“Servants. Slaves. Somebody to hurt.” Jessup drank beer and his hands shook.
“She had a brother,” Michael prompted.
“The brother. Ah, God.” Jessup scrubbed large, worn hands across his face, pulled the skin tight, then let the hands drop. “She made Abigail drown him in the creek.” Michael rocked back; Jessup nodded bleakly. “She beat Abigail half to death, and then made her kill the one thing she loved. I think that’s when her mind broke.”
“And Salina Slaughter was born.”
“She has no idea, Michael. Don’t you see? Abigail…” He choked up. “That sweet, perfect soul. She doesn’t even know Salina exists. She has blackouts, memory losses.”
“But she suspects.”
“She fears some version of the truth, yes. She invited George Nichols and Ronnie Saints here; then they turned up dead after she blacked out. Chase Johnson, too.”
“That’s the third body in the lake?”
Jessup nodded. “Then the senator was killed. Abigail’s been terrified that she might have had something to do with it. But you fixed all that. The police think gangsters killed the senator; they think the boys from Iron House were somehow wrapped up in that. Maybe they were dropped in the lake to pressure the senator. Or maybe they were wrapped up with Stevan Kaitlin in some other way. The cops believe it’s all connected, and Abigail is trying to do the same. She’s like a new person.”
“And yet you haven’t answered my question.”
Jessup sighed, unhappy. “Truth can be a tricky business.”
“Is Abigail my mother?”
“All right, Michael. All right.” Jessup sighed deeply, gathered himself. “Abigail didn’t run away until she was fourteen. That’s four more years she spent with Arabella Jax. Four years of abuse and deprivation. Four years for Salina Slaughter to take hold. Four years of hell…”
“Go on.”
“Arabella Jax wanted daughters, but God had his own ideas, I guess, and gave her two boys, one strong and the other sickly. They were born in the back bedroom of the house you saw. They’d have probably died without Abigail. They slept in her bed. She kept them warm, kept them fed. Protected them.” Jessup shook his head, then pushed on. “Arabella held off for a while, but the day came when she told Abigail to drown them, too. She wouldn’t do it, though, no matter how much Arabella beat her. It went on for two weeks, the beatings and bleeding and denial.”
Michael felt a sharp pain in his heart. “What are you saying?”
Jessup nodded at the hurt that was coming. “I’m saying she ran off rather than kill you boys.”
Michael had to walk away from that. Jessup gave him twenty minutes, then paid the check and found him in the parking lot, hands in his pockets as traffic blew past.
“Abigail is my sister.”
“Yes.”
“Does she know you’re telling me this?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Michael turned, and in his features Jessup saw a road map of grief. “She’s not that poor, broken little girl anymore. She won’t be. She can’t be. This is where she’s strong. This life.”
“And yet she left us there to die.”
“A child can only take so much, Michael. You, of all people, know that’s true.”
“I never abandoned Julian.”
“Didn’t you?”
“That’s not how it was.”
“And yet Julian was left alone until Abigail gathered him up.”
Michael looked away.
“For what it’s worth,” Jessup said, “she has nightmares about it, crucifies herself with guilt. And don’t forget that she came after you as soon as she possibly could. She found you at Iron House. She tried to give you a life.”
“This is difficult.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“I’m supposed to keep it to myself?”
Jessup understood. Telling Michael in the first place had not been an easy decision, but he’d sold his soul on the day he made Arabella Jax scream and beg and spill her guts. It would be nice for something good to come of it.
“I guess that’s up to you,” Jessup said. “I’m not sure how Julian would take it. He’s half- convinced that what he saw in the boathouse was delusion, but only half-convinced. As a man, he needs structure. He needs to know the people around him are strong enough to watch his back and make a difference. I don’t know that he could handle having a woman like Arabella Jax as his mother. It would be a brutal truth after all the love he’s known.”
Michael thought about that and decided Jessup was right. Not all cruelties were physical, and his brother would not easily endure such a revelation. “So, Julian doesn’t know the truth, and Abigail doesn’t know that I know?”
“Yes.”
“You’re asking an awful lot, Jessup. She’s my sister. We’re family. Do you understand how important that is to me? To Julian?”
“She can’t know that you know. Facing that past would kill her. Knowing you’re aware of what she did, knowing Julian is aware… She barely lives with herself now.”
“Jesus.”
“I’m sorry, Michael. I truly am.”
Long moments passed, then Michael said, “How did Abigail get here?”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw the place she was raised. I met her mother…” He stalled at the thought of Arabella Jax being his mother, then shook off the anger and disgust. “How did she go from Slaughter Mountain to the place she is now?”
“Strength and will and character. I don’t know what happened after she ran away, but she was only twenty-two when the senator met her. By that time, she’d put herself through college and spoke three languages fluently. She was working in an art gallery in Charlotte, and, I swear to God, Michael, you’d think she was fresh out of some European finishing school. She was that polished; that perfect. The senator fell for her overnight.”
“Did she love him?”
“Does it matter?”
The sun slipped low, and Michael felt flush with emotion. Like he was drowning. Like his skin was too tight. “Abigail will always have doubts, you know. The senator died in her room. Julian thinks he saw her in the boathouse.”
“We can live with doubts,” Jessup said. “It’s the knowing that breaks us.”
“What about Salina Slaughter?”
“I can manage Salina.”
“Yet three people are dead.”
“Only one thing makes her violent.”
“What’s that?”
“A threat against you or Julian. The boys from Iron House. The senator.” Jessup shrugged.
