Like still photographs in her mind, Jade pictured La Bonne Vie. It meant “the good life,” in French, but for her, it was anything but.
Her father being struck in the head by Livia. His body unmoving on the ground. Hurt and pain. Livia flirting with men, touching their chests with her fingertips, leaning close, rubbing against them. Confusion and anger. Livia flying into a rage because something had happened or she’d perceived a slight. Fear. Livia calling to her children, asking them to line up along the grand staircase, looking them over for imperfections, like a hair out of place or not wearing the complete outfit she had purchased for them. As if wearing the wrong-colored socks would distort the image of the Coltons as the perfect family. Resentment and more confusion why they only mattered when other people were watching.
Livia striking her so hard across the face, she had fallen down the stairs. Sadness and hurt. When her father had asked her what had happened, she had lied and said she had slipped. Fear and desperation.
Memories that Jade had never made sense of until after her mother had been arrested: men coming to the house late at night with packages and people. Those packages and people being nowhere in the house the next day.
When Jade was older and bolder, she had found some of her mother’s secret rooms, hidden behind wainscoting and panels and some leading to a complex serious of tunnels under the property around La Bonne Vie. She had also found a book of passwords.
“Are you doing okay? If you’ve changed your mind, I can drive you back to the farm,” Declan said.
Jade had been wringing her hands and she stilled them on her lap. It wasn’t a long drive to La Bonne Vie, but the memories hammered at her so viciously, she wished she could scream out loud. The tension in her chest was nearly unbearable. By confronting the past, she could put it behind her. After La Bonne Vie was torn down, she wouldn’t have the opportunity to gain that closure.
“I’m fine. This is hard for me. There’s a lot about my childhood that still haunts me,” she said.
Declan reached across the car and set his hand over hers. “I’ll be with you. I called and Allison is on-site too. Is there anyone else you’d like to be with you?”
His compassion and warmth struck her and she felt a kinship with him. “I can do this. Maybe I can even help.”
“Help?” he asked.
“I’m sure you’ve found some of the secret passageways tucked around the main house and the other buildings,” Jade said.
“Edith and River found some. The construction team has since done a thorough search. They’ve found and closed a number of them,” Declan said.
“I can show you ones they may have missed,” Jade said.
“Only if you want to,” Declan said.
As he turned his sporty car into the driveway leading to La Bonne Vie, Jade’s breath caught in her throat. The house was different than she remembered. It wasn’t as big as it was in her childhood memories. It looked broken, like she and her siblings were, like anyone who was involved with Livia Colton eventually became.
Construction noises rose around her. Her mother wouldn’t have allowed banging and sawing on the premises when she was in residence. Renovations and additions to the house had been completed when her mother was traveling.
Declan parked his car a good distance away from the house.
Jade stepped out. Taking several deep breaths, she reminded herself she was an adult. Livia had no hold over her. Livia didn’t have power over Jade and her siblings the way she had when they were children.
“She can’t hurt me,” Jade said.
“What?” Declan asked.
Jade shook loose the thought of her mother. Thinking about Livia never brought anything positive. Getting sucked into a spiral of negative thoughts wasn’t something Jade could do anymore. She needed her energy to run Hill Country and she needed to overcome her fear of La Bonne Vie.
“Is it safe to enter anywhere?” Jade asked.
“Yes. Your choice,” Declan said.
Jade walked to the front of the house. She didn’t want to enter from the back as if she were sneaking inside. Piles of broken bricks and debris were stacked outside the house. Large Dumpsters were filled with wood, drywall and trash.
The front porch was crumbling, paint peeling from around the double-door frame. The window to the left was cracked and the window to the right was covered with cardboard. Jade stepped across the threshold.
The grand staircase had once gleamed in the ornate chandelier fixture that had hung from the center of the two-story foyer. Now, the wood was scuffed, the bannister missing on one side and the chandelier gone, nothing hanging in its place. Livia had loved using the stairs to make a grand entrance to parties. She would gather her guests in the entryway, serve them champagne and cocktails and, when enough people had arrived and the band was playing one of her favorite songs, she would sweep out into the limelight in her couture gown, her hair arranged artfully, and she would descend the stairs as if she were royalty greeting her subjects.
How the people in Shadow Creek had put up with that, Jade had no idea. It had struck her as odd then, and now she wondered if they didn’t fear Livia, the same way her children had. Jade didn’t realize she had walked up the stairs until she was halfway to the first floor. Her mother’s bedroom had been off-limits. Jade shuddered to think what had gone on in that room.
Her mother had cheated on all her husbands. She hadn’t been faithful to another human being once in her life. Her words were cruel and her mouth spewed lies, deceit and hate.
When the details had emerged of Livia’s crimes, Jade had been disgusted and horrified that she had lived in a house where organized crime, human trafficking and drug deals took place. Jade walked to her room first.
She hated everything about it. For her ninth birthday, Livia had offered to remodel her bedroom and Jade had been excited at the prospect. Seeing her siblings’ rooms, she had thought about colors and curtains. An interior designer had met with her and had sketched a room perfectly suited to Jade. Her anticipation at seeing the final product had been immense; she had slept in Claudia’s room while the work was completed on hers. After three days, she had entered her room and had been met with disappointment.
The colors and styles she had discussed with the designer were nowhere to be seen. She had turned to her mother, sight blurry through her disappointed tears, and her mother had looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Stop crying.”
“This isn’t...”
“This isn’t what? What you wanted? I made it better. What you picked was ridiculous. Horses in a room? Horses stink. They are dirty and they make the people around them filthy. Are you a common stable girl? What do you want to do with your life? To clean up horse crap? I thought you were smarter than that. This room is what I wanted.”
Jade had felt utter defeat, as if Livia’s comments about horses were another insult to her father. She had wiped at her tears and had sat quietly in her bedroom alone until bedtime. When she had been called for dinner, she had pretended to be asleep in her new bed, underneath the purple-and-green bedspread that she’d hated.
“I wish I could burn this room down,” she said.
Declan was standing in the doorway. “Some dark things happened in this house.”
Jade turned, surprised at how much being here was affecting her and bringing to mind memories she had thought were buried. “Everything my mother did or said or touched turned to pain.”
Declan walked into the hallway and returned with a sledgehammer and a pair of goggles. “I can’t let you burn the place down. Too dangerous. But you can smash whatever you want.”
Jade slid the goggles over her eyes and took the sledgehammer from his hand. “Really? You’ll let me smash holes