Chapter 6 - Blood on the Countertop
The knock came at 7:00 PM that evening.
It wasn't Bennett’s violent pounding, nor was it the crisp, businesslike knock of law enforcement. It was a timid, scraping sound against the lower panel of the oak door.
I walked to the entryway and opened it.
Lydia Blake stood on my porch.
She was not wearing her country club pearls. Her designer coat was unbuttoned, her graying hair whipped into a bird's nest by the biting lake wind. Her face was pale, blotched red from hours of crying, her lips chapped and trembling. She looked twenty years older than she had on Sunday at *The Briarwood Club*.
"Maeve," she whispered, her voice cracking into a ragged sob. "Maeve, please."
I didn't invite her in. I didn't step back. I stood in the doorframe, a wall of stone.
"What do you want, Lydia?" I asked. No 'Mother.' Just Lydia.
The omission hit her like a physical blow. She flinched, pulling her collar around her neck. "They arrested Camille. She’s at the 1st District processing center. They set her bail at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Bennett’s bail is over a million—they won't even let him out because of the federal hold! Maeve, she’s in a cell! My baby is in a cell with criminals!"
"Camille is a criminal," I said evenly. "She forged my medical history to commit me. That makes her an accomplice to felony civil rights conspiracy."
"She was desperate!" Lydia wailed, stepping onto the threshold. Tears streamed freely down her face, cutting through her expensive foundation. "You don't understand what Bennett did to her! He controlled her, Maeve! He threatened to leave her penniless! She did what she had to do to survive!"
"And what did you do to survive, Lydia?" I asked. "Did you have to take a forty-thousand-dollar bribe to consign your eldest daughter to an asylum?"
Lydia stopped. The tears dried instantly on her cheeks, replaced by a momentary, ugly flicker of panic.
"Owen Hayes pulled the wire records," I told her. "The state’s attorney has your banking ledger. You sold me for an entry suite at *The Waterford*."
Lydia’s knees gave out. She slumped against the wooden doorjamb, sliding down until she was sitting on the cold threshold, clutching her knees like a broken child.
"I gave my whole life to you girls," she sobbed into her coat. "Your father left us with nothing! Nothing but debts and an old car! I gave everything to make sure Camille had a chance to marry well, to be someone! You were always so strong, Maeve. You never needed me! You were tough! You could survive anything!"
I looked down at her.
"Is that the lie you told yourself every time you robbed me?" I asked, my voice deadly quiet. "You thought because I didn't cry, because I didn't beg for your affection, that I didn't bleed?"
"Maeve—"
"When I was eighteen," I said, every word hitting her like a surgical scalpel slicing through scar tissue, "I worked until my fingers were raw and bleeding from caustic lye dishwater so I could buy textbooks for pre-med. You stole the four hundred dollars I hid under my mattress and bought Camille a designer gown for her senior prom. You told me I was strong. You told me Camille needed to shine."
Lydia kept her head down, weeping into her sleeves.
"When I shipped out to Fort Sam Houston," I continued, "I stood on that Amtrak platform alone. Every mother on that train was holding her child, crying, praying they would come home in one piece. You were at a country club brunch with Camille's first fiancé. You didn't even call me to ask if I arrived alive."
"I was afraid!" Lydia cried out, looking up with raw, ugly desperation. "I couldn't bear to see you go to war! It broke my heart!"
"No, Lydia," I said. "It didn't break your heart. It didn't cost you anything. You didn't care if I died in the desert, as long as my military survivor benefits named you as the primary beneficiary. Isn't that right?"
Lydia’s mouth snapped shut. She stared at me in horrified silence.
"I found the change of beneficiary form you tried to file while I was in a medical coma in Landstuhl seven years ago," I said. "The Army JAG flagged it as unauthorized. I didn't confront you back then because I couldn't accept that the woman who gave me life was an opportunistic leech. But I see you now. I see all of you."
Lydia reached out, her trembling fingers grabbing the hem of my trousers. "Maeve... she’s your sister. Drop the charges. The state’s attorney said if you refuse to testify as the complaining witness, the conspiracy charges against Camille will be reduced to a misdemeanor probation! She won't have to go to prison! I am begging you! On my knees, Maeve! Drop the charges!"
I reached down, took her fingers, and peeled them away from my trouser leg. Her grip was weak, fragile, pathetic.
"No," I said.
Lydia gasped. "You’re a monster! You have no heart! You’re colder than ice! Your own flesh and blood!"
"I am a surgeon, Lydia," I said, stepping backward into my house. "When a limb is gangrenous, you don't kiss it. You don't weep over it. You cut it off at the joint to save the body."
"Maeve!" she screamed.
I closed the door in her face.
May you like
The heavy steel deadbolt clicked home. Outside, Lydia’s wailing continued for ten minutes before the sound of her car door slamming cut through the night, followed by the screech of tires as she drove away into the cold dark.
***