18. Rowan
18
ROWAN
“M om?”
“Hmm?” I looked down at my daughter, nestled against me on the porch swing. Her feet tucked up beside her, her book forgotten in my lap. I had lost track of how long we sat there together, with me rocking slowly, lost in my head.
“Are you ever going to go back to work?”
I had to chuckle even though my heart wasn’t in it. She had a way of getting right to the point. “Of course I will. Just not quite yet.”
“But it’s been, like, a week. Hasn’t it?”
Eleven days counting the weekends, but who was counting? I hadn’t been to the office since the Wednesday of my last dinner with Spencer. By now, the flowers were dead, along with everything else.
“People are allowed to take time off, you know.” I rocked the swing, wishing the motion would soothe me. “Everything will be fine. I’m still checking in with the office every day. Noelle knows she can reach me if there are any problems. I just… I need this time.”
“I’m sorry you’re sad.” Her head touched my shoulder again. “I wish I could make you happy.“
That was the most painful thing of all, hearing her say that. “I know how you feel because I always want to make you happy when you’re sad. But sometimes, there’s nothing you can do. Like right now, I have to get through my sad feelings and get back to life. And I will,” I promised. I just wish I knew how.
“Did you and Spencer break up?”
My God, she was determined to kill me. That was how it felt as I struggled to find the words. You couldn’t break up what had never started, but that wouldn’t help things. Instead, I told her the only thing I knew was true. “No matter what happens between me and Spencer, it won’t change how we feel about you. He’s not going anywhere.” Hell, he had even kept the bodyguards watching the house and the school.
“Yeah, but what about you? If he makes you sad?—”
“You have nothing to worry about,” I insisted, cutting her off before her sweetness made me sob. I had done enough of that. “It’s grown-up stuff. I know you don’t want to hear that, but it’s the truth. Everything will be okay in the end. I know that for sure.”
I checked the time on my phone. “Why don’t you go inside and get washed up for dinner? Maybe Grandmom needs a little help getting things together.”
“You can tell me you want to be alone. It’s fine.” She kissed my cheek, hopping off theswing and heading inside. “I’ll let you know when it’s time to eat.”
It was starting to look more and more like I was the child and she was the parent. I needed a little parenting, hence my reason for hiding out at Mom and Dad’s ever since that nightmare at Spencer’s last Thursday morning.
Nothing had changed in the ten days after. I had heard nothing from him. I followed the story online, the accusations that had been hurled at him. None of them mentioned me by name, which, of course, came as a relief, not for myself, but for Hannah. She already knew too much. She was too young for the specifics.
I had asked Mom and Dad right away if they had told anyone what I confessed. “You never told us his last name,” she’d reminded me. “How could we have gone to the press? And why would we?” She had looked so sad, so pained, the way I would if it was Hannah going through hell. “We wouldn’t hurt you that way, and we would never hurt Hannah.”
No, but sometimes things like this happened without a person realizing the toll it would take. That was why, instead of going inside, I waited on the porch for the person I knew would be joining us for dinner tonight at my invitation.
My phone read five forty-five when a familiar hatchback pulled up at the curb. I watched my sister climb out from behind the wheel. She noticed me right away. Did her steps falter? It looked that way, but then I might have been making it up in my head. Eventually, she reached the porch, eyeing me warily from the other end.
I had spent days mulling this over. Imagining all the things I would say to her. I had rehearsed this moment more thoroughly than I had ever rehearsed for a role. Yet, having her in front of me was a different story. All that flew out of my head, leaving behind the first thing that came to mind. “I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
Rhiannon blinked rapidly, her head snapping back. “Hi to you, too,” she muttered, looking me up and down. “You look like hell.”
I gave her the same up-and-down look, replying, “You’re not looking so great, yourself. What happened to all the fancy clothes?” She was dressed the way I was used to seeing her, in an old band T-shirt and a pair of jeans with the knees ripped out. Almost like she had been pretending to be somebody else, wearing a costume. It was a well-fitting costume, but eventually, everybody got tired of pretending to be something they weren’t.
“Uh… thanks?” She crossed an arm over herself, gripping her other elbow. That was always what she did when she felt exposed or nervous. “How are you feeling? Are you sick?”
“Can we please stop this? Because you know damn well how I’m feeling. You know I’m not sick, even if I sort of feel that way. Don’t pretend Mom didn’t already tell you why I’ve been here. I know that’s why you’ve been steering clear. If this were any other situation, you would have been here by now.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she insisted with a nervous laugh. Her gaze kept sliding toward the front door like that was her way out. Her chance at freedom.
“Give it some thought,” I suggested, slowly rocking the swing. “Maybe you’ll remember. You know, you never did tell me the name of the man you were seeing. Why don’t you tell me now?”
“Wow. You’re giving me whiplash.” She laughed. She could laugh all she wanted, but I saw the strain on her face, in her eyes.
“I’m curious. What’s his name? What does he do for a living?”
“It doesn’t matter. We are… not seeing each other anymore. That’s over.” Her brows drew together as her gaze dropped to the wood floor under us. She scuffed one of the planks with the toe of her sneaker. “He wasn’t right for me.”
“Because he’s a goddamn sociopath?” I guessed, snickering when her head snapped up, eyes wide. “You know what, I’m feeling psychic today. Let me take a guess. Is his name Damian Fields?”
Her mouth fell open. Her mouth snapped shut. “See?” I muttered. “That’s the one thing I was curious about. Would he use his real name? At first, I thought no, of course not. He would want to fly under the radar. But then I gave it some more thought and realized no, he would want us to know it was him pulling the strings all along. So how did he do it?” I asked, which in and of itself was a miracle seeing as how my heart was breaking, and stringing words together was becoming more and more challenging.
“Please.” She hung her head again, shoulders rising and falling in a sigh. “Please, don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what? Don’t hold you accountable for something you’ve done?” I didn’t want to scream out here in the open, so I settled for grunting out, “Dammit, Rhiannon. How could you? I know you hate Spencer, but he is Hannah’s father, and you still went out of your way to hurt him.”
She flinched. “Is that what you think happened? That I wanted revenge or something?”
“Don’t tell me that had nothing to do with it.”
“No. It didn’t.” She ran a hand under her eyes, sniffling now that she had given up the act. She was trembling, her body sagging before she perched on the railing running the length of the porch. “I swear. I didn’t realize… I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t realize what? That there was something strange about a guy you were seeing wanting to know about my past?”
“Just let me explain.”
It was the funniest thing. My instinct was to say no, to shut her down, to tune her out. Then again, that was what Spencer did to me. He wouldn’t let me tell my side of the story, and I still resented the hell out of him for it. Now I understood how easy it was to stick my fingers in my ears, close my eyes, and pretend I couldn’t hear anything that didn’t fit within the narrative I had already constructed.
She must have taken my silence for acceptance because she continued in a soft voice, “Do you know how long it was since I felt… noticed? Special? The men I work with, they sit glued to their computers all day. They barely notice anyone or anything around them. And they have the social skills of toadstools. You know how hard it is for me to meet people. I get three sentences in, and I say something stupid or nerdy or, I don’t know.” Lifting a shoulder, she concluded, “Whatever it is, it turns people off. But not him. He liked me, or he pretended to. He made me feel… pretty.”
“For God’s sake, Ree, you are pretty. You’ve always been pretty. Is that all it takes to make you spill a secret like that? Telling you you’re pretty?” I was almost shouting and had to cut myself off before I got much louder.
“Oh, spare me the sanctimonious crap,” she spat. Now, my head snapped back in shock. I could count on one hand the number of times she took that tone with me. Bright color flooded her cheeks, and her lip curled in a smear. “Look at you. You’ve had your entire life handed to you while some of us had to scratch and fight for every goddamn good thing that ever happened. For once, something good happened to me. For once, somebody saw me. Noticed me. Not the beautiful and perfect Rowan.”
“Don’t make this about that,” I whispered, shaking my head. I didn’t know whether to be sad, disappointed, or sickened by her excuses.
“But that’s what it was about, don’t you see? I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody,” she insisted, shaking her head fiercely. “I swear to God. Do you understand how stupid I feel? He used me. Looking back, I see it so clearly.”
She scoffed and sneered again, though something told me she sneered at herself. “The questions he would ask about the family. Asking if I was close with you. What it was like growing up together. I thought, wow. ” She released a sigh, leaning against the post beside her. “Wow, he really wants to know about me. My life, my history. I told him all about Hannah, about helping raise her. Of course, he wanted to know why you weren’t the one doing it. I walked right into his trap.”
I was starting to understand. How he found her, I didn’t know and might never, but at least I was starting to see how it all came together. It wasn’t like she went out and sought him. “So, you told him everything,” I concluded. “You hardly knew him. Why would you trust him with something like that?”
“I told you. He made me feel special. I honestly thought…” She covered her face with her hands. “I thought maybe this was it.”
“Jesus…” I whispered.
“You don’t get it!” Her hands dropped to her lap, tears flowing down her cheeks. “All our lives, it’s always been about you. Rowan, the star. Beautiful, perfect Rowan. Everybody paid attention to you. I was always an afterthought. And then, what happened? You started dating this ridiculously wealthy guy, and he almost got you killed. You found out you were pregnant with his baby. Your face was disfigured, your career went up in smoke. And then what happened?”
She barked out a brutal laugh that chilled my blood. “You somehow managed to pivot and ended up doing better than ever! Mom and Dad gave you everything. They let you come back home. They raised your baby for you so you could go to school. Because it’s always about you! What’s best for Rowan. How can we help Rowan? Poor, tragic girl whose dreams were broken. What about my dreams? When did anybody give a shit about my dreams?”
She scoffed, either at me or herself, standing and turning around to gaze out over the street. “I finally had something for me, and I was so desperate and so lonely, I walked straight into it. What an absolute joke.”
I had known that, hadn’t I? That she felt overshadowed. All the photos in the living room, the way our parents had always bragged about me while rarely doing the same over her. How awkward she felt around people. How rare it was for her to leave her shell.
One day, I might find it in me to feel sorry for her. This was not that day, not with my battered heart still struggling to beat. Not when the pain of losing Spencer again was so fresh and sharp.
“When did he approach you? I need to know,” I told her when she snorted. “I need to put it together in my head, for myself.”
“I don’t know.” Her head tipped back, and she heaved another sigh. “The day before you went out on that date. I assume it was with Spencer.”
“The night of the break-in?”
“Right. We met the night before that. I went to my usual place to pick up dinner on my way home. He was behind me in line and struck up a conversation over whether he should get a chicken cutlet sandwich or meatball parm. We ended up having dinner together at the restaurant. It all sort of snowballed after that.”
This meant itwas the night after Spencer and I found each other at the award luncheon, then went for drinks in the evening. Was he following Spencer around all this time? More likely, he had someone else doing his dirty work. Probably more determined than ever to dig up dirt on him.
Spencer visited my office the next afternoon, didn’t he? Asked me out. With all of Damian’s money and all of his ruthlessness, I didn’t doubt it was child’s play, dredging up more information about my family and me after confirming our association. Following my sister. He had the resources to find out just about anything on anyone. He would have known she was single.
Now I understood something else that had never occurred to me with so much bullshit drama threatening to drown me. Damian had probably sent that guy to the apartment to break in, to shake me up at the very least. Maybe to find more information on Spencer.
“Honestly,” she whispered, sliding a pleading look my way. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. Not you, not even Spencer, definitely not Hannah.”
I wasn’t trying to hear that. Not with a hurricane raging inside me. “So you told him about the accident,” I concluded.
She gulped, nodding. “Vaguely. I swear to God. I told him it was some rich guy named Spencer.”
That was all he needed to know. Some rich guy named Spencer had crashed his car with me inside and gotten away unscathed. “You told him Spencer was Hannah’s father,” I added, groaning when she nodded in response. “You told him I wanted to be an actress?”
“There were so many conversations. It’s not like I told him everything at once.” Now she was defensive, shoulders hunched, eyes hard. “Yes, I must have.”
Chilly silence unfurled between us and hung in the air for a long time. My heart was too heavy. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to feel about her. “I’m going to need time with this,” I decided, standing and heading for the door. “If you’re going to be here, fine. I’ll be up in the bedroom.”
“Wait, Rowan,” she pleaded with tears in her voice. “Please, don’t hate me.”
I didn’t know how I felt, whether I hated her or not. I only knew I couldn’t say another word without either screaming or sobbing. It was better to remove myself from the situation, so I headed inside and straight upstairs without another word. She could explain my absence to Mom and Dad.