Chapter 36 Erin
Erin
Eighteen months is a long time. Long enough for a new life to set down roots, another school year to pass, and for scar tissue to grow over the trauma of watching the man you once loved hold a gun to his own daughter’s head.
But somehow, it isn’t long enough to commit the sound of another man’s voice to merely a memory, as opposed to something I feel and hear every day.
I shelve the last of the returned books and take a step back, scanning the display table with smug satisfaction. Historical romance on the left, young adult reads front and center, a handwritten sign recommending summer reads in curling blue ink.
I’d never planned to work in a library, but as Paige settled into her new life, found new friends and spent more time with them, I found myself with more and more capacity on my hands. More time to myself, more time to think, more time to remember. So, I turned to books.
I read everything I could get my hands on—anything to stop my mind from straying back to salt and pepper hair, inked forearms and rough fingers.
When I’d finally exhausted Mallorie’s rock star biographies and Mom’s historical romance books, I took their exasperated advice and joined the local library.
Every hour that I wasn’t working as a part time marketing assistant for a women’s charity—that couldn’t really afford to pay me a whole lot but least allowed me to do something with my college degree—I would spend sitting in softly lit corners perusing the pages of Jane Eyre, The Untethered Soul and Astrology for Beginners.
It worked. It was the only thing that did.
By immersing myself in words, I could fill my head so full there wasn’t room for anything else.
I was sitting in my usual corner one afternoon reading Mahjong for Dummies when one of the librarians approached me.
She was moving out of New York and needed to backfill her role.
She’d seen me around so much she couldn’t think of anyone who’d know the shelves and the lay-out of the place better than me, and clearly I had time on my hands.
Well, I mean, she didn’t put it quite like that, but I read between the lines.
I agreed on the spot and she began training me there and then.
It was possibly the best decision I’ve made in all of my adult life.
The library is my safe haven. I get to read, meet authors, talk to other readers, help them fill their Tbr list (which they hate but secretly love) and fulfil a side of me—one that feeds my curiosity and provides me with the quiet I need—that I didn’t know existed.
Plus, it’s harmless and out of sight. I’m not in anyone’s firing line and this is perhaps the last place a filthy-mouthed mob boss is likely to find me.
“Erin?” Mrs. Kline calls from the front desk. “Your group is here.”
I smile. “On my way.”
The girls from the foster center tumble in a moment later, loud and bright and wonderfully normal, all chatter and backpacks and questions about the reading corner we’re setting up for their after-school sessions.
I guide them toward the beanbags and the piles of books I’ve already set out that I think they’ll like.
This reminds me that I had a choice. And this is what I’ve chosen. Books, structure and predictability. A life where the loudest sound is a dropped novel, not gunfire.
In the evenings, I help at a girls’ mentoring charity three blocks over. I hold reading groups and help to deliver confidence workshops. It allows me to feel like I can compensate for raising my daughter in the same house as a psychopath.
It wasn’t my fault, I know. Gerard kept his real self hidden from me until the very end, but a part of me will always feel foolish for not seeing it, and for not getting Paige out of there sooner.
The important thing is, she’s safe now. And while the girls settling into their reading corner haven’t had the best start in life, I can help them too, in my own small way.
“Earth to Erin.”
Mallorie’s voice slices clean through my thoughts as she drops into the chair across from me, eyeing the papers I’ve laid out like they personally offend her.
“You’ve been staring at that page for five minutes,” she says. “Either it’s the most riveting library budget spreadsheet in history or you’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing?”
“You really need me to say it?”
I lift my lids and glare at her. “I’m not doing that thing.”
“Yes you are. You’re thinking about him.”
She’s right, and I hate that she’s right, because it’s been eighteen months and no matter how many books I bury my head in, the image, the smell, the sound of him won’t leave my head.
Mallorie leans forward and takes my hands.
“It’s okay, you know,” she says, softly. “It was an intense couple of weeks. Those experiences leave their mark on someone. No one could blame you for thinking about it. But you have to stop pining at some point.”
My eyes narrow. “That’s offensive.”
She leans back with an arched brow. “Really? You had lots of yummy sex with an actual mafia God who gave you a six-figure bonus for the privilege. You inherited Gerard’s house, his investments, and half his assets.
You’re living in a beautiful house in New York, volunteering, working a wholesome job.
Paige is happy, your mother is… well, as happy as she can be…
And you’re still pining like a Victorian heroine. ”
“I am not pining.”
She dips her chin. “You alphabetize your spice rack when you’re stressed and you still freeze every time an Italian accent appears in a movie,” she shoots back. “You’re pining.”
I look up, my shoulders sinking with a heavy sigh. “Okay, so what if I am?”
“Honey…” Mallorie’s tone softens. “Why did you leave him? It’s clear he didn’t want you to.
You could hardly speak through tears on the ride home and you didn’t mention him again for months.
I saw the chemistry you had—it was combustible.
And him around you? I’ve never seen a man melt only to harden himself around the very shape of you. ”
I chew my lip to stop the emotions from penetrating my eyeballs.
“Even with the horrible tension and the stabbings and the fact we had a dead man in the house, I could tell he made you happy, Erin. And you deserve to be happy. You don’t deserve to be closeted in the back of a library, your lady bits gathering as much dust as War and Peace.”
I feel the pretense leaching out from my pores.
“Mallorie, don’t. It’s hard enough as it is. You’re right about all those things. Really, you are. You’ve always been too perceptive for my own good. But we’ve had this conversation so many times and you know exactly why I left and why I can’t go back. I did this for Paige. She’s everything.”
Mallorie looks back at me with a gentleness that hurts.
“I get it, Erin. But what you also need to remember is this: You are everything too.”
The house is warm when I get home.
The first sound I hear is my mother’s voice. She’s humming to herself in the kitchen, making Paige something to eat.
After the trauma we all experienced at the safe house in the woods, my mother has been somewhat gentler with me. I suspect she feels a little guilty about favoring my ex-husband over me all those years when he’d turned out to be a gangster of the worst possible kind. Though, she’d never admit it.
She’s showing me she’s sorry in other ways—being here for Paige when she gets home from school, making dinners when I work late, not mentioning Augusto even though I know her opinions don’t differ greatly to Mallorie’s.
“Mom?” Paige calls from the dining room.
I hang my bag in the closet then follow the sound of her voice. I find her surrounded by leaflets, forms, and what appears to be a glitter pen explosion.
“What’s all this?” I ask, stepping on a blob of glue.
She beams. “Junior prom planning!”
“Junior prom?” I echo, blinking. “Already?”
“Yeah, Mom. It’s happening in three weeks.”
I feel the blood run from my cheeks. How is it her junior prom already? How did she get to sixteen so fast?
“Okay…” I mentally rearrange all the plans I’d had in my head. “What do you need help with?”
She hesitates which, given her prior enthusiasm, sets off alarm bells.
“What is it?”
She chews her lip.
“I was thinking,” she begins cautiously, “about the guest list.”
“Okay. Who were you thinking?”
“Well, you, obviously…”
“Thanks.”
“Grams, Mallorie… And I thought maybe we could invite… someone else.”
I shake my head, puzzled.
“Your great aunt? Gerard’s aunt?”
That’s the only other living relative I can think of and she was a part of Paige’s life for a long time.
“Um, no, not her… I’m not ready to, um…”
“No, I understand. Then, who?”
The lip-chewing starts up again.
“Wait— Do you have a new boyfriend?”
Her face pales. “No, that—”
“Then, who?”
She blurts it out like ripping off a Band Aid.
“Augusto.”
The room goes very, very quiet. I haven’t heard Paige speak his name since we left the safe house. And the weirdest thing about it is, it doesn’t feel weird. Oh, that, and she wants to invite him to her prom?
“What?” I say, now convinced I didn’t hear her correctly.
She winces. “Before you freak out—”
“I’m not freaking out,” I say, although my eyes feel like they’re about to pop right out of my head. “Why would he want to come to a prom?” I throw my arms out to the sides. “He might be dead for all we know.”
Knowing the life he leads, it’s a distinct possibility, albeit one I don’t ever want to think about.
Her gaze lowers. “He’s not dead.”
I shift my feet, not caring that I’ve just stood in another blob of glue. “What?”
She peers up at me guiltily. “I said, he’s not dead.”
I take a steadying breath. “And how do you know that?”
That damn lip of hers is going to get chewed off at this rate.
“Paige…?”
“I… stayed in touch with him.”
Her words hit me like a slap, emotions that I’ve bottled up, shut away, pretended don’t exist, slamming into me like a truck.
“You what?”
Paige’s bottom lip has popped free of her teeth and is now trembling.
“I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d say no but, I just— I thought—” Her words tumble over each other.
“I thought maybe one day you’d realize you still love him and you want to go back and I didn’t want him to disappear from our lives completely! ”
Anger surges up from my stomach, to my chest, to my throat and out my mouth so fast it steals my breath.
My voice shakes. “The entire reason I left was to protect you from that world. From danger. From men like Morozov showing up in the middle of the night. From men like—” A sob bursts out of me, unexpectedly. “Like your father.”
Paige leaps to her feet and throws her arms around my neck.
“It wasn’t your fault, Mom,” she says, tears falling onto my neck. “What Dad did, it wasn’t your fault. And you can’t protect me from everything. And Augusto… he protected us. He didn’t bring danger, Mom, he stopped it.”
I hold her tight. Every word she’s saying is true, but acknowledging it makes me feel helpless, like she’s slipping from my grip somehow and I can’t protect her anymore.
She hiccups into me. “He’s never once spoken badly about you, Mom. Not once. He just… he always asks how you are, and if you’re happy. He still cares about you, Mom. He still loves you.”
That knocks the air clean out of me.
“I wasn’t trying to betray you by staying in touch with him,” she says. “I just didn’t want him to think we vanished like he meant nothing.”
My anger and hurt softens, only to be replaced by something more painful. Fear.
He’s in our lives—my life—whether I want it or not.
And God, I do want it.
I’ve wanted it since the moment I met him. Since that first kiss. Since he killed the man threatening our daughter’s life. Since we drove away from the safe house with only Paige’s safety in sight.
I want him so badly it hurts every bone in my body. I’ve fought, and fought, and fought, yet I still feel as strongly for him now as I did eighteen months ago.
We hold each other, weeping quietly and a shadow appears at the door. I lift my gaze to my mother.
“Did you know?”
She nods but doesn’t say anything.
My mom, Mallorie, Paige… They all knew. They’ve just been waiting for me.
I unclasp my daughter’s arms and wipe my snotty nose on my sleeve.
“Ah, Mom, don’t do that,” Paige scolds, gently. How did she suddenly get so mature?
Planting my hands on my hips I glare at them both in turn. “Okay, so how does this work?”
Paige’s eyes widen. “You’re okay with this?”
I swallow. “I don’t know. Let’s say I am. What happens next?”
Paige pulls out her phone and starts typing. “Well, I send him a text and let him know you said it was okay.”
I’m stunned. “You text him?”
Paige lifts a shoulder without looking up. “Yeah.”
As these facts sink in, my stomach takes flight, making me feel lightheaded. I sink into the chair opposite her.
I glance up at Mom. “Will he even come?” The last thing I want is for Paige to be disappointed.
Paige drops the phone into a pile of glitter. “He’s already said he would, as long as you were okay with it. He said—” She hesitates, flicks her gaze to Mom and back to me. “He said if you were okay seeing him, he’d go anywhere, anytime.”
My heart skips several beats. That’s one of the most romantic things I’ve ever heard.
Paige’s phone lights up, making us both snap our focus to it. Before Paige can snatch it up, I notice the name: Augie.
“You—you call him Augie?”
“He told me to,” Paige says, the very picture of nonchalance. “Yep, he says he can’t wait.”
A light sweat breaks out across my forehead. “Have you met with him? In person?”
“No,” she says with a note of sadness. “He said he didn’t think that would be right, not without you knowing.”
“Oh, but texting my daughter behind my back is fine.”
Mom steps into the room. “It wasn’t like that, Erin. Paige said she wanted to see how he was. They communicated through me initially.”
“Through you?”
Mom sighs, guiltily. “Yes, and I can imagine how it might feel. You know, it was no secret how much I liked Gerard, so to be friendly with Augusto without you knowing… It felt wrong and I’m sorry, but…”
She nods toward my daughter who looks at me firmly. “I wasn’t taking no for an answer.”
“Right.”
“Is it okay if I mail these?” Paige lifts the pile of invitations sending a cloud of glitter into the air.
“Sure,” I reply, absently, because my mind is already spiraling.
I assure them both I’m not about to fall apart, then go and lie down for several hours.