Chapter Nine
I t had been three days since the service, three days since I had learned that my origin story was a sham, a charade, a big fat whopper. That I was likely the product of my dad not pulling out in time rather than a miracle achieved by two loving parents. It took me twenty-four hours to find the courage to read my father’s letter. As if the emotional beat down of the past few weeks hadn’t been enough, I felt myself completely unravel when I read his words.
My dearest Peanut,
If you are reading this, then your mother and I have passed. I know it is selfish, but I hope our departure causes you to grieve at least a little, knowing full well that after you receive this, you’ll likely curse us both – justifiably so.
Obviously, Howard has given you the envelope with your original birth certificate, the few photos I had of your mother, Lisa, and this letter. I wish I could hug you as I know this must be a bit of a shock, and I’m sure you’re wondering why we didn’t tell you sooner. In the simplest terms, I made a vow.
Your mother, Lisa, was a free spirit, a lover of butterflies, ramen noodles, the spicier the better, the sun on her face, and the wind in her hair. She was unlike anyone I had ever known and she cartwheeled into my life just when I needed her most. You were conceived out of that love.
Those were some of the happiest days of my life, anticipating your arrival with the woman who filled my life with everything good. But then your sister Sophie got sick with measles which caused encephalitis and we were sure she was going to die. Being a man of faith, I prayed to God for her to be spared and she was. I knew afterwards that I had to make things right, so I told Barbara about Lisa and you. She seemed to take it well. She wanted to meet your mother. Looking back, I should have said no, but Barbara had been unhappy in our marriage, too, and I thought we were in agreement to end it. I assumed we’d find a way to raise Sophie and you separately but together. It was not to be.
After one meeting with Barbara, a new plan was suddenly in place. Lisa would give us full custody of you and she would go away for good. My world fell apart after that and the only thing that kept me going was you. When you laughed I heard your mother’s laugh. When you smiled, I saw the kindness she had shown me and countless others. She was a good woman, selfless and kind. Do not judge her harshly for walking away. It was not easy for her, but she knew once she met Barbara that your life would be impossible if she tried to stay with me. She felt no child should suffer through that.
When she held you in the hospital that one and only time, she wept and said you were the most beautiful baby she had ever seen. She was right. Then she asked me to make sure that I loved you enough for both of us. As I write this, you are sleeping in the bassinet beside my desk. I hope that when you read this, you will feel that I did love you enough for both of us. You are and always will be my greatest joy.
I have no right to ask, but if you decide to find your mother, please tell her that I never stopped loving her just as I will always love you.
Forever yours,
Dad
I read the letter, cried over it, read it again and again and cried some more. I was in a whirlwind of emotions, running the gamut from sad to angry and back to sad. Frankly, it was exhausting.
After hours of chewing on it, I came to some conclusions. My mother had been bought off by Babs. That was my first thought because I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that my birth mother ditched me without some seriously green incentive. My second was what a spineless frail thing Lisa must have been to give up her baby to a shrew like Babs. In my scorching disappointment, I thought maybe I was better off not having been raised by someone so weak. But then, I remembered this was Babs. She always got what she wanted no matter the cost to the other person. I knew this because she had cost me plenty.
Rage filled the vacuum left by my disappointment. I wanted to hurt someone, flay them bloody with caustic words and, if possible, back over them with a car. And not just someone but Babs. I desperately wanted to torture her the way she had tortured me over the years with her scrutiny and nitpicking and withholding of affection. Me, whose only fault was that I was conceived out of love by a woman who wasn’t her.
But Babs, that wily bitch, had outmaneuvered me once again. Tying me to my half-sisters—
yep, still weird—with this house and our substantial inheritance. The only way I could hurt Babs would be to pack a bag and walk away, letting her two precious darlings lose everything. That would teach her. That would show her. Yeah, except Babs was dead. There would be no showdown where I got to watch the pain of my betrayal crush her spirit.
And if I did walk away, it would destroy my sisters. Em, who didn’t even know who she was without Babs, and Soph, whose marriage in my opinion was rocky at best. If I let the house and the inheritance go to Paisley, what would happen to them? Did I care? Yes. I loved my sisters. Damn it!
I studied the best picture of my birth mother out of the three my father had left me. It was a profile shot of her sitting on the beach watching the waves. She had a determined chin and a slightly upturned nose that I recognized in the mirror as my own. I couldn’t tell what color her eyes were but I was betting they were a dark blue, like mine. Her smile looked generous and her hair, oh, her glorious hair. Just the sight of the wild dark curls being tossed on the breeze made my eyes burn and my throat get tight. What would it have been like to be loved by someone like her? By someone who gloried in my rebellious nature? By someone who resembled me, who understood me?
It hurt so damn much. I stuffed the pictures and the original birth certificate, honestly, what was I supposed to even do with that, and the letter from my father into its envelope and then slid the whole thing into a T-shirt. I loved Em, but she was a world class snoop and this, all of it, I wanted to be just mine for a while until I could think about being given up by my mother and raised by Babs and not feel like throwing up. I suspected it was going to take a while.
Thankfully, there was enough that needed to be done around here to keep me occupied, especially since the boy next door had made himself scarce and I didn’t even have random sightings of Liam to distract me. If that wasn’t enough of a pisser, any time I tried to get Em to confront the reality that was our mother’s bedroom, she freaked out. She didn’t want anything touched, moved, or donated to charity.
Soph and I were at a loss. Despite the will’s dictate that I stay through the summer, I wasn’t going to be in Gull’s Harbor forever and since Babs had been a shopper right up until the bitter end, her walk-in closet was crammed top to bottom with clothes, jewelry, cosmetics, you name it, if the shopping channel carried it, Babs bought it.
When I looked at her array of stuff, most of it still unused, I couldn’t help but think there were a lot of women’s shelters who could really use these goods. It killed me that Em was unwilling to part with any of it.
“This is going to take weeks, possibly months, to sort,” I said. We were standing in the main bedroom that had been our parents’ and then Babs’s on the first floor of the house.
“So?” Em asked.
“So, unless you want to be stuck with the burden of doing it by yourself, you need to let me at least start the process,” I said.
“No!” Em shouted. She sounded panicked. “Nothing is being given away. Nothing!”
Em was red in the face with her fists clenched at her sides like a three-year-old in the throes of a tantrum. Just like when we were little, this irritated me more than it made me want to jolly her out of her mood.
“Listen, Em,” I said. “I know this is hard—”
“Don’t!” Em cried. “You’ve been away for years. You don’t get to pretend that this,” she paused to gesture wildly around the room, “is the same for you as it is for me.”
I sighed. It shouldn’t have hurt because she spoke the truth and yet, it did. Now I understood why everything had been so toxic for me here, so not only did I feel like a neglectful sister, I also felt like an interloper, too. Good times.
“Listen, I get that you were closest to Ba...er...her.” There, I was trying to make an effort. “And I know you’re hurting, we all are, but we still need to deal with this stuff.”
I’m a pretty simple gal at heart and clutter of any sort makes me hyperventilate. Frankly, just looking at the closet made me woozy.
“I’m not ready,” Em said.
“Okay, how about we talk about it again in a week or two, maybe we could start with just the new items where there’s no sentiments attached.” I didn’t know what else to say. There was no getting around the fact that we had to start sometime and since I was here, now seemed the best option.
“We had a routine,” Em said. “I miss it.”
Uncertain of where this was going, I listened.
“We had breakfast together every day, then I went to work and Mom spent the day with her friends but in the evening, it was just the two of us.” Em brushed a tear from her cheek. “We’d fix dinner together, talk about our days, discuss my outfit for the next day and how I should wear my hair. I don’t know how to do these things without her to guide me.”
Alarm bells clanged in my head. Em looked like she was on the verge of another meltdown, and I was too stunned by the level of co-dependency that had developed between my baby sister and Babs to ward it off.
“So, you were like, what, a live dress up doll?” I asked.
Yes, I spoke without thinking, clearly, and the expression of frustrated hurt Em turned on me was almost scary in its intensity. It would have been more so if she wasn’t hugging one of Babs’s wide-brimmed sunhats to her chest at the time.
“No!” she snapped. “Yes. Maybe. Oh, god, I don’t know. I just...it was all so much easier when Mom was here. I don’t know what to do, how to dress, what to eat, where to go...”
The flow of words stopped as she dropped the hat and sobbed into her hands. My heart ripped right in two for her. It hit me then that she had lost so much more than just a mother, she’d lost her best friend.
“Oh, Em.” I pulled her into my arms and held her while she cried.
Soph entered the room and stopped when she saw us. I was more than willing to share the task of comforting the sobbing baby sister. Maybe Soph would know what to say because I sure didn’t.
“Hey, you okay, Em?” Soph joined our hug, making it a group thing.
“No,” Em said.
“What’s wrong?” Soph asked.
I slid out of the hug and let my big sis take over. Through her tears, Em sobbed the same story to Soph that she had to me. Soph glanced at me over Em’s head and I shrugged. I’d had no idea that Em was so reliant upon our mother for everything and judging by the look on Soph’s face, she hadn’t either.
“I’m sorry, Em.” Soph’s voice was soft, a mom’s voice, as if she was talking to one of the twins when they were younger and had just skinned a knee. “I understand how lost you must feel, but you’re going to be all right. It’s just going to take some time for you to adjust to doing things on your own, but I know you can do it. You can find the new normal. Hey, maybe you’ll discover you even like being in charge of your life.”
Em’s back went rigid. She looked at Soph and then at me as if we had completely let her down. I realized she thought we should step in and take over where Babs had left off. She wanted us to tell her what to do, what to wear, how to style her hair, all of it. Well, I didn’t even own a comb, so that was never going to happen.
“You don’t understand!” she cried. “You’re both so self-involved. You have no idea what I’m going through. None. You just don’t get it!”
Em strode out of the room. Soph and I looked at each other. When the front door slammed, we both jumped.
“On the scale of dramatic exits, that was a solid seven,” I said.
“Well, she did live with Mom the longest; stands to reason she would have picked up that trait.” Soph walked over to the closet and sighed. “This is too much. How are we going to deal with all of this stuff?”
“A match?” I offered.
She laughed.
“We can’t do anything without Em,” I said. “If that existential crisis is any indicator, she’ll flip out.”
“Agreed,” Soph said. “Should we go after her?”
“No,” I said. “Let’s give her a little more time.”
Soph nodded. We left Babs’s room, and I felt my shoulders drop a bit in relief. Maybe I hadn’t been as ready to start sorting as I thought.
“How are the twins holding up?” I asked.
“They loved their grandmother, but they’re also sixteen,” Soph said. “Since they’re taking off to do a glam summer of service abroad, their sadness is tempered by the adventure that awaits.”
I remembered how Liam had been the center of my teenage world; every thought and emotion was filtered through my relationship with him. I glanced through the living room window over at his house. There was no sign of him, per usual.
“And how about Stan?” I asked. “I barely got a chance to speak to him at Babs’s service. Is he doing all right? The doctoring business is good?”
“Yeah, it’s good,” Soph said. “Really good.”
Her smile didn’t reach her eyes, and I remembered how tense Soph had been in conversation with Stan. She took her role as older sister very seriously and I knew she wouldn’t share personal information readily.
“Is everything between you two okay?”
“Yes, Jules.” Soph sounded exasperated, or maybe defensive, either way my radar was flashing that the bridge was out on this convo and I should shush. Naturally, I disregarded it.
“It’s just that things seemed off between you,” I persisted. I wanted her to know that I was here for her as well as Em.
Soph met my gaze and tossed her mom bob. “Stan is Stan. Have you read Dad’s letter yet?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Uh huh,” she said. Stalemate.
Neither of us were ready to talk, fine. Except, I wanted to push. “Stan is Stan.” What the hell was that supposed to mean? I didn’t like Stan and never had. I gave him a pass mostly because he helped to spawn the twins, who were becoming two of my most favorite people in the world, but otherwise, yeah, he was a pretentious jerk with his three-hundred-dollar bottles of wine, golf weekends with his doctor buddies, and his need to buy himself a new luxury car every year. We had nothing in common except our mutual affection for Sophie and the kids.
“Listen, if we’re not sorting today, I have a million things to do for the PTO. Call me if you talk to Em first and let me know how she’s doing and I’ll do the same.”
“Roger that,” I said. Soph gave me a quick squeeze and then she was gone.
I took a deep breath and absorbed the silence around me. It was lovely. I hadn’t been alone, truly alone, since I’d arrived and I found that I missed it. I enjoyed rummaging around in my own head. In New York, I worked at home and spent days with just me, myself, and I, my cats and no one else, and I really, really liked it.
I made a mental note to ask Jessie to text me a picture of my kids. Maybe I could do a quick round trip to New York to pick them up. I really didn’t think I could go three months without them.
My friends had warned me for years that I would slowly turn into a crazy cat lady, but so far I had just the two finicky felines and only because I’d found them abandoned. I still traveled, brunched with friends, and maintained a solid rapport with my neighborhood shop owners. The librarian at my branch library adored me and we had weekly chats about books that usually tripled my to-be-read pile, so it wasn’t like I was agoraphobic. I was just at peace by myself and navigated the world quite well as a solo unit.
That said, since I’d come home, I was aware that something was missing in my life. It had been a really, really long time, meaning well over a year, since my last relationship and I missed sex. There, I said it. I missed it. I wanted it. And not surprisingly I knew exactly with whom I wanted it.
Babs had spent the time after my father’s death alone—seventeen long years with no dates, boyfriends, or significant others to squire her around. She had chosen instead to hunker down and find her companionship in her daughters, mostly Em.
There was nothing wrong with that, I supposed, except I wanted more out of life and it hit me like a slap upside the head that if I didn’t get my butt back out there, I stood a very real chance of becoming the bossy older sister Em was searching for to guide her life. No, thank you.
My pulse raced and I needed to get out of this house. I needed the sun on my face, the wind in my hair, and the smell of the sea in my nose. Fifteen minutes later, I had my laptop in its bag in the front basket of my old beach cruiser bicycle, and I was on my way to Liam’s Coffee Shop. He could avoid me next door, sure, but he couldn’t ignore me as a paying customer. At least, I hoped he couldn’t. If the man tossed me out on my keister there wasn’t much I could do about it, but I was betting that he wouldn’t...although given our past the odds were not in my favor.
I wound my way down the hill, the Pacific’s strong breeze wreaking havoc with my crazy brown curls, toward our quaint little town below. It was hard to believe that this was the first time I’d ventured out since I’d arrived. There had been so much happening, I hadn’t really had a chance before now. All of the old shops still circled the small green which was anchored by a Methodist church on one end and a Jewish synagogue on the other.
I pedaled past the card shop, the bakery, where I almost stopped, the florist, the bookstore, almost stopped again, the shoe repair place—really, how did old man Mancusi stay in business—
the pizza joint, and finally I turned at the corner and found myself in front of Liam’s Coffee Shop.
My heart was pounding so hard that I was pretty sure it was determined to slam right out of my chest, and suddenly the term “ribcage” had a whole new meaning for me. It felt as if my ribs were the only thing keeping my unruly heart from staging a prison break.
“Keep it cool,” I muttered to myself as I locked up my bike. “Keep your freak in check. You’re just here to get coffee, no big deal.”
At that moment, I almost climbed right back onto my bike and headed for home, but the road back was all uphill and I really wanted a cup of coffee, okay, that was a lie. I desperately wanted to see Liam again. Like a worm in my head the idea just kept burrowing deeper and deeper into my gray matter until it was entrenched. There would be no leaving the center of town until I got my fix.
I slung my laptop case over my shoulder and entered the shop in what I hoped was a casual way. Bells hanging on the door handle chimed, announcing my arrival. No one noticed.
The place was bigger on the inside than it appeared from outside. Two baristas were behind the counter in front of me, but the shop then opened into a large L shape. Most of the tables were full and there were shelves of tchotchkes for sale strategically placed to relieve customers of their hard-earned money.
At the far end of the L was a small stage and a chalkboard over it announced that a band called Yuma Beach would be performing that night. Cool. The surf theme was prevalent throughout the shop with surfboards hanging from the ceiling and fastened to the walls. The decor reminded me of the endless hours spent surfing with Liam which were some of the best memories of my life.
I ordered the largest latte they had while scanning the joint for a glimpse of said boy. There was no sign of Liam. I tried to squash my disappointment. According to my sisters, the man owned three of these places. It had been a long shot at best that he would be here instead of one of his other locations.
There was a small table in the corner and I headed toward it, thinking I could at least get some work done while I was here. While my laptop booted up, I took the opportunity to people watch. Typical So Cal crowd: an older, sun-weathered hippie couple that smelled faintly of patchouli, two wannabe celebutantes dressed in micro-minis and chunky boots with their boob jobs fully on display in their mid-drift baring halter tops, a pasty pale balding businessman in a snappy suit talking on his cell phone—seriously, get some sun, dude—and a middle-aged Black guy in baggy shorts, a polo shirt, and a golf visor.
Then there was the guy in aviator glasses who took a seat at a table two over from me with thick blond hair revealed by a partially lowered navy hoodie, reading a newspaper. Well, more accurately, he was skimming the sports page while watching me over the top of his shades.
I studied his face. Maybe thirty, with a firm jawline. He was too young to be an acquaintance of Babs but might be a friend of Soph, although I didn’t recognize him. Hmm. Could be he wasn’t staring at me but looking past me to see outside. Then again, it was totally possible that my hair had reached all new levels of poof and now resembled a big brown cloud that he couldn’t tear his gaze from. I couldn’t fault him for that.
I checked my reflection in the black mirror that was my cell phone. Yeah, the hair was decidedly bushy but not enough so that it would encourage staring. I thought about calling him out on his rudesby behavior, but that would mean I had to engage, and I didn’t care enough for that sort of scene.
Instead, I opened my email and began to triage my client’s requests. Some were urgent, some were not, and some were the whining of high maintenance clients who thought “miracle worker” was part of my job description as their webpage designer. Lucky me.
I started stomping out fires and as always once the issues were crushed into piles of smoking ash, I had lost all sense of where I was and how much time had passed. A prickle of awareness brought my attention from my laptop. Figuring it was the hoodie guy, I glanced over at his table only to find it occupied by an elderly couple playing Scrabble.
Huh. Still, I felt someone’s eyes on me. I turned my head and scanned the coffee shop more thoroughly and there he was. Standing just inside the door, with his wetsuit unzipped and riding his hips, his surfboard held by one arm, his hair slicked back with sea water, and his exposed skin a deep sun-kissed bronze. Oh, my Liam.
His baristas greeted him by name, and he gave them a tight nod. Without looking at anyone but me, Liam propped his board against the wall and then he was striding forward right to my table with barely contained fury. Uh oh.