15. Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Fifteen
Nine years ago
Callie felt his presence before she saw him. The hair on the back of her neck rose, and her entire body began to tremble. She had tried to sleep. Really, she had, but there was just no way she could relax when she knew he would be arriving late tonight. She had tiptoed out of the house at two a.m., hoping that he might have the same idea. They had made no plan, arranged no secret rendezvous, but last year they had made the summerhouse their own, and she desperately wanted to find him here again.
She turned to find him silhouetted in the doorway, the full moon casting his face into shadow. The trembling grew so strong that her knees nearly buckled, but she managed to stumble across the room and meet him halfway. They wrapped their arms around each other and just stood there, holding on tight. Her trembling eased. The solidity of his body, the heat—the reality of Adam—was almost more than she could handle after so many months apart .
“I’m eighteen.” She spoke the words into his chest, but he heard them. He pulled back, his expression grim.
“I know.”
“You don’t look happy,” she said. “Why?”
“There’s something important we need to talk about.”
He had found someone else.
She tried to pull back, but he wouldn’t let go. She pushed against his chest, but found herself imprisoned within the circle of his arms. Her eyes burned, the tears ready to fall, but she squeezed her eyes shut and used her anger to hold the floodgates closed.
“Just say it.” She spoke the words to his chest. “And then let me go.”
If anything, he held her more tightly.
“They’re sending me to Singapore.”
His answer was so unexpected that it took her a few seconds to understand.
“On a business trip?” she asked.
He slid his hand around the nape of her neck and gently eased her head back so that she looked into his eyes rather than at his chest.
“On a five-year assignment.”
The weight of the words made it suddenly difficult to breathe.
“Five years is a long time,” she said softly.
“I know.”
He sat in one of the wicker armchairs. She curled up in his arms, wishing fiercely that she could make him stay.
“When do you leave?” she asked.
“Tuesday.”
She choked on the news. “So soon?”
His arms tightened around her. They sat in silence for a long time while she absorbed the full meaning of his news.
“Are you okay?” he finally asked .
She nodded, but didn’t try to speak through the lump in her throat. He shifted position so he could see her face.
“You don’t look okay,” he said, a crooked smile on his face.
She swallowed hard.
“I was the one who said ‘no plans, no promises,’” she whispered, “but I couldn’t help it. I just thought, now that I’m eighteen, and Madison really isn’t that far from Chicago….”
“I thought about it, too,” he admitted.
“I can wait for you.” She couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
“You have no idea how much I want that,” he said roughly, “but I won’t let you do it.”
“You don’t get to decide.”
Crazy as it seemed, she felt completely at peace with the idea of putting her life on hold for five years.
“Please, Callie. You’ve talked so many times about getting away from here and playing your music for other people. You need to do that. You need to go after what you want—not sit around waiting for me.”
She didn’t respond. He would be halfway around the world. If she wanted to wait for him, there was nothing he could do to stop her.
“Callie?”
She leaned forward to give him a swift, hard kiss. “If this is going to be our last weekend together, then I have only one request,” she said.
“What’s that?” He sounded suspicious.
“I want my first time to be with you.”
He went completely still, but she could feel the electricity race through both of them. Every muscle in his body tensed, and she was fully aware that one particular part of his anatomy thought this was a fantastic idea. That wasn’t the part she would have to convince. It was his brain that was going to cause problems .
“I’m not going to claim you like some prize and then walk away,” he said. “I’m not that much of an ass.”
“No,” she agreed. “That’s why I’m the one who’s going to claim you as my prize, and then I’ll walk away.”
He choked on a laugh, then said “It’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.” She climbed off his lap to stand before him in the moonlight. She didn’t want to waste a second of their time together. Grabbing the hem of her t-shirt she stripped it off, pleased to hear his swift intake of breath.
“I’m a grown woman and—quite legally—I can do whatever the hell I want.”
She slipped her thumbs inside the waistband of her pajama pants and would have stripped them off as well, but he leapt to his feet and grabbed her wrists. She laughed.
“Slow down,” he growled, holding her wrists behind her and pinning her body against his.
She found his chin with her mouth and kissed her way along his jawline, the harsh stubble burning her lips. When she reached his ear, she began whispering all the things she would like to do now that the legal barriers to their physical union had disappeared. He maneuvered her until her back hit the wall, then pinned her wrists above her head. He claimed her with his mouth, pressing the length of his body against hers and kissing her until she gasped for breath.
Desperate for more, she shifted her upper body, teasing both of them by brushing her breasts against his chest. He had taught her well last summer, and she used every lesson against him. He groaned, then adjusted his grip so that he could hold her wrists with just one hand. With the other, he grabbed her breast and held her body still, teasing the tip with his fingers until she whimpered his name.
He let go of her wrists. She wound her arms around his neck and wrapped one leg around his waist, locking him against her in case he had any stupid ideas about leaving. But he didn’t. He slid his hands beneath her hips and lifted her to meet him. She hooked her feet together, anchoring herself to him, and gave herself over to the fire.
She wasn’t the only one who had learned a lot last summer. He knew the secrets of her body, and he used them to his advantage. After so many months untouched, the combination of his hands kneading her backside and his erection grinding against her center had her shuddering in his arms within moments.
He scarcely gave her a chance to breathe before carrying her back to the chair. She curled up again in his lap, but this time he kissed her senseless. Each time she tried to peel off his shirt, he distracted her with his hands. He caressed her everywhere, his hands stroking up and down her back, her legs, and between her thighs, until she gasped his name and shuddered in his arms a second time.
When she had recovered, she climbed off his lap and stood before him with her hands on her hips.
“My turn,” she said. She reached for his hands and pulled him to his feet. “Take off the shirt.”
He obeyed her order with the half-smile that she loved. She moved into the circle of his arms and distracted him with a kiss while she pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. When she stepped back with her prize, he raised an eyebrow in question.
“Please tell me you have a condom in here,” she said. “You are not getting out of this with some lame excuse about not having condoms. Now do you have some, or do I need to go get mine?”
That got his attention. “I thought you said—”
She grinned at him.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “I knew you were coming.”
Now who was having trouble breathing? She opened his wallet and sure enough, there were three condoms tucked inside. She calmly ripped one condom from the chain, tucked the remaining two back inside, and tossed the wallet onto the chair.
He held himself very still, his breathing uneven. While he fought a losing battle with his conscience, she went about her business, unbuttoning his shorts and then slowly unzipping them, easing both his shorts and his boxers down his hips until they fell to the floor around his ankles.
She ripped open the condom. He put his hands over hers, whether to help or to stop her she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. She rolled the condom onto him all by herself, and by the time she had achieved her goal, both of them were struggling to breathe.
She led him over to the long, cushioned bench where they had so often stopped short of this milestone. He would have eased her back on the bench, but she turned them around and gave him a gentle shove. He lay back instead, pulling her on top of him.
She had waited so long for this moment that she wanted to move fast, but he slowed her down with his kisses and his hands until she grew impatient. He held her hips against his and she knew that, if she let him, he would pleasure them both without ever coming inside her. She dragged herself up to a sitting position.
“Please, let me have this,” she said.
He cradled her face in his hands, and she knew then that he would give her this gift, because that’s what it was: a gift that she would remember forever. She lifted herself up and positioned him so that she could torture them both by lowering herself every so slowly back down. He took a strangled breath and grabbed her by the hips. She smiled.
“Can’t wait?” she asked.
Instead of answering, he shifted his hands so that he could touch her center with his thumbs. She whimpered. The more she tried to lower herself onto him, the stronger the pressure of his fingers. Damn him, she was going to come before he was inside of her.
No more slow and easy. She was so wet and so close to coming apart that she barely felt the breaking of her barrier as she took him fully inside her. He groaned and his hands tightened reflexively, sending glorious shocks radiating from her center outward. She rolled her hips, experimenting, and he groaned again. She leaned forward, which also felt good, and he shifted his hands, so that he held on to her backside, helping her to rock against him again.
They moved together, finding their rhythm, until she could feel herself filled to overflowing. She clung tightly to him as her body tightened around him and he finally let go. In that moment, she knew that they belonged to each other.
Together they watched the darkness fade to dawn. Callie decided that she hated the sunrise. She hated all signs of time passing. One night gone. Only two remained.
“So how do we do this?” she asked. “Monday morning, at sunrise, what do we do?”
“I guess we say goodbye,” said Adam. “We’ve done it before.”
“And then? When will you be back?”
“I just don’t know,” he said softly.
At least he was honest. She thought about it for a minute.
“We won’t say goodbye,” she said. “We’ll just say, ‘Until I see you again.’ We don’t need to worry about exactly when that might be.”
He smiled. “Because we’ll see each other again.”
She smiled back. “Yes, we will.”
Callie couldn’t believe she had shut the door in Adam’s face. She was standing up for herself for the first time in years. She was throwing out challenges and playing with fire again. She leaned against the door, her nerve endings still zinging from the kiss. Who was this brave new woman inhabiting her body?
For so many years she had been faithful to Brian, or at least to the idea of their relationship. She had built a wall around herself, setting herself apart from the world, avoiding the temptations that Brian craved. But something had changed. She had changed.
Callie pushed herself away from the door and headed for the phone. She needed to talk to someone or she would explode, but she stopped halfway through dialing Tessa’s cell phone. She could imagine all too easily the scene on the receiving end of the call. Tessa and Mel were probably still at lunch with their mother, dissecting her life over salad. Sure, she wanted to talk, but not on speakerphone to all three of them at a restaurant. She put the phone down and stared at it for a moment.
There was nobody else she wanted to call.
She was too restless to write music, or even to play. She needed to move. She prowled the house, then grabbed her jacket. It was time to get out, to go somewhere, do something. Anything to get rid of this adrenaline rush.
But she stopped short at the door. She knew exactly what she needed to do, and it was right here in the house. Throwing her jacket toward the pegs on the wall, Callie marched back through the kitchen and took the stairs two at a time until she reached the attic studio.
It was time to open the box.
Callie flopped down in the resting chair and reached around the side. Sure enough, the flowered box was still there, hiding beneath the fringe of the afghan. She pulled it out and opened it on her lap, guilt and curiosity swirling inside her. For better or worse, the guilt wasn’t strong enough to stop her.
Best to start from the beginning. Callie tipped it so that the most recent letters fell against her stomach, giving her easy access to the earliest materials at the bottom. She quickly leafed through them until she held the first one in her hand. The postmarked dates went back almost thirty years.
September 29
Dear Dora,
I miss you. We all miss you. Even the babies know that something is wrong. I understand your reasons for leaving, but are you sure it’s the only way? We are a creative bunch. Perhaps we can come up with a better solution than severing all ties.
You know I will support you, even if you continue down this road, but please reconsider. We just don’t feel like a family without you.
Love,
Lauren
October 16
Dear Dora,
I must beg your forgiveness for sending that letter in September. You are absolutely right. It was incredibly selfish of me, and I won’t do it again. You deserve to lead your own life, and to find your own happiness, rather than simply playing a supporting role in mine.
Enclosed is a photo of the twins. I will try to send one each month, so you can watch them grow. Please write when you can. I want to hear all about this new life of yours.
Love,
Lauren
The enclosed Polaroid showed two babies, perhaps six months old. At the bottom Lauren had written “Ellie” and “James.” The pink bow on Ellie’s fuzzy head helped to distinguish girl from boy, but otherwise the two babies looked much the same in their one-piece pajamas.
Callie puzzled over the relationship between her mother and Lauren as she skimmed the next few letters in the series. Lauren had kept her promise. She had not repeated her plea for Dora to come back, and she had enclosed a photo in each letter. The letters grew longer as Lauren recounted funny little stories about the growing babies. After the first six months, the letters came less often, although each contained several photos. From time to time, Lauren would mention someone named Barrett (her husband?), but generally she talked about the children. Dora had clearly responded in kind, but her half of the conversation was missing.
Callie frowned in frustration. This was like reading a mystery book with pages missing and the end torn off. Who were these people? Why had her mother never mentioned them? There was an easy way to get answers to all her questions, of course. All she had to do was ask.
Right. Like she was going to admit to her mother that she had been snooping around. Even as she reached for the next letter, Callie knew that what she was doing was wrong, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. The idea that her mother had lived a whole other life, one that she had never mentioned to her daughters, completely blew her mind. Callie simply had to know more.
As the years passed, the notes became less frequent, but they were still stuffed with snapshots. Callie found herself fascinated by the parallel story of these twins in New York City, only a few years older than she and her sisters. They had suffered the same fashion disasters, the same unfortunate hairstyles, but the pair in New York did it with more flair and more money. The girl had even gone to a debutante ball when she was sixteen.
By the time Callie had caught up to the present, late-afternoon sun streamed through the studio windows. She studied the most recent photo, sent just before Christmas. Ellie and James were all grown up now, responsible adults back home for the holidays. It was Thanksgiving, if the turkey on the table was any indication. No spouses yet, but surely it wouldn’t be long. Both twins were attractive and, according to Lauren’s maternal bragging, extremely successful in their chosen careers.
Callie tucked the photo back into its envelope and reached for the final letter, the one that had piqued her curiosity in the first place. She re-read it, hoping for insight now that she had more context.
March 2
Dear Dora,
I am dying. I tell you this now, bluntly, because I am sick and tired of dancing around it. I was supposed to die when I was thirteen, and every year since then—43 of them!—has been a gift. We should be celebrating my triumph over the odds instead of tiptoeing around the truth. But the children are firmly planted in denial, unwilling to imagine a life without their mother. Even my doctors won’t say it plainly. Only Barrett understands. And you, I hope.
Frankly, I’m relieved that I can see the end approaching, and that it is not cancer. I have been stalked by that invisible enemy for too many years. I swore to myself that I would never submit to chemotherapy again, and I meant it. But my new diagnosis means that I don’t need to battle my physicians or my family, for there is nothing heroic they can do to save me. Thank God.
(It’s congestive heart failure. Ironic how the miracle that cured my cancer also sowed the seeds of my destruction.)
I write to you now, dear friend, because I would like to see you before I die. I would like you to see how Ellie and Jamie have grown up. I would like us all to be together one last time.
The doctors tell me that I may have another year or two, but they are lying. (They call it optimism.) I know my body. I know my self. I will have one last summer on the bay, and then I will fade away.
Would you deny a dying friend her last wish?
Please come see me.
Love,
Lauren
Callie had a better perspective on the letter now, but no idea how her mother might respond, or if she had responded already. She wished that she could meet Lauren. After reading all these years’ worth of correspondence, she wondered how her mother could have hidden a rich and vital friendship for so long. She wanted to know the mysterious Barrett, and the model children, Ellie and Jamie. More than anything else, she wanted to know if Dora planned to visit Lauren before it was too late.
The sound of a car coming down the drive startled Callie so much that she jumped to her feet. The box tumbled to the floor, letters and photos flying everywhere. A quick glance out the window confirmed her worst fear.
It was her mother.
Frantically, Callie scrambled to pick up the evidence, tossing it all back into the box in a jumble. She would have to come back later to sort them neatly in order to hide her tracks. But for the moment, she needed to get the letters back in the box, and fast.
When she had collected them all, she jammed the lid back on the box and slid it under the resting chair. The slam of a car door propelled her down two sets of stairs and out onto the sun porch, where she opened her guitar case, plopped into a chair, and began thrashing out a hard-driving rhythm, one that could plausibly explain why she hadn’t heard the car.
A few moments later, Dora stepped onto the sun porch.
“Hi sweetie, I’m back.”
Callie didn’t need to fake her start of surprise. She had been playing so loud that she really hadn’t heard her mother open the door.
“Hi Mom. How was lunch?”
“It was lovely to see your sisters, but we missed you. How did the songwriting go?”
“Great,” answered Callie, too quickly. It had been a bizarre day, from finding her notebooks to getting dunked to uncovering her mother’s secret past. The one thing she hadn’t done all day was write music. “I had a very productive day,” she said.
Her mother looked at her oddly—the woman had an excellent bullshit detector—but didn’t ask any more questions.
“Don’t forget, you’re on for dinner.”
“I know. I’ll be right there.” Callie began to put away her guitar.
“I can help,” said Dora, opening the door to head back inside. “I just need to put my shopping away. Oh! And don’t let me forget.” She paused in the doorway. “We need to talk calendar. At lunch, your sisters and I cooked up a plan for a girls’ weekend in New York.”
Callie’s head snapped up, but her mother had already gone back into the house. Now Callie had a dilemma on her hands: Should she tell her sisters?