Page 28 of All the Beautiful Things
“When she was diagnosed,” he stared at the television screen for several moments before he bit his lip and then swallowed harshly. “When she was diagnosed, she became obsessed with you. You were all she talked about, all she wanted to help and then Dad started looking into everything. They’d talk for hours about you, how to help, what they could do, if anything, and I was so damn pissed. So pissed she was spending all of her energy on someone like…” He paused and shook his head.
When he gritted his jaw together, I finished it for him and hated the pain in his eyes as I did. “Someone like the person who killed your mom.”
“You have to understand what that felt like to me.” His dark eyes were now rimmed with tears and bloodshot. His features made him look like the world’s most furious lion. “You have to understand what that did to me. Melissa was dying. She should have been fighting for herself. She needed to be resting and taking care of herself to give herself a better chance of survival, to conserve her energy.” His tone went ragged as he relived this pain, all that anger he had for his sister turned on me, making him fiercer. And yet as he ranted, as he poured out his truths I’d wanted to learn, I had to beat back the overwhelming urge to go and comfort him. “She should have been taking care of herself and all she thought of was you.”
Tears burned my eyes, my nose, my throat. There wasn’t a single square inch of my body that didn’t burn beneath his hatred for me as well as his pain.
“My mother was dead. My sister was dying, and she kept praying and dreaming of ways to help someone. Help you. Which yes, brought up a lot of anger and memories about how our mom died. So yeah, I was pissed. I was really fucking mad at her for not taking care of herself, spending her energy she needed to live on a cause that had seemed so useless.”
His words slashed at me like a whip. Every one of them hurt. The judgment on his face he’d kept so hidden. Had he ever not seen me like that?
“My parole,” I rasped through the agony whipping through me. I had to know. Had to know how they helped. How deep did their help go?
“Melissa died and made us swear we’d help. She pleaded for months, and finally Dad agreed he’d do whatever he could. I didn’t. I stormed out of her room and a week later she was gone.” He squeezed his eyes closed before pressing his thumb and finger to the bridge of his nose to staunch the flow of tears as his shoulders shook. “My sister died, and then Dad did the exact same thing she’d done—spent months trying to figure out a way to help you.”
Every muscle in my body tightened as his emotions ravaged him from the inside out. His despair so palpable, my fingers burned to comfort him, to throw my arms around him and hold him and apologize for being the one who caused so much turmoil before Melissa’s death. Apologize for being me.
“I’m sorry you lost her,” I said instead.
He stayed like that for several moments, shoulders quaking with such force before he collected himself and licked his lips. When he did, it didn’t seem like he saw me, but was looking through me. “Dad has a lot of contacts, in law and in the justice system here. He had some lawyers dig into your behavior and your record when you were inside. Once he learned you were becoming eligible for parole, he hired a lawyer to help. He wrote a letter, a character reference, and then attended your hearing. He didn’t want you to be paroled to go back to Illinois with nothing, so he tried to get your parole here, so he could keep an eye on you.”
A tidal wave of emotions threatened to drown me. David had done this. From the very beginning when he came into the diner, he’d already known so much. Was that why he didn’t speak much? Too worried he’d get to know me, and I’d ruin this perfect facade they’d seemed to have crafted of me? Had he watched me, kept his distance at least emotionally until he finally deemed me worthy of his dying daughter’s wish?
“Ellen?” I asked before more tears fell. “Did she know?”
He nodded, features slowly softening so he didn’t look so much like a caged animal. “Dad reached out to her once you paroled just to talk to her. He checked in those first few months when you were still in the shelter, getting settled, that was how he learned you’d gotten a new job at Judith’s.” He blinked and tilted his head. “If it helps, Ellen didn’t quite like knowing he was looking into you. He said once she seemed protective of you.”
“Did he tell her the truth? What Melissa told him?”
“That you’d have to ask him. Or Ellen. I’m honestly not sure.”
I nibbled at the bottom corner of my lip. “Did you know where I lived?”
He’d told me once he didn’t, but he knew too much to not know that.
Hudson sighed. “I knew, but I didn’t put two and two together when we were doing the project. When we were finalizing plans for it, something kept making me thinking of you, but when I went over it with Brandon, I thought it was because the new buildings were going to have a restaurant, a diner, on the ground level. I thought that’s what made me think of you.”
He shifted again so he was closer to me. He reached out, like he wanted to hold on to me, but I flinched back from him.
He pulled his hand back, apologized for attempting to touch me before he continued. This time, he was earnest. “We didn’t stalk you. We just wanted to help, or at least Dad did, and then… then we met.”
“And I was a complete bitch to you.”
“I didn’t blame you for that. Not once. I know how it seemed, or must have, to you, to have us suddenly in your business and everything, but Dad especially in the last few months, suddenly became obsessed. Felt he wasn’t doing enough, needed to do more than just ensuring you were surviving. Told me many times that survival in the worst conditions wasn’t why we’d helped you get out and wasn’t what Melissa wanted for you.”
I hid my reaction to his words. I knew why David became obsessed. I was the only who did. And like so much of my anger for having had the truth kept from me, sludge settled in my stomach knowing I was now doing the same thing.
And exactly like Hudson had done, I’d promised David, too. His health was most definitely not my story to share, but the irony wasn’t lost on me, either.
“What did she want?” I finally choked out.
His smile was sad. Tears had dried on his cheeks but there was no detracting from his attractiveness or the way my body still warmed in response to that smile. “She wanted you to have everything that had been stolen from you. She wanted you to have a life. A good one. Not scraping by.”
Pieces I’d questioned fell into place, painting a fuller picture than I’d imagined. They’d been helping me for over a year. And with my meeting with David on Sunday, I now knew why he hadn’t allowed Hudson to say anything. Why the sudden need to do more, like Hudson claimed.
Hudson cleared his throat. “I never intended, never wanted, and certainly never expected to care about you so much.” His voice was hoarse, wrecked from tears and emotions. He pleaded with his onyx eyes, framed with his jet-black lashes. His unshaven scruff longer than usual, like he couldn’t muster the energy to shave. “And I’m so sorry. So sorry for hurting you and keeping how much we knew a secret from you. I never wanted to hurt you, and I wanted to tell you so many times. I’m so very sorry, Lilly.”
But he didn’t, because he wouldn’t go against his dad who had set this whole mess in motion.
