28. Zach
I never meant to hurt anyone.
It was the one rule I lived by—the one rule I’d always lived by—but rules didn’t always cut it. Trying not to hurt people and doing it anyway was kind of my family’s curse. In fact, I suspected it was part of the reason we spent so much time in the great outdoors. When your only bed was a piece of canvas laid out on the forest floor and your only company was your own miserable self, you couldn’t do much in the way of damage.
That’s the lie we told ourselves, anyway.
“Wait,” Chloe said as she stood on the library steps, her expression torn between confusion and pain. Both of these were important to note: the first, because I knew that discovering Jasper Holmes to be my biological grandfather would be a lot to take in; the second, because only a woman who cared could feel that kind of pain.
Whether it was me she cared about or Jasper, however, remained to be seen.
“This whole time, you knew about her? About them?” she asked. The hurt part was starting to win out over confusion, which was no more than I expected. For all that she claimed to be a woman facing dead ends at every turn, Chloe Sampson was pretty damn smart. She’d put the rest of the pieces together faster than most of us could tie our shoes.
“I knew about her, yes,” I admitted. “But Jasper only existed as a story Grandma used to tell at bedtime. Sometimes, he was the big brave mountain man who worked hard every day of his life, determined to do the right thing by the people he loved. Other times, he was a softhearted romantic who captured Grandma’s heart through books. Imagine my surprise when I moved here and saw him for the first time. I ran into him at the grocery store, scowling at the produce section as though the wilted greens were a personal insult.”
Instead of getting a laugh out of Chloe, my comment only caused her to furrow her brow deeper.
“You knew she had a baby,” she said, still in that accusing, faraway tone. “You knew she broke his heart on purpose and kept it a secret from him all these years.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I said. Feebly, I suspected, and too late to be of any use. “Until Jasper told me the whole story, I didn’t know she’d arranged it to make him think she died in childbirth. Catherine—my grandmother, that is—always made it seem like she and Jasper just ended, that their love story wasn’t meant to last. When he first started talking about her dying, I thought maybe it was a metaphor for his emotional loss or something.”
Chloe turned a stare on me that could have curdled blood. “A metaphor? Zach, he’s the unhappiest man I’ve ever met. He’s been nursing a broken heart for over sixty years, and you’re bringing the woman who broke it here? Now?”
I winced. Deep down, I knew Chloe was right. Now that I’d met my grandfather for myself and seen the cabin he built like a shrine to my grandmother’s memory, there was no hiding it.
“She never wanted me to make contact with him,” I admitted. “In fact, she didn’t even know I was moving to Colville until I’d already accepted the job with the survival school. And believe me—once she did know, she was none too happy about it. It’s only now that I’m starting to realize why.”
I looked to Aloysius to make sure he was doing okay, but all he did was watch us in that knowing, wide-eyed way of his. That kid saw a lot more than most people realized, but I doubted he understood just what Chloe was accusing me of.
Lying. Omitting the truth. Slapping a fake library barcode on my grandmother’s weathered old copy of A Farewell to Arms and offering it to his sister as an opening gambit.
Of all the things I’d done, that was the only part I wasn’t super proud of. I’d known, from something Aloysius had said when he was half out of his mind with pain in the forest, that his sister recently found an old book with handwriting in it, and that their next-door neighbor had offered to buy it from her. I’d also known, in the way that people in small towns always knew, that the laughing, boisterous Sampson family lived next door to my biological grandfather.
At the time, it had seemed the most logical thing in the world to do. I’d wanted to get to know my grandfather better. I’d wanted to get to know Chloe better. Inserting myself into the story with a literal story had seemed like the ideal solution.
Until, of course, I realized just how messed up the story was. My grandma had always been a larger-than-life presence, the sort of woman who could hold a room spellbound using nothing but a smile, but this whole situation was starting to feel way too big.
Even for a man built like me.
“Grandma tried to convince me to leave Colville before I exposed myself, but I’d heard so many stories about this place that I couldn’t resist.” I drew a deep breath and glanced around me—at the unnaturally wide streets of this town, the jagged mountains rising in every direction, so many trees you could stand in the middle of a forest and feel like you were in an ocean. “And then when I got settled in, well…” I let my voice trail away in hopes that Chloe would pick up where I left off.
She didn’t.
“I guess I’m more like my grandfather than I’d like to admit,” I finished. “Once I set foot in this town, I realized I belonged here. There’s something about this place that calls to me.”
“Not me,” Chloe said, finally finding her tongue. “I’ve been looking for a way out since the day I was born.” Her remark felt barbed, but it was no more than I deserved. I should’ve been honest with her from the start, but what was I supposed to have said?
Oh, yeah. That bitter old man you’re obsessed with? We’re related, only he doesn’t know I exist. Apparently, he doesn’t know my dad exists, either. He thinks we’re part of a long-dead past that he buried a long time ago. Also, do you want to go for a hike? I know of a place where we can get lost together.
In the end, it didn’t matter, because Aloysius was the one who took her barb to heart.
“You miss going to college in Spokane, don’t you, Chloe,” he said, stating it as a fact instead of a question. “And only having yourself to take care of.”
Chloe cast me a look of such loathing that I could read every word in her big green eyes.
“I’m exactly where I want to be, Noodle,” she said as she gathered up her purse and held out a hand to her brother. He couldn’t take it, obviously, since he had to struggle up the library steps on his crutches, but as she turned her back on me, I knew what she was trying to say.
She blamed me for this mess. For dragging a twelve-year-old into my family drama, for exposing the truth she tried so hard to hide from the three lives that depended on her. But most of all, for taking the side of a woman who’d left this town without once looking back—not at the places she’d left behind, and definitely not at the people.
Chloe knew what it meant to be the one left standing, straining to hold all the pieces together. So did Jasper.
And no matter how much I might wish otherwise, I was only one more problem added to a pair of intelligent, well-read curmudgeons who’d been dealt a terrible hand in life…and who never once got an apology or a thanks from those who owed them the most.