30. Cameron
Chapter 30
Cameron
W atching Everett walk away, I try not to let it hurt. He just told me he loved me, and I know those words weren't flippant. They weren't said out of obligation because I said it first. They were felt in his soul, and I would know because we share the same one. The man walking away from me now hasn't healed. He's hurting too, and part of loving someone is trusting them with that pain. I can't fault him for not knowing what to do with the emotions he's fighting now. Before he walked away inside the gala, he said, "There's no way I'm walking away from the first girl I ever said I love you to without a kiss." I loved him yesterday, I love him today, and I'll love him tomorrow, and right now, I'll love what I know exists between us, for us.
"Hey," Mackenzie says as her hand finds my shoulder. "Let's tackle one broken piece at a time and see if we can't put some hearts back together."
I pull my father's book tight to my chest. She stayed. She didn't walk off with Connor and Garrett as they followed after Everett, and it means the world to me to have her by my side. I nod and turn around only to find Lauren staring at me with the same contemplative curiosity she always has, but where I used to see conniving, someone trying to get close to me to steal my man, I now see it for what it potentially always was: curious unbelief.
"When did you figure it out?" I ask blankly.
"She found the book hidden in my room. I had planned to talk to you about it tomorrow?—"
Lauren raises her hand, and Stormy shrinks back.
"The day I stopped in the team shop and brought the two of you lunch, Stormy mentioned your birthday, and then you told me your father was Damon Salt. That was the first time in twenty-two years I ever had any reason to doubt that you weren't in the grave I left you in. My eyes immediately saw someone else standing before me. I was convinced I was going mad and seeing ghosts. It's why I excused myself. There was no way the thoughts running through my head were real. It had to be a coincidence. Amelia must have been pregnant at the same time I was, and I didn't know. That's what I told myself anyway..." She pulls her phone from her back pocket. "Can I show you something?" she asks as she takes a cautious step toward me.
"Sure," I say, as my lungs expel breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
She clicks open her phone and shows me a picture of a woman holding a baby in front of a statue of Mother Mary. The picture is faded and worn, but the auburn hair, porcelain skin, and blue eyes are unmistakable. "Who is she?"
"That's my mother holding me."
"I don't understand…" Obviously, I follow her suggestion that the woman in the photo is my grandmother. "How? Or better yet, why?" I turn to Stormy. "When you said you had been lying to get close to me, and then I thought back to our conversations about my brother, I thought you were going to come out and reveal you were my sister. Not this."
Stormy shoves her hands into the front pockets of her overalls. "In hindsight, I see how you could think that. My bad. If it makes you feel any better, I lied to Lauren too. She followed me here blindly, unaware of the morsel of information Sage Graves shared with me."
"Maybe not blindly. It was time for me to face the past I had run from. It was time to find closure. I just never expected that closure to be my daughter alive and well." Thunder rumbling off in the distance catches all of our attention as a few sprinkles fall.
"How about we take this inside? Our table is empty now that the men have left," Mackenzie says as she gestures toward the tent.
"We're not really dressed for a gala," Lauren states plainly.
"It's fine. We'll find a table in the corner," I say as a big gust of wind picks up.
We've just found a table in the back when Mackenzie leaves us to grab some drinks, and I notice Garrett and Connor at the bar. My heart beats out of tune as I discreetly look around the room to see if Everett stayed too.
"He's not here," Lauren says, noting my wandering eye.
"How can you be so sure?"
She mindlessly starts fidgeting with the twine wrapped around the silverware on the plate before saying, "He loved your dad, and hearing his ugly truths wasn't an easy pill for him to swallow. It doesn't help that he blames himself for the accident."
"Wait a minute. How do you know that?" Her comment has my palms instantly sweaty. How does she know that and I don't? What reason would Everett have to blame himself?
"Well, he didn't use those words exactly, but it was easy enough to infer. The night you and Stormy went camping, I took your phone back to Everett's..." She rests her elbows on the table. "Spoiler alert. I was digging. I was trying to find anything that could corroborate the speculation that had existed since the moment I found out your birthday and who your father was." Her guessing the password to my phone, which was my father's birthday, makes a lot more sense now. "Anyway, part of my snooping included asking many questions about the past. I was trying to put together timelines, such as when Damon moved to the East Coast, when you guys came back, and what, if anything, Everett knew, and that's when the accident came up. He was pouring a drink when he mentioned that, the night of the gala, Damon was late because he swung by Everett's house to pick up an award he had left in his office. He paused mid-pour, and without words, I knew why. He had just told me something he didn't mean to share."
How could I not know this? That little nugget of information changes things. It wasn't just our age gap or the fact that I'm his best friend's daughter that stood in the way. It's his penitence. He can't find it within himself to be happy with me because, in his mind, he's not deserving.
"I grabbed a bottle," Mackenzie says, returning to the table. "It was easier to grab a bottle of wine than four glasses." I notice the way Connor quickly glances in our direction to check on his wife. When he catches me looking, he gives me a small smile that feels sad, but I push it away. I have words for his father, but right now, I need answers.
"Stormy, how did you get this book?"
The one time she was at the house with me, I walked her in and out. She didn't have an opportunity to roam the house freely. I look at the spine, and this is indeed one of the books that has sat on Everett's shelf since my father passed. When we cleaned my father's place, Everett asked if he could have his collection. He said he liked having a piece of my father that he knew he enjoyed. My father loved collecting first-edition books of classics. I don't recall seeing him read them, but he enjoyed collecting them. We had a small library at my childhood home because of it. Most of the collection was put into storage except for the few that Everett took to display in his office.
She grabs the bottle of wine and pours herself a glass. "I suppose I owe both of you a story. Sage Graves adopted me. She wasn't my biological mom." Her eyes connect with Lauren's. "A detail I hadn't realized Lauren already knew but went along with all the same. Pain knows pain, and she believed my lies reflected that. What Lauren didn't know was Sage told me something that stuck with me before she died. Sage never liked to discuss why she left Waterloo. I only ever knew she had a son who she said she left with family, but one day after one of her group sessions?—"
"What kind of group sessions?" I cut her off as I take the glass of wine Mackenzie slides in front of me.
"I'll answer that," Lauren says. "Sage and I met through a support group for mothers who had lost children. While Evan may have been alive and well, Sage wasn't a complete monster. She loved him, but it hurt too much to stay. She struggled with the guilt of abandoning him and also grappled with her own pain from the circumstances surrounding his conception. It was a vicious cycle of depression that she seemed to never win."
Stormy takes a drink of her wine and starts again. "After one of their group sessions, I asked her why she bonded with Lauren. Sage didn't have friends, and she and Lauren didn't seem to have anything in common. At least, not the way I saw it. That's when she said, 'We both left a piece of our heart in the same small town. The only difference is the piece I left behind is sick, poisoned at its core and can't be saved, but hers is beautiful and has the power to make her whole again.'"
Lauren sets down her glass. "I don't understand. If she knew Cameron was mine, why wouldn't she have told me?"
Stormy shifts to sit cross-legged on the chair. "I don't know if she meant those words literally. Sage could have been saying it metaphorically, knowing that you needed closure. The closure you'd never get if you didn't come back and put your demons to rest, but..." She holds up her finger and lets out a sigh. "Regardless of how she meant it, literally or metaphorically, it always weighed heavy on my heart because I've been missing a part of me my whole life, from not knowing my dad. I thought if there was even a small chance you were real, it was worth pursuing, especially knowing how much the absence of you impacted Lauren. I knew my time with Lauren was limited. The tiny house situation wasn't a lie. I did buy one, and this summer was our last hurrah together, so I knew I needed to act sooner than later if I was ever going to get a shot at discovering the truth. I honestly had no idea what I was looking for. I knew Sage's name, and an easy search gave me Evan's. The rest, I was winging it."
Waiters delivering entrées to the table have her pausing. The savory smells of chicken and candied green beans have my stomach rumbling. I didn't realize how famished I was until the aromas hit my senses. I set my glass of wine down and grab a fork.
"Okay, you had a name, but how did you know the lies to tell without a story?" Mackenzie asks.
"The world has a funny way of working things out sometimes. A week after we moved into our apartment, I walked down to Main Street and ran into a group of guys who asked if I wanted to tag along to a party. I said no until I was checking out at the convenience store, and another guy with a cart loaded full of beer asked me the same question, but he said, 'My name's Evan, and you look like you're ready to go to your next party.' Needless to say, I said yes. My thought was, even if he wasn't the same Evan I was looking for, if this many people were going to the same party, there was a good chance I might run into him."
"You were at the divorce party he threw the night Everett got back in town," I say, almost spitting out my chicken. "So that day you came over to hang out with me wasn't your first time there?"
"Nope, but it was my first time in the pool house," she adds before snatching up one of the rolls off the table.
"And the book?" Lauren waves her hand in prompt for her to continue.
"Right, I didn't get the book until I ran into Evan a few days later, when you came home and caught us in the living room. I ran into him again at that same convenience store, but he was a different person this time. He looked defeated, and of course, I had a vested interest because, by that time, I knew he was indeed Sage Grave's son, so I invited him up. He had no qualms about telling me how he fucked up." She nods toward Lauren. "You were there for some of his story time, but you missed the parts about how he needed a place to stay. When you went into the kitchen to grab a drink, I told him to follow my lead, thinking maybe you'd buy my lie and let him stay so I could get more information. That's how I walked myself into that lie. As for the book, it was in Evan's bag that day. I ransacked it when he went to the bathroom, and I snuck it under a couch pillow when I noticed it was a journal within a book. When I took it, I assumed it was his. I had no idea what I grabbed belonged to your father, so it took me some time to piece together what and who I was reading about." She takes a big bite out of her roll before saying, "Oh." Reaching into her back pocket, she pulls out an envelope. "I probably should have pulled this out when Everett was still here, but you guys were having a moment, and I'm not sure what difference this would have made." She slides it across the table. "I didn't accidentally throw your brush in my bag. I stole it. Those are the DNA results."
The envelope sits between Lauren and me, and we stare at it. Do I want to open it? Yes. But at the same time, I already know what it will say. The question is, how do I feel about that?
"What do you want from me?" I ask softly as I look up from the envelope.
She nervously rubs her thighs. "I can't go back in time and make up for the years I lost, and I don't expect you to call me mom. I'm not trying to be a replacement for the mother you lost, but I'd like to try and be your friend." She picks up her glass and takes a drink. I don't bother filling in the silence with comments about how the mother I did have wasn't really one at all because she's right. We can't change the past, and those comments will only give her more reason to abhor my father. Dead or not, I don't want to feel divided. "I know we missed out on so many firsts, but there's also a lot of firsts still to be had. Graduation, marriage... babies. I'd like to be there for them if you let me."
"I think I'd like that, but let's try the friends thing first." I pick up the envelope and try to lighten the heavy by adding, "I thought you were trying to steal my man all summer so..."
She laughs. "I had a feeling you thought that, but it couldn't be helped. I'd be lying if I said I didn't shamelessly try to flirt a few times, but only because of you. I wouldn't have pursued it; believe it or not, Everett Callahan isn't my type."
"Oh yeah, then what is? In this town, Everett Callahan is every woman's type," Mackenzie chimes in just as a loud crack of thunder shakes the ground.
Lauren's lips quirk to the side as she fights back a smile. "The apple must not fall too far from the tree. Cameron likes them older, but I've embraced my cougar era. I prefer inexperience. I enjoy teaching them exactly how I like it."
We all smile wickedly just as Moira's voice echoes across the room. "We're going to need everyone to evacuate to the main building." She barely gets the words out before the tornado sirens blare loudly and chaos ensues as a massive gust of wind blows through the right side of the tent and the entire structure starts to fall.
"Get under the table," Lauren yells, but I'm not quick enough, and searing pain shoots through my head before everything goes black.