Once upon a time, in a different world than mine, there lived a girl named Electra Beaudry.
And she was everything.
That's what Jake made it sound like, anyway.
Electra had loved bubbles and daffodils, the color pink, small white dogs, and tutus. Whenever there were cupcakes around, you had to keep a constant eye on her because if you didn't, she'd find them and lick the icing off every last one.
So basically, she was just like every other little girl in the world.
I wished Jake would fast forward, but listened anyway because his love for her was so clear in his wistful smile as he went on and on about all the trivial details that I didn't care a lick about. Obviously, the love was platonic, so it was completely unreasonable to feel jealous, but yeah, that was there too. Did that mean I was no different from Charlotte?
Eventually though, he got to the day they'd gone into the woods.
Jake and Peyton had been twelve, Charlotte ten, and Electra six. They'd gone because Charlotte had wanted to catch frogs. In hindsight, Jake said, maybe he and Peyton should've been suspicious - Charlotte had never liked the woods.
And Charlotte had told me the truth after all. Everything about Beaudry's wife running off with another man and sending back for Electra were true.
But as I'd suspected, there was more to the story than she knew, a part that Jake and Peyton had kept from her.
That part, that hideously catastrophic twist of fate, was so incredibly tragic, that to this day, it brings tears to my eyes to think about it.
Laney Beaudry had contracted a man named Thomas Lytle to kidnap Electra. In her defense, Lytle came with strong recommendations from people who needed men like him, as someone who was smart, efficient, and most importantly, trustworthy.
Lytle had taken a temporary position at the ranch, infiltrating their world. He'd befriended Charlotte and as agreed, had snatched Electra from the woods on that fateful day. He'd taken her back to his house and Laney had jumped on the first flight out, on her way to collect her.
Thomas had given Electra some food and a couple of toys to keep her occupied. Then, he'd locked her into a room and had gone out to buy cigarettes.
He didn't think anything of it, he lived alone in an isolated cabin near the woods and mostly kept to himself. He thought she'd be safe.
But while he was out, his brother, Cyrus, had come by.
Strung out on meth, he'd needed money.
While ransacking the house for something to pawn, he'd found Electra.
And he knew some people who would pay money for a girl...
Jake shrugged, his head bowed low, red-rimmed eyes staring at his open palms. "So he took her."
Days later, deep in the woods, the search team had found her ravaged tutu. DNA testing had identified two sets of samples. The blood was Electra's. The man's sample had been too degraded, but they were able to extract mitochondrial DNA. By then, Laney had confessed her part to Carson Beaudry, and they were able to match the DNA to samples found on Thomas Lytle's toothbrush.
Of course by then, Thomas Lytle was long gone.
Everyone assumed Electra dead, buried somewhere in the forest. Lytle's trail had gone cold and the books were closed, officially, anyway. Beaudry had wanted it that way- Canyon PD would never deliver the kind of justice he wanted.
A month later, Laney Beaudry had "accidentally" driven off a cliff while driving in Mexico.
And it had taken years, but eventually, Beaudry's men had tracked Thomas Lytle down. They picked him up in California and brought him back to Texas, tied him up in the old stables. There, Earl Waites had physically tortured Lytle for days. Beaudry had wanted every detail, every last bit of information. Apparently, there was honor among thieves, especially if they were brothers, because Thomas hadn't broken easily. It had been gruesome, but all men had their limits and eventually, he'd confessed to Cyrus Lytle's involvement.
Beaudry had executed Thomas himself, with a single bullet to the head.
Jake, had watched it all.
"What?" I cried out. "Why?"
Jake shrugged. "They always did that, my dad and Beaudry. For as long as I could remember, they always brought me along to watch them do their shady shit. Told me that it would make a man out of me."
I was horrified, but let him continue the story.
Cyrus Lytle had managed to clean up after a stint in rehab and had turned his life around. He was still living in Canyon, working a job loading cargo at a warehouse. He had a newborn daughter of his own, and volunteered at his church as a counselor for troubled teens.
They'd dragged him out of bed in the middle of the night and had strung him up where his brother had died the night before.
Cyrus had been nothing like his brother. He'd blamed the drugs and begged forgiveness, confessing to both the kidnapping and the rape. But not to murder. No, no, he hadn't killed her, he'd sold her to some guy who worked for a guy who operated a child trafficking ring. He couldn't remember his name, but he could find out. He would find out, if they would just let him go...
Beaudry had fallen to his knees. There was a chance that his Electra was alive. His thirst for vengeance was was quenched by his desperate need to find his daughter. Suddenly, Cyrus was no longer the cause of his despair, but his only hope.
So he'd released him.
But not without a plan. Beaudry did bad better than anyone else. A man had been dispatched with instructions to abduct Cyrus' daughter with the intention of holding her hostage until Cyrus delivered something worth trading her for.
But Jake didn't understand that then. All he saw was Electra's rapist walking out the door.
So he'd followed him out, grabbing the nearest weapon he could find. A tire iron, leaned up against the barn wall.
By the time Earl had managed to pull Jake off of Cyrus, it had been too late. The damage had been extensive and Cyrus was no more than a pile of useless flesh with a brain to match.
Beaudry had been the one to call the cops.
"So why did you come back here? And why does he let you stay?" I asked.
Jake chewed on his lip. "Because we still want the same thing."
"To find Electra," I whispered. "He's still looking."
"He'll never stop, not even once he's dead. There's a trust set up, one that ends when the last of his money does, which is pretty much never."
"Oh," I said.
"Beaudry had Electra late in life. He's old as fuck already and he knows his math. If she's found after he dies... I'm all she'll have in the world," he said.
"That's what he wanted from the beginning isn't it? He brought you to live with him so the two of you would grow up together like siblings, so you'd stay loyal to her. And he exposed you to all that violence because he wanted you to be able to go to all ends to protect her once he's gone. Because that's the kind of legacy his dirty money is going to leave behind."
"He wanted someone to look after her, yeah. Can you really blame him for that, though? It's just a father's love."
But what about you? How is that fair to you?
"So he acted impulsively when he called the cops and then regretted it. That's why he arranged to have your sentence reduced and moved you to a nicer correctional center," I said.
Jake laughed at that. "Beaudry doesn't act impulsively, and he sure as hell doesn't regret anything he does. He wanted me to serve the full sentence. Wanted me to learn not to act impulsively."
"Then what happened? Who did?" I asked.
Jake leaned back, rocking his chair onto its back legs. "Peyton did."
***
Child-Kings don't have the privilege of a childhood, and Peyton had been no exception.
Born heir to an enormous wealth, to a weak mother and an erratic father, Peyton Bishop's silver spoon had come with soul-crushing baggage.
Charlotte had exhibited signs of mental illness from an early age. Abigail Bishop, already having problems with her husband, had blamed herself. Too ashamed to admit the problem to her family in New York, she spiraled into a deep denial and coped by leaning heavily on her young son. Always bound by duty, Peyton hadn't seen it that way, but that too, had been a form of abuse.
As for Jake and Peyton, Jake's earliest memories started with Peyton already in them. He didn't know how they'd first met, only that he couldn't remember a time when he hadn't known him.
They were made for each other, these two terrified and lonely boys, both helpless pawns of irresponsible adults, being forced to witness the perils of the world earlier than they'd been ready to.
And because they'd met before they were aware enough to be self-conscious, they'd told each other everything, and found a kindred soul that truly understood. So they'd tried to help each other in every way they could, huddling together against the big bad darkness around them.
But it didn't matter that they'd seen and lived more horrors than some adults do in a lifetime. They were children, mistakes were made.
For example, when Charlotte had started climbing into Peyton's bed at night, Peyton hadn't wanted to distress Abigail with the problem. They'd thought an appropriate solution would be for Jake to fuck her to see if that fixed it.
"Did it help?"
He looked at me like I was insane. "Of course not. No, there's a lady in New York - Karla, a no nonsense, German woman who'd worked for Peyton's grandfather forever. Of all the adults he knew, Peyton trusted her most, so we called her. She flew down that very day and regulated the situation. Pretty much kicked Abby's ass and got Lottie the help she needed. She's helped him with everything since."
It was uncomfortable for me to bring it up, but I did it anyway. "I think Mr. Bishop might've sexually abused Charlotte. That's what she told me. Does Peyton know?"
Jake picked at a callous on his palm. "Yeah, he knows."
"And he didn't do anything about it?"
"It's a lot more complicated than that."
What could possibly be complicated about your father molesting your sister? Look how far Jake had gone for his "sister", and that was after she'd been beyond help!
"No really, it is," he said. "Jack Bishop has Dissociative Identity Disorder. It's a big secret, something to do with inheritances and such. As far as I know, only Karla, Abby, Peyton, Beaudry, and I know. But Peyton said to tell you everything, so..."
"What the hell is Dissociative-whatever?"
"Multiple Personality Disorder," he said.
That one, I knew.
Jake continued to pick at his hands. "So put yourself in Peyton's shoes. You've got a sociopathic, pathological liar of a sister crying sexual abuse at the hands of a father who literally is several different people in one body, and can't control his behavior. What do you do?"
My brain shut down trying to make sense of it, the walls of the room closing in around me.
This is what Peyton feels like all the time.
"So he split them up. Ever wonder why you rarely see Jack Bishop? He's pretty much locked up in the south wing of the house. You know his assistant? Trujillo? Not a secretary but a full blown MD. He and his team keep an eye on Jack 24/7- the guy can't take a piss without ten cameras trained on him. Sucks, but what can you do."
Oh God, Peyton.
It was a good thing that my face was too fucked up to read because Jake was watching me like a hawk. I cleared my throat. "So Electra."
He returned his attention to his hand. "Right."
Charlotte had immediately confessed to arranging Electra's kidnapping. There was no reason for her to hide it- she was long used to Jake and Peyton scaling mountains to protect her. Jake had lost it completely, but a trembling and stammering Peyton had convinced him to leave Charlotte out of it.
"He said it would make no difference," Jake said. "That we could tell Beaudry exactly what had happened, only say we saw Lytle ourselves. We'd seen him around the ranch, we knew him. No one had to know about Charlotte."
Because time was of essence, Jake had given in. The only thing that had mattered was getting Electra back. The seed had been planted though, a crack in the foundation of their friendship.
"It felt like he was asking me to give up my sister for his. I resented it. If it had been the other way around..." Jake shrugged. "I mean, I guess I don't know what I would've done."
"Do you still resent him for it? Blame him?"
He shook his head. "At the end, it didn't matter."
They'd ran home and told Beaudry, leaving Charlotte out of it. The police had been called, a manhunt launched.
The boys had huddled together at the stables, white faced and silent and waited.
Everything changed when Laney Beaudry had come running into the house. Wild eyed, hysterical, and desperate to find her daughter, she'd told Beaudry everything she knew. That included the details of Lytle's progress reports, and that had included Charlotte's involvement.
Beaudry had talked to the boys in his office.
As retribution for Charlotte's trespass, and in exchange for keeping it a secret, Peyton had offered Beaudry land. All of the Bishops' holdings in Texas, as soon as he inherited it.
I was dumbfounded. "And Beaudry took it?"
Jake's laugh was hollow. "Right? I think that was the first time I saw Peyton for what he was. Or maybe for what he was becoming. As for Beaudry, I'd stopped being surprised by the things he did a long time ago, but it still threw me off. It was as if he'd expected Peyton to make such an offer."
So Jake had sat there, sick to the stomach, as the two of them negotiated in an alien language. Later, Beaudry had told Jake that refusing the offer wouldn't have changed anything, wouldn't have brought Electra back, and that cash was king.
"Rich people are different, I guess, or maybe that kind of attitude is how you get rich to begin with. People like you and me, we'll never understand."
"So then what?"
"Then nothing. Peyton started boarding school the following fall. We still hung out when he came home, but our lives were going in different directions. Obviously." He'd tried to shrug it off, but he'd been hurt by it.
Because you still loved him.
"And then, a few years later, all that mess with Cyrus Lytle happened."
And Peyton helped you, because he still loved you.
Jake looked up at me, awaiting my judgment. He kept his face steady, but but I could tell that my reaction mattered.
"Last question," I said. "Why on earth did you keep fucking Charlotte after all that?"
He laughed. "What the fuck, Layla. All this and that's what it comes down to?"
Not really, but I wanted to lighten the mood. And yeah, I was curious.
Jake balled his fists up and pressed them against his eyes. "I dunno, Layla. I can't think or see straight when it comes to those two. I don't know if I'll ever be able to."
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