Chapter 47 Let the Past Be the Past ’Til It’s Weightless #2
“Can you talk about the bird? Or is that too upsetting?”
Again, his question stops me in my tracks. While it probably should be an uncomfortable topic, it’s stirring up sweet nostalgia. Not the sour kind.
“I can talk about the bird. It was a European bee-eater. Stunning species.”
Sounding light with curiosity, he says, “Never heard of it. Tell me what makes it so special.”
Grinning, I explain how it was on my Aunt’s bird bucket list. She was ticking off all the ones she found the most beautiful. It’s a tough one to spot because of its migration habits and the way it burrows instead of nesting in visible locations.
My volume decreases to a whisper as my thoughts drift from the bird to that fateful day. “A breeding location was found in this old quarry. It was a perfect window of opportunity for her to finally see it.”
“I see.”
The sourness I was expecting earlier appears. “Sadly, Aunt Slow Mo never saw the bird. Not that trip, anyhow. I did.” I swallow. “And Zara did.”
My next exhale quivers out of my chest, bringing some of the regret, guilt, and shame to the surface.
He comforts me, caressing me in silence for a bit before he asks, “Can I be frank with you?”
Unable to let him get away with the cliché phrasing, I quip, “I’d prefer you be Reed. If not, then how about Francois?”
“Walked right into that one.”
Smirking, I pat his forearm twice, encouraging him to say whatever he was planning to say.
“Earlier, you said that regardless of what was in the police report, you blamed yourself.” He pauses, and I hear and feel him swallow. “Baby, there’s no freaking way it was your fault. Maybe nothing I do will convince you of that. Will you let me try?”
“Okay, Frank,” I jest. “Give it your best shot.”
“I look at death through the lens of an investigator. It’s all I know. If this were my case, I’d ask you a few questions. And I’d study the evidence. The facts always guide me to a logical conclusion.”
Tentatively, I grant his implied request. “Fire away.”
“A lot of what I’d normally ask, I already know from what you’ve said tonight or what I read in the file.
Things like why you were there, who was with you, and all that shit.
Based on everything I know, I’m left wondering only a few things.
Are you sure it’s okay to ask? I don’t want you to feel like you’re on the witness stand or anything. ”
I twist my head, trying to peek at his face and flash him my slight smile. “This is fine. Your tone is nice and calm. You may proceed.”
“Good.” He kisses my cheek delicately. “When you and I went birding, you didn’t take any photos. Seeing the bird was enough for your list. Why did you and Zara want a picture of this bird? Was it because it was so photogenic and you wanted to remember it forever?”
“Not exactly. The photo wasn’t for us. It was for Aunt Slow Mo. We were afraid it would return to the burrow before she got up there.”
“Ah. Got it.” He pulses his arms around me. “If this were my case, that would leave me with two more questions. And honestly, I don’t need to ask them because of how well I know you.”
“Pretend you don’t know me. What would the questions be?”
After waiting a few seconds, he finally decides it’s safe to proceed. “I would have asked if you forced Zara to take the picture, either by threat of violence or malicious manipulation.”
I shake my head. “I would never force her. She offered to do it.”
“That’s exactly why I didn’t ask.”
“Out of sheer morbid curiosity, what was the second question?”
“The second question is even less necessary. There’s no way you’d—”
Sensing what he’s getting at, I answer before he vocalizes the question. “No, I didn’t push her. I tried to stop her from falling. I didn’t do anything to make her fall.”
He rubs his hand in a circle over my heart, massaging the deep ache. “Cookie, did you hear what you just said? You came to the same conclusion that I did. It isn’t your fault.”
At least a dozen objections try to form on my tongue, but they fizzle before I can get them out.
Despite being in bed, my stomach thinks I’m on a roller coaster. The fastest one on the planet. Hairpin turns. Death spirals. Ninety-degree drops.
It leaves my head spinning and heart racing.
He led me to a conclusion that I probably would’ve seen myself if it weren’t for my trauma blocking the path.
Reed doesn’t speak for a long time. He keeps his hand over my heart.
“Is it really that simple?” I ask, my voice a mere puff of air.
“Nothing’s ever simple. But this case is pretty cut and dry.”
One of those objections finally flings out of me. “It was my idea to take the—”
He interjects in a warm, soothing tone. “I hear you. An idea can’t kill anyone. Only actions do. None of your actions caused her death. It was a tragic accident. Nobody is to blame. Least of all you, Lila.”
For the first time, the possibility that I’m not the cause of Zara’s death begins to seep in.
As it does, it’s both easier and harder to breathe.
I’ve been swaddled in a blanket of guilt since I was seven. Reed’s heartfelt words and his conviction are wearing the fabric away, unraveling the threads.
As the shame and regret begin to disintegrate, I’m able to move. My heart isn’t fossilized in that old, fractured state.
And it starts beating again.
All because of this amazing man and his goal of fighting my demons. Yet he has his own.
Reed deserves the same respite from what haunts him.
I start to twist to face him, tapping his forearm to signal my move. Once our bodies are aligned, I nestle my cheek against his warm chest. Without speaking, we find a way to re-entangle ourselves. Legs, arms, and hands all snuggle their way home.
He cradles the back of my head, gently holding me in place. His heart beats soothingly against my ear.
“When you froze after I called you dimples, were you thinking about your parents or your twin?”
His sharp intake of breath echoes from behind his chest wall, making it sound more profound. “Sort of.”
I wait him out, inherently knowing he needs time to open up that vault he’s kept his past in.
“Other than the endless list of insults Kenzie flung at me, nobody has ever called me by anything other than my government name. And that realization really fucking sucks.”
“Because . . .” I lead him to continue so he doesn’t shut down before he purges this from his psyche.
“I suppose it made me wonder why I never mattered enough to anyone for them to give me a stupid nickname.” He groans. “It sounds pathetic. Sorry.”
“No. Don’t apologize. It isn’t pathetic. And it isn’t true. You’ve always mattered to me.”
He kisses the top of my head. “I know that now.”
“I’m curious about something you said the other day about your birth mom and whatever she did to you. Can you tell me what you meant?”
Faking irritation, he quips, “Oh yeah. That little slip. I should’ve known you wouldn’t let it go.”
I barely quash a snort-laugh. “If you were in my shoes, would you ignore it?”
“Fair point.”
Silence mingles with our steady breathing. If it weren’t for his continued caressing, I’d swear he fell asleep. Possibly to get out of answering me.
Eventually, he finds the words and the strength to share them. The same way I had to. Walls like ours don’t crumble instantly or easily.
“Since I was four when I was adopted, almost five, I always knew I wasn’t their real child.
Yet I didn’t fully comprehend what it meant to be adopted or how it worked.
Not only was I too young, but I also had no foundational knowledge of what a family was.
We were given up as newborns. We never had a mom or dad.
Only a rotation of caregivers. What makes a family—mom, dad, sister, babies, grandparents—none of those things were in my sphere of awareness.
All I knew was that one day I was in a random house with my brother and a bunch of kids. The next, I was Reed Hayes.”
When his words seem to trail off, I squeeze him a little harder to nudge him. I don’t have an FBI agent’s toolkit, so I’ll have to coax him through this my own way.
“My new mom was pregnant with Kenzie, and they did all the bullshit to prepare me to be a big brother. As her belly grew, the idea of a mother became concrete. I saw it happening. And I knew I didn’t grow in this lady’s belly, so where the hell is the belly Perry and I came from? Where’s our mother?”
After another weighted pause, he says, “From that point on, I assumed our parents didn’t want us, or they were dead. I hated not knowing. As I grew older, it got worse. It ate at me. I had to fucking know.”
“I get that. Ignorance isn’t always bliss.”
“Exactly. The Hayes family dynamic made the urge to learn the truth about my birth family so much intense.”
“What do you mean by the dynamic?”
“I didn’t belong with them. I’m not a real Hayes.
Never will be. And to be honest, I never wanted to be.
I was perfectly happy in that fucking foster home with my brother.
” His voice holds a ghost of a tremble that breaks my heart.
“Except for the bare minimum of affection my dad showed me, I had no clue what it was like to be loved and wanted. Truly wanted.”
“But they had to want you. They adopted you. That’s a big deal.”
“Oh, I’m sure they did at first. Then Kenzie came along, giving them the baby they always wished they could conceive.
At that time, I remember constantly crying and begging to go back to the only family I knew.
So my connection with them wasn’t strong.
Likewise, theirs with me. After Kenzie was born, they no longer bothered to make me feel welcome.
I was just there. A burden or obligation. Unwanted all over again.”
I hate that for him. So, so much. The anger makes finding a response difficult, especially since it rings true with how I felt in my family after Zara died. An unwanted obligation.
Reed continues sharing before I know what to say.
“I was away at college when I finally snapped. And it was a freaking psychology class that illuminated some of my dark thoughts. The ones always under the surface. They haunted me like phantom pains when someone loses a limb. The core of who I am was a mystery, familiar but also completely out of reach. I needed to know who made me. Or made us, actually. Did we look like my birth mom or my dad? Did my birth father have the same voice? Did they have brown eyes too? Why did they name us Perry and Reed? If they were alive, where have they been all these years? Was there a chance they’d want to know me as an adult?
And most of all, did they ever love us at all?
I needed to know how they justified throwing us out like trash. ”
“You aren’t trash.”
Instead of responding to my declaration, he presses on. “Since I was over eighteen, I was able to petition the court for the information on my birth mother. I started there. And I found her. Alive and well in Tennessee.”
My heart catapults into my throat.
His next words might as well slice their way out of his throat with rusty blades from how harsh they come out. “Turns out, the truth was far worse than merely being unwanted. My mother had a choice. And she made it. Perry and I paid the price for her selfishness. She could have kept—”
The shrill ring of his phone silences Reed’s words.
“Shit. I need to get that.” With an annoyed huff, he releases me to grab his cell. “It’s Andrews. Fuck me running. This is gonna be bad.” He taps the screen and raises it to his ear. “What is it?”
Reed slides to the edge of the bed and swings his legs out, resting his feet on the floor. Meanwhile, my mind reels over everything he shared. More importantly, where it was leading.
His mother made a choice. A selfish one.
What could that possibly mean? It sounds far worse than simply choosing to put them up for adoption.
It might kill me to wait until after this phone call to find out what he was about to say. Talk about leaving me hanging. Not only am I not getting that BJ lesson tonight, but the chance for him to get this off of his chest is fading fast.
“I can’t leave Lila alone. Especially not now,” he seethes into the phone.
Shoot. He needs to leave. And apparently, something else has happened to put me in more danger than I was when he left me alone last night.
Unless I’m totally misreading this. Too bad I can’t hear what Agent Dad is telling him. Instead, it’s just a rattle of an indecipherable voice that escapes past Reed’s ear. There’s no doubt he needs to leave, though.
Reed’s entire body stiffens. “No way. After what happened with Riddick, you think I’ll trust one of them with her? Not a fucking chance. Who else can we get?”
Okay, sounds like I wasn’t wrong. I’d like to feel proud of my ability to decode a one-sided conversation, but this isn’t the time.
I watch him get progressively more agitated as he shoots down suggestion after suggestion, presumably for someone to babysit me. Eventually, he finally accepts the last suggestion.
“Yes, fine. I know they’re good. But . . . “ He forks his fingers through his hair. “Just not him. They can send someone else.”
Him?