Twisted(98)

A surprise, yes, but she also didn’t want to give Gray’s mother a chance to refuse the call.

“Hello,” Mrs. Duffy said after a moment, her tone coolly pissed. She wasn’t used to people refusing her demands—or the demands of her staff. “Can I help you?”

Despite the edge to her voice, she still sounded like the woman Jazz had loved so much. Everything that had happened had sent that love into hiding, but it only took a few syllables to bring it roaring to the forefront again.

Now if only she could speak.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

Jazz gripped her phone tighter. “Hi. It’s Jazz. Jazz…Edwards,” she added into the silence, trying to ignore the twist in her gut from the realization that perhaps Mrs. Duffy had shoved her into the back of her mind.

To Jazz, Mrs. Duffy had been a second mother. A better mother. In Mrs. Duffy’s eyes, Jazz had been the girl who shattered her family.

“Jazz? Is that really you?”

Don’t analyze her tone. She doesn’t sound hopeful, and if she does, it’s not because she wants to talk to you. And that’s fine. Her priority is and should always be her son.

“Yes. It’s me.” Jazz cleared her throat. “How are you?”

“Better now. How are you?”

“I’m good.” How could they talk so pleasantly when their last meeting had been so full of vitriol and pain? The intervening years acted as a kind of buffer, sheltering them both. “Gray’s good too.”

Lie number one. She hoped there wouldn’t be half a dozen more before the conversation ended.

Mrs. Duffy exhaled, clearly relieved. “I’m so glad. I’ve called him so many times but—”

“You have?” Jazz couldn’t smother her surprise. “He never mentioned it to me.”

“He doesn’t take my calls. Doesn’t respond to my letters. I leave him voicemails and I send him notes, but I get nothing in return.” His mother chuckled humorlessly. “That’s my son. Stubborn to a fault.” She paused. “I don’t doubt he’s been influenced to keep up his lack of communication as well.”

“You think I’ve asked him to stay away from you?”

The knowledge shouldn’t have wounded her. What else would Mrs. Duffy think? She obviously saw Jazz as the ho who had teased one son into going too far and cried rape then prodded the other son into breaking up his family.

Except she hadn’t cried rape. Gray had hassled her about going to the cops so many times during those weeks she’d lived at the Duffys after the attack, and she’d always said no. She’d insisted it was a family matter. Brent had just slipped up.

She hadn’t truly believed that. If Gray hadn’t come in when he had, Brent wouldn’t have stopped. He’d been so close to ripping part of her away that she never could’ve gotten back.

The first few months after, she’d thought he had succeeded anyway, even without completing the rape.

If drinking too much brought that kind of behavior out of a person, they obviously weren’t fully balanced to begin with. But God, she hated being the reason Gray and Brent had stopped speaking. Gray had ostracized himself from the people he loved because of her.

“I’m not saying you specifically asked him to not to talk to his family, Jasmine.”

“I didn’t. I never would have. In fact, I asked him just the opposite.” Jazz pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I took myself out of the situation. Brent’s reaction to me was the problem, so I left. I fully intended to leave Gray behind permanently too. For the first couple of years, I didn’t speak to him at all, so I didn’t even know he’d stopped communicating with you and your husband. He moved out and into his own place without me even being aware of it.”

“He believed he was upholding your honor.”

“He’s a wonderful man. You raised him that way.”

Mrs. Duffy didn’t say anything.

“I also didn’t want to let you and Mr. Duffy go. Sometimes there aren’t any choices.”

“Yes, there are. Once you started talking to him again, you could’ve chosen to urge him to come back to us. But you didn’t. You continued to lead him on, just as you led on Brent—”

“We’re together,” she whispered. “Gray and me. We’re in love.”

The silence that descended was so absolute that Jazz felt its echo in her chest like the reverberation from the amps. She wasn’t on stage right now but she might as well have been. It felt like a spotlight shone directly on her, highlighting her flaws. She would come up lacking. She always had.