Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
He was spent. Wrecked, so when he got a phone call from an unknown number, he really didn’t want to answer it. He wanted to take Lila’s hand, get back in the truck and drive back to the Painted Ridge Ranch.
But something compelled him to answer. Maybe it was the curious look on Lila’s face. Maybe it was the fact that she was there. Had been there, so steadfastly, this whole time.
So he answered.
“Hello?”
“Is this Nolan?”
The voice on the other end was familiar, but there was something about it that caught his ear. It wasn’t a telemarketer, not any kind of spam call, he was sure of that right away.
It sounded close, not like it was in some echoey call center, and there was something about the way she said his name.
“Yeah.”
“I’m... I’m your sister. Parker.” His heart froze in his chest along with his breath.
It was like everything around him stopped for a moment.
“I am really sorry about what happened today. I’ve only just kind of put all the pieces together.
My mom and I had a huge fight. She saw your email to me.
I didn’t know that she was watching my account because I did a DNA test. I didn’t know what I was going to turn up.
I didn’t know that I was going to find a half-brother.
She did, obviously. The email that you got, with the meeting time and place, that was from her.
And then she arranged to have us all out of the house today. ”
He didn’t know if that was worse or not. For a full thirty-five seconds, he couldn’t even breathe. It was his mother that hadn’t wanted him to meet his sisters.
His mother that had made sure to send him to an empty house.
And his sisters hadn’t known at all.
“If you’re still in the area, I want to meet you. I want to hear your story. I want... I want to know.”
“It sounds like if I do, it’s going to get between you and your mom.”
“Our mom,” she said. “And I wouldn’t go imagining that she transformed into a whole different person after she left you. We just live in the same house.”
“All right. Where do you want to meet?”
“There’s a coffee shop, down in town. I’ll give you the address. Everyone else wants to come too. I mean, my other sisters. Our other sisters.”
Our sisters.
“The more the merrier,” he said.
He got off the phone, and looked at Lila. “That was my sister. I guess we’re meeting after all.”
He filled Lila in on the finer details as they drove to the address that he had been given.
His heart was throbbing, and he was struck by how intense this whole thing felt.
Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe it was because of Lila.
It felt like all the cynicism that he had spent years cultivating was wearing away.
Like it had been replaced by something else.
That, he was sure, had something to do with her.
That, he was certain, was to do with Lila.
New Lila, and the way she challenged him, softened him, changed him.
But right now, he just had to get through this.
He pulled up to the coffee shop, and he had a feeling of déjà vu, but upside down. Very similar to when he had met Christy.
“Come in with me,” he said.
Telling her to wait in the car when he had walked up to the door had been an act of self-preservation.
Now, he wanted her there. Now, he wanted her to be part of this moment.
Even if it was a bust. Hell, he might have driven all the way back here only to get stood up again.
And maybe there was something good about that, just like Lila had said.
Maybe there was something beautiful in the hope, even when he had never been given reason to do it.
If this was the payoff, or just the evidence that he was a fool, he felt like he could be reasonably content either way.
Because he would rather be a fool than be a cynical, stagnant asshole who was going to spend the rest of his life alone. Spend the rest of his life counting his money, trying to prop up his own importance through his monetary achievements.
Because that was who he’d been, for a long time.
There were reasons for that, and they were pretty understandable, but now that he could see it all so clearly, he didn’t have an excuse to keep going that way.
Lila got out the passenger side and met him around at the driver’s side, and as soon as he got out, she extended her hand. Took it, squeezed his fingers as they walked into the coffee shop.
“Well, you showed up,” she said.
She recognized the achievement in that. She recognized what he was doing.
He looked around the room, and he didn’t see three girls his sister’s ages.
He looked at Lila, and then, the door behind her swung open.
And there they were. Blonde, short. One of them was dressed in jeans with her hair in a high ponytail, the other was wearing a frilly dress with her hair tied partway back in a ribbon, while the third was wearing glasses and a pair of smart slacks.
“Nolan?” the one in jeans asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“I’m Parker. This is Fallon,” she gestured to the one with glasses. “And this is Tatum.” The small frilly one. “And we weren’t supposed to know about you.”
That led to a long conversation that went on until poor Parker was hoarse.
She explained they’d had a semblance of something normal in their life, but something was always just a little bit wrong about their mother. And they had never known quite what it was.
Secrets, yes, but from everything he could glean from the conversation, it sounded as if she had relapsed. It was a covert relapse, something quite different compared with what her addiction had looked like back when he’d been young.
“What about your dad?” he asked, looking at his sisters with some concern. “What’s his part in this?”
“He’s great,” she said. “But his focus is his work, and pleasing our mom. And like... I don’t want to say that our mom is a bad person.
But I think there are a lot of things she just can’t take responsibility for.
And I think anytime we do something that reminds her of life back when she wasn’t perfect, then she gets difficult.
Also, I don’t think you worry that much about perfection if you are perfect. ”
“Well, nobody is,” he said. “But you are right. She’s got secrets. And I’m the biggest one.”
Lila had been quiet for the entire meeting, her hands clasped in front of her, and he turned to look at her now, rubbing his thumb over her cheek.
Yeah, he was just making that clear. And that wasn’t something he was going to be able to take back.
But then, it had been foolish to think that he could take any of this back.
There wasn’t a damn thing that he could take back.
Not with Lila. And he wouldn’t. Didn’t want to.
“Thanks for being here.”
“Of course,” Lila said. There was something guarded in her eyes, and he wondered if she realized what was going through his mind right now. He wondered what was going through hers.
“Well, we can’t go back to not knowing about you,” his sister said.
“Technically, true,” Fallon said. “But we can pretend we don’t.”
“No,” Parker said. “We can’t do that. Because now we know. And it’s not fair.”
“I don’t need anything from you,” he said. “I’m not a charity case. I can’t stress that enough. I have my own money, I’m secure, I’m set. That isn’t why I came to you.”
Parker looked at him, her eyes steady on his. They probably had the most in common. He didn’t know why he thought that, just something that he could feel in his bones. “Right. Well, I get that. And I wouldn’t have thought anything else, not based on everything about you.”
“Glad to have your buy-in.”
“I just wonder what it’s going to look like if we defy our mother on this. Our dad is always going to back her up. It’s just the way it is. I don’t really understand that dynamic. But he’s so in love with her. And she’s volatile, and difficult sometimes, but he loves her.”
“I know something about that,” Lila said. “My biological father, he just sucked. But my mom was stuck on him all of her life, and they weren’t even married. I know what it’s like when somebody has just an obsessive fascination with another person.”
“Like I said,” Parker said. “It’s not like our childhood was terrible.
I think our dad did a lot to try and cover up what would have been messy.
And she was fine sometimes. But whatever this is, this whole thing with you, it completely set her off in the weirdest way.
The way that she got into my email... And I would never have noticed if I hadn’t, like, randomly looked in my sent folder.
Because she deleted the other correspondence from you, but she didn’t think to check that.
I was going in to make sure something I’d sent had actually…
sent and there her reply to you was. I knew that we had matched on the DNA site, but I didn’t know what to do yet.
I was honestly so shocked to see a half-sibling on my mother’s side.
Not because I didn’t think she was capable, but just the shock of knowing that she had a child and she didn’t tell anybody.
I know my dad doesn’t know, and I know that whatever she was doing today, it was designed to keep all of this together, but I can’t pretend that I don’t know. ”
She looked at her other two sisters. “I can’t pretend that I don’t know, and I want a relationship with you. I can’t speak for everybody else.”
Fallon shrugged. “I’m not one for intellectual dishonesty. And I don’t appreciate my mother’s actions.”
Tatum chewed her lower lip. “I feel bad for her. Am I the only one? This must have been incredibly painful. And, yes, she’s acting strange now. Yes, she’s doing things that are wrong, but that has to do with this. I’m sure it was traumatizing. To leave you.”
“She didn’t give me up when I was a baby,” Nolan said. “She left me when I was about five. She left me at my grandmother’s, and she never came back. And then after that, she must have met your dad, started a family. You’re all quite a bit younger than me.”