The Taking (Seven Deadly Sins #3)(17)
Author: Erin McCarthy

She was exhausted and just wanted to close the courtyard gate on them and sink onto her couch, which was placed exactly where she wanted it, thank you very much.

Her mother, wearing a red pants suit even though she’d had no plans that day other than this visit, fluffed her short, chic gray hair. “I know it’s none of my business.”

That was such a promising start to a sentence.

“But honestly, Regan, can you just give me one good reason why you’re throwing away your marriage to Beau? It’s not too late. He’d take you back, I’m sure he would. Just tell him you panicked, you got confused, he’ll understand.”

There it was. Yet again. Her mother’s conviction that she had suffered some sort of temporary insanity. Regan crossed her arms over her chest then realized her action, and purposely dropped them. She didn’t need to defend or protect herself. “I didn’t panic. I didn’t get confused. Our marriage wasn’t working for me.”

“So you just gave up? Like that?” Her mother snapped her fingers. “The shine wore off the new toy so you threw it away?”

When had she ever behaved that way? Her entire life she had caused no ripples, had always done what was expected of her, and respected all of her mother’s rules and desires. Regan could be totally honest in saying she had been a passive child and teenager, not a brat. That was no doubt partly the result of her sister’s death at the age of six. Regan had never wanted to add to their grief, had never wanted strife or tension. Felix had been right about that in his reading of her.

“No,” she told her mother carefully, determined not to lose her temper. “It was a mistake. I never should have married Beau in the first place.”

Her mom opened her mouth, but her father interceded. “Mary,” he said, a soft warning in his voice. “It’s time for us to go.”

“Thanks, Daddy,” she said. “Thank you for dinner.”

He gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Talk to you soon, princess.”

“Bye. Bye, Mom. I love you both.”

“I love you, too, Regan,” her mother said, her disappointment so apparent it undid Regan’s carefully constructed façade.

Knowing she was going to cry, she waved and retreated into the house, shutting the door behind her and locking it. Rude, no doubt. And something she would hear about later, but God, she couldn’t stand that look on her mother’s face. The implication that Regan had left Beau purely on some juvenile impulse, a bratty plea for attention.

Did her mother even have one clue about who she was?

Regan wandered through the enormous gourmet kitchen and wondered, did she really know herself?

Who exactly was Regan Henry? And who had Regan Henry Alcroft been? That was easier. She had been fictitious, a woman who didn’t actually exist. A woman who had never really been, and would be no more.

Her family’s reaction to her divorce was what she had been expecting, no matter how much it distressed her. But Felix’s reaction in his shop hadn’t been what she’d been hoping for.

Regan climbed the stairs to the second floor, her hand gripping the rich mahogany balustrade. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it wasn’t such coldness.

Then again, why would he care about her marriage breaking up?

It was more than a little embarrassing to think how frequently he had popped up in her thoughts over the last few months, and clearly she was just a random customer to him. One of hundreds he saw in a year. Nothing special to make her stand out in his mind.

Though he had remembered her.

And he had said she was lovely.

It was artificial flattery, nothing more, and she needed to remember that.

Stepping into her living room, she went over to the box she had purposefully avoided unpacking before her mother had seen the house. It would have led to another argument, and Regan could only handle one at a time. Ripping off the tape, she opened the box and pulled out the picture frames, then removed them from their Bubble Wrap one by one.

On the creamy buffet she used for storing candles and magazines in her living room, Regan arranged the photos of her childhood. Her and Moira at the beach. The two of them lying in a hammock together. Wearing twin grins in another picture, mouths rimmed with chocolate ice cream. The formal picture of the Easter that Regan had been four and Moira six, before the diagnosis. They were both dressed in yellow chiffon, white gloves, rosebud purses clutched delicately in their laps.

Her mother didn’t approve of Regan displaying pictures of her sister. It was too painful, her mother claimed. But for Regan, it was a way to hold on to the good, to the wonderful memories of sisterhood, of happy times, and the fast friendship that only siblings can share. In these pictures they were two little girls living life to the fullest, and that was the way she remembered Moira. Even when she’d been dying of leukemia, all her hair gone, Regan had memories of Moira singing along to the TV in the hospital, grinning in delight at the treat of a Popsicle, and offering for Regan to snuggle under her covers with her, then tickling her.

It was a mystery how her father felt about his oldest daughter’s death, because he was silent on the subject, but her mother’s opinion was clear—the hole in her heart had never healed and she didn’t appreciate being reminded of that.

The mother-of-pearl frames surrounding the treasured photos were expensive antiques from her grandmother on her mother’s side, passed to Regan at her death. Another point of contention between Regan and her mother. Bad enough she had pictures of Moira lying about, but to stick them in her grandmother’s frames … to her mother, that was heaping grief on grief. For Regan, it was comfort, a way to keep them both close, to show respect.

She pulled a small crystal lamp out of the box, placed it on the end of the buffet, and plugged it in. Surveying the tablescape, she arranged a few frames, then was satisfied. Considering what a long day she’d had, that was good enough for tonight. She’d tackle the real unpacking tomorrow.

For now, she was going to sit on her balcony and go back to the beginning of CAC’s journal. She didn’t want to read it out of context, but wanted to read the author’s whole story, from start to finish. She was meeting Felix the next day, and she wanted to at least have some questions ready for him about voodoo so he didn’t think she was using the journal as some sort of excuse to see him.

Which maybe she was. In part, at least. She really did want to understand the journal, but there was no denying she also wanted to see him.