Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Rocky looks at me like I just won a national spelling bee competition. He is impressed.
My cheeks heat, and I fixate on my mom. “I lied to you, and I thought you’d be more upset I let you believe we were pulling a job here when we weren’t.”
Her gaze is gentle on me. “I am hurt, but I know you must’ve had a good reason to lie. You didn’t want to hurt me? You and Hailey thought Addison and I would disapprove?”
“Because we do,” Addison says bluntly, but there’s little bite to her voice. It’s almost in a matter-of-fact way.
Elizabeth softens even more, like she’s compensating for her best friend. “We’re just trying to steer you on the right course, bug. That’s all we’ve ever tried to do.” Worry blankets her face as she looks between Rocky and me. “Which is why we’re still urging you all to leave Connecticut.”
Rocky mutters under his breath, “Here we go again.”
Addison holds up a hand. “You don’t understand, Bray.”
“Help us understand then,” he shoots back. “What the fuck is so big, bad, and ugly here that you want us on the train out tomorrow?”
Elizabeth and Addison share an indecipherable look, and then my mom utters three words I despise. “We can’t say.”
Rocky’s wrath bathes him in pure ice. “You can’t say?” he asks in disbelief. “I’m sorry, is the devil gripping your vocal cords? Why in the fuck can’t you say?”
“Brayden,” Addison snaps. “Don’t talk to Elizabeth like that.”
“He’s right, though,” I cut in. “If you want us out of Connecticut, you should at least give us the decency of telling us why.”
“It’s better if you don’t know,” Elizabeth says and rises to her feet. She pulls the needle off the record, cutting off the music.
“I’ve heard that before,” I say coldly. “We’re not five anymore, Mom. You can’t keep us in the dark.”
“I’m sorry, spider, but this is something that’s bigger than you. It’s bigger than all of us, and it’d be worse, I promise you. It’d be much worse if you knew.” Fear invades her eyes, but how am I supposed to trust it? Trust her?
My chest rises and falls heavily, the lies compounding.
Rocky is blistering beside me in his own brewing rage. “You won’t tell us why?” he asks them. “Then give us something else. Because you sure as hell haven’t been completely honest with us, Mom.” The dry bitterness on that endnote causes Addison to turn a shade paler.
“What do you mean?” Addison breathes out.
“You tell me,” Rocky flings back, snuffing out his cigarette on the windowsill. “It seems like you all might’ve kept something from us. Something else. Maybe because it’s ‘better if we don’t know.’ ” He uses finger quotes.
“No,” Elizabeth says quickly. “We’d let you know if there was information we were withholding.”
I grimace. “I don’t believe that.”
Her face fractures, and I realize those words hurt her more than anything else I’ve said tonight.
“I don’t know what you’re insinuating, Bray,” Addison says, putting out her own cigarette on the ashtray. “Maybe if you gave us some context.”
“Context,” Rocky laughs dryly. “How’s this for context. Your son was fucking stabbed on Halloween by his stalker, and in order to save his life, we had to give him a blood transfusion. Except—oops—none of us even know our blood types. What an inconvenience that turned out to be.”
“Is Trevor—?” Addison starts.
“He’s fine,” Rocky cuts her off quickly. “But six blood tests later, it looks like he can’t be your biological son. So what’d you do? Steal him from a grocery store? Snatch him out of a crib?”
She shakes her head over and over and looks hurriedly to Elizabeth. My mom has a hand to her mouth, shell shocked.
“We saw you, Addison,” I say. “You had a pregnant belly when we were little. Was that a lie, too?”
She touches the edges of her eyes, trying to stop the tears. “Give me a moment.” She rises and flees toward the powder room.
Elizabeth shoots to her feet like she means to follow her.
“You walk out of this room, and I walk out of your life,” I tell her sharply, the ultimatum spilling out of me in an uncontrolled frenzy. I’m not even sure I really mean it, and my heart thumps so loud in my ears.
She stares at me like I’m transformed. A figment of the daughter she knows. I’m glad she can understand the feeling. “She lost the baby, Phoebe,” she tells me so softly, so painfully. “She had a miscarriage, and then she adopted Trevor. And instead of telling you all about it, Everett, Addison, and I agreed to just let you all believe he was hers. But he is hers. In every sense of the word.”
A lump lodges in my throat.
Adoption.
I just theorized this upstairs, but aren’t there holes to this story?