Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Jae gags at his reply before knocking him down a peg or two. “Give them time. I’m sure it won’t take them long to realize how useless you are.”
She hits a nerve, and it has Cedric’s attitude backpedaling quick smart. He steps away from her with his hands held in the air like they will be when he’s arrested. “I just want to make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. He isn’t who he says he is.”
“And neither are you,” Jae fires back, her voice surprisingly strong considering her gall has Cedric puffing out his chest to remind her about their contrasting sizes. “But that isn’t what this is about, is it? You lost, and everyone knows the Lancasters never lose.”
“Hey!” I try to shout when he grabs Jae’s arm, but no sounds come out of my mouth. I haven’t used my voice in years, and up until I had to use every muscle in my body to free Jae from the mangled remains of her car, I didn’t know I still had it in me.
It’s hard to trust anything when you’ve been silenced by more than endless lies…
“Back in my day, men lost hands for stealing.”
Although confident Cecil’s statement is factual, I place down the handwritten letter I was in the process of reading before pivoting around to face him. He knows my hearing is so shit, even while sneaking up on me, he makes sure I can either see his lips or he stands at my left.
“Did you ever bring her out here?”
Cecil dumps a deer carcass onto the dining room table I molded from a pine tree that didn’t survive a snowstorm last winter before returning to the foyer to remove his jacket and shoes. We stock up on deer and rabbit meat just as snow starts falling. The cooler conditions mean we don’t have to cure the meat, which saves us from an extra salty winter.
“She’d been here before. Just not with me.” The unease of his last sentence keeps me quiet, much less what he says next, “Excluding the pieces you’ve added the past three years, everything you see here was from Rosie’s private collection.” I smile along with him when he pushes out with a grunt. “She dragged it down the damn mountainside herself. That woman was as tiny as a fairy but stronger than a giant.”
His smile switches to a scoff when I ask, “Is that how her husband found out about your affair?”
Roderick’s claims last month were factual. His grandmother did have an affair with Cecil in the months leading to his grandfather’s death, but what he failed to mention was the fact his grandfather was an abusive piece of shit who was only with Rosie for her parents’ money.
He also skimmed over the part that Cecil and Rosie met because Cecil saved his grandmother from an inferno similar to the one that engulfed Ophelia’s car almost four years ago. Rosie was trapped in the wreckage, and although her husband didn’t have a scratch on him, he sprinted for cover instead of ripping off the passenger side door like Cecil did.
When Rosie woke up in a hospital bed, her memories of the accident were sporadic, but she remembered the kind eyes of the man who never left her sight until first responders closed the doors with her on one side and the stranger on the other.
After learning her savior’s details from a local journalist covering the story, Rosie wrote to him. That one letter soon expanded to thousands. Then, almost five years later, they organized to meet.
I don’t think either of them were anticipating an affair. Rosie merely wanted to thank Cecil in person, and Cecil was desperate to conduct his own assessment of how well she had recovered from her injuries.
Cecil assures me they were nothing but friends for several months after their initial meeting. Things didn’t heat up until Rosie’s husband, Memphis, offered Cecil a job. It was during those long hours that Cecil realized Rosie deserved more than a husband who thought money was the only thing needed to take care of her.
He swears on Rosie’s grave that he didn’t woo a married woman. He simply showed her how good life could be with him, but anyone north of Texas will tell you he’s the worst liar. He wooed her with everything he had, and just when things started to look on track for them, Memphis found out about their affair, died in a car accident the same night, then only eight short months later, Rosie’s convertible sailed over the same edge of road.
Her wreckage landed half a mile from where Cecil’s cabin now sits, and although Cecil was at the main house at the time, he explains the collision was like a bomb going off. It rattled the cabin window, and flames stretched past the treetops. Even if he wanted to save her, the blast wouldn’t have allowed it.