Page 54 of Perfect Composition

“Jesse, you were so young,” our father tries.

“I was five, Dad. And she was gone. Would it have mattered if it was a virus or a wreck? No. All that mattered was Mama was gone.”

“What neither of you two realize is she was the love of my life. It was my job to protect her! To protect this family!” he shouts.

“And that gave you the license to interfere with mine? Even to the point of leaving me and my daughter in the dark?” I fume.

His maniacal eyes shift toward me and drift downward. “Anybody else, Paige. Why did it have to be him.”

“What’s he talking about, Paige?” Jesse asks.

“The person who crashed into Mama was Beckett’s mother. That’s why—despite knowing everything about where he was from practically the beginning—he never told me how to reach him. Just think, Jesse, our father would rather pay blackmail to the people who killed Mama than…”

An eerie shiver races down my spine when my father starts to laugh. “Blackmail? Darlin’, that wasn’t blackmail. Let’s just say that was a thank-you to them for never acknowledging their biological grandchild. After all, it wasn’t hard to convince them to accept it as it came with a legal agreement I would drop the wrongful death civil suit against them.”

“You sued Beckett’s parents about Mama?” I confirm slowly, the picture becoming clearer.

“You’re damn straight I did!” he roars.

“How long had it been in court, Father?”

His brow furrows. “By that point? Sixteen, seventeen years. What does it matter?”

Enough time for all of us to be punished for an accident or fate.Dropping Jesse’s hand, I stride forward and succinctly declare, “She’d be ashamed of you.”

He sneers, “You never knew her. Despite the stories, you never knew your mother, girl.”

“No, but I did. And Paige is right, Dad. Mama would have been damn ashamed. I know this because I am. Come on, Paige.” Jesse steps forward to take my arm.

He guides me down the stairs to my waiting vehicle.

“Now wait just a damn minute,” our father calls after us.

We ignore him. “I’m furious with you, Jess,” I grit out.

“That’s for later. Are you staying at your house tonight?”

I nod. “For a few days. Then I’m heading back to New York. I need to be with Austyn.”

“Fair enough. I’ll drop by.” When I shoot him a menacing look, he holds up his hands. “I swear, I’ll give you a few days. But I really want to know what happened in New York.”

I twist my body to the still-shouting man on the front porch of the place I once called home. “Every part of my life has been shaken by this.”

Sadness pinches the corners of his eyes. “Paige, I never meant…”

I lay my hand across his mouth. “Just save it, brother. I can’t right now.”

He nods before backing away. I slide into my car and put it into gear. Almost on autopilot, I drive back to my home. When I reach the community of cookie-cutter houses I raised Austyn in, I pull into the garage and drop my head to the steering wheel.

What do I do? How do I go about fixing two decades of deceit perpetuated by my family?

Are there even enough ways to apologize to Beckett for the years he missed with Austyn?

Unable to process what to do, I drag myself from the garage into my house, seeking the oblivion of sleep.

BECKETT

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE