Page 11 of Beau
Dad had brought a lot of paperwork with him when he came to visit them.He had paperwork from the funeral home that stated that they’d received the body from the hospital on the night she’d been killed.Also, he’d been given a list of things that she’d had on her when she’d been in the accident that had killed her.
Then there was the fact that he’d been present at the embalming.That had taken a great deal of expense to have that happen, but Dad, even then, had been so grief-stricken that he wanted to make sure that she was dead when they buried her.The embalmer had even allowed Dad to take pictures of the marks that Mom had had on her body.The sigil that she had on her right shoulder was something that she’d gotten when she’d married their dad.A mark of the mates that they’d become, both of them were marked on their right shoulders.There was a police report, too, that had accompanied the body from the hospital that she’d been taken to.
“Do you suppose that she has the sigil on her right shoulder?”Everyone turned to look at her, and she was slightly embarrassed.“I’m sorry.I just thought of that and wondered.If she is human—for whatever reason, I think that this is a human person trying to do this to us—would she have understood what the mark would mean and try to duplicate it?”
“That’s a good point.I never thought of that.But why are you so sure it’s a human?”She told them what she’d been thinking.“Again, I never thought about that.Her being able to lie to us is something that should have been the first thing that we thought of.We can’t lie to one another.”
No one said anything for long moments, and she was concerned they thought that she was wrong.They just had too much evidence to say that she was dead rather than being around them and causing trouble.
“I’m going to ask her about it if she calls me again.Or any of us should.That way, we can know for sure that she’s lying.I have to admit, and only to you guys, that I hope this is Mom.I know it can’t be, but I feel like I have plenty to say to her now that she’s back in our lives.I have questions too.”Rogen looked around the room, and it seemed that everyone was agreeing with her about their mom.“What do we do if she can’t answer the question about the sigil?Do we just stop answering her?Or do we have her arrested as soon as she gets here?I have no doubt that she’s on her way here as we speak.She wants something from us, and I have a feeling that it’s money?”
“I do as well.She was practically begging me for money to get the rest of the way to us when I was talking to her.”Rogen could see that Calhoun was still pissed off about the call that he’d gotten from her.“Even if she had come right out and asked for the money, I would have turned her down.I don’t now nor will I believe that she’s our parent.And that’s something that I will take to the grave.As Rogen has said, she’s human and we all just know it.”
“I think we should have a list of questions that we ask her whenever she calls one of us.First and foremost, she should be asked about the sigil.And where it is.It should be easy for her to tell us, I’dthink.Also, and this one is important too, why she waited.I no more believe that no one notified us of her being in a coma for the last ten years.Nor her waiting to get in touch with us.Sure, she could say that she didn’t remember us because of the coma, but I just don’t believe her.”She looked around the room at the nodding heads of her family.
“Would compulsion work on her?”Calhoun and Rogen both said that it should, but you couldn’t be sure if it worked unless you were face-to-face with her.“I’d like to have that arrangement made so that we can see for ourselves if she even looks like our mother.”
“That would be easy to explain with the wounds from the accident, I think.She was banged up around the face when I saw her at the hospital.And since we had a closed casket, there isn’t any way that we’d know if she was fixed or not.”She thought about something else.“Mom’s hair was unique, too.Remember how it had the blueish highlights of our kind throughout her hair.And the color was so beautiful, too.”
“I think we should dig out pictures of your mother so that we can be ready when she gets here.I know that ten years can make a difference, but I don’t believe that without a picture, we’d be able to see her for what she is.A fraud.”Dad looked at her.“You have some of the pictures from the vacation that we took about a month or so before she died, don’t you?Get some of those out and give them to the family.I might like to have a couple of my own.Even though it sounded like she didn’t want me around, I’m still going to meet with this woman to find out what she wants.And if it is money, we’ll have to turn her down like we know we should.”
After everyone left, Rogen sat in the dining room and thought about her mother.If this woman was really their mother—and she didn’t believe it for a second—then why now did she want to engage with them again?There was no reason for her to have come into their lives now when ten or fewer years ago would have been smarter.They were still grieving then, and it would have been easier for an imposter to have slipped into their lives.There were more questions than answers every time she thought of her and her reasons for coming back into their lives.
“Could it just be like she’s saying?I mean, stranger things have happened, right?”She said that she supposed it could be true, but she didn’t want to believe that her mother would be around after all that had been done to her.“Have you contacted anyone in your former home state?Maybe if she’s there, someone can identify her for you.”
“We have some neighbors looking out for her.I don’t know what good it will do to have her coming around to them, however.Mom was never liked by a great many people.”Weston asked her why.“She was mean and ruthless to people.I know that the Harts had a beef with her because she would forever park in their yard when she came home late from drinking.I always thought that she did it on purpose, but I never cared enough to ask.She was just mean to people who didn’t stand up to her idea of human behavior.Which is to say she never liked humans at all.She thought that they were beneath her and all shifters, for that matter.”
“Sounds like she was a great person to be around.”They both laughed.“But seriously, have you given any thought to what you’re going to do if she turns out to be just who she says she is?”
“No.”Weston just nodded at her like he knew that’s what she’d say.“There is just too much evidence to the contrary about her not being our mother.If she is, I’ll be the first one to tell her how sorry I am that we disbelieved her.But I doubt that it will ever come to that.And we have a plan too.Whoever she calls next will ask her some questions about her body and the sigil that’s on it.”
“If she got the phone numbers where you think she got them, from the funeral home, then why hasn’t she asked why she can’t get in touch with Benson?I would think that would be the first thing that she asked.”Rogen told Weston that she’d not asked and that to her was very telling.“Then there is Belinda.You said yourself that she didn’t care for Benson marrying Belinda.You’d think that she’d mention something about that as well.To ask if they were divorced or something.Only a human would ask that question.”
“You’re right.I’m glad you thought of that.”He kissed her on the nose.“What was that for?Are you hitting on me?”
“I am if that’s all right with you.But now that we don’t have to worry about the house any longer, how about we talk about having a baby?It’s your body, so you tell me if I’m wrong in thinking that now would be a good time to start.We’ve got the sex part down pat, now we just have to wait until you’re in heat again.”She said that she wanted as many babies with him as they could have.“We’re immortal, so that might be a lot more than you think.”They both laughed.
“I would love children with you as soon as we can get pregnant.It’ll give me something to look forward to before we have to deal with my mother’s crap.I want them to be healthy and strong and know that they’re loved by us.I know we have a lot to give them, but I don’t want them to be spoiled either.Does that make sense?”He said that it did.Just because they could, didn’t mean that they had to.“Good.On that we can agree.But having children with you might be the best thing that happens to this family.I know we’ll have a lot of built-in sitters already.”
“No kidding.They’ll be fighting over watching the babies that any of us will have.And I think they’ll all start having babies now that nearly all of us have mates.”She agreed with him.“Now your mom shows up, and the shit will hit the fan with her.”She asked him if he thought that it would.“I do.For whatever reason, I don’t believe she’s your mother either.I don’t know why for sure, but things are just too…I was going to say weird, and that might be it.Why is she hiding herself in the shadows right now?Why hasn’t she asked about Benson?I know that there were no grandkids when she died, yet but she could have asked about you guys.Has she ever once asked how you’re faring?If you need anything from her?Those would be questions that I’d ask of my children if I hadn’t seen them in a while.”
“You know that’s a good point.She has never asked any of us if we’re all right or if we need anything.I would have too had I believed that she was our mother.I would have been the first to send her money to get here, too, but she didn’t act like a mother who missed her children.”She kissed him on the nose for his help with those points.“Another thing is, and maybe you can figure this out, why didn’t she want Dad around?I mean, you’d think that he’d be the one person that she could depend on to be there for her.I think you’d want to be there for me.”
“I don’t know, but I can guess.”She asked him what he thought of.“He was the most intimate with her; he’d know all her personal traits and the way she said something.Did she curse?Would he have known that over you guys?The little details of her life would be something that he’d be able to pick up on.And I’m thinking that once she got you guys on board with her being who she said she is, then it would be easier to make him believe it.”
“Mom didn’t curse in front of his kids.Dad would know that too.Or if she only did it with him around.”Weston nodded and told her that it would be things like that that would trip her up.“I agree.I should have had you at the meeting today with my family.You might have well hit right on it how we could tell.Does compulsion work on humans?And don’t ask me why I think this is a human doing this.I just do, that’s all.”
“Compulsion works better on humans than it does shifters.”She asked him why he knew that.“Because as a shifter, she would know that you could get her to tell the truth by using it, and she’d be prepared for it.You know, strengthen up her mind somehow to not give in to it.”
“Whoever she calls next, and I’m doubting that it’ll be me or Calhoun, the others are going to use it on her to get her to tell the truth.I think it would be better to do it in person, but that’s just me, and we’d have to be face to face with her, and I’m not ready for that.”She thought about it.“Though it would answer a lot of questions if she were to be here in person.”
“Have you given any thought as to why she’d be doing this if she’s not your mother?”Nodding, she told him what she thought.“That’s what I thought too.Money.And since you’ve been ‘married’ to me for a few months now, it stands to reason she would have figured that out as well.More money would make a person, either a human or a shifter, do things that they normally wouldn’t have done.”
“She’s done this before.That’s another thing that I don’t know why I believe that, but she’s just too calm and assured in her talking to us for me to believe that she’s not done this to someone else before.Some family that she’s robbed of money by pretending to be a long-lost relative.”
They talked about things for the rest of the evening.Mostly, it was how their day had gone, and only sprinkling in a few bits and pieces about her supposed mother.Once they went to their room, she decided that it was high time they started having a baby in the family.She was ready when he was, and it seemed to be taking forever for her to ovulate.It wasn’t as if they were wasting their time in having sex all the time.If she didn’t get pregnant soon, it wasn’t from lack of trying.
Chapter 6
