26. Nate
Chapter 26
One thing New York and Los Angeles have in common is the traffic. We haven’t moved an inch in over five minutes, and I’m getting antsy. That might have something to do with the faint traces of a hangover from drinking and dancing with Dex until the small hours, but this cab to the lockup where Declan stored our parents’ belongings is starting to make me feel claustrophobic.
“Let’s walk the rest of the way,” I suggest, handing the cab driver a twenty.
We all climb out of the cab, dodging through stationery traffic to the sidewalk. I take hold of Dex’s hand, and my brothers and I walk the last four blocks to the storage unit.
Declan keys in the code and lifts the roller door to reveal a ton of boxes, all sealed and stacked three high, lining the walls. The unit also houses our dad’s golf clubs, an old bike with a rusted chain, a scratched mahogany sideboard that had been passed down to Mom from her mother, and a piano I remember Mom buying because she thought it would be a good idea for us to learn to play a musical instrument. Suffice to say none of us had either the aptitude or the patience to learn, and it had gathered dust in the dining room. She’d refused to get rid of it, though, saying it added a touch of elegance to our home.
“Whose is the bike?” I ask Declan with a cocked eyebrow.
“Mine.” He flashes a broad grin. “I nagged Mom for weeks for a bike, but she thought the streets were too dangerous, so she refused. Dad talked her into it in the end.”
My face twists, and Ciaran lays a hand on my arm. “He was still your dad.”
“I think he hated me.”
Callum shakes his head. “No, he didn’t.”
“He always treated me differently, and if you’re being honest, you’ll all agree.”
Declan tugs on his bottom lip, his expression pensive as he eases out a breath. “He was much tougher on you than the rest of us. I figured he wanted to motivate you for some reason, like he thought you weren’t pushing yourself hard enough or something.”
“Instead, he must have gotten a kick to the gut every time he saw me because I reminded him of Mom’s betrayal. I mean, I don’t exactly look like the rest of you, do I?”
Dex pipes up. “Actually, you do. Apart from the color of your eyes, of course. But you have lots of physical traits in common with your brothers.” She emphasizes the last word, clearly to ram her point home. “Take a look in the mirror side by side and you’ll see.”
She turns her back on us, wanders over to the piano and lifts the lid, running her fingers over the keys. “I always wanted to learn to play, but we couldn’t afford a piano,” she says wistfully.
My heart twists for her. I mightn’t have had it easy, but I’ve never been short of stuff. Games consoles, Lego sets, the latest sneakers all the kids at school were wearing. Sure, I hadn’t gotten the affection from my dad that my brothers had, but Mom more than made up for the shortfall, pouring all her love into me.
“I can ship it to you if you like,” Declan says. “It’d be nice for it to have a home with someone who appreciates it.”
“I’d love to take you up on that,” Dex says. “But as Nate will no doubt attest to, I’d have to get rid of my furniture to accommodate it.” She giggles. “I live in a miniscule apartment. I barely have room for my cat.”
I make a mental note to speak to Declan privately and get the piano shipped to my place. I can’t make Dex’s apartment any bigger, but if I have my way, she’ll be spending all her time at my house now, anyway.
Declan takes down the first box. “Sorry, guys, but I can’t remember which one the shoebox is in, so we’ll have to go through them all.”
We all sit on the floor, each opening a box, and begin the search. It takes ages because we keep stopping and reminiscing about what we find inside, particularly when we come across some old photo albums of our school days. Dex pauses her searching and watches as we share memories.
“You grew into your looks, then?” she says, giving me a playful shoulder bump as I point out a formal school picture taken in seventh grade, about a year after the accident that killed my parents. I appear happy enough, wearing a big, beaming smile, but my eyes hold more than a tinge of sadness and knowledge only someone who’s suffered would have.
I flick the end of her nose. “Lucky for you, I did.”
Ciaran holds up a photograph and turns it over to check out the date on the back. “Hey, it’s me. I must only be about six months old. Oh, man, I’ve gotta take this back to show Millie. Aimee looks just like I did as a baby.”
Callum snatches it off him. “Poor kid.”
“Here’s one of you, Callum, about the same age,” Declan says, waving the picture in the air.
Callum grimaces. “Well, you ain’t showing Laurella that one. Check out those chubby cheeks.”
Dex laughs. “If she sees Ciaran’s, she’ll know what you looked like anyway. You’re identical twins, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Oh, shit, yeah.”
Heat radiates through my chest. These guys are my family, and they always have been. I was just too caught up in the lies I’d told myself to recognize it. The realization catches me off guard, and I suck in a sharp breath.
“You okay?” Dex asks, squeezing my hand.
I nod. “All good, Titch.”
The fifth box I open contains the shoebox. My breath snags in my throat as the memories of the night that changed my life come flooding back, and I grip the lid but find I can’t open it.
“Here, you do it.” I push the shoebox across the floor to Declan.
He opens the lid and peers inside. A smile tugs at his lips as he lifts out a stack of Christmas and birthday cards. He passes them around, and we all take our time to open the cards and read the greeting.
“That’s it,” I say when Declan picks out a pink envelope.
He takes out the card and opens it. The letter flutters to the floor. Unfolding it, he scans the first page, his eyes moving over the words. When he finishes the top sheet, he starts on the second one. From what I can remember, that’s Mom’s original letter, which my sperm donor had returned for some reason. Maybe it was too painful for him because he’d actually loved us both and was trying to cut ties as a way of coping. Or maybe he was an unfeeling bastard who found it easy to compartmentalize, and once he’d accepted his affair was over, he’d quickly moved on.
“Well,” Callum says. “What’s it say?”
Declan raises his head. I can only recall one other time when my eldest brother had looked so somber, and that was the morning after our parents’ car crash. He’d sat us all down and given us the worst possible news in his calm, stoic manner that we’d all come to rely on.
Declan passes the letter to Callum, and he and Ciaran read it. I don’t need to. The contents are burned into my brain.
“Are there any other letters?” Declan asks me.
“I don’t know. I didn’t get past that one.”
“I need to see if I can find any more.” His face is pinched as if he’s in physical pain. “I understand if you guys don’t want anything to do with this, but I have to try to understand what was going on with Mom. Why she risked her marriage to Dad and her relationship with all of us. I’m guessing your birth father must have meant a lot to her. There’s a huge amount of sorrow in her words when she wrote to break things off. If you want to leave, feel free.”
I shake my head. “I’m going nowhere.”
“Us either,” Callum says.
Declan takes a breath. “Okay, then let’s begin.”
We spend the next several hours searching through every single box, but apart from that letter, there is no sign of any other communication between Mom and my birth father. Declan closes the final box with a heavy sigh. He stiffly gets to his feet and dusts down his jeans.
“That’s it, then.”
“I guess so.” Disappointment surges through me, despite my earlier insistence that I didn’t want to know anything about my real father. There must be a small piece of me that is desperate to learn where I came from, but my bloody-minded attitude prevented me from acknowledging it. Yet now we’ve arrived at a dead end, I really want to know.
Declan checks the time. “Shit, I’ve got to go. I have a meeting with a supplier at the hotel.”
“And I owe Draven a shift or two,” Ciaran says. “He’s been carrying the load this week.” He squeezes my shoulder. “Sorry, bro.”
“Do you mind if I stay for a while?” I ask, then with a quick look at Dex, I say, “You can go back with Declan if you’d rather.”
“I’m staying,” she says, her jaw muscles set in a rigid line.
“No problem,” Declan says. He removes his cell from his pocket and taps at the screen. “I’ve text you the code. Just make sure you lock up when you leave.”
After they leave, Dex stands and wanders around the unit, touching various items as she passes by.
“You want to know, don’t you?”
I meet her gaze. “I thought I didn’t, but yeah. Not that it matters. We don’t even have a name. Only an initial. L. Probably stands for fucking Lothario.”
“That’d be FL,” Dex says with a grin.
I stiffly get to my feet and rummage through several boxes we’ve already searched. Expelling a frustrated huff, I plant my hands on my hips. I can’t believe I’ll never know who fathered me. He might be out there, looking for me, although that’s unlikely. He probably knew what Mom named me, and without sounding like an egotistical dick, I’m pretty well known.
There has to be something we’ve missed.
My attention falls on the sideboard. I stride over and open the top drawer. Apart from a couple pens and some scraps of paper, it’s empty. The next one contains an elastic band and an empty plastic box. One by one, I open the other drawers. Nothing. Incensed when the last one doesn’t have anything useful in it either, I slam it shut.
“Goddammit.”
I scrape a hand through my hair, annoyed at myself for daring to believe I might find some answers. I’m too busy pacing and muttering to myself to notice what Dex is up to. The sound of knuckles rapping on wood gets my attention.
“What are you doing?”
She glances over her shoulder with a frown. “When you slammed this drawer before, it sounded different to the others. At first, I thought it might be because you shut it so forcefully, but now I’m not so sure.”
I walk over to her. Removing the drawer from its runners, I give it a shake. Nothing seems untoward. I set it on top of the sideboard and tap the bottom, but it sounds like a normal drawer to me. I remove another one and repeat the action. Cocking my head to one side, I knock on one and then the other. There is a difference in sound, although it could be something as simple as minute discrepancies in the raw material.
“See?” Dex says. “They sound different.”
I glance around but can’t see any tools I might be able to use to prise the bottom of the drawer away.
“Here,” Dex says, handing me a bobby pin she’s taken from her hair.
I slide it between the side of the drawer and the bottom. It takes several attempts, but eventually, the bottom lifts. I get my fingernail beneath it and pull it up.
Jackpot!
Hidden away from prying eyes are bundles of letters, each one tied with a navy-blue bow. I pick them up, immediately recognizing the writing. Every single letter is from him.
My knees give way, and I sink to the floor. Dex joins me, her presence a comfort I can’t find the words to express.
I drop the letters in my lap and then sit there, unmoving. Now I have potential answers within my grasp, I can’t find the strength to read them. It feels disrespectful to Mom to go through intimate letters from her lover. There’s no doubt she didn’t want them found, otherwise she wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to hide them. And for more than twenty-eight years, her secret had remained just that.
“Do you want me to go through them?” Dex asks tentatively.
I nod. “Do you mind?” I croak.
“Not at all.”
She picks up a bundle, carefully tugs on the ribbon, and sets it to one side. She scans through the first letter, then the next, and the next. When she’s finished, she ties the ribbon around them and moves onto the second bundle. “From the dates, it looks like this is when he started writing to your mom.”
She continues reading, saying nothing. Eventually, my curiosity gets the better of me.
“What do they say?”
Dex lifts her chin and meets my gaze. “Whoever your dad was, Nate, it’s obvious he was deeply in love with your mom.” She passes one over. “Here, see for yourself.”
I clasp the aged paper, yellowed around the edges, and a little torn in places. The ink is faded, too, but the words are clearly visible.
My darling Rebecca,
As I sit here on my sofa all alone, my arms feel empty without being able to hold you. It’s been a long three weeks, and I can’t wait until you find a way to see me again. I know it’s difficult, but I love and miss you.
I do understand and hear what you said in your last letter. I know it is impossible for us to be together. You have your children to think of, and I have mine. But you mean the world to me. My life is so much fuller since we first met. The longer we are apart, the more I yearn for you.
Please get in touch soon.
Love always,
Your Laurence.
Laurence. My dad’s name is Laurence.
I pick up the next letter. As painful as it is to read such private and intimate thoughts, I have to carry on. I devour the next few. All are a similar theme to the first one, filled with angst and longing, although strangely, some he signs as Laurence, and others he just puts L.
Toward the end of the second bundle, I find what I’ve been searching for but hadn’t dared to hope for.
“Dex, Listen to this.”
My darling Rebecca,
Your news has stunned me. I’ve been sitting here for hours, reading, and rereading your last letter. The light has faded, making your words harder to read, yet still I haven’t moved.
It’s clear to me now why you stopped coming to see me for all those months, but I do wish you’d been able to confide in me. It cuts me deep that you felt the need to deal with this on your own.
Oh, but my love, you’ve made me both ecstatically happy and devastatingly sad. Happy because there will always be a part of you and me in the world, an expression of our love, yet sad because I know I will never be able to tuck my son in at night, or soothe him when he’s sick, or sing to him and make him laugh. I will never be able to do all the things a loving father should do, but I respect your decision. You have three other children to think of, and I know it would tear you apart to leave them behind. And I know you love him, too. I don’t begrudge you that.
But it hurts, Rebecca, so very much.
Try to include a photograph of Nathan next time you write. And please let me see him at least once.
My love and adoration, as always,
Your Laurence.
Dex squeezes my arm while I sit there in stunned silence. “Oh, Nate.”
My eyes glisten over, and when I look at Dex, she’s all fuzzy.
I blink a few times to clear my vision. “He did love me.” I blindly reach for her, and she doesn’t hesitate to fling herself into my outstretched arms. “Of course he did. How could he not?”
I don’t know why it’s so important that this stranger, this sperm donor had loved me, but it is. The fact I hadn’t been the product of some one-night stand, but what seemed to be a true love affair validates me in a way I haven’t prepared for. What if my dad is still alive? Would he want to meet me?
I cling to Dex for several minutes before letting her go.
“There’s still nothing to hint at who he was, though. Knowing his first name was Laurence isn’t going to help very much.” I get to my feet. “Come on, let’s take the rest of the letters home. My brothers deserve to be a part of this.”