Starr tried hard to keep a scowl on her face. Todd had taken advantage of her complete emotional breakdown to sneak off after his psychotic mother without letting anyone give him any kind of backup.
But she couldn't stay mad at him. She had never been able to stay mad at him. She always knew he was sorry, even if he didn't say it. She always knew he was doing his best to protect his family even when the way he went about it was completely illogical. She wouldn't change a thing about him.
She kept herself from shuddering. No, the "changed" version of Todd hadn't worked out for anyone except maybe Tea.
As always, Todd seemed to know the minute she had forgiven him. "So, what do you want to do tonight? I'm thinking we'll wait until tomorrow morning to turn ourselves in. Less chance of you having to stay in jail overnight that way."
Starr crossed her arms and put on her best "tough" face. "I don't think I'd mind. You've been getting me ready for jail since I could talk."
Todd returned a wry smile. "But I never wanted you to end up there. No matter what your mother thinks."
"Mom is... well, a lot of things happened while you were gone. Obviously."
"Maybe now is a good time for you to catch me up on some of them."
Starr had never felt less like doing anything in her life. "Speaking of Mom, this is her necklace. I was cleaning my room today- not like there was anything else to do, stuck in here- and I realized I never gave it back." She sensed rather than heard Todd following at her heels as she walked into her mother's bedroom. "Maybe we can watch a movie. There are some good ones that you missed."
Starr snapped open Blair's jewelry box and dropped the necklace inside. Todd reached out a hand to keep Starr from closing the box again. With one finger, her caressed the earrings Blair had worn at their first real wedding and again to the Vickerman premiere
"What's going on between you and Mom?" Starr asked, because it was physically impossible not to ask. "I know you talked last night."
"We talked and she didn't say anything. Kind of like you didn't say anything just now when I asked you..."
Starr held a finger to her lips, but it was unnecessary. Todd had heard Blair and Jack's voices coming closer, too.
As one, Todd and Starr backed into the closet to wait for Blair and Jack to move down the hall to Jack's room. Instead, though, Jack and Blair turned into Blair's room.
Starr's eyes sought Todd's in the darkness. They had two choices, and neither one of them was any good. They could leave the closet and reveal themselves to Jack, which would sabotage Blair's plan to gain Jack's trust even if Jack didn't call the police and turn them all in. Alternatively, they could stay in the closet and eavesdrop, violating Jack and Blair's privacy. (Jack, obviously, deserved it, but Blair really didn't even if she had forced them all into this moronic plan about pretending to believe Jack when he accused Todd of murder.)
"Why are you looking around like that?" Blair asked. "You think someone's going to jump out from under the bed?"
"When Tea and Dani came over in the middle of the night, it felt like a sign." "A sign we shouldn't talk." "I know it sounds stupid. But if it happened again..." "That would mean it wasn't just a coincidence?" "Yeah,"
That was it, then. Starr and Todd's list of bad options had just been reduced from one to zero. There was no way in hell Starr was going to be a sign that Jack was supposed to carry on lying to Blair and keeping Todd locked up.
Naturally, Blair had a closet that was bigger than any of the freshman dorm rooms at Llanview University. Starr and Todd could settle in for the night if they had to.
Starr sank to the plush blue carpet and leaned her back against a full-length mirror. Todd sat down beside her, and Starr dropped her head to his shoulder, enjoying the feel and scent of him if not the situation.
Outside, there were rustling sounds. A few drawers opened and closed.
"No one hiding under the bed. No one hiding in the drawers," Blair told Jack.
"I'm not kidding." "I know this is hard, son. But sometimes the worst part is the waiting. When whatever it is finally happens, you can start to deal with it. You take the power back." "I can't take the power back. I never had the power."
Starr rolled her eyes. She imagined that Shane and Gigi Morasco would beg to differ.
In fact, Jack's lie about Todd was the reason she had had to break their father out of prison and had spent the day on perverted house arrest. It was the reason she was stuck here now. Jack's spoiled brat decisions had been controlling all of them for a long time.
And here he was whining about not having power.
Starr resolved not to feel guilty about eavesdropping anymore. It was Jack's own damn fault.
"How do you mean?"
Apparently even Blair hadn't been able to make sense of that one.
"I definitely didn't have a choice about all of a sudden my dad not being my dad, and some other guy showing up and saying he was my real dad. What other family does that ever happen to?"
Starr agreed with that, at least. It did have a way of making you feel like a worthless piece of crap.
"There's exactly one comparable case. That's how I chose the attorney I've been talking to about getting Todd's property back in his hands."
Starr listened with interest. She hadn't known that her mother had called an attorney about that. From the way Todd tensed beside her, she didn't think that he'd known, either.
"So it happened to someone before. It still sucks. It turns everything upside down. And then the only dad I ever knew died, and it sucked even more." "I'm not going to argue about that. But you weren't doing so well even before things went wrong with your Uncle Victor." "Eli was a psycho stepfather who wanted to kill everybody."
Starr snarled inwardly. No way did Jack get to throw Eli at Blair like that. If he kept it up, she was going to burst out of the closet and give him the beating he deserved. She'd never liked her mother's stupid plan anyway, so blowing it sky-high at the worst possible moment would have a certain charm.
Todd took her hand, which she hadn't realized she had clenched into a fist.
"I am so sorry about bringing Eli into your life. Eli and- yesterday we were talking about Spencer. I think that was even worse for you since you were so young and so attached to him." "It's not about being sorry. It's about, every time things are going okay, something happens. We're happy, and then Dad- Victor- ends up on death row. We're happy, and then it turns out Spencer is a psycho and Sam is out there somewhere and Victor goes away for forever looking for him. We're happy, and then Starr gets pregnant. That was the worst."
This time, Starr really would have jumped to her feet if Todd hadn't been holding her hand so tightly.
"Why was that the worst?" "We were never a family again after that. Starr was always his partner, but that was all right because that meant you and I were partners, too. Right?" "Right."
"Then when she got pregnant, he didn't want her anymore."
The fight drained out of Starr abruptly. She knew it was true. She'd lived through it, after all. It still hurt to hear Jack say it so succinctly.
She thought she'd done enough crying for a decade or so that morning and gotten everything out of her system. But silent tears slid out of her aching eyes and down her cheeks.
This time, instead of sneaking off, Todd tugged her into his arms and put her head on his chest.
"So since he didn't want her, she took you. Because he was mean to her, you wouldn't let Sam and me see him." "He was a little more than mean to her, Jack. He endangered her and Hope."
THANK YOU! Starr sent sniffling, appreciative thought waves in her mother's direction. She was awfully tired of being the villain of this piece when Jack was the one who had killed a woman and then gotten their father locked up for a crime he hadn't committed.
"Not on purpose. He didn't throw her down those stairs on purpose!"
Todd hugged Starr harder. Starr tried to hug back. She knew that she wasn't the one who was the most likely to charge out of the closet any longer. But while she wanted to slap Jack across his smug, spoiled face, Todd wanted to dig up Victor's body so he could kill him again.
At the moment, Starr would have been fine with that. "No matter why you did it, I didn't have a chance to get to... you had Starr, and I had no one, and then Dani showed up and he had Dani and you had Starr and I was one kid too many. He thought you and Starr were trash and I had to work really hard to make him think I wasn't trash, too." "All right, Jack Cramer Manning."
"No, but he was completely unremorseful. He was unremorseful for attacking Cole and Langston and Markko, all of whom were children at the time. I couldn't put my children at risk, Jack, you mean too much to me."
Starr's stomach jumped with anticipation. Jack had gotten the middle name treatment. Blair was finally going to go thermal on him, like she should have done months before.
"Do you have any idea how lucky you are? You have this huge family that loves you so much. You know, I never had that growing up. I went from foster home-" "Foster home to foster home. I remember." "Well, maybe you don't remember it like I remember it. Cause I'm telling you right now, it was no piece of cake. Even the good homes had too many kids, so I know what it's like to be lost in the shuffle. And I'm telling you right now, that never happened to you. Not one single day of your little life. And for you to sit there and you to tell that to me, that's a cop-out! Because I've been there for you! I've had your back! I've been beside you all the time because I love you, son. I love you, and I'm always gonna love you, and nothing is gonna change that! Do you hear me?" "Because that's how much I want you to feel safe. I want you to remember that I am on your side, on your team, getting your back, supporting you. Why did you tell me that the Original Recipe guy knocked you out and killed Victor?" "Because Victor was dead and I wanted to try to make him proud of me one more time. I knew he would have wanted me to do it."
"I love you, too, Mom." Jack's voice cracked. "Why are you pretending that you believe what I said about Scarf- this Original Recipe Todd guy knocking me out and killing Victor?"
"The other day you caught Sam eating a whole box of cookies in bed. You didn't let him do it even though he wanted to." "It would have made him sick." "You were a good brother to Sam by not giving him what he wanted. Even if Victor does want you to lie about your father, maybe you can be a good nephew by letting him come to terms with what happened instead of putting it off with lies and manipulations that are just going to hurt all the people he loved along with your father." "What?" "I'd like to hear you say it."
"But it's different. I don't owe Sam anything. Victor saved me. I got into a mess and- I didn't mean for it to happen, Mom."
"You know what."
There was a rustling sound, like Blair had put her arm around Jack the same way Todd had his arm around Starr. They were back in the old teams. "After I took away your phone and your computer and deleted your MyFace account."
"Brad and I- it was mostly my idea to make up a girl on MyFace."
"Yeah, after that." Jack's narrative took on the hollow tone of someone who had gone over these events in his mind too many times. "He dropped a weight on my foot and everyone laughed and said I deserved it. So I had to get him back. So this made up girl, she flirted with Shane. Then she invited him to this party. The address was a house Brad's family owns. We went in- Brad and Beth and me. We turned up the music. When someone came to the door and yelled, Beth answered and the door opened. Since I was the biggest, I grabbed- I thought it was Shane, I was so wired up that we were pulling it off for real- we closed the door. We put a chair under the door to keep it shut. I- I swear to God I didn't know anything about the generator. Five minutes later, not even, I wanted to let her out. I wanted to let her out, and Brad said if I did everyone would keep laughing about Shane dropping the weight on my foot and Shane would be proud of himself and I'd lose. So I let- so I went along with it. And then we found out it was Gigi, not Shane, and the generator- she died and I killed her and there's nothing I can do to fix it and I can't sleep and I can't think and I hurt all the time and I'm so so sorry but Victor said I was the only one he could tell and I couldn't talk to you especially any more and he went away and he's never coming back and she's never coming back."
Starr and Todd leaned their heads against each other, both feeling awful for Jack. There was a long moment of silence where all four of them breathed shallow, pained breaths together. Starr wasn't sure where she ended and her parents and brother began.
"Thank you for telling me, Jack. I'm proud of you."
"Me too," Todd whispered, and Starr poked him to make him be quiet.
"I love you so much."
Jack's whisper was so low that Todd and Starr barely caught it.
"Why?"
"Because you're brave enough and strong enough to face the truth when you make a mistake. Because even though you give Sam a hard time sometimes, you also help him get his coat on and save him from himself when he steals a box of cookies. Because I love to go riding with you and I love watching you play soccer. I love that you're funny even though I don't always get your jokes. I love that when you were little you wanted pet lizards because you wanted to be like Starr. I love that you always had a sense about people and things and you knew how other people felt. I love that when you were a little boy and had nightmares, the magic word to make you feel better changed every night. I love that you love horror movies, but you love fairy tales too- and I know you do, don't pretend you don't."
"Maybe," Jack conceded.
"Mostly, I love your hair." Jack half-laughed and the bedsprings squeaked as Blair ruffled Jack's hair. "The most amazing hair I've ever seen. Look in the mirror, it looks perfect when I've just finished messing it up." "Mom?" "Son?" "If you love me so much, why did you go back to the man who gave me away and told you I was dead?"
It was Starr's turn to take Todd's hand like he'd taken hers at the beginning of the conversation. It felt like a very long time had passed. "No, it wasn't fine. Believe me," "Right, I know all about the gross island stuff. Wish I didn't." "You and me, both. Starr missed him so much. I couldn't keep her away from him, not unless I chained her to the wall. Probably not even then."
"You couldn't let me see Victor because he hurt Starr," Jack continued. "But Todd gave me away and that was fine?"
Starr nodded her head in the affirmative.
"You and he missed each other too. When you were a baby, he'd hold you and you'd stare at him, just mesmerized. I know you don't remember it, but you loved him. You needed his touch. You needed his voice. I knew he would never hurt you on purpose, and he never has." "But that- that could have changed. With Victor, he was programmed to be this guy, right? That's how he fooled you and Starr and everybody."
Blair didn't answer. Starr couldn't look at Todd or squeeze his hand.
"He used to love us. You and me and Starr. I remember one time there was a thunderstorm. Starr came and got me. We ran into your room- she pretended I was the one who was scared and you called her on it. We all slept in bed together that night and I knew that there was no one in the whole world who loved each other like the four of us did."
Starr swallowed down the bile rising in her throat. She remembered that night. Unlike Jack, she knew that it was the first time the four of them had been together after Margaret Corcoran had kidnapped Victor and Asa Buchanan had sweetened the pot by faking Blair's death.
She'd been basking in the togetherness. Meanwhile, her real father had been less than halfway through eight years of torture.
"Then there was another time. I wanted to build a fort in the living room at the penthouse with pillows and blankets. We all got in there together and ate pizza and watched a horror movie, which was a lot less scary than that DVD of Starr in the school musical that you made us watch. We were a family. He looked at you and me and Starr like we were everything. But that changed. You know that changed. He talked about you and Starr like you were dirt on the bottom of his shoe. And I was kind of all right with it, because that meant I was beating Starr for once. How do you know this guy hasn't changed, too, if Victor was supposed to act like him?"
Todd banged his head against the mirror behind him. Starr grabbed him to make him stop. Luckily, Jack and Blair seemed to be too entranced in their conversation to hear.
"We don't know, Jack. Even if all of that were true, you can't keep pretending that you saw Todd at Victor's house when you didn't. It hurts you too much. It keeps the police from finding the real killer. It keeps you from getting to know your real father. I think you'd like him." "Do you think he'd like me?" "He adores you, Jack. He always did and he still does. I saw him watching you at the Vickerman premiere and at Viki's when they were running DNA tests. He can't get over how great he thinks you are."
There was a sniffling sound, and footsteps. Jack must have gotten off the bed. He was done talking. They'd almost survived. Starr sat tensely next to Todd and hoped neither of them did anything to blow it.
Jack said something inaudible.
"Okay, what?" "Can you take me to the police station so I can tell them the truth about Todd and Gigi?" "How about tomorrow? That will give your lawyer a chance to-" "Tea was here in the middle of the night. She could show up when we want her to." "The same one you talked to about the identity confusion thing?" "They're friends, actually, one referred me to the other. They practice in Chicago, but they've both agreed to get here within a few hours' notice." "That part of the police station will be closed by then. McPain won't be there." "Please, Mom. Like you said, the waiting and not knowing- please, can we do it now? Just tell McPain what we're going to tell him without officially telling him?"
"I don't think Tea is the best person to help us with this. Between Victor dying and Irene's will putting her out of that house, she's so frazzled lately. We need someone it will be just business with. Someone who didn't know Gigi and isn't emotionally invested. I've spoken to a man who has a great record in these situations."
"I'm not a lawyer, but I think you'd better not call him McPain while you're explaining that you lied."
Blair sighed. "All right. You're right, you need to get this off your chest. Go wash your face. Wait. Come back."
They didn't hear anything, but Starr knew Blair must be hugging Jack.
"Love you. Proud of you."
For a few minutes, there were footsteps and water running. Then quiet.
When the silence stretched, Starr and Todd got stiffly to their feet and stumbled into the empty room, blinking in the last orange rays of the setting September sun.
