14. June
JUNE
June stepped out of her bedroom, still in the soft quiet of shock.
She closed the door carefully behind her while Victoria was still in the shower when June left. June was glad she didn’t live with Victoria permanently. The woman had been in there for nearly twenty minutes, and there was probably very little hot water left in the house.
Margo had knocked on the bedroom door earlier to let June know she’d put a plate of food in the warmer and there was hot chocolate in the pot on the stove.
June wasn’t hungry, but she wanted some of the hot chocolate. She thought it might soften the hard edges inside her chest just enough to let her breathe properly again. The house was quiet. Everyone must have finally gone to bed. It had been a very long, strange day.
June glanced at her wristwatch as she padded down the hallway.
A day of watching her life catch fire one piece at a time.
She felt as though she’d just stepped out of a high-octane action movie, and her body wasn’t entirely clear yet that the movie was over.
June was exhausted in a way that sleep wouldn’t fix quickly.
Her mind was spinning too hard to let her rest.
She was almost at the kitchen doorway when she heard the voices. She got to the door when June stopped.
Her heart hammered against her ribs as she recognized the tone of the conversation.
It was Carmen, and Carmen wasn’t speaking softly.
She was telling a story June had never planned to tell anyone, and she was telling it to the exact people June had spent thirty-eight years carefully keeping it from.
June knew she should move. She knew she should either step forward and announce herself or step back and leave them to it.
She couldn’t make either of her feet do anything at all.
She stood frozen in the shadow of the hallway with her pulse beating in her ears, and listened to her sister lay out the worst morning of her life like it was a matter of public record.
Then Carmen’s voice dropped in a way she used when she was past being kind.
“So while June might have kept secrets from you. She had her reasons,” Carmen was saying, her voice clearly aimed at Holt.
“Just like I’m sure you have yours for keeping a big secret from her and Willa that affects them both.
” Her voice dropped to something very quiet. “Isn’t that right, Director Dillinger?”
The silence that followed was the silence of four people trying to work out what had just been said.
“What does that mean?” Willa asked, her voice sharpening.
“Ask Holt,” Carmen replied. “I have to get to bed. It’s late, and we have a long day tomorrow. We need to figure out what we’re doing next.”
“What do you mean, Carmen?” June’s body moved before she’d given it permission. She stepped into the kitchen doorway with her hand still resting on the doorframe.
Four heads turned toward her at once.
“June.” Carmen turned and gaped at her sister. Her face shifted through several expressions before landing somewhere between guilt and defiance. “How long have you been standing there?”
June ignored her sister. Her eyes settled on Holt.
He had gone a little pale. His hands were flat on the counter in front of him. He was looking at her with the expression of a man who had just watched a door he’d been keeping closed swing open in front of him, and knew exactly what was coming through it.
“What does Carmen mean, Holt?” June asked carefully. Her voice was surprisingly steady. Her heart was not. “Is it true then?” she pressed, taking a step into the room. “Were you having an affair with Lillian while we were married?”
“What?” Holt breathed.
“Dad?” Rad hissed beside him.
“You were having an affair?” Willa’s voice cracked on the words.
“No.” Holt’s eyes widened as realization moved across his face. “Is that what you thought? June, is that what you’ve thought all these years?”
“It’s what I saw,” June told him. The words came out harder than she’d meant them to.
“It’s what Lillian made sure I saw. Then I got your phone bill a few weeks after you left, and I found a number you’d called over and over again during the last five months of our marriage.
I traced it. It was Lillian’s family home in Boston. ”
“That’s not what that was,” Holt replied, shaking his head. “June, no. Lillian’s father was helping me with my FBI application. He had contacts at the Bureau. He was writing my recommendation letters.”
“Then why keep it secret from me?” June pressed. “Why not tell me? I was your wife. I would have been happy for you. I would have wanted to know.”
“I just didn’t think it was relevant to mention at the time,” Holt admitted.
His voice had dropped. “I wasn’t hiding it from you.
I just didn’t think to tell you. It was background.
It was paperwork. It was—” He stopped himself.
“June, I was not having an affair with Lillian. I wasn’t having an affair with anyone. ”
June couldn’t stop the disbelieving laugh that escaped her.
“Sure,” June managed.
Her eyes narrowed as the pain she’d thought she had packed away decades ago came cutting through her as sharp as the day it had first arrived.
It was the private grief of a young woman who had loved a man completely, trusted him completely, and then watched the whole foundation of that trust collapse in front of her.
“Lillian sent me a text message the day after you walked out on our marriage,” June continued, her voice steadying into something hard.
“It said, Holt and I are finally off to Virginia. Looks like he’s free again.
I stared at that message for the longest time.
Then an hour later, another one came through from her.
It said, Oops. Wrong number. And then she blocked me. ”
“What?” Holt stared at her. “I... no, June. No. I never?—”
“I wanted to believe in you,” June cut in.
“I so badly wanted to believe that Lillian was just being spiteful. That morning, I called your hotel room at six a.m. I was going to tell you everything. I was going to tell you about the baby. I was going to tell you I didn’t care about my job, I could put it on hold, I just wanted us to work. ”
Holt stood up slowly from the stool. He started toward her, one hand lifting.
June stepped back.
“I’m not finished,” June seethed. Holt stopped.
“I still didn’t want to believe it,” she continued.
Her voice had gone quiet now, which was worse.
“Even after everything. A month after Willa was born, I took her on a trip to Virginia. I found out where you were staying. I took a babysitter with me. I left my baby girl at the Airbnb with her and went to your front door. I was going to tell you about her. I was going to tell you I wanted us to have another chance.”
Willa’s eyes had filled silently. She said nothing.
“June…” Holt’s voice was raw with emotion.
June shook her head and stepped back a little further from him.
“Your housekeeper answered the door,” June continued, holding Holt’s gaze now without blinking.
“She was polite. She told me you weren’t home.
I asked her where you were. She said you and Lillian had gone out for the evening.
I asked if Lillian was living there with you.
She said not officially yet, but she was there most days, and there was talk of the two of you getting engaged. ”
Holt’s face had gone grey.
“I stood on that doorstep, Holt,” June said quietly.
“And I thanked her. And I got back in a cab. And I sat in the Airbnb, holding our daughter for the rest of the night, and I decided I was never going to let anyone tell her she wasn’t wanted.
That she wasn’t chosen. That she was somehow a consolation prize because her father had a fiancée and a new life two states away. ”
“June.” Holt’s voice came out almost inaudible.
“June, you never told me you did that,” Carmen breathed behind her. “Oh, sweetheart. I had no idea you flew to Virginia.”
Carmen started to move toward her.
June held up a hand without turning around.
“I’m okay, Carmen,” June said, too sharply.
Carmen stopped and sat back down on her stool.
“Dad?” Rad pressed. His voice had a hard edge. “Is this true? Was Lillian there that night? Was she part of your life before the divorce was even final?”
“It wasn’t like that with Lillian,” Holt defended himself.
“Mom...” Willa began.
She turned to her daughter and held her eyes.
“Willa,” June continued, her voice softening, “what I did to you is still not excusable. What happened between Holt and me doesn’t change what I kept from you.
I owed you the truth about your father from the moment you were old enough to understand it, and I didn’t give it to you.
That isn’t something any of this erases. ”
“Mom,” Willa whispered.
“Holt was my first great love,” June told her simply.
“That isn’t an excuse, Willa. It’s just the truth.
He was my first great love, and watching him leave me like that broke me in a way I didn’t know a person could be broken.
And I let that broken part of me make a decision that wasn’t mine to make.
I took a choice away from you, and I took a choice away from Holt, and I don’t get to take that back now. ”
Willa’s tears were sliding down her face openly.
“Oh, Mom,” Willa breathed.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” June managed. “Whatever happens between Holt and me, I never want it to affect your relationship with him. You have every right to know your father. You have every right to want him in your life.”
“Mom—” Willa tried again. “I…”
“I never meant for any of this to come out in front of everyone,” June turned back to Holt. “I’m sorry, Holt. Truly. I should have told you long before now. I just never managed to work out how.”