19. Holt #2
“Of course I knew.” Lillian looked at him without an ounce of regret or remorse on her face. Then she snorted as if it was funny. “The thing was, Holt and I weren’t even officially dating at that point.”
“Where was he the night June came looking for him?” Ace’s voice had dropped even lower and Holt could hear the slight tremor of barely controlled anger in it.
“He was doing what he always did, working late at Quantico,” Lillian replied. “But the housekeeper made sure that woman believed he was at dinner with me.”
“June!” Ace’s voice rose. “Her name is June.” He blazed. “You are the most...” Ace started.
“How could you do something like that, Lillian?” Rad cut in, his voice low and controlled in a way that told Holt his son was holding himself together by a thread. “My father deserved to know about his daughter.”
“Why?” Lillian replied, genuinely baffled.
“She’d just have been a burden on him. On us.
He’d have had to split his attention between the two of you and I’d have had even less time with him.
” Her eyes flicked scathingly up at Rad.
“When I finally agreed to have a child with him, and we had you, I knew our lives would never be the same. It was always about you after that. Rad this. Rad that. I never wanted children. I knew the moment they arrived, everything had to revolve around them.”
“Wow,” Ace managed.
There was a small sound of movement, and part of Ace’s body came briefly into the frame.
“I think I’ve heard enough,” Ace declared. “Rad, I’ll wait for you in the rental car.”
He turned toward the camera, and for a moment Holt could see his face clearly. Ace’s expression was the calm, contained anger of a man who was very close to losing his temper and knew he needed to leave before he did.
“Thank you for answering our questions, Lillian,” Ace told her coolly, standing.
“And, you are a genuinely terrible person. I’d say leaving Rad when you did was the best thing you could ever have done for him.
He turned out to be one of the most decent men I know thanks to his father and grandmother.
” He paused. “Goodness knows what he’d have turned out like under your influence. ”
“Well, I never,” Lillian scoffed, hugely insulted. “How dare you come into my home and insult me.”
“If the rumors are true,” Ace continued, glancing pointedly around the sparsely furnished mansion, “and by the look of how little of value is left in here to sell, I have a feeling this won’t be your home for much longer anyway.” He gave her a small, mocking half bow. “Good luck, Lillian.”
“Wait, I’m coming with you,” Rad said quickly, already standing up.
He turned back toward his mother one last time.
“Thank you for answering my questions, Lillian. And for finally making me realize that what my grandmother told me about you was right all along. It was never about me having done something to push you away. It was always about you being a terrible person.”
The video clicked off.
Holt didn’t move for a long time.
He sat in his office chair with his hands flat on the desk in front of him and stared at nothing.
The cellphone screen had gone dark. Rad was sitting across from him, watching him carefully, saying nothing.
The only sound in the office was the faint hum of the air conditioner and the distant ringing of a phone somewhere down the hallway.
Every piece of the last thirty-eight years was slowly, methodically realigning itself in Holt’s mind.
June’s face in the Airbnb kitchen in Miami three months ago, telling him how she’d called his hotel room that morning and heard Lillian answer.
June had waited to catch him and sat outside the hotel in her car.
She’d risked it coming to his Virginia house, holding their one-month-old baby, being told by a housekeeper he was at dinner with another woman.
June writing letters to him that had never reached him.
June calling a phone that had been rerouted without his knowledge to a woman who’d been quietly feeding his life to her like scraps to a waiting dog.
His heart jolted and he realized it was true, June had tried to get to him and tell him about Willa.
She had tried over and over, and Lillian had made sure none of it ever reached him.
“Dad?” Rad’s voice came through gently. “Dad, are you all right?”
Holt swallowed hard, his voice hoarse and his pulse racing with his thoughts. “I’m all right, son.”
“I’m sorry to drop this on you this way,” Rad told him quietly. “I really am. But I thought you needed to know.”
“You did the right thing, Rad.” Holt lifted his eyes to his son’s face. His own eyes were bright. “You did the absolute right thing. Thank you.”
Rad nodded once.
Holt’s eyes moved back to the drawer where he’d slipped the two albums. He thought about June.
About every photograph in those albums, every careful caption, every small loving note about Willa’s childhood that June had written in the full belief that he’d moved on from her inside of forty-eight hours and never looked back.
He thought about the way she’d documented their relationship and marriage anyway, with no bitterness, no accusations, nothing in any page that would make Willa think less of him.
He thought about the night three months ago when she’d stood in that kitchen and told him quietly that she’d tried more than once to tell him about Willa and hadn’t tried hard enough.
The thing he now knew was that June had tried.
She had tried so much harder than she’d ever given herself credit for or even admitted.
“June,” Holt said aloud, his voice rough. “I need to see June.”
“I thought you might want to do that,” Rad replied, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Why don’t I drive you back to the lighthouse to pack an overnight bag? Ace is ready to go as we thought you might need a flight to Miami.”
“Hasn’t he just flown you all over the country?” Holt glanced at his son.
“He’ll be more than happy to do it again.” Ace grinned. “June is like a mother to him and has been since the day he met her right back when Willa and Shaun first met.”
Holt stood up, already reaching for his keys, his jacket, his cellphone. He pulled the two albums out of the drawer and tucked them carefully under his arm.
“Let’s go.” Holt was moving toward the door before Rad had stood up.
Rad drove them back to the lighthouse.
Holt sat in the passenger seat of his son’s car and stared out of the window as Sandpiper Shores rolled past. His mind was spinning too hard for him to properly pay attention to the conversation Rad was attempting to keep going beside him.
“Did you know how rich the McKennas actually are, Dad?” Rad asked.
“Yes,” Holt replied, trying to focus on his son’s voice. “Ace’s father and grandfather were stockbrokers. They owned a firm and an aviation company.”
“Did you know Ace has a small private jet of his own now?” Rad sounded incredulous.
“No.” Holt shook his head. “It doesn’t really surprise me, though. They own half of the airport in Gainesville.”
“I did not know that either,” Rad observed, with genuine astonishment. “Why didn’t we fly to Miami in his jet three months ago, then? It was far more luxurious. It even had a second pilot.”
“I’m not sure.” Holt shrugged.
Holt’s brain was battling to stay focused. He had to physically stop himself from barking at Rad to drive faster. As they pulled into the driveway of the lighthouse, he suddenly frowned.
“Why are we in your car?” Holt asked as he realized he hadn’t even stopped to think he had one back at the police station. “I could’ve got here much quicker in my police SUV.”
“I thought you could use a bit of time to think,” Rad replied easily, already getting out and moving around to open Holt’s door.
“Think about what?” Holt asked as his son marched him inside the house.
“What to say to my new mother,” Rad told him.
“New mother?” Confusion fogged Holt’s brain.
Rad was already ushering Holt through the kitchen and toward the living room. Holt moved with the two albums still tucked under his arm, his head feeling like it was several seconds behind the rest of him.
“Rad, what are you talking about?” Holt stopped and looked back at his son as he cleared the living room door.
“Just walk, Dad.” Rad moved past him impatiently.
Holt turned his brows furrowing at how strangely his son was acting and then stopped dead in the doorway.
A woman was standing in the middle of the lighthouse living room. Her hair was pulled back softly. She was wearing jeans and a simple cream blouse. Her eyes were wide and shining and already filling with tears as she looked at him.
Rad crossed the room to her and kissed her gently on the cheek.
“Hi, Mom,” Rad greeted her warmly. “I’m going to leave the two of you alone. Let me know when you’re ready, and I’ll come and fetch you. I’ll drive you over to Willa’s whenever you want.”
Rad walked past his shocked father and patted him firmly on the shoulder. He leaned in as he passed and whispered close to Holt’s ear.
“Oh, Dad.” He grinned. “I forgot to tell you that Ace and I stopped in Miami last night on the way home. There is this awesome Airbnb there that’s just changed ownership. And the hostess is the most remarkably kind and forgiving person I’ve met.”
The message was entirely clear as Rad stepped out of the living room, walked through the kitchen, and closed the door softly behind him. Holt hadn’t been the first to find out about Lillian.
He kept his eyes on the woman and didn’t move.
She was standing in front of him, looking at him with her beautiful eyes filling with tears.
Holt’s breath caught in his throat.
He set the two albums carefully down on the small cabinet beside him.
He uttered only one word before they both moved toward each other at the same time.
“June.”
Then she was in his arms, his lips were on hers, and thirty-eight years of everything that had kept them apart finally fell away.