Chapter 26 #2
When Wyn brings me one of the two glasses she’s poured, and moves to sit back on the chaise, I stop her.
Wrapping my arm around her hips, I tilt my head up and smile at her, coaxing her to sit on my lap.
I need her close to me for this conversation.
She loops one arm around my neck, sitting across my thighs.
I like that she didn’t hesitate to sit with me like this in front of her grandmother and the rest of the people here.
“Don’t ask me what it is; I don’t know that much. I am not clairvoyant,” Birdie says as she takes a pull of what she’s smoking.
I sip the whiskey. “This was the last place my father had been before he—” Clearing my throat, I shove down the emotion that naturally comes every time I think about him.
“Rumor was on our books as the last job he’d been on.
I don’t care what the hell he cleaned up here, or if he cleaned anything at all, but he didn’t come home after it.
He took a detour up to New York, a place he’d never just go and visit on his own.
” I swallow before I say, “He went there and never came back.”
I can feel Wyn’s body tense as she looks at Birdie.
Birdie sits motionless for a beat as her eyes water.
But instead of answering me right away, she looks down at the table and at her deck again.
Moving the satin cloth first, she flips over a card.
Queen of Cups. It means nothing to me as it faces me upside down.
She studies the picture for a moment before looking back up at me.
“I fell in love with your father over the course of three decades,” she says softly. “It’s not what most people would consider a love story, but I like to think that every story needs to be a little different, simply based on who people are.”
She gives her granddaughter a placating, tight-lipped smile.
“Imagine having a secret that makes you a morally gray person, and then finding another who can understand it, embrace it . . . live with it.” Glancing between the both of us, she adds, “I feel like you can imagine.” She bats away a tear that starts to fall down her cheek.
“There wasn’t going to be a ‘happily ever after.’ He had his life, and I had mine.
We didn’t ever talk about a future, and when we saw one another, it was always business. Until, one day, it wasn’t.”
She takes a sip of her whiskey and flips another card over. Strength. The Roman numeral eight is at the top, and below it, an upside-down image of a woman and a lion.
“The last time I saw him, I wasn’t okay.
” She looks at Wyn first, and then lifts her chin a little higher before she says, “Wyn had been missing for more than two months, and I knew in my heart that she wasn’t gone.
” Birdie looks down at her hands and then at the deck of cards on the table before she lets out a steadying breath.
I grip my hands along Wyn’s hip tighter, knowing whatever comes next is something that I’m not sure I’m prepared to hear.
“I begged your father to help me find her. Somehow. And I thought he would, at the very least, just hold me for a little while, let me feel the loss of someone who’s so important to me.
We talked about all the dead ends and last people who had seen her, and then the next morning, he was gone.
Left me a note on a piece of paper that said, ‘I'll do everything I can.’”
From my back pocket, I pull out the picture of the two of them I found in the workspace at Tommy’s place.
I slide it across the table toward her, but not before Wyn sucks in an audible breath when she sees it.
She stands up abruptly, pulling away from me.
Holding her chest, visibly upset, she nods like she’s trying to work out what Birdie just shared.
“Wyn?” I ask, concerned, wanting her to say something, but instead, she stumbles back and takes long strides back toward the vined archway. I don’t understand what has her spooked.
“Wyn,” Birdie calls out, but she doesn’t turn around or add anything more.
When I stand to follow Wyn, she adds, “Before you go chasing after my granddaughter, you need to hear this, Julian.” Something about her tone halts my steps.
“She hasn’t told me much about where she was.
I shouldn’t have told you this with her here.
We did everything we possibly could while looking for her.
I didn’t mean for him to get involved.” Her face squints, not able to hold back how much she’s feeling all of this.
“I’m so sorry your father didn’t go home right away. Maybe if he had . . .”
“I don’t understand any of this, or why my father never told me about . . .” I shake my head and stand. “Is it strange to say that I’m relieved that he had someone. And that there was more to his life than just me or making jewelry or our fucked-up legacy?”
“It doesn’t sound strange at all,” she says.
I look down the length of the table at the group of women who have now stopped their individual conversations. I don’t care about anyone else or what people might overhear. I need to make sure Wyn is alright. “I need to?—”
“Julian,” Birdie says, her eyes watering as she covers her mouth, “When you told me he was gone, I had this feeling.” She shakes her head. “He made me a promise, and then I didn’t hear from him again.”
I furrow my brow. “What do you mean? When?”
“I didn’t want to think that something had happened to him; it had been so long. And then Wyn came home . . .” She smiles as she bats another tear away.
My gut sinks at what I think she’s telling me, knowing what kind of man my father was, and now just hearing about all of this between them.
“I expected him to show up when I texted this time. And he didn’t. The man I loved for most of my life told me he would try to find my granddaughter.” Taking a pause, she searches my eyes. “She came home. And then, you showed up in his place.”