Chapter 33 #2
To sink with it.
“Then Dad was there. He was soaking wet. I’ve never seen him so scared. But he was alone, and I knew . . . we were alone.” She crumpled again, curling so tightly she fit like a ball in my lap. “They were so scared. They died scared. Because I didn’t save them.”
My heart broke. Over and over and over again.
“I’m sorry, Vera. I’m so sorry.”
She cried for so long I started to worry she’d never stop. But eventually, the shaking in her shoulders stopped, and with it, the tears. Her body slumped against mine, not even having the strength to sit upright. Too much heartache and it was shutting her down.
I shifted and picked her up, cradling her against my chest as I walked to a nearby tree. Then I sat at its trunk, using it as a backrest even though the bark dug into my bare skin. It was nothing compared to what Vera had endured alone.
The strength she’d had at seventeen to swim home. To keep swimming. To not give up. Damn. I’d never hurt so much for another person and been so proud at the same time.
I held her, unmoving, until she eventually leaned away to meet my gaze.
“She was an addict.” The life had drained from Vera’s voice. It was flat and dull. “I never talked to Dad about it. He tried, in the beginning. But I shut him out. I just . . . couldn’t.”
“Understandable.” I tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, then untucked it.
“When Vance and Lyla found me, Dad told them the truth. They didn’t know I was listening, but I was outside our shelter, eavesdropping. I heard every word.”
She inhaled a long, deep breath. It was the first time she’d filled her lungs in hours. The breath to start another story.
One more story.
Her father’s.
“Dad met her at a bar in Alaska. Whenever they told us the story, he said he took one look at her and left his friends in the dust. Proposed to her the next day. Love at first sight. That’s what I believed for most of my life.”
“Not anymore?”
She stared at me, her eyes softening. “Not for them.”
But for her. She’d loved me from first sight. For the rest of my life, I’d regret not being able to say the same.
“How did they actually meet?” I asked.
“In that bar. He went to the bathroom and found her passed out with a heroin needle stuck in her arm.”
“Heroin?”
Vera nodded. “He took her to the hospital. The next day, went to check on her. He said once she was out of rehab to give him a call, and he’d buy her a cookies-and-cream milkshake.”
“Did he?”
“Yeah. They started dating. She got pregnant with me, so they got married. Dad thought everything was fine, but he came home from work one day when I was nine months old and she was passed out drunk on vodka in the bathtub. She’d left me in my crib for hours with a dirty diaper and no food.”
The mental image was jarring. Maybe because Allie was so young. I could still see her at that age. I could hear her crying from her crib, arms outstretched, when she’d wake up from a nap and want me to come rescue her.
“Apparently, they got her on some medication for postpartum depression. They moved to Idaho so they wouldn’t have those long, dark winters in Alaska.”
I’d lived through one of those winters and it was brutal. Montana might be cold six or more months out of the year, but at least the sun was usually shining.
“According to Dad, her family was toxic. I don’t remember them because Dad refused to let them be around us after we moved.
We never went back to Alaska, even though that’s where his parents lived.
They came to Idaho to visit us until they died.
Dad used his inheritance to buy us that house on the lake and get the boat. ”
Every added detail was like another tiny cut. Another dash of salt on an open wound. Did Cormac regret every decision he’d ever made? My heart softened for her father. In his shoes, I would have blamed one person.
Myself.
“They waited awhile before having Elsie and Hadley. Dad wanted to make sure she was okay. That she’d be a good mother.
” Venom dripped from Vera’s voice. “She was a good mother. She’d leave me notes in my lunch box.
She’d braid my hair and talk to me about the boys I liked.
She’d hug me whenever I was close. She’d kiss my temple and tell me she loved me to the moon and back. I loved her too.”
Loved. Not love. Vera’s love for Norah had drowned with her sisters.
“A friend of hers from Alaska came to visit. They went to lunch. Dad didn’t go along. He told Vance he didn’t think much about it. But that must have been the turning point for her to start using again.”
Cormac hadn’t noticed? I held that question inside.
I had a lot of blame to put on that man.
For my sister. For Vera. But a friend of mine from college had been addicted to meth.
I hadn’t known about it until he’d gotten arrested for breaking into his grandparents’ house to steal some jewelry and pawn it for drug money.
Addicts were good at hiding their vices.
“Dad came home that night and found her alone,” Vera said.
So Norah had made it home with the boat while her daughters had been drowning in the lake and Vera had been swimming for her life.
“Dad asked her what was going on, and she kept talking about swimming lessons. She thought he was a lifeguard and asked him to get her kids from the pool. He went outside, found the boat on the shore, not tied up. After he put it all together, he strangled her.”
I flinched.
The way she said it, so cold and detached.
Her father had murdered her mother, and Vera spoke about it like the truth that it was. Did she ever resent him for that? No. Probably not. Not after what Norah had done.
“Dad went looking for us. Ran the boat almost out of gas. I was on the dock when he got back.”
And then he’d swept her away from the world. He’d hidden her and let the world think she was dead. That he was a man who’d murdered his family.
Would I have done any different? Would I have taken Vera away from that horror? He would have gone to prison. At seventeen, she would have been left as a ward of the state. That, or sent to live with family. Possibly Norah’s toxic parents from Alaska.
Did she have other family? Vance seemed to be her only link to the past, and he wasn’t a real uncle, just a friend.
Then there would have been the media attention. A tragic case like that . . . reporters would have been crawling all over her. They sure as hell had when she’d appeared years later, not dead. They would have suffocated her.
Maybe Cormac had done the right thing taking her away after all.
“Mateo?” Her face was splotchy, her eyes red and puffy. She was still beautiful, even tear soaked and jagged.
“Yeah?” I ran my knuckles down her cheek.
“Will it always hurt?”
“I don’t know, Peach.”
She leaned her head on my shoulder, her hand coming to my heart like she could feel it twisting. “I think yes.”
Yes. It would probably always hurt. But she wouldn’t be hurting alone, not anymore.
We stayed against that tree for hours, just holding on to each other. Finally, when Vera shifted to stand, we climbed to our feet and made our way back to camp.
Every tent, including ours, had been packed up. Jasper was putting the last cooler in his rig before slamming the tailgate shut. The other vehicles were loaded, and my parents’ fifth wheel was hooked to their truck.
The moment Dad spotted us, he walked over with the keys to my truck in his hand. “Allie is riding with us. We’re moving campgrounds.”
Thank fuck. Not a chance I was making Vera stay by this lake. “Where to?”
He reached out and ran a thumb across Vera’s cheek, giving her a smile. A father’s smile. “The Eden Ranch.”