A Holiday Temptation - Tiffany Patterson Page 0,55

out on accident, Jackie. Please believe me.”

“Wait, Mama, slow down. What happened last night?”

She nods. “I’d gone to the store to get a bottle of rum. After Thanksgiving, I found out it helped me get to sleep, but your uncle stopped by after my second or third glass. I offered him a glass of the Coke I purchased also. I filled mine with rum thinking he wouldn’t notice if I mixed it with the soda.”

“You were drinking home alone?”

She nods, looking down at her hand in her lap. “I would go to the store when you weren’t around and hide the bottles under my mattress.”

“Oh, Mama.”

She shakes her head. “It helped me sleep. Your uncle asked about you again, and I said you were probably over Mark’s. He began grilling me about Mark and what his last name was, if I’d met him, on and on. He knows Mark O’Brien. Your father told him about Mark from your teenage years.”

“I know, Mama.”

“And the house. He told me that since you lied, the house and money would go to him, and he’d kick me out, making me homeless. I’m broke because your father left me with nothing, and I haven’t had a job in over thirty years. But Will also threatened to get Mark into trouble somehow. You know he and your father have connections all over the state. I’m so sorry, Jackie. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay, Mama. It’s not your fault.”

“I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth. He always told me I talked too much.”

Gritting my teeth, I bite back a curse. I didn’t need to ask who he is. My father manipulated my mother so much over the years, I’m surprised she knows which way is up and which is down.

“Is that why you did this?” I ask, softly running my hand over her bandaged wrist.

She peers down, staring also. “I was just so tired. I went to bed after your uncle left but tossed and turned for hours. I made myself another drink. That didn’t put me to sleep, and I began fretting more and more. I don’t know what made me do it. I just thought you’d be better off if I weren’t here. The world would be better off if I weren’t around. The next thing I remember is waking up here in the hospital.”

Taking my mother into my arms, I rock her side to side as she cries. Tears stream down my face as well, but they’re mostly tears of anger. How could one man do this to a woman he claimed to love? How could someone reduce another human being to a quivering mass of loneliness and sorrow after his demise?

A heart attack had been too kind of an ending for my father.

“Ms. Hinkerson, I’m sorry, but that’s all the time I can give you with your mother,” the doctor from earlier interrupts.

Wiping the tears from my eyes, I stand and look at him. “Are you admitting her?”

He nods. “Yes, for seventy-two hours.”

I nod, expecting as much. I take my mother’s hand into mine. “It’s going to be okay, Mama. You’re going to have to spend Christmas here in the hospital, but you’ll be home for the New Year.”

She shakes her head. “We don’t have a home.”

“Shhh,” I shush. “Everything will be fine.”

Regrettably, I have to release her hand as more medical staff enter the room. I take a step back and give her one final look before exiting.

Mark remains in that same spot. Our gazes meet, and I fall into the chair next to him, breaking down.

“What happened?”

I can’t hold back anymore. I tell him everything. About how my father manipulated his will to include the clause about my mother only getting ownership of the house under strict conditions. One of them being that I was forbidden from dating anyone for five years, especially him.

“He had a vendetta against you even after all of these years. Once he found out that I’d been sneaking around with you in high school, he threatened to have you arrested even after the accident. It’s why he sent me away to a boarding school up in Maine.”

Shaking my head, I sniffle and finish telling him how I planned to use the money from my bonus at Cypress to buy the house.

“That wouldn’t have been enough to buy it outright,” Mark says of the $10,000 bonus I should be receiving from Cypress at the signing of the merger.

I nod, agreeing. “No, but I have some money saved, and