Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
FORREST
I t was a ninety-minute drive to the coast, where my mom and Jerry had their place. We pulled in a little after I’d guessed we’d be there, coming to a stop in the gravel drive in front of their house, the deep navy of the Pacific Ocean far in the distance, below the cliffs beyond the house. Once, this property had been part of hundreds of acres overlooking the coastline, with sweeping views surrounded by wild nature. Years before, the land had been subdivided, and Jerry had managed to snag ten acres with a sliver of the cliffs to call his own. A handful of outbuildings had come with the land, and he’d used one of them as his pottery studio, but he hadn’t built anything until he’d convinced my mother to marry him. Then they’d designed a modern house, all angles and wide cedar plank siding, with tall plate glass windows that looked over the land and the ocean beyond the cliffs.
Around the house, they had a kind of farm. I say “kind of” because it was nothing the two of them couldn’t manage easily. There were chickens and a goat. The area she’d set aside for vegetables was at least fifty percent bigger than the last time I’d been out. Speckled around the property were the outbuildings, all of them with dark green siding built in a style that far predated the contemporary main dwelling.
When my mom had met Jerry, she’d thought he was a potter, teaching a ceramics class she’d signed up for as a way to fill her time and keep her creative juices flowing. She’d assumed Jerry was a poor artist and been chagrined to find out that he’d actually started and sold a successful company selling kombucha. His distinctively branded bottles were found all over the Pacific Northwest. He wasn’t Sawyer-level wealthy, but he’d had a healthy bank account and the desire to spoil my mother with as much compost and as many farm animals as she could handle. These days, she was mostly retired, puttering around her land, growing things, playing with experiments in the kitchen, and generally causing trouble.
At the sound of our doors closing, my mom strode out of the house onto the deck. The familiar sight of her sent a stab through my heart and brought unexpected tears to my eyes. It was the first time in my life I’d gone so long without seeing her, and fuck, I’d missed her.
She stood on the front deck in a pair of old jeans—probably Jerry’s—that hung from her hips and were patched at the knee, held up by a braided leather men’s belt. Over that, she wore a flowing grass green tank top, her mostly gray hair long and wild in waves and curls almost to the middle of her back. She’d added streaks of hot pink since I’d last seen her. Except for the gray, she looked years younger than her age. Her eyes were sharp as they landed on us.
“Finally.” She strode down the steps from the deck and down the walkway to come to a stop in front of Sterling. She gave Sterling a slow once-over with hazel eyes so like mine, taking in every detail of the woman beside me. When she got to Sterling’s face, she smiled. “Sterling Sawyer,” she stated with a hint of Georgia in her voice, “I heard you don’t take after your daddy.”
Sterling smiled back and said, “God, I hope not.” She held out her hand.
My mother ignored it and pulled her into a tight hug. “I’m Emily. It’s good to finally meet you,” she said. “I’m glad he brought you home.”
Sterling’s hands rose to tentatively pat my mother’s back. I didn’t think she’d been expecting the warm welcome. To be honest, neither had I. I wasn’t sure what to expect. It had been a long time since I’d brought a girl home to my mother. Not since high school. And never anyone like Sterling. Never the woman I loved.
My mother’s welcome for me was significantly less warm. She leaned in and wrapped her arms around me, giving me a tight, quick squeeze. “It’s good to have you home.” Letting me go, she stepped back. “Come in. We’ll have dinner soon,” she said, turning and leading us into the house. “Jerry’s out helping a neighbor with his fence. He’ll be back soon. Can I get you something to drink? Tea? Wine?”
“I’d love some tea,” Sterling said. “With the time change, I keep forgetting it’s almost my bedtime. I feel like we’ve been traveling for weeks. It’s hard to believe we were in Sawyers Bend this morning.”
My mother pulled out a teapot and a matching set of teacups that I recognized immediately as Jerry’s work.
“These are beautiful,” Sterling said, admiring the deep red glaze that faded to orange and then to a bright yellow at the lip of the mugs.
My mother smiled. “My husband Jerry made them. He’s an amazing potter.”
“Oh, that’s so cool. We have some wonderful potters at home. The area I live in attracts artists.” Sterling lifted the mug and studied the rich color of the glaze. “This is really gorgeous. I’d love to see more of his work.”
“Oh, we’ve got it all over the house,” my mother said, pride evident in her voice. “There’s some in a gallery in town, too. He still teaches classes now and then. It’s how we met.”
Sterling and my mother talked as my mother put together tea and filled a plate with my favorite ginger snaps. She might be angry with me, but she was still my mom. I sat at the table, silent, absorbing the awesome weirdness of my two favorite women getting along, happily chatting. I’d always thought they’d like each other. Had, in my most optimistic moments, dreamed about Sterling being welcomed in my mother’s kitchen, the two of them enjoying each other. But now, after the last year of solitude frozen out by both of them, it just felt surreal.
My mother poured tea and set our mugs in front of us, and then I recognized the look on her face. It was time to talk business. Mom Business. She raised one dark eyebrow, her sharp gaze moving from Sterling to me.
“Explain,” she said.
“Explain?” I asked, raising an eyebrow back.
“Don’t get smart with me, young man,” she said. “Explain why you’re still wasting your time chasing daydreams.”
“They aren’t daydreams, Mom,” I said. “Dad left behind a code?—”
My mother smacked her palm on the table so hard that the plate with the cookies jumped. Ripples ran across the top of my tea, and my mom’s eyes went from sharp to stark with pain. My stomach twisted. I hated this part of it, hated that she’d never been able to hear a single word about my dad.
“Forrest,” she said, her voice tight, “I’ve barely talked to you for a year. I recognize that is mostly my fault. I was angry, maybe angrier than I have a right to be, considering that you’re an adult living your life. But I cannot understand why you would risk your career and the woman you told me you’d fallen in love with, chasing some fantasy of your father’s. There are no accounts filled with money. I don’t know what happened to all of it, but it’s gone. He didn’t leave us anything. He just left us.”
Her voice cut off with a choke, and she swallowed hard, blinking away the gathering moisture in her eyes.
“I’m not wasting my time,” I said evenly, trying to control my frustration. “And I don’t care if there isn’t any money. This isn’t about the money.” I looked to Sterling, for whom this was very much about the money. “If there isn’t any money, I’ll?—”
Before I could finish, Sterling cut me off. “Shut it, Forrest. I don’t care about the money either.”
I saw in her eyes that she was telling the truth.
“Emily,” Sterling started gently, “I don’t know if there’s any money. We’ll find out, I hope, eventually. But I decoded the clue on the statue of Vitellius, and Forrest and I have been following all of the clues his father left. It isn’t daydreams. It’s important.” She looked at me, emotion heavy in her eyes. “He left this for Forrest. He wanted Forrest to do this. It’s not a waste of time, but I’m sorry that it makes you sad.”
My mother didn’t say anything, but I could tell she was listening.
“Mom,” I said, “Sterling’s right. I have to do this. I have to follow this trail Dad left for me. It’s been full of memories. We went to the lake house. I saw Sugar Mae and Bob. I’d forgotten about them.”
My mother lifted a hand to shield her eyes as if it was too bright in the kitchen. Her shoulders hitched, and I hated myself anew for forcing her to deal with all of this, to feel these things she hated to feel. But she had to know.
“They miss you,” I said quietly.
“I miss them too,” she whispered. “They were good friends. I just…I couldn’t stay, I couldn’t… Forrest…I’m sorry… I’m sorry I haven’t been able to let you have your father. I just…” She dropped her hand and lifted her eyes, shattered with pain.
My heart flinched. I didn’t want to think, didn’t want to imagine what it would be like—to lose Sterling. And not the Sterling of today, but a Sterling I’d married and had a child with, had a life with. And then to have her be gone, to have her leave me in such a final way by her own choice.
No, I couldn’t fathom what that would do to me. And my mother didn’t know what Emmett Blake had discovered.
“Mom,” I said, afraid that I was only going to cause her more pain. “Have you ever considered that Dad may not have killed himself?”
My mother shook her head, tendrils of hot pink and gray brushing her cheeks. She tucked her hair roughly behind her ears. “Forrest, we can’t rewrite the past.”
“I’m not,” I said. I looked to Sterling and back to my mother. “Sterling’s been doing most of the work solving these codes and ciphers Dad left behind. But we came across one we couldn’t crack.”
I wasn’t telling her the story about the root cellar or any of the reasons we left Sawyers Bend. That would only get me in more trouble.
“We brought the latest cipher to some security people Sterling’s brother used to work with. And they, um… They looked into me since Sterling and I are…” God, this was awkward and complicated to explain. “Anyway…when they investigated me, they looked into what happened to Dad.”
I explained what Emmett Blake had found. My mom was shaking her head before I could finish telling her about the gun that hadn’t been fired.
“No,” she said. “Forrest, no. I don’t want to hear fairy tales. I don’t want revisionist history bullshit. The past is the past. Your father left us, and I will never forgive him for that. I will never be at peace with it. And I won’t let you sell me some story. I won’t let you give me hope. I’d rather have the truth, and the truth is that he’s gone.” Her eyes burned with anger and pain, tears pooling on her lashes.
“Mom…can’t you just listen?” I pushed, hating that I was hurting her all over again.
“I am listening,” she said, “but you don’t have any proof. The police looked into his death all those years ago, and no one ever said it was anything other than suicide. I won’t have it.” She smacked the table again, the teapot and mugs rattling at the impact. “Do you hear me? Unless you have real proof, I won’t discuss it. Do you have anything more than shadows and ghosts?”
I let out a long sigh and shook my head.
“Then get out. Just give me a few minutes. Please. And then I don’t want to discuss this again.” She stood, wobbling a little. “You two go poke around in the garage, see if you can find your boxes while I finish up dinner. We’ll eat the cookies later.”
I stood. “Mom…I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if I should tell you?—”
She cut me off with a shake of her head. “I was so mad at you for lying last year and causing yourself so much trouble. I can’t be mad at you now for telling the truth. Even if it’s only your truth. But I need a minute. Please.”
I nodded, sick to my stomach at her distress, my heart aching. I’d hurt her by lying, I’d hurt her by staying away, and now the thing that I’d thought might make her feel better had only hurt her more.
I hated it. I hated myself more than a little for doing what I’d done.
“Give a shout when dinner’s ready,” I said and led Sterling back out the front door, across the yard, past the chicken coop to the old garage.