Chapter 24
Shannon chased Dina down the block and around the corner. “I just want to talk to you, Dina!” Shannon cried. “I think you owe me that, after everything.”
When Dina realized that Shannon wasn’t going to let up, she whirled around and threw up her hands. “All right! Fine. I’ll talk.”
Shannon gasped for breath. She pressed her hand against the stone building beside them, then pulled the envelope of pictures from her back pocket. Slowly, she said, “I didn’t know. None of us did.”
Dina pulled the first few photographs from the stack. Shannon studied Dina’s expression as she pored over the happy and beautiful life and memories she’d shared with Shannon’s father. Dina’s eyes glinted with tears, but it didn’t make sense, not if Dina had always been with Fred Peters for money.
“Where did you get these?” Dina asked softly.
“On the street,” Shannon said. “You threw them out.”
“I didn’t.” Dina pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. “I would never have thrown them out. I recently moved in with Mikey, and yeah. Yeah. You heard what he said about Fred.”
“About my father,” Shannon said, her voice breaking. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation.
Dina let herself fall to the ground. She sat on the sidewalk with her back against the wall and her head between her knees. Shannon had never seen her so defeated.
“What are you doing?” Shannon demanded. The least Dina could do, she felt, was own up to what was happening. She could admit what she’d done was wrong.
And then, she realized that Dina was crying. “I didn’t want to blackmail him,” she breathed. “I loved him.”
This knocked Shannon to the ground as well.
She watched as her ex-friend and ex-flatmate sobbed with sorrow, missing the man they were both missing, aching for the life she’d thought was her own.
Shannon wanted to tell Dina that she couldn’t have loved my father because he loved my mother.
But nothing in life felt sure anymore. Up was down.
“What about Mikey?” she asked instead.
Dina sniffed and sniffed. “I met Mikey when Fred—I mean, your dad—told me we couldn’t see each other anymore.
This was back at Christmastime, I guess.
I was devastated. I probably would have fallen in love with anyone.
I told Mikey about Fred, about how wealthy he is and how mean he was to me, and Mikey told me that we had to find a way to get some of his money.
When Fred reached out to me again in February, asking to get back together, I wanted to break things off with Mikey.
But Mikey urged me to see him. He told me this was our chance to get back at Fred and start a life together. ”
Shannon listened, dumbfounded. Never in a million years could she have expected to pity Dina, not when it came to the relationship Dina had with her father.
“Things were still pretty new with Fred,” Dina said. “I thought I could push Mikey off eventually, and Fred and I would find a way to be together. I knew that he and Arietta were going to Greece for some conference…”
“For their anniversary,” Shannon interjected, but Dina didn’t care.
“But I thought maybe in a year, maybe in two, Fred would come clean with Arietta, and we could make a real go of it. I imagined having kids with him, Shannon. I genuinely thought we were going to have a life together.” Dina let out a horrible sob.
“And now, he’s… he’s not dead? I guess? But I don’t even know how he is.
I don’t know what he looks like. I have nightmares, Shannon.
I can’t believe I never got to say goodbye to him.
I don’t know if he’d recognize me if…” She kept crying.
Shannon gaped at Dina—at this woman who’d wanted to become her stepmother. It was a story she couldn’t fully fathom. It didn’t fit easily into any box.
Many things could be true at once, she knew. She could be angry with Dina and her father for what they’d done. But Dina could still be grieving about Fred’s stroke. Dina could still be grieving a life she’d believed would be hers one day.
Shannon remembered how, not long after Fred’s stroke, Dina had bought her that coffee. She’d wanted to be close to Shannon, if only because Shannon was the closest person to Fred she had.
“Oh, it’s such a mess,” Dina whispered.
Shannon didn’t know what to say. “What about the twenty grand?” she asked.
Dina pulled her hands from her face. “What twenty grand?”
Together, they turned to look at the bar, where they’d left her poisonous boyfriend Mikey.
“He’s been trying to get more out of my mother,” Shannon said. “But Dina, we’ve been through so much. Please. Will you help us get that money back?”
Dina sniffed and sniffed. “I’ll do it,” she whispered. “I’ll do it for Fred. But Shannon, you have to do something for me, too. Can you promise me that?”
Shannon wasn’t sure if she could promise this woman anything. But she was desperate. “All right,” she said. “Tell me what you want.”