Page 174 of Untouchable

An hour later Kelly was walking into her mother’s room.

She was shocked by how frail her mother had grown in just a couple of weeks. She was dying of cancer. She’d had a prognosis of three months almost three months ago.

She didn’t have much time left.

She was awake, though, and fully alert when Kelly entered the room.

“Jack said he called to tell you what happened,” Kelly said without greeting or preamble. She and her mother were way beyond the niceties.

Her mother nodded. “He told me. It doesn’t make a difference.”

“It does make a difference. Caleb isn’t guilty of this after all. Our whole plan to seek justice can’t go anywhere now. I told Jack to call the whole thing off.”

“I know you did.” Her mother’s voice was thin and brittle. “But you’re not the only decision-maker here.”

“I know that.” Kelly sighed and rubbed her face, feeling so tired she could barely keep her eyes open. It was like the past three months, the past seventeen years, had finally caught up with her, leaving her with no energy at all. “I don’t want to do anything though.”

“That’s because you fell for him, like a silly girl, but I’m not so blinded by feelings or hormones or whatever it is. Caleb Marshall has never been anything but a cold, selfish bastard, and I can still make him pay for that.”

“He didn’t kill Dad. I heard the phone calls. It was Roman and Arthur Marshall. And they’re both dead—beyond the scope of our vengeance now.”

“Someone has to pay for it.” That had been her mother’s refrain all along. It had turned her into this driven, obsessive, pitiless creature. She hadn’t always been like this. Grief and injustice had twisted her into it.

Kelly released another long breath. “Someonehaspaid for it. You and I have paid for it. For way too long now. I’d like to… I’d like for us to stop, and only we can make that happen.”

Her mother met her eyes across the distance. Kelly didn’t expect anything to change. Her mother had hardened herself so much to this battle she’d lived to fight that nothing was going to soften her. Not her daughter. Not her death. Not the truth.

But something did change in her mother’s eyes. Not softness or sympathy but something that looked almost likeunderstanding. “And you think it’s that easy. You just let go. Release. And we finally stop paying.”

“I don’t know. But I want to try. I’ve done everything I could to make the world change. It won’t. And now there’s nothing left for me to do but let go. So that’s what I’m going to do. I really want… I really hope you’ll be able to let go too, if only so you can have some peace at the end here.”

“I want justice. All I ever wanted was justice.”

“I know. Me too. But what we have instead is the truth. It’s going to have to be good enough. If you expose Caleb as the killer, when we both know he’s not, then you’ve taken that truth away from us so we’ll be left with nothing again.”

Her mother was silent for a really long time. “What are you going to do?”

Kelly gave a little shrug. “What I should have done a long time ago? I’m going to live my life and not keep reopening old wounds.”

“And Caleb?”

“That’s his choice to make.”

“Are you going to go back to him?”

“He’d never take me back, but my choices aren’t dictated by his. I know that now. It’s not a happy truth, but it’s the only one I have. I’m still going to live my life.”

Indecision and bitterness twisted on her mother’s face for a few moments until it finally resolved into an exhaustion that was akin to what Kelly felt herself. “Okay then.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay. So you live your life.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to die.”

And that was the answer, Kelly realized. Her mother was too far gone to embrace forgiveness or reconciliation. But in her own way she was letting go too.