Beachcombing in the Bahamas (Once Again #11)

Chapter 34 – Adeline

34

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ADELINE

I look at Harris, the distinguished lines of his portrait face. He’d been such a handsome man. Too bad he was so faithless.

“They were married yesterday,” I tell him.

He didn’t answer, just stared down at me.

“I did everything I could to keep them apart. Together, they are an abomination.”

I sit in my desk chair and sip my whiskey. “The house is too quiet,” I say softly, as if now I have to be quiet too. In my own home, for God’s sake, I have to be quiet.

And still, Harris is as silent as the house. But is that a smile growing on his lips? Or my imagination?

Maybe it’s the whiskey.

I swirl the amber liquid in my glass and say to him, “They’re all gone, you know. Trevor has his new home, his new baby, his wife. They haven’t even come by for me to meet the baby. I wouldn’t even know her name if it weren’t for the online birth announcement. Well, good riddance. He didn’t even have the decency to have a boy. You know, it’s the man’s sperm that has all the control.” And yet, despite my words, my heart feels oddly heavy as I continue talking to my dead husband. “I walked through their suite, and there’s nothing left of him. There’s nothing left of Brock or the boys either.”

I brood silently for a moment. True, they only came home on school breaks. But they always came here . Now they don’t come home anymore. And the gatehouse is empty too. Good riddance to her , but I’ll miss the girls.

The whiskey burns going down. And I look at Harris. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

No one has called me in over three months. No one has come to the house. And they don’t pick up when I call.

Family . I feel the sneer of that word and all it means in my mind. Then I tell Harris, “I’ll disinherit the lot of them. Ingrates. And I will find a way to take the company from Brock.”

“I made sure you couldn’t do any of that,” he finally says.

I laugh then. “The great man speaks at last.”

“Except for the house, it’s all in a trust.” His lips seem to hiss on the word. “And Brock is the trustee. You can’t touch it. He’s even in charge of your allowance.”

I hate my husband for setting things up that way. Wresting all the control away from me. Except the house. That’s still mine. I might burn it to the ground so none of them can have it when I’m gone. “There has to be a way around it,” I say to him. “Perhaps if I buy up all the extra shares floating around out there.”

“You’ve already tried getting rid of him. It didn’t work. And it won’t work the next time, Adeline.”

His words beat at me, drumming against the walls of this room, which seem to get closer all the time. I’d tried as soon as we got home from the Bahamas. But no one on the board would support me.

“You left me with no way to punish them for all the things they’ve done to me.”

“I left you with no way to destroy them.” He laughs. It’s a humorless laugh, an angry laugh. A triumphant laugh. “And yet you still tried to find a way with your manufactured documents full of lies. You tried to beat them down with it.”

“I did what I had to do,” I shout at him.

“That’s what you said when you accused me of fathering another woman’s child, even though I told you it wasn’t true. And you paid me back by telling me that Pierce, my second born, wasn’t my child at all.”

“What difference does it make now?” I hurl the question at him. “You got another child. You got Trevor.”

“Yes. And you could never twist him and destroy him the way you did with Pierce.”

I gaze at Harris’s portrait, that handsome face, which now seems distorted by a sneer. And I murmur, “All you ever had to do was love me.”

His words whisper back at me. “No one can love somebody who is completely unlovable.”

I grab the bell pull, yank it so hard it rips away. And I say to Harris, “I’ll show you.”

When Nolan opens the door, saying, “Yes, ma’am?” I almost scream at him. Then I point at Harris. “Take down that portrait.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He doesn’t bat an eyelash, and there’s not even a quiver of his lips.

And looking straight at Harris, I order, “Take it down and burn it. And burn the one in the living room too.”

Nolan has to call the gardener to help him, but together they take Harris off the wall. And long minutes later, I smell the bonfire as Harris goes up in smoke.

And then, I’m truly alone.