24. Hailey
When we step onto the plane, I can smell Arlo. His clean body, a hint of pricey cologne, leather, and wool. He permeates the air, and my nipples pucker. My heart revs, and my eyes dart left and right in search of my…
What is he to me?
My passion. My obsession. My personal fetish.
I’m met, not with Arlo, but with a gorgeous woman whose blue eyes match the fitted blazer and trousers she sports. While the ascot around her neck almost duplicates the color of her white-blond hair.
“Good morning, and welcome aboard.” Her head bows slightly. “You must be the famous Natalia Wright and the infamous Dr. Fitzpatrick” She places a hand on her chest. The other she motions me toward a large leather seat. “My name is Sigrid.”
“Infamous?” My brow crinkles.
“Downright loathsome, from what I hear,” a new huskier female voice chimes as she exits the cockpit. Her uniform matches Sigrid’s, apart from the cream Hijab covering her head and neck. The beaming smile on her brown face belies her words. “I’m Sana, and you are the woman who stole the untouchable heart and crushed the hearts of all pining for him.”
My crinkled brow shoots toward the sky, and my jaw goes in the opposite direction. “I’m pretty sure I haven’t stolen anything.”
“Besides a few handbags,” Nat chimes from her perch on the cushy leather seat.
I wave her off, shocked this is the first I’ve heard about her missing handbag. Okay, handbags, with an s.
“It’s not stealing if it was given.” Sigrid reaches for a large white box, designed with polka dots with white mesh covering them, and offers it to me. His scent is strongest here. It fills my nose, and I have to suppress the urge to close my eyes and moan. “Mr. Judge dropped this off, personally, shortly before you arrived.”
I hug the weighty package to me and sit on the seat across from Nat. We exchange looks at the box while Sana closes the cabin door. When she’s finished, both women stand there expectantly. Even Nat scoots to the edge of her seat. For a moment, I wonder whether it’s something appropriate for the masses. I don’t mind either way. It would take something really freaky to make me blush.
A small noise seeps from the polka dots. The weight inside shifts.
“Oh my God.” I rip the lid from the box and peer inside. Lopsided and tattered ears wave at me. “Plink!” My cat gives a tiny meow, like, ‘duh, who else?’
“Plinko?” Nat is up in an instant, making grabby hands for the grump.
I hug his neck and kiss his head before I hand him over. He smells like Arlo, as though he rubbed himself all over the man from top to bottom. Just like I long to. My cheeks are hot and surely bright pink. The stretch of my mouth is so wide it hurts. Arlo Judge knows how to get to me.
The women ooh and aah over Plink, and he seems to revel in their attention, preening more than I ever thought possible. I reach for the envelope inside addressed to my siren in the same bold handwriting and ink as before. My fingers shake as I open the card inside and begin to read.
“Aloud!” Nat demands.
Part of me wants to keep his words for myself. And another part, an uncharted part, wants to share them, to stake a claim that I have no right to boast.
“Hailey, the rear cabin has been set up with all the things Plinko requires. My pilots have offered to cat sit while you’re on the ground. I would love nothing more than to…” I catch myself before I choke on a happy sob and swallow it down. “…than to be with you on this journey, to hold you close and give you comfort, but I know it’s something you need to do on your own. Plinko will give you what you need until I can. Yours in every way, Arlo.”
Sigrid clutches her chest. Sana uses the backs of her fingers to wipe at her eyes. They both sigh while I blink at the words written as plainly as words can be.
Yours in every way.
“Fuck.” Nat sobs and clutches Plink to her bosom. “I need a drink.”
I don’t care that it’s nine thirty in the morning since Mrs. Friedman needed to come in at eight, I second the notion.
The ladies get us situated with drinks and snacks and toys for Plink that didn’t come from my apartment. I stare at my cat. As we set a course for my hell on earth, I’m swamped with gratitude. It’s a feeling I haven’t spent much time examining in my life, but with Arlo in it, I’ve found myself experiencing it more and more, holding it tight and studying it closely.
When we land in Iowa, and Sigrid and Sana, Arlo’s beautiful and badass pilots, have taken over kitty care, Nat takes my hand, and we descend onto the tarmac. A Town Car and driver wait for us at the end of the stairs.
He doesn’t strike me as a normal driver. The man is fit in a way a suit cannot hide. His Asian descent is apparent in his bow and the severity of his jawline.
I must study him a little too long because the corner of his mouth tips in the barest hint of a smile. Then I shift to see Nat is not studying so much as generously eye-fucking him.
“My name is Hotaru.” His accent is an interesting mix of British and Japanese. He opens the door for us. His eyes are intelligent. And then I remember Arlo’s words from our very first meeting.
He ’ s my guy .
“Why are you in Iowa?” Nat blurts. “You need to be in New York or Milan. London or Paris,” she tacks on.
“I live in New York,” he informs her.
“Then I’ll have you on the runways and magazine covers in no time,” she beams.
“Domo arigato gozaimasu.” He bows. “But I have a job that suits me better.”
“You’re not a driver,” I surmise by the glint in his eyes.
“I am, if that is what Mr. Judge requires.” He evades.
“What else do you do that Mr. Judge requires?” Nat’s voice is thick with innuendo.
“Many things,” Hotaru purrs. “Today, I’m protecting his heart while it’s not near his body, and her beautiful aunt.”
My heart heats a thousand degrees, cooking me along with itself in the process. Nat giggles. Like actually giggles.
“Last week, I was his translator in a business meeting,” Hotaru continues.
“But he speaks Japanese,” I counter.
“Indeed.” He grins. “Most people don’t know he’s fluent. I’m a nice decoy in a business setting. As it happens, I was translating German for him.” He motions toward the car’s interior. “If you are ready, then we’ll be off.”
I nod, still too stunned to say more. This man is a lot to take in. He’s almost too beautiful to look at directly. Like the sun on earth. His words are even more to digest.
It’s no surprise he’s so important to Arlo.
When we slip inside, the divider is up.
Nat grabs my hands and pulls them to her chest. “His heart, Hay. His heart.” There are tears in her eyes. “God knows, you’re mine.”
“Stop.” I blink rapidly, shoo her away, and nearly collapse back on the seat. Women who don’t know Arlo very well saying I stole his heart is one thing. His longest friend and his man saying it is another. It’s as if my body knows what’s to come and won’t let me grapple with this sudden development. My brain goes blurry and only takes in the passing scenery of Des Moines instead of computing.
An hour and a half drive, one as long as the plane ride, gets us into the thick of cornfields and soybeans. It’s brown as far as the eye can see since everything was harvested just last month. All the warmth and joy I felt just a bit ago has been overshadowed by the gloom of what’s to come.
“It is fitting that we return when everything is dead and desolate,” I whisper.
Nat interlaces her fingers with mine. “Not everything.”
“Even the mice who’ve lost their ground cover from the hawks and owls.”
Gosh, I’m being quite morbid and dramatic.
“We’re not,” she says, smacking my hand in rebuke.
“No, we’re not.” I pull her close and kiss her head, which she lays on my shoulder as we meander through the few traffic lights Paton, Iowa, has to offer. The population is steady around the two hundred mark. Equal to the population of the single floor of my old apartment building in New York.
So few people, and still my mom managed to find trouble.
We push past the place some call a city and turn off the main drag onto another bleak highway. Just a few miles down the road, Nat straightens. I do too. My heart beats in my throat. Cold clings to my skin, along with incongruous sweat.
The house I grew up in stands proud, flanked by barns, silos, fields, and one large tree in the front and another in the back. It’s an off-white two-story. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure it’s white with a layer of grime. It has a covered front porch with a swing, black shutters, and a blood-red front door.
“Why no one thought to paint that door in the last decade is beyond me,” Nat gripes.
I can’t say a word. My hands have started shaking. At least my legs are okay, so far. Hotaru slows down past it. I wish he’d step on it. Luckily, we can’t stop. Another family lives there now. Their purchase paid for my parents’ funerals and my education.
Not soon enough, the house is in the rearview, and I’m glad I can’t see the mirror. We push on another ten minutes and several turns until the car stops at the gates of a small cemetery.
Hotaru opens the door for us, and we heave ourselves out the back. Sunlight blasts overhead in a way I haven’t seen in a long time. There are minimal trees or buildings to block it. The temperature is mild for November. I squint at the horizon. It’s dotted with headstones, large and small, old and new.
“We’ll stay as long as you need.” He bows and then retreats toward the driver’s door.
“Thank you,” I call after him, wishing I could say I’m ready to leave now.
“Tondemonai.” He nods before disappearing inside.
“I fucking hate this.” I take a step forward and realize I have no idea where I’m headed. My memories of the last time I was here are blurrier than a blackout drunk’s.
I look over my shoulder toward Nat, my mouth open to ask if she knows where to go. As soon as my gaze finds her, I stop. Her beautiful face is contorted. Silent tears slip down her cheeks. Her whole body rattles with sorrow.
“Do you want to go home?”
Her head shakes.
“Do you need to grab a room overnight? Try again tomorrow?”
Her head shakes.
“Okay.” I loop an arm around her elbow and meander us through the maze of memorials to well-lived lives and lives cut short. We pass the heartbreak of little ones with no chance to explore the world. We pass couples who died in their hundreds. I wonder if they loved each other or just made it through the best they knew how.
Several stray rows through, and Nat’s breathing returns to normal. The set of her shoulders lowers. A breeze kicks up, and our hair dances in the slow currents.
“You know, by the time we were eighteen, both our parents were dead,” Nat offers, speaking about her and my mother. “We were their late-in-life miracle babies.”
That I knew, but I hadn’t thought about it in a long time.
“They tried for decades. In fact, I’m sure I have more than one sibling buried here.”
“Jesus.” The thought pits my stomach.
“We’re lucky, you and I.” My aunt squeezes my arm in hers. “Even though it doesn’t seem like it right now. We are. We were given a chance to live while so many weren’t.”
Life. It’s all about perspective.
I stop our progress and fling my arms around my aunt. Something I haven’t done in far too long. I hug her for all I’m worth and then some. My tears start slowly and then gain traction.
“I know I am.” I try to say. It comes out garbled and breathy.
“Me too.” Nat chokes.
We sob until they turn to hiccups and then subside. Nat kisses my forehead. She pushes me back to arm’s length and just stares at me with a look of wonder in her eyes. Her fingertips smooth over my cheeks, wiping away my tears. “I don’t really have a right to be, but you make me so damn proud.”
“Of course you do. You raised me.”
“No.” Her head makes a slow shake from side to side. “You were fully formed when you came to live with me. A hard worker. A kind soul. A girl who wouldn’t take shit from anyone.” She pulls me close and tucks me under her chin. “Your parents did the hard work, and I got to reap the benefits. I got to see you blossom into a beautiful woman, a successful woman with a loving heart who still won’t take shit from anyone. Not even me.”
My parents taught me the value of hard work and determination. They taught me about caring for others and how to stand up for myself. They were so much more to me than their end. It’s about time I remember that.
“I love you, Nat.”
“Oh God, Hay Bale, I love you more than anything.”
I know she does, and I don’t want her to live her life for me. I need her to live it for her.
“You should live with Laurent. If he makes you happy, I want you to go.”
She levers back and blinks at me as though I spoke Ongota, a Southwestern Ethiopian language that only ten people speak.
“It’s not that simple.” Nat chokes.
“Isn’t it?” I shrug. “Do you love him?”
“What is love?”
“You love me. So you know what it is.”
“Loving you is easy.” Nat cups my cheeks. “You’re my blood, my breath, my everything.”
My heart does a flip flop seizure thing in my chest. I remember Arlo’s words, when talking about his reason for coming to therapy, for wanting to touch and be touched.
She is everything.
My voice quakes. “Love is trust and respect. Affection and obsession, tempered by patience and understanding. It is commitment. Love is wanting the best for the other and trying to give it, no matter what.”
I hug my arms around myself to keep me together. Nat wraps hers around me too. All the pieces of myself I’ve held neatly together—well, as neatly as a sex addiction will allow—begin to quake and tear at the seams.
“I love Laurent.” There’s reservation in her statement.
“But?”
“I don't know that I should. We have a lot in common, share so much, but in ten years, what if he regrets not having children?”
“Do you regret not having children?” I push back, thankful to push aside my own panic for Nat’s.
“No, but I made that decision a long time ago.” She holds up two hands, flicking one wildly. “Long before you came into my life.” My aunt goes still. Her face blanches. “Not that I wasn’t happy to have you.” Then her nose wrinkles. “Not that I was happy about what happened. I?—”
“I understand.” I grab both her hands and hold them in mine. “I understand.” My smile is sad but not forced. “I think you two have some conversations to wade through.” I give her a shrug. “But they’re conversations worth having. Now, do you have any idea where we’re going?”
She takes a deep breath and shakes with her exhale. “Your parents will be by mine. I remember where they are.” She points. “By those trees.”
Nat tugs me along, and we walk toward a thin stand of short trees. With no blocks or street signs to mark the distance, it takes longer to get there than I expect. It’s as if they get farther and farther away with every step, but then we’re there, standing in front of the graves of two grandparents I never met. Come to think of it, I’d never met any of my grandparents. My dad had been the last baby of ten. So his parents were long gone by the time I arrived.
Beside Easter and Lane Wright were two tiny headstones for a boy named Henry Lane Wright who lived for two days and a girl named Easter Prin Wright who lived for five. Both of them would have been older than my aunt, had they lived, by more than a decade.
“Damn.”
“Yeah, she had several miscarriages too. They didn’t bury them back in those days or even mention them. I only know because of old medical records I found when cleaning out their house.” Nat shivers. “It’s a big part of the reason I didn’t want to have kids. I was scared to lose them.”
She takes a big gulp of air. “After we sold the old farm, your mother and I moved to New York.” Her eyes sparkle with fresh tears, but a big smile stretches her mouth. Memories dance behind her eyes. “We were both going to be models. We were identical twins, after all. We were going to rule the world. Take fashion by the balls.” Her swallow is huge. “We were well on the way too. Together and separately, we landed an agency, big brand deals, and walked in Fashion Week. Things were looking up, but your mom wasn’t. She was depressed. Big crowds cranked her anxiety. Tight schedules made her snappy.”
Nat’s gaze finds me. “She missed home. The small community where everyone knew everyone. She missed her friends and her boyfriend.”
My dad.
“They started dating in?—”
“Middle school, I know. She was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen and she was everywhere he looked.” I grin at her. “Because there were two of you, only he didn't know that because he’d moved here from Ohio in seventh grade. He fell in love with her talking in the back of the science classroom when they were supposed to be dissecting a frog, and the rest is history, as he always said.”
“It was. Honestly, I was surprised when she agreed to go with me, but it only lasted a few months before she came back. They married a couple of months later, and you were born by the time she was nineteen.”
“That’s so young.”
Nat shrugs. “It wasn’t out of the norm back then. But I was terrified when I heard she was pregnant. I was so worried, but you came, and you were perfect.” She beams at me. “Ten fingers. Ten toes.”
“Low bar.”
“And the cutest nose I ever saw.” She bops me on it.
“You’re bound to lose a finger if you keep doing that.” I smirk.
She bops me again and then drags me down until we stand in front of my parents’ graves.
Beau Curtis Fitzpatrick
September 10, 1972 - September 10, 2004
Aria Wright Fitzpatrick
December 20, 1972 - September 10, 2004
“My dad’s fucking birthday.”
“Yeah” Nat’s stunning gray hair shimmers as her head shakes.
“What a bastard.”
“Yeah,” she agrees.
“Should they even be buried next to each other?” Now that I’m older and have a bit of perspective, I’m seeing things I never thought about. I have a mind to exhume and separate them.
“They were happy together, with you, for a long time.”
“Until they weren’t,” I grumble. “Why didn’t she just file for divorce?” I might kick rocks at her headstone if there were any to speak of. I’ve wondered, as I have many times in the past two decades, if it was because of me. If she didn’t want to break off their marriage because it would have hurt me. Sure, it would have. Only a hell of a lot less than what happened.
“Why did she have to cheat?” I practically growl.
“You know better than most why people cheat.”
I do. As a therapist, I’ve seen it all. Pre-cheating, mid-cheating, post-cheating. Couples clinging to something that used to be, instead of facing what is and trying to repair it or let it go.
“The farm was a lot of work. She wanted to sell it and move to the city. Your dad loved it and he loved your mother. He was looking for a middle ground, and she, I don’t know what she was looking for.” Nat sighs. “I wish she’d told me, so I could have helped her.”
“There’s no guarantee things would have turned out differently. She would have had to make a change.”
The memory of blood washes over me.
Two pools of it. Two bodies. And the third one, very much alive.
Then my bloody hands.
For the first time in a long time, my body doesn’t convulse.
“Cheating doesn’t warrant a death sentence,” Nat decrees.
No, it shouldn’t.
“It did for them and me too, in a way.” I step back from their graves and look at my aunt. “A little for you too. The lives we thought we’d have were over that day.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“I closed off a part of myself to make sure something like this would never happen to me.”
“You can change that.”
My aunt drops to her knees in front of my mother’s grave. Her elegant hand smoothes over the stone. “I’m sorry I couldn't help you when you needed it, Ari. I forgive you for not letting me, and I forgive myself.”
She stays there for a while, talking more quietly to her sister, and then she speaks to my dad. When she’s finished, she stands, steps back, and motions me forward.
Part of my heart tugs me forward, but I remain rooted.
“I’m not ready to forgive.”
“Not even for yourself?”
Tears slip down my face.
I head for the car. Sorrow and fear weigh me down, making my steps drag. It’s like I’ve taken three steps forward with Arlo, and the instinct to turn and flee dogs my heels. The impulse is rabid and its teeth are fucking sharp.
How can love feel so good and right one minute and leave three people dead the next? How am I supposed to trust the good feeling Arlo gives me, when it can turn to dust so quickly?