I did go get Terror from my parents' house. I wanted to be with at least some part of Billy, some untainted part - which, even with his playroom of sex stuffies, Terror was.

"Veronica?" I was waiting for Dad to gather up the newest treats that Mom had taken her four-legged grandson out to spoil him with, and was holding Terror on my lap and stroking his ears - clearly lost in my own thoughts since Mom had been calling my name for longer than I noticed.

Shaking off what I'd learned about Terror's daddy, what the future didn't hold for me and the uncertainty that would come once the holding pattern that everything seemed to be in, I looked up and knew she had noticed - everything.

Mom took a seat beside us, and while she didn't reach out for my hand, I knew she wanted to.

"Are you planning on telling me what's going on, or am I going to have to assume the worst?" The worst? What could be worse than the reality?

Taking a safe route, I chose the cowardly route. "Joe's been reassigned to the local bureau." Seeing her eyes narrow at the reminder of his existence gave me a pinch of guilt, but I couldn't tell her about Billy - not now. "We're working -"

"You're working with him?" She made it sound like I was working with Satan himself and I couldn't understand it, what about Joe could have been so fucking - "I guess you have no choice -" ah, so it was the CIA's fault that I had to mingle with the Devil.

"Why do you hate him?" I don't know why I asked, maybe because knowing might shift my focus from the shitstorm gathering around me. "What did he really do?"

I'd never seen my mother's nostrils go so narrow or her lips so thin. And this was a woman who managed to make the other ladies at the club side step her if she looked like she was in the slightest mood. My curiosity peaked a bit higher, the need for a distraction growing.

Sniffing as if Terror had unleashed one of his noxious gas pains, and I knew from experience how noxious, I watched as she worked through the thoughts about what to tell me and what to hold back. Great, so a partial answer. What else did I expect?

"That man," said in the same tone that a priest might when pointing out a demon hovering over a possessed person, "took you away from using your education," could she show how terrible she viewed what path my learning had taken me? If she could, then God help us all. "In a respectable role," couples therapy or a very mild talk therapy of her minimal choosing, clearly. "And charmed you into joining a dangerous and waste of your talents."

"Waste of my talents?" Damn my curiosity, but I kind of wanted to know what Mom thought my talents were. "How?"

Could her lips get thinner? Yes, since they all but disappeared at my interruption, which was hilarious given that she hadn't wanted to unleash precisely what Joe had done to make her and Dad put a full body press on ripping us apart.

Settling into the sofa with a wondrous air of patience she clearly felt like I didn't deserve, she let out a long suffering sigh and I felt my irritation ratchet up a thousand notches. I thought we were over this shit, our back and forth snipping, but obviously I was wrong. And then she pulled Terror closer to her, as a buffer, I guess.

"Yes, your talents," she glanced over at me while stroking Terror and I realized she was using him to calm herself down. "I can't honestly say that I understand why you decided to become a psychologist, Veronica, but I did actually read all of your professors' glowing reviews of your insight," well fuck me, who knew? "I was coming around to having a therapist in the family," as if I were a fucking serial killer who she had to love anyway, "and then you announced that the CIA wanted to bring you into the agency."

"And that was Joe's fault?" I was trying to make sense of shit that I asked to be unleashed upon me, but I swear to fuck, it just didn't. "I didn't meet Joe until I was almost through training."

She was shaking her head and looking at me with so much pity that I wanted to - fuck I don't know what I wanted to do. "Do you honestly think that a man with an ego the size of a mountain didn't have some say in bringing you into his sphere?" No, actually, I didn't. "He oozes this -" her lips returned just so they could curl. "I knew, your father knew, that with the clearance that those people -"

"My coworkers, who I also share that clearance with," reminding her and interrupting her, clearly not getting me on the right side of this conversation. "Do go on -"

"He had to know about your inheritance, your trust funds," oh, so that's why she jumped onto the conclusion that he MUST just want me for my money.

I stood up and Terror, a traitor to her in her time of need, jumped up with me - obviously he'd hit his fucking limit too. "It never occurred to you that he could just want me?" It hurt, oh it definitely fucking hurt - but it was distracting me from the reality that Billy's actions was forcing on me. "It never occurred to you that Joe Kessler was in love with me, and not some intangible money that I rarely actually think about?"

Mom paled, realizing that she'd let slip out the worst kind of confession. "Veronica, of course I knew that anyone -"

Shaking my head, I turned away. "It's fine, Mom." And as Terror and I moved toward the door, I had to say something, end the conversation and - "I'll drop Terror off on Monday."

Salvaging whatever was broken again, or broken still wasn't something I cared to think about - not as I drove Terror home, to a home that I hoped like fuck was void of Billy Butcher. Because after the day I'd had, the last thing I wanted to contend with was looking him in the eye and knowing that his life was trickling by, and one day soon I wouldn't be able to want to avoid him - not when he'd be gone forever.