My Loving Family Paid to Destroy Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Welcome Home

At his mother's table Nolan learns Laurel pleaded guilty and paid the crew $11,000 a month, and his father's answer to why comes too fast, so he goes to see her.

I slept on the floor of my old bedroom, because the mattress felt like a trap.

Five years on a concrete slab will do that to a spine.

My mother had kept the room exactly as I left it.

My teaching awards were still on the shelf, and my school sweater was still on the chair.

At midnight Trenton knocked and came in with a mug of warm milk.

"Honey in it," he said. "Like when we were kids."

I drank all of it.

It tasted like being nine years old and safe.

He sat on the floor beside me and did not ask a single question about the cellar.

I loved him for that.

At seven the next morning, my mother put a whole pie on the kitchen table.

Apple, with the lattice top.

"You're going to eat a slice for breakfast," she said, "and I don't want to hear a word."

I ate two.

My father sat at the head of the table in his reading glasses, scrolling a tablet.

The small television on the counter was tuned to the news with the sound low.

I saw my own face on it, the missing-person photo from five years ago.

Then I saw Laurel.

She stood in a courtroom in the same black jacket, with a deputy at each elbow.

My mother grabbed the remote and turned it up before my father could stop her.

"The woman accused of orchestrating the kidnapping of Nolan Thayer appeared this morning for arraignment," the reporter said.

"She waived her right to an attorney and entered a plea of guilty."

I put my fork down.

A prosecutor stepped up to a microphone on the courthouse steps.

"The defendant's bank records show a cash withdrawal of eleven thousand dollars on the first of every month," he said. "That is sixty withdrawals over five years."

"The money went to the men who held Mr. Thayer."

"Six hundred and sixty thousand dollars," Trenton said softly. "Jesus."

My mother covered her mouth.

On the screen, the reporter held up a photo of a small farm with a fallen fence.

"Griswold family land, sold four years ago," she said. "Records show the proceeds were spent in a matter of months."

I stared at the picture.

Laurel's grandfather had left her that land in the hills.

I had never seen it, because she said she would only sell it for something that mattered.

She used to say that someday it might buy us a house with a porch.

"She sold her family's farm to pay them," I said.

"Not to save you," my father said, without looking up from his tablet. "To keep you."

I turned my head.

"Why would she do that?" I said. "If she wanted me gone, why keep me alive for five years?"

"I've wondered the same thing."

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, and he looked old.

I felt a stab of guilt for even asking.

Then he said, "So she could own you, son."

He said it fast, before I had finished asking.

"Some people can't stand to lose what they think belongs to them," my father said. "She took you, and she kept you, and she got to feel like a wife the whole time."

My mother nodded and wiped her eyes.

"Eat your pie, honey," she said. "We'll never let her near you again."

I ate.

But I kept turning it over.

Sixty payments of eleven thousand dollars.

A woman who wanted to own me for five years could have kept me quiet for a lot less.

And she had never once sent me a message through those men.

I would have known.

They had told me a hundred cruel things.

Not one of them had come from Laurel.

At eight, the family lawyer arrived with the same leather folder.

He stood in my mother's kitchen with a cup of coffee he did not drink.

"Mr. Thayer, the district attorney's office has called twice," he said. "They'll want your statement by Friday."

"I'll give it."

"There's also a request."

He paused.

"The defendant has asked, through the jail chaplain, to see you."

My mother made a small hurt sound.

My father put down his tablet.

"Absolutely not," he said.

"She has no right to put him through that."

"It's only a request, Howard," the lawyer said.

"Nolan doesn't owe that woman a single minute," my father said, and his hand came down on my shoulder.

It was warm and heavy and loving, and I had missed it for five years.

Trenton leaned across the table.

"Bro, don't," he said. "She'll mess with your head. It's what she's been doing all along."

I looked at the three of them.

Three faces that had spent five years waiting for me.

Then I thought of Laurel in a courtroom, saying a word I had never heard her say.

Guilty.

She had said it in the same voice she'd used in the ambulance.

Like a woman reading out a grocery list.

I stood up from the table.

"I'm going to see her," I said.

"Nolan," my mother whispered.

"She hired the men who took me," I said. "I want to hear her say why to my face."

I picked up my coat.

"And she's going to answer me."

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