Page 112 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
Parker’s voice gets lower. Rougher. “It lasted for two years, until he found out. I think he had me followed after he discovered us together one night. But he didn’t confront me right away; he waited. He planned. And then, when he had what he needed, he forced me to make a choice.”
My hands shake. My palms sweat. My heartbeat increases to a nearly impossible rate, pounding with such frantic hummingbird beats I feel faint. But my mind is clear and cold. I have the most intense feeling of hovering above myself, outside my body, watching this horror unfold with detachment as if it’s happening to someone else.
Parker stands. He contemplates the photos with his hands on his hips, his shoulders rounded, the normally proud line of his back bent. “Isabel’s father had a gambling problem. I have no idea how my father discovered that, but he organized a private poker game, one with a low enough buy-in so that her father could play. And then my dad did what he does best: he cheated. He let her father gain confidence with a few substantial wins, let him get a taste of real money, and then pulled the rug out from under his feet. The man got so desperate he ended up betting the deed to his farm. And, of course, he lost.
“When my father had the means to destroy Isabel’s entire family completely, he came to me and said I could stay with her—and her family would lose their livelihood and be out on the streets, and I’d be disinherited so I couldn’t help them—or I could leave that very night and go to school in England, never to return. He’d already arranged everything. Plane ticket, apartment, tuition, everything. All to get me away from a girl he hated because of the color of her skin.”
When Parker turns to look at me, his eyes glitter with moisture and self-hatred. “So I agreed. Though it broke my fucking heart, I thought that I was being strong for her. That it was the right thing to do, saving the farm, saving her family. I had no doubt my father would follow through on his threats. And, stupidly, I thought she would eventually move on, have a beautiful life, forget all about me.”
His voice cracks. “Instead she killed herself. Because I didn’t have the courage to stand up to my father, she died.”
I don’t understand. I don’t understand what you’re saying.
My words must have been spoken aloud, because Parker replies, “He made me write her a good-bye letter, and then I left. For a few years I was in school in England, and then I lived in France for a year with Alain. I was miserable the entire time. Heartbroken. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, when it got to be so bad that I knew I had to go back or go insane, I booked a flight to Laredo and went straight to her house as soon as I got off the plane. I was going to confess everything, beg her for her forgiveness. But I was too late; she was already gone. Her mother told me the whole story.”
One by one, my cells begin to shrivel up and die.
I whisper, “Her mother?”
As if he can no longer bear to meet my eyes, he looks away and hangs his head. “She loved me like a son. She was always good to me. But when I saw her that night, I knew her love had turned into the kind of hate that eats you alive. She said things to me, screamed things…things I’ll never forget. She told me that after I left, Isabel had killed herself. That she’d taken her father’s gun and put it to her head. And that she’d been cremated, so there wasn’t even a grave I could visit. She was gone. And I had her blood all over my hands. I still do. It can never be washed away, no matter how hard I pray, how much I give to charity, how long I try to make amends.”
My knees give out. Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, I sink silently to the floor where I sit ashen, shell-shocked and shaking, like the victim of a bombing.
Lost in his painful memories, Parker doesn’t notice my distress.
“I went a little crazy after that. Got into a lot of fights, did a lot of stupid shit, got myself into a lot of trouble, because I wanted to die, too. Couldn’t shake the guilt. Drank. Wandered. Spent a few months in jail for a minor drug possession charge. Probably could’ve gotten out of it if I’d contacted my father, but by then he was dead to me. I didn’t want his help or his dirty money. Met a guy inside who was a cook. Got to be friends. We were released at the same time, and he offered me a job in his family’s restaurant, cash under the table.
“I took it because I had nothing else to do. Started as a busboy, moved up to cook. Turns out I was pretty good at it. I guess I picked up a lot living with Alain that year in France. The restaurant got a good write-up in the local paper, started making more money. I started trying different dishes. Reservations started selling out. One day some bigwig comes in with a boatload of money, says he wants to make me the head chef at his fancy new restaurant. I said sure, on one condition: we name it Bel Époch. The investor said that was a stupid name for a gourmet Mexican restaurant, especially since it was spelled wrong, but I said no name, no deal.”
Gazing at my picture, Parker pauses for a moment. His voice turns reverent. “I wanted to name it after Isabel, you see. That was my nickname for her: Bel. It was an homage to her, and to the time we had together. Bel Époch: beautiful era. The best time in my life. So the investor eventually relented. And that was my first restaurant.”
Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “I started The Hunger Project in memory of her, too. I thought she would’ve liked the idea of giving food to the underprivileged kids in the South. Kids like her, who never had money for school lunches. And the donations I make to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, those are in memory of her little brother who died of the disease.”
He heaves a deep, heavy sigh. “I guess…I guess I’ve be
en trying all these years to somehow make it right.”
Tears slide down my cheeks. I feel them, but make no move to brush them away. I don’t have to ask Parker about my letters, because I know now he never received them. Whether my mother or his father made sure of that, I doubt I’ll ever find out. But I know by the honesty in his voice, the deep emotion and unfathomable regret in every word, that what Parker has just told me is the truth.
He doesn’t know I’m Isabel.
He doesn’t know I was pregnant when he left.
He believes I’m dead, and that he’s the cause.
He’s done all these wonderful things—naming restaurants and giving to charity and starting a nonprofit to help poor kids—for me.
Me, the perfect, dead love he told me about on our first date, the girl I hated with a furor like a holocaust.
Reality folds in around me like a complicated origami form, angles and layers I can’t see through, sharp edges that cut. The out-of-body detachment from before vanishes, replaced by a distinctly painful in-body experience wherein I feel each and every screaming nerve, each and every acutely agonizing intake of breath.
I’m underwater. I’m going to drown.
Everything I am, everything I believed, all the rage and vengeance that has driven me for the past fifteen years was built entirely on a sandcastle of untruths and misinformation, of pettiness and folly, of the hardness of two people’s hearts.
Parker’s father and his intractable discrimination.
My mother and that one, terrible lie.
