Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Kaidan’s words landed like a bomb, rendering her boisterous siblings completely speechless.
“What?” Carson said for all of them. “What the actual fuck are you talking about, Kay?”
“Don’t yell at me! I’m just saying… There’s a vibe.”
“What kind of vibe?” Jordan asked tentatively. “And why haven’t you said anything before now?”
“I wanted to wait until we were all together,” Kaidan said. “Do you guys remember what it was like between them before it all went to shit?”
“Nope,” Roman said. “I only know the shit.”
“Same,” Jackson said.
“Me, too,” Gillian said.
The three youngest had vague memories of the bad times and even fewer recollections of the good years.
“When they were together—and happy—Mom was different. She was lighter, giggly and silly.”
“You’re talking about my mother?” Jackson asked. “Giggly and silly?”
“I know what she means,” Julian said. “I remember that.”
“I do, too,” Carson said. “She was like a teenager in love around him.”
“Yes!” Kaidan said. “Exactly. Over the last couple of months, I’ve heard her on the phone at night, behaving just like that, and then, this past weekend, she disappeared.”
“What does that mean?” Griffin asked. “How can a grown woman disappear?”
“She turned off her location and went dark for the whole weekend,” Kaidan said.
“She did,” Jordan said, nodding. “I tried to call her twice about work stuff, and she never returned the calls. When I looked to see where she was, her location was turned off. I can’t remember a time that’s ever happened.
When I asked her about it this week, she said she forgot to check her voicemail. ”
“That also never happens,” Kaidan said.
“I thought it was weird,” Jordan said, shifting uneasily in her seat.
The idea of their parents back together, after one of the most contentious divorces in history, was almost impossible to believe.
“That’s so weird.” Gillian crossed her arms in a protective pose that tugged at Julian’s heart. “She’s always available.”
“Why do you assume it’s Dad she’s talking to?” Carson asked suspiciously.
“Because I’ve never heard her behave that way with anyone else.”
“That doesn’t mean she hasn’t met someone new,” Carson said. “Why in the hell would she ever go back to Dad after what they put each other—and us—through for ten goddamned years?”
Leonardo stopped short as he approached the table. “What’s wrong with you guys? You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something.”
“Or something,” Roman said for all of them.
“Ready for more drinks?” Leo asked.
“So ready,” Carson said.
After they’d ordered another round and Leo had walked away, Ethan said, “I can understand wanting it to be true.”
“That’s not what this is,” Kaidan shot back at him. “Them back together is the last freaking thing I’d ever want.”
“Same,” Griffin said as everyone else nodded in agreement.
“I’m merely saying the preponderance of evidence has me wondering if it’s possible,” Kaidan said.
They all looked to Carson, who put up his hands to fend them off. “No way am I investigating whether our parents are rekindling an old flame that nearly swallowed us whole. No. Way.”
“You could find out faster than the rest of us,” Jordan said.
“Get someone else to do your dirty work. If it’s true, I want nothing to do with it.”
Leo approached the table to take their dinner orders but stopped when he seemed to sense the tension was still strong. “Should I come back?”
“Give us a few minutes, Leo,” Julian said. “Thanks.”
“You got it, Counselor. No rush.”
After Leo walked away, the silence persisted, which was so unusual when they were together that it put Julian’s nerves on edge.
“You guys, listen… While I appreciate that the evidence might point toward a reconciliation, there’s no way they’re back together.
They’re barely civil to each other when they are together, which is hardly ever.
It’s been three years since they saw each other at Rome’s graduation. ”
“They see each other at bar association stuff,” Jordan said.
“They do?” Julian asked. “Since when is Dad going to those meetings?”
“He rarely misses one,” Gillian said.
“How did we not know that?” Julian asked his brothers.
“Maybe he’s checking out for something else because he doesn’t want us to know he’s going to be somewhere that she is,” Ethan said.
Again, the siblings were silent as they pondered the possibility…
“Are we going to eat?” Carson asked. “Cuz I’ve got other shit to do tonight.” He signaled for Leo to come take their orders.
“Everything all right, family?” Leo asked.
“Yeah, all good,” Julian said. “Let’s order.”
After dinner, which Jackson paid for with much bitching and moaning, they parted with hugs and promises to set a date for the next one on the girls’ side of town.
“Do you think it’s true?” Griffin asked Julian the second they walked away from their sisters to head back to the office.
“No, I don’t.” Eating dinner had been a chore thanks to the huge knot of anxiety that’d settled in his chest at the mere mention of their parents rekindling a romance that had wrecked their lives for a time.
Julian had taken most of his lobster pappardelle to go for lunch tomorrow.
Hopefully, the sick feeling would pass when one of his siblings produced proof that Kaidan’s theory was nonsense.
They’d agreed to be on alert for clues. Well, everyone but Carson had agreed to that. He’d reiterated his earlier statement that he’d have nothing to do with it either way.
It had to be nonsense.
There was no way…
“Jules,” Roman said, “did you hear me?”
“No, sorry. What?”
“What if it’s true?”
“It’s not, so let’s move on.”
It couldn’t be.
That was the end of it as far as he was concerned.
After she’d put her kids to bed, Isla poured a glass of the wine she’d gotten at the grocery store, where she’d stocked up on the way to the rental.
She figured she’d earned the wine after the two days she’d just had.
Since emerging from her closet hideout, she’d been waiting to feel heartbroken that her marriage to Gabriel was finally over.
She’d thought she might feel regret or a longing for what used to be.
Rather, her prevailing emotion was relief.
It was over.
Done.
Finished.
Forever.
According to her new lawyer, she had a very strong case for sole custody of her kids, and apparently, her parents had left her money that would make everything easier.
Hearing that news had been almost as shocking as Gabriel taking a bat to their home.
She’d assumed all their resources had been used to pay for essentials as Denny finished raising her while he commuted to college at UCLA.
In the whirlwind of revelations uncovered as she took steps to end the marriage and move out of their apartment, she’d barely had a second to process any of it. Now that she could reflect, relief was the pervasive emotion.
In truth, the demise of her marriage had been a slow-rolling train wreck or, as she’d seen it described by someone online, death by a thousand paper cuts.
That phrase had spoken to her soul. Day by day, week by week, month by month, the paper cuts had added up to a gaping wound that’d scabbed over but never had the chance to properly heal before he did something to reopen it.
And the cycle would begin all over again.
As she’d carved into the drywall in the back of her closet, hoping to find a space where she and the kids could hide if it came to that, she’d been fully aware of the absolute insanity of what she was doing and why she needed it.
After having Mila completely on her own, suffering from postpartum depression while caring for two kids and wondering where her husband was for the first month of their daughter’s life, the marriage had been over for her.
She’d been biding her time ever since, looking for an exit ramp that he’d delivered with a baseball bat.
She’d begun to move on from him mentally and emotionally even before he smashed up their home, forcing her to make the actual move to leave him for good.
Tonight, as she sat in someone else’s house, surrounded by things that didn’t belong to her, she was more at home than she’d been in the apartment for quite some time.
She felt safe, hidden within a city of millions in a place he’d never think to look for her.
For once, the massiveness of Los Angeles was coming in handy rather than frustrating her with traffic, crowds and other challenges that came with city living.
She exhaled fully for the first time in years.
Years.
It’d been years since things had been “normal” with Gabriel.
Years of her life that she’d never get back had been lost to an unknown adversary, an illness or an addiction or something that’d taken him over and away from her.
She wondered if knowing what was wrong would make her feel better.
At one time, it would have. Now, it didn’t matter anymore.
She hoped he’d get the help he needed so he could maybe someday have a relationship with his children, but that’d be up to him.
All her begging and pleading for him to get help had fallen on deaf ears, and now…
She was done.
Isla drank her wine and gazed at the framed posters of musicians she didn’t recognize on the wall above the sofa in a house on a street named for a president she’d barely heard of.
Woodrow Wilson. She had vague memories of learning about him in school, but no solid info on him that she could easily recall.
The Realtor Denny had called had told him the short-term rental that’d checked all her boxes had historical significance to some musician she’d never heard of but whom Denny had gushed about while Isla had made sure the windows were locked.
She couldn’t care less about historical significance. The only thing that mattered was that she and her children were safe and secure and had enough money to eat tomorrow.
Hearing that Denny had protected her money from Gabriel had been both shocking and devastating.
But thank God for him, as she’d thought a million times since they lost their parents.
They’d been union camera operators who met on the set of a film when they were twenty-one and had been together ever since.
Denny and Isla had taken some comfort in knowing they’d be together forever in the afterlife.
Twenty-year-old Denny had stepped up for her then and so many times since that she couldn’t possibly count them all.
If she’d known when she first got together with Gabriel that her brother was hiding money that was legally hers, she would’ve been outraged.
In her righteous indignation, she might’ve said or done things that could never be unsaid or undone.
There was no question that, if it’d come down to a choice back then, she would’ve ended her relationship with her brother to preserve her bond with Gabriel.
What a fool she’d been, but thankfully, she hadn’t lost her brother, too. That would’ve been truly tragic.
Here, she thought as she looked around at the cozy room full of musical memorabilia from the sixties and seventies, comfy couches, terracotta tile and other Spanish accents, she was more at peace than she would’ve thought possible on the day she met with a divorce attorney.
Speaking of Julian, her phone chimed with a text from him.
Gabriel is out on bail. He’s been served the restraining order and been told to stay at least one thousand feet from you and your children.
I have some more paperwork for you to fill out.
If you’d like, I could drop it off on my way home.
I live up the road from where you are in the Canyon.
Or I could messenger them over tomorrow.
Oh hello. Yes, please, bring me the papers, you sexy devil, she thought.
Stop it, Isla. You’re about to file for divorce after your husband got himself arrested for smashing up your apartment. The last thing in the world you should be doing is crushing on your divorce attorney.
But he’d been so kind, so understanding, so gorgeous. And he’d smelled pretty damned good, too.
If she was going to hell for thinking her divorce attorney was sexy, then at least she’d go happy.
Her actual reply was all business. Sure, that’d be great. You’ve got the address on Woodrow Wilson Drive?
Yep, I know that house. It’s a landmark. I didn’t know it was being rented.
I heard it’s got history. To me, it’s a safe haven.
See you shortly.
Oh my God, he was coming over soon!
She ran for the shower and was still dripping as she rifled through suitcases on the floor, looking for something to wear. Jeans and a T-shirt were the first things she found, so she grabbed them and went to get dressed and dry her hair.
She didn’t want to look like she’d gone to any trouble as she put on lip gloss, mascara and some powder to matte the shine on her forehead that came from the cold sweat she’d broken into as she tried to find everything she needed to look presentable when nothing was unpacked or put away.
“You’re getting way too excited about a lawyer dropping off paperwork for your divorce,” she told her reflection as she gave herself a good once-over in the full-length mirror in the bedroom to make sure she didn’t have toilet paper stuck to her foot or underwear hanging out of her jeans.
Deciding she looked as presentable as she ever did these days, she straightened her hair and then went to finish her glass of wine while reminding herself he was coming as her lawyer and nothing else.
“You’re in no position to be getting excited to see any man, let alone your freaking divorce attorney. How many of his clients fall madly in love with him? Probably most of the women—and maybe some of the guys, too. You’d be the latest in a long line, so knock it off and get real.”