about his mother's involvement in the entire situation but there was nothing he could do.
As the of the reality set in of what had happened, the church bells tolled signaling the wedding would soon start.
"Shall we?" Chris asked.
Genevieve grabbed her son Morgan's hand who had stood there listening to all of the grown-up drama without saying a word and moved up the front steps of the white church long side the foursome.
Inside the church, Lear and Lucas were sitting behind a few pews of Coraline's friends, a steady group of ladies she knew from school. Jane Donnelly among them. Jane quickly swished around her pew to the one behind had and sat next to Lucas. Her eyes glowing with the gossip she had just heard from the other ladies.
"Did you hear?" She whispered to the men.
Lucas shook his head "Hear what?" He whispered.
"Baxter isn't coming. He wasn't invited." She whispered back.
Lear rolled his eyes "That's not true, Coraline invited him."
"She did? Where is he then? He's the brother she grew up with, and he's not here. But you are: the brother she never knew of." Jane whispered, full emersed in the news that Coraline was a Lockwood not Murphy.
"Jane, Cora invited him, Baxter chose not to come. He's still healing from his attack. He wanted to be sure to let Cora have her day without the physical reminder of something awful that happened just a few blocks away." Lear said.
"I think that was nice of him." Lucas added, Lear smiled and squeezed his partner's hand.
"Did you hear the other news?" Jane whispered.
"I think we've heard everything you've heard." Lucas smiled hoping to keep the Tirymor House maid from sending them into more village tales.
"About Rebecca?" She asked.
Lear turned his head, like the snap of a catapult towards her. His eyes met Jane's and she quickly saw his stern reaction, she forgot his familial connection to Rebecca and his employment as the family's personal lawyer.
"Of course you have." She answered. "I was the one who tipped off Jacob. I thought I'd help him know that the police were readying an arrest. He took care of it on his own."
"What do you mean by tipping off the police?" Lucas asked.
"I heard them talking about their evidence, so I told Jacob. He turned her in. That house of cards fell on itself in days." Jane replied proudy.
"Why would you do that?" Lear shouted, his voice echoing in the church, bouncing between status of the Madonna and child and St. Joseph.
Jane sat back, shocked at his response, but there was no time for her to answers as her attention quickly turned to the group walking in: Nik arm in arm with Danielle, Chris arm in arm with Genevieve and young Morgan.
Jane let out a small disappointing "humph" at Lear and quickly turned her nose up as the group that entered that came and set behind Lear and Lucas.
"What was that about?" Morgan asked about Jane's reaction as the groom and his best man entered with Father Donavon from the front of the church.
Genevieve shushed her son as the ceremony was about to begin.
The music swelled at the front of the church amongst several large brightly lit candles. The sunlight beamed in from the four skylights in the ceiling onto the white flowers that adorned the ends of the 12 pews that made up the interior aisle of Saint Catherine's church.
Aaron, a man of over six-feet tall, held his hands clasped at his waist. He looked proud, happy and slightly nervous as the ceremony began to build while they awaited the bride.
As the music made it's way through an opening pomp and circumstance before the actual wedding march began, Lear turned back to Chris with a very concerned look and leaned over the pew.
"It was Jacob." He whispered.
"What?"
"Jacob, he's the one that turned in Aunt Rebecca." Lear whispered.
Chris's eyes widened.
"Why would he do that?" Genevieve asked, also whispering under the music.
Chris sighed, the only reason was one that built up over time, a perfect storm of the Lord family breaking down in front of the world's eyes in Jacob's favor and Rebecca's breaking point seemed to be the perfect and final nail in the coffin of anyone standing in Jacob's way of complete control over the entire Lord family empire. Sebastian's supposed death, Christopher renouncing his Lord family name and choosing to allow his alter ego to remain legally dead, Rebecca's one-woman crime spree and her marriage falling apart.
It all finally fell into place, and Jacob was the beneficiary.
As all of this landing in Chris' mind, the Church doors opened and a veiled Coraline, dressed in the whitest dress anyone had ever seen began her decent down the short white flowered aisle to be married.
Cora's eyes glowed bright under her perfect white veil. But she felt a hint of sadness as she had no father to walk her down the aisle. As she put her first foot forward, a man's hand grabbed her arm and looped it under his arm.
It was Baxter, the adopted brother she had grown up with. He was dressed perfectly. Top hat under his free arm. A white tie perfectly matching his white button shirt with black pearled buttons. A tiny sprig of baby's breath poking out of his jacket pocket. A simple gesture to her being his baby sister. His face still bruised and scarred from Caspian's attack.
"What are you doing here???" Cora asked, happy to see him.
"I couldn't let the world watch my baby sister get married and not be here to give her away. No matter what anyone tells you -- you're my baby sister too. I want to be here for you." Baxter said.
She reached over and grabbed him into a big hug. She had never been happier.
Cora and Baxter began their steps forward from the foyer of the church towards the nave. She was going to marry a man that loved her unconditionally. Aaron would protect her and care for her like she had always dreamed of. Her happiness brightly shining like the sun through the skylights above
As they continued, she turned to the right and saw her brother Lear, her true blood brother, sitting there holding hands with his partner Lucas. As she passed him, she smiled her bouquet of white hydrangeas were overflowing in her hands. Lear winked at her as she continued to walk down the aisle with Baxter tightly wound in her arms. Her family finally together.
The music swelled to an abrupt stop as Baxter handed his baby sister over to Aaron who happily took the beauty in his hands.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here in the name of love. The love of a couple, the love of two families coming together as one, the love of a community celebrating two people who have found their way through a world of darkness and pain and realize that beyond those realms there is happiness, love and true companionship. We celebrate that today but should celebrate it everyday because everyday we can find this same thing around us. In our types of relationships -- not just the beautiful one we are witnessing here today of Aaron ad Coraline." Father Ryan spoke just as Jacob snuck into the church with Celeste.
Jane, ever the observer, turned when the church door opened and saw her boss and his wife enter.
Geneveive noticed Jane and turned back, Chris noticed Genevieve and turned back too. It was the first time both brother, Jacob and Chris, had come into contact with each other so soon after Jacob's heart-attack at seeing Chris alive.
"Don't do anything." Geneveive whispered to Chris.
"Don't do anything." Celeste whispered too to Jacob.
Jacob bowed his head to Chris who turned away with no emotion.
Then, Father Donavon Ryan began to read the vows and allowed the happy couple turn to each other to look into each other's eyes.
Love was in the air, but only restricted to the small church. Elsewhere in the village darkness reigned supreme.
****
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| Eden comes to the beach house |
Later that evening, Barrister Eden Sydney made his way to Bellmore Beach house with important documents for Caspian. The divorce from Rebecca had been finalized and Eden had final documents in his hands for Caspian, not only that, but Lear had given the Barrister Rebecca's signed confession, that Judge Banning had also looked over, accepted, and signed.
The news of Caspian's now ex-wife was heavy, Eden felt it necessary to bring the news to Caspian in person rather than send it with a currier from his office at Village Hall, it was an orthodox way thing for someone in his stature to do, but Eden had seen enough pain in the village over the year he'd been there. He felt it necessary to heal some of man to man.
As Eden stepped up the steps of the front porch of the he could see into the front parlor window. There was one lamp on leaving the rest of the house incredible dark. He stepped back down one step of the porch believe that the house was empty but then heard a stirring. Footsteps rushing somewhere in the house, large heavy footsteps.
Eden furrowed his brow, confused, and went up the porch and knocked on the door. No one answered, but more footsteps could be heard, almost manic in their pattern. Eden knocked again, and this time called out to see if anyone was one.
No one answered. Eden then went to a side window and looked in, a shadow, a large-framed person clearly Caspian, poked out from a side wall then darted back again to be unseen.
"What the devil?" Eden said, the waves over to his side on the beach crashing over his thoughts like thunder rolling around in turbulent sky.
Eden knocked again.
"Caspian? It's Barrister Sydney. I sent you a note earlier today so my visit wouldn’t be unannounced and I wanted to...." Eden's voice trailed off when he saw the note. It was on the floor of the wooden porch away from the door.
"...Oh." Eden said to himself. "Looks like the wind blew the note off your door, Caspian, you in there? Aurora?"
Eden reached for the doorknob; it turned and Eden walked into the front foyer of the Beach House. He looked around, there was a sound coming from the back rooms. It sounded almost like a window being lifted up, heavy in its aged wood. The front parlor, to Eden's left was lit still with the one lamp. Quiet. Just the ticking of a small clock on the hearth.
Eden's heart felt like it was racing. "Aurora?" He whispered. "Caspian?"
Caspian stood just away from view. His mind clouded with madness of his split identities. Viktor, his true self, had control fully taking over. The heavy wood Eden heard was not a window opening, but a door from a back area being ripped apart. The heavy shards of the door in Viktor's cold hand ready to bludgeon Eden in the head.
Viktor watched Eden survey the foyer, he noticed things strewn across the floor. A picture frame broken. A table lopsided with a runner pulled all the way to the end, a vase with flowers over turned.
"Aurora???" Eden called, his voice sounding much more urgent.
Eden turned back towards the dimly lit front parlor. Just before entering he dropped his briefcase down and stepped in. He moved towards the sofa and there she was, just her legs sticking out from the back. Aurora's unconscious body.
"OH MY GOD AURORA!! Are you alright? Aurora? Aurora? Open your eyes. Aurora??" Eden shouted as he fell to his knees to try and wake her.
She had been attacked, strangled and left for dead for almost a full day. She'd waken occasionally but the pain and her exhaustion from the fight with Caspian/Viktor had taken too much out of her.
She started to stir, now that Eden was shaking her awake, but then a blow to the back of the head.
Eden went down, crumbled to the floor like a house of cards collapsing next to Aurora. Aurora, awake now but still on the floor, opened her eyes to come face to face with the cold state on Viktor Holten face salivating at his newest victim.
"Almost got me." Viktor growled low, as a long drop of spittle fell from his lips and on to Aurora's bodice.
****
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| Chris visits Rebecca |
As the night wore on, and the wedding in the village went from ceremony to celebration, Christopher snuck off ...he needed to see someone and left his own soon to be wife and her son on their own.
Genevieve and Morgan headed home. Her worry was that Chris was regretting having passed on the opportunity to return to his life as David Lord. She watched him walk down the street from St. Catherine's as she and Morgan drove off in a cab.
"Do you think he'll be alright?" Morgan asked.
Genevieve seemed to not notice her son speaking, distracted with what would Chris truly wanted for himself and if she’d still fit in once it came.
He tapped her hand. "Mother?"
"Huh? Oh. Sorry darling, yes. Yes. He'll be ok. He's got a lot on his mind." Genevieve replied.
"About Mrs. Casador? She was always so nice to me, I can't believe what she did." Morgan answered, recalling his somewhat friendly relationship with Rebecca while he lived under her roof at Tirymor House.
"Sometimes people go through things in their life and those things change us. For the better and for the worse. This is --- this may have been Rebecca's worse."
As their cab turned a corner and puttered down one of the increasingly foggy streets, Chris entered the police station. He asked to see his mother, and one of the deputies refused, saying it was too late in the evening for prisoners to have visitors.
"You don't understand, I just found out she was here and I have to see her. Please." Christ said.
Before the deputy could answer, Constable Justin Ryan exited his office to see David standing at the front desk.
"It's alright Bill. I'll take him down." Just replied.
The deputy handed over the keys to Justin, and the two men made their way towards the hallway that had a triple lock on it that led to the cells.
"You're her other son, yes? Younger than Jacob?" Just asked.
Chris nodded. "David --- well, I don't go by that anymore."
"I've heard the situation." Justin replied with a grin. "Feels like everyone in town has a bit of a second side. Wonder what mine will be now that I live here." he joked.
"Uh.. right." Chris replied awkwardly.
"She hasn't been talking much since her lawyer came to see her." Justin added.
"Did he tell her not to speak?" Chris asked.
Justin didn't know. "He came in had some legal things with him for her to look over then her granddaughter came by and that was it. She never spoke another word."
"Charlotte was here?"
Justin nodded as the two made their way passed a drunk man in his cell, sleepily tossing and turning and covering his head with a pillow to block out the conversation.
"She's just down here, we kept her in a private spot downstairs." Justin said pointing towards the locked doors. "I'll let you in, but you can't stay long. I'll be back in about 10 minutes."
"Thank you."
Justin walked over and unlocked the gate that led into the stairwell that went down to a more private set of jail cells that had all been freshly repainted and fixed after the police station had burned down. Although not damaged in the fire, the basement cells were still scorched and held debris, now it was clean, the fresh paint smell still wafting through the small corridors and down the stairs that led Christopher to his mother who was reading a book in her cell.
"Mother." He whispered.
A guard sitting next to a lamp also readying a book lifted his head.
"Constable Ryan let me in." Chris said to him. The officer closed his book and nodded then went back up the stairs allowing Chris and Rebecca some privacy.
"Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes, David." Rebecca said of her once thought dead son Christopher, a name she refused to use. She only called him by his birth name David.
"Mother -- I heard about everything. How -- how did -- why..." Chris began before she interrupted.
"It's better I don't fill your mind with the details, son, just know that I'm ready for whatever Judge Banning has set for me. I think its time I paid."
"I want you to listen to me, ok, I want you to really listen to me when I say this: Are you covering for Jacob? Was it Jacob that really did all these things? Because if it was you --" Chris began before his mother once again interrupted.
"David enough! Your brother is a lot of things and to be honest I can't fault you for assuming that I would be covering for his disgusting behavior as I had done so many times, including what he did to you. And for that, perhaps, this is my punishment because no one can or should cover for any one whose done something like I have. It was all me, no one else. I was selfish, and stupid -- a woman who's had everything she could ever want and for some reason I wanted more. I wanted it all, and losing Caspian was the catalyst for me trying to destroy what stood in the way of that want." She explained.
"But, you killed someone." Chris said.
Rebecca's eyes began to water. The truth once again setting into her mind of what she did to poor Asha Hoffman, a woman she'd manipulated into going along with her scheme to destroy Danielle Holten, their mutual rival.
It was never meant to go the way it went, Rebecca, continued to say but, Christopher couldn't shake the feeling that Jacob could have helped their mother instead of turn her in.
"He did it for the good of the family." Rebecca said.
"The good of what family? There's no one left. He destroyed any hope of Sebastian being the head of this family some day, he's alienated Sebatian's wife and child, he killed my wife, banished his daughter, exiled me... and on and on. Now this, now he's turned you in instead of helping with a defense that would protect you from any heavy sentencing. He just threw you to the wolves." Chris replied angrily.
"I have to be punished." She admitted.
Chris knew she was right but the thought of Jacob knowing that every family member was now either missing, dead or incarcerated meant he could now control the entire empire his family controlled without any say from anyone else on the family tree.
"We were supposed to all look out for each other; Father would have wanted it that way and Jacob could have found someone to help you navigate a guilty plea and still get you a sentence worthy of his mother. Now, now there's nothing." Chris explained rightfully.
"Perhaps, but at this point, what's left for me on this earth? I eagerly await a rest." She said turning back to her chair and sitting down.
"What are you saying?" He asked.
Rebecca did not reply, she only looked passed him into the corner once again where the shadows began to form into the creature forming and posing as her dead husband Albert.
This time, the creature only stood there, His eyes, Albert's eyes, daring her to speak his name. But she refused this time and only stared back. Her stoic look was a game to the creature. Who'd blink first? Rebecca knew that an insanity plea was out of the question. She'd done it all under perfect frame of mind, calculating it all to the last second. Except for the one mistake -- the overdose.
The creature looked at and mouthed to her "Say goodbye" and moved his finger, Albert's finger, across his neck.
"Darling," Rebecca said softy "I think you should go no. Go and be happy with the rest of your life. It's the best thing you can do now. For me and your father."
The creature in Albert's face grinned crudley, his teeth sharp and jagged. He pretended to sniff Christopher, searching for the scent of his soul. Licking his hand to taste him, the salts of the skin acted like little bits of bread marking the way to the sweet kind soul that stood there.
Rebecca stood up, the creature laughed and backed away from Chrsitopher.
"Go." She said to her son.
"I can't watch this happen to you." he told her.
"I've watched happen to myself, already, before it's even happened. Its what has to be, David. It's what has to be." She said.
Chris began to cry. She hadn't seen him cry in decades. Her son, her sweet middle child whom she remembered as sensitive and kind. The one who was always first to reach for her hand to hold when he was little. She’d missed out on his life for over 20 years when they feared he'd jumped off the lighthouse to his death. He'd left his family, aided by Aaron, and hid in London and never looked back. When that truth was revealed that Chris, or David as he was known to her, was alive, Rebecca never faulted him for his deception. Chris knew this.
She knew too that he had to stay away, that Jacob's evil plots and his destructive schemes were the reason for Chris’ disappearance and now distance.
And for that, she had wished she'd done more to protect Chris and not Jacob.
It was all too late.
Chris reached through the bars and held his mother close. The creature pretending to be Albert vanished into the shadows of the wall again. The darkness faded.
Then Chris left the jail and his lost mother and walked home. The cold night air seemed to bring him back to life. Cooling his hot cheeks and drying his tears. He felt like he'd just spoken to a dead woman walking, Rebecca was a shell of herself after all she had been through.
He recalled making a truce with Jacob, telling him he wanted no more death, no more battles, no more war between the brothers.
But now -- his mother gone into the recesses of prison -- Chris thought again.
"This is all his." He whispered to himself. "I'll destroy him."
