5. Liv
Liv
We woke the next morning twined around each other in my bed.
Coming to with a man’s arm draped over my waist, I had a moment of sheer panic.
Then I remembered Theo following me home in his black BMW.
Remembered his hand low on my back as we walked up to my house, the warmth of it burning through my dress as he pulled me close against him.
We’d taken mutual advantage of each other as soon as my front door opened: on my coffee table, against the living room wall, and finally in my four-poster, which had creaked until I was afraid it would collapse.
My cheeks heated at the memory, just as he leaned over and lifted my hair off my neck so he could kiss me there.
“Coffee?” he said, his voice still rough with sleep.
I shuddered at the rasp of his stubble against my skin, and he smiled. “Or,” he said, “we could...”
“No, we couldn’t.” I slid out of bed, wishing for clothes. It was ridiculous, given what had happened last night, but a sudden wave of shyness washed over me.
The sheets rustled as he moved. “Mmm. Why not?”
“Fiend,” I accused for want of a better retort, making myself turn to face him.
He lay on his back in a splash of sunshine like he’d planned it, fingers knotted behind his head, wearing nothing but a devilish grin. “Glass houses,” he said, raising one dark eyebrow.
“Coffee,” I replied, foraging in my dresser for cover and fleeing for the bathroom.
As I brushed my teeth and tried to tame my hair, I wished I had my phone so I could text Tessa about how my disastrous date had turned into an evening with a piano sex god.
What would I tell my mom about Mustache Man?
If she could see me now, she’d be mortified.
I told myself not to feel guilty. I deserved every bit of my glorious time with Theo. But despite myself, my mom’s voice echoed in my head, telling me I should be ashamed of myself.
Giving myself a pep talk in the mirror, I stomped out of the bathroom.
The bed was rumpled but empty and the unmistakable scent of French roast drifted from the direction of the kitchen.
I followed it and found Theo standing shirtless at the counter, messing with two mugs.
My guilt faded as my mouth fell open in appreciation.
Gray didn’t drink coffee and had never once made it for me in all the years we were together—much less done so half-naked, like Mr. October in the Hot Piano Players of the Year calendar.
He caught sight of my expression and turned. “What’s the matter?”
I found myself speechless, not a typical condition. And yet, this was the second time it had happened to me in my brief acquaintance with Theo.
He ran a hand through his hair, looking puzzled. “Did I screw up? You did say you wanted coffee. I didn’t think you’d mind me digging around in your kitchen. But if I overstepped—”
I surged into him, knocking him back against the counter, and pressed a kiss to his lips before he could say anything else. His hands rose as if by instinct, gripping my waist.
“Mmm. What was that for?”
“Nothing,” I said, disentangling myself to grab one of the mugs and doctor the contents with cream and sugar. “Carry on.”
He raised an eyebrow again but followed me to the wooden table by the bay window, cradling his coffee.
I loved this kitchen. I’d worked with a designer to redo it the year before Gray and I split up, putting in gray granite countertops, whitewashed cabinets, and a farm sink.
But it had never seemed finished to me. Maybe because I’d envisioned cooking incredible meals together, then sitting around the secondhand table I’d scoured three stores to find, laughing and chatting about our days.
Instead, I’d had to drag Gray to the table, complaining all the way.
After a while, the kitchen mocked me with its perfection, as if I’d renovated it for another family, one that would make it come alive.
Seeing Theo here, making himself at home the way I’d always wished Gray would...
it hurt, but it felt satisfying, too. It felt right.
That was ridiculous. I’d only just met the guy. So he’d made coffee; that didn’t mean he was going to stick around for breakfast. And I had no reason to want him to, except I liked having him here.
“You’re staring, you know,” he said, settling into the chair Chloe usually took. “Not that I mind, given I’m enjoying the view myself.”
Amused, I rolled my eyes. “Sure. Because yoga pants and a T-shirt are every bit as eye-catching as...you.” I waved a hand in his general direction.
“I’ll admit, it’s not as provocative as that damn dress.” He shrugged. “But it’s you I’m seeing, Liv, not the packaging.”
Warmth flushed through me. This guy was too good to be true. “So you really did like the dress.” I tucked a curl behind my ear, musing. “I’ll have to tell my grandma.”
He choked on his coffee. “Come again?”
“The dress. It was hers. She’s got a whole closet of these amazing vintage clothes.
Stuff she wore in Manhattan in the ’40s.
And, well, she insisted I wear that dress last night.
” No need to tell him about the disastrous date with Mustache Man.
“I guess she’s living vicariously through me, but I don’t mind.
It makes her so happy.” I took a self-conscious gulp of coffee.
“I probably shouldn’t have said anything. I know it’s weird.”
“You love your grandma. That’s not weird. It’s sweet.” He grinned at me over the rim of his mug. “Now, the fact that she dressed you hot like whoa and sent you out on the town...that’s a little peculiar, I’ll admit.”
“Shut up.” I leaned across the table to swat him, but he dodged out of the way.
“My family’s from New York City too,” he said as a peace offering, draining his mug.
It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. Even though I’d grown up in Manhattan, we lived in North Carolina now, in a sleepy town sandwiched between a beach and a river.
But people came to Wilmington from all over, and I guessed it wasn’t that odd that Theo was a fellow New Yorker.
“Really?” I said to Theo. “Maybe they were friends back in the day.”
“I doubt it, if yours was busy hanging out in Manhattan high society. My great-grandparents were immigrants from Lithuania. Clawed their way out of some serious poverty on the Lower East Side. They probably sewed half the dresses your grandmother wore.” His tone was light, but beneath the surface I detected an old hurt.
An uneasy feeling swept over me. You didn’t grow up in my family without getting nervous when someone mentioned the residents of lower Manhattan’s turn-of-the-century tenements. But I blew it off. “Surely not,” I said, knotting my fingers around my mug.
“It’s more possible than you’d think. That’s what they did, work in garment factories. Even the kids. My Grandma Susi used to piece clothing together at night when she was little. She’s got all kinds of stories.” His jaw clenched.
The name hovered at the edge of my consciousness, oddly familiar. Seeking to reclaim our playful mood, I unknotted my fingers and reached across the table, taking one of his hands in mine.
He looked up, features set in apology. “I’m sorry. I’m being stupid. Let’s talk about something else. Like—what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a trauma therapist.”
His face rearranged itself into the puzzled expression I was used to seeing when I talked about my career. With a sigh, I went on.
“Basically, I help people who’ve survived traumatic experiences find ways to process what’s happened to them.
My specialty is generational trauma. And I have a particular interest in epigenetics…
understanding how an ancestor’s traumatic experience can alter biochemistry and the expression of DNA in future generations.
” I had Tessa, a brilliant epigeneticist, to thank for that.
“But most of what I do involves working with people to help them heal from traumatic events. I use regular talk therapy, but also EMDR, cognitive processing therapy, and a bunch of other approaches. Whatever works for my clients.”
Normally, this was the point where I lost my listener. But Theo didn’t look disinterested. He looked disturbed. “What got you interested in that?”
“It’s a long story.”
He shrugged, smiling. “I’ve got time.”
I took a sip of coffee, warming to my explanation. “I love understanding what makes people tick. And I’ve always been fascinated with the roots of trauma. How they manifest in a person, and how they can get passed along to future generations.”
His brows knitted. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” I said, encouraged by what seemed like genuine interest on his part, “this researcher, Rachel Yehuda, studied the neurobiology of Holocaust survivors and their descendants. She found that not only do Holocaust survivors with PTSD have lower levels of cortisol—their descendants were born with decreased cortisol levels and tended to have PTSD, too, even though they weren’t in the camps themselves. ”
I waited for him to slide under the table and fall asleep, the way Gray had always threatened to do when I started talking about this stuff. But instead, Theo folded his arms over his bare chest.
“Go on,” he said.
I did my best not to get distracted by his biceps. “You’re actually interested in this? Because most people—”
“I asked, didn’t I?” He gave me a small smile, but something about it seemed forced.
“Right.” I cleared my throat. “So, Yehuda went on to study war veterans and people who’d been pregnant during the 9/11 attacks.
She found the exact same pattern. Low levels of cortisol and the presence of PTSD in survivors as well as their children, and their children’s children.
Not to mention anxiety and depression. Am I boring you to death yet? ”
Theo shifted his weight. “Not yet,” he said, his gaze flicking away. He didn’t look bored, exactly, but something about him seemed off, uneasy. Maybe he was just trying to be polite.
“I’ll try to wrap it up,” I said, taking pity on him.
“The gist is that for years, scientists thought trauma survivors passed their mental health struggles down to their descendants through environmental and social cues, not genetics. You know, the whole ‘nature versus nurture’ debate. But what Yehuda’s research found is that people carry the ghosts of their ancestors’ unresolved traumas with them, embedded in their cellular biology—so they have symptoms of traumas they’ve never personally experienced.
It’s wild, and also fascinating. At least, I think so. ”
Now I had Theo’s attention. He was looking right at me, his hazel eyes narrowed. “So, what trauma’s lurking in your past, Liv?”
“Not me,” I said. “But way back in the day, when she was a toddler, my grandmother disappeared. No one really knows how it happened, because she was inside a park in New York City that requires a key to enter or leave. It took a year for my great-grandparents to find her. They ran ads in all the major papers, and finally some couple in Chicago saw one. They’d adopted my grandma from an agency in New York, and she matched the photo in the paper. ”
I glanced up at Theo, expecting him to look intrigued, or at least curious. This had to be more interesting to him than epigenetic theory. But instead, he’d gone white.
“Go on,” he said, his voice tight.
His reaction bemused me, but I obliged. “My grandma had no memory of her life before the adoption. And she’d been so traumatized, she’d lost the ability to speak, so she’d never told anyone her name.
My great-grandparents brought her home, but then another woman showed up—a Jewish immigrant from the Lower East Side—claiming my grandma was really her daughter. ”
Now Theo didn’t just look white. He looked sick. “And then?”
It was a strange story, true. But I didn’t get why it would bother him this much. I paused, wondering if I should stop, but he motioned for me to continue. Uneasy, I went on.
“There was a big drama, splashed all over the papers. Apparently, this woman had lost her daughter the year before, and she latched onto my grandma’s recovery as some kind of wish fulfillment.
She started showing up outside my great-grandparents’ apartment, begging to see her kid.
Then she accused my family of using our money and influence to steal their daughter, and my family turned around and accused her of harassment and extortion.
Eventually it went to court, and my family won.
” I drew a deep breath. “It was a giant mess, and it got me thinking about how something like that affects families for generations to come. Hence, my choice of career.”
Theo yanked his hand out of mine and stared at me, his expression hard. “What did you say your last name was again?”
“I didn’t. But it’s Brentwood,” I said, the uneasy feeling growing. “Olivia Carter-Brentwood, which I know is a mouthful. But everyone calls me Liv, except my mother and my grandma, which...what’s wrong?”
“Your grandmother’s first name.” He looked paler than ever. “What is it?”
“Ella,” I said, bewildered. “Why do you—”
He shot to his feet before I could finish speaking. His chair clattered to the floor behind him. “The place she was kidnapped. Was it Gramercy Park?”
“Yes.” I peered at him, perplexed. “How do you know that?”
His mouth flattened into a grim line. “Allow me to introduce myself, Liv Carter-Brentwood. My name is Theo Dressler. And that woman your family decimated in court? She was my great-grandmother.”
My heart plummeted to my stomach. And then it was my turn to stare.