Page 130 of Hate So Deep

Probably…the bitch has been doing strange shit since he was attacked and mostly, I avoided it to avoid her.

Still, a shudder rolls down my spine as I wipe my palms down my jeans and step back.

Absently, I note the pulse in my neck, pounding wildly while I stare down the hall.

Just keep going Lala. Get your shit and go.

I can’t move though and swallowing past the lump building in my throat, I spin on my heel.

Buck’s floor, surprisingly clean considering the police went through it, comes into view and from my peripheral, I spy something twisting in the air.

Black dots dance before my eyes as I raise my gaze. At first, I don’t understand what I’m seeing, and I laugh, although the broken sound assaults my ears.

Why would Mom hang a doll from the ceiling? That’s weird…even for her.

Tracing my gaze from the shoes, shiny loafers with a thick heel, I move up the tailored black pants and pause on the slim black belt.

No. Please…no.

Her once starched white shirt now wrinkled and deformed comes into view and bile surges up my throat as I stop on the strand of pearls, she wore every single fucking day since my grandfather gave them to her, forty some years ago.

I can’t bear to see her face but still, like a damn car crash, I raise my gaze.

Her eyes, those blue eyes stare at me with the same vacant expression as the last time I saw her and I touch my throat, taking in the thin cord wrapped around her once smooth, unblemished skin.

“Mom?” I whisper, which is stupid because she’s not going to answer me. She’s never going to speak to me again.

Stepping back, I turn to the wall before dropping my gaze to the floor, spying the same thin fucking cord currently wrapped around my mother’s neck rolled into a ball by the garbage can.

“Why?” I whisper, tearing at my hair. “Why couldn’t you justseeme?”

I see that the bed Mom bought my brother finally came in handy—Buck hated it on sight—when she wrapped thecord around the frame, twirled it through the bed posts, and presumably stepped off the mattress to end her life.

What am I supposed to do? What the fuck am I supposed to do?

The brutal burn of rage presses at my chest and I crawl from the room into the hall. Dropping to the floor, I curl into a ball as sobs bark from my throat unbidden.

I came here today to end this farce of a relationship, but it would seem she beat me to it.

As usual, the woman who controlled everything about our lives has directed the last act.

I’m fucking alone. She left me. She didn’t care enough about me to stay. None of them did.

If no one sees you, do you disappear?

It’s been twenty-four hours since my mother took her life and still, I can’t wrap my head around it.

The police told my dad that they think she’s been dead for several days. Perhaps since the night she told me to get a fucking lawyer and essentially grow up.

Was that an act of mercy or did the woman not want to be found until she was truly gone?

She had to know that I would find her.

Right?

With everything that’s happened, I still haven’t admitted to what I found and my suspicions, but I know I can’t outrun it forever.

Maybe it’s stupid to keep it secret but I’m only human and I need time to get through this blow before taking another.

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