The Secrets She Keeps

by Jolie Moore

  It was like he knew. But he couldn’t know. He couldn’t suspect that I’d put my own daughter up for adoption. He couldn’t know I’d left her at the hospital like a stray dog at the pound. That I still to this day couldn’t decide whether it was the best decision or worst decision of my life.

  I stood, turned on the overly bright lights and looked in the mirror to see if my face was lined with guilt. Nothing but the same face I’d had my whole life stared back at me. A little pale, a few laugh lines, but no blood red letter bled from my forehead.

  I lifted the hem of my shirt. Even in this light, as bright as an operating room, the linea negra no longer showed. There were faint stretch marks around my bikini line, but who but the most dogged observer would notice that or attributed it to anything but weight gain and loss? The other changes like my slightly broader hips wouldn’t be noticeable either without a before and after photo.

  Sitting back down, on the side of the tub this time, I put my head between my legs until the bout of nausea passed.

  “Nari,” Lucas called. Then his knuckles thudded on the wood door. “You okay in there?”

  I looked at the big dial of my man-faced watch, but I had no idea how much time had passed since I’d come in.

  “I’m fine,” I said. I stood and opened the door. Lucas’ hand was raised, poised to knock again.

  “What happened?”

  “Just a dizzy spell,” I lied.

  “Maybe it’s because you haven’t eaten anything all day.”

  “Neither have you,” I said.

  “Nerves. Let me make us something,” he said, leading me back to the living area.

  I sat at the small black granite island, nursing my self-involved guilt. Today had to have been one of the most nerve-wracking, heart-wrenching days of his life and here I was reliving my own pain and trauma. But I couldn’t walk out now. This relationship thing required I be there for him. And I wanted to be. I really did, but I wondered if it wouldn’t kill me first.

  I watched while he pulled out an onion, cheese, and a couple of apples. A mandolin followed. Deftly he sliced apples, onions, then cheese. Twenty minutes later, he’d assembled some kind of pie. While we talked about work, the apartment filled with the most amazing odors. Nothing like the food I’d grown up with. Nevertheless it reminded me of dinner in Owen’s dining rooms.

  With a little fanfare, Lucas pulled the round pan from the oven.

  “What is it?”

  “My mom, Joyce’s, apple cheddar and onion tart. She made it every fall when the roadside stands were overloaded with the fall harvest.”

  I nodded when he asked if I’d like a slice. Lucas took a seat next to me. He’d devoured one slice while I’d only taken a bite.

  “Do you like it?” he asked.

  “It’s different,” I said. The mix of sweet and salty was truly interesting, not that I’d eat it every day.

  “You don’t have to finish it,” he said, pointing to my remaining slice.

  “I don’t have much of an appetite,” I said. Not only had the world changed from Technicolor to sepia after everything happened, food had never been the same either. I ate to survive.

  “It’s better with hot apple cider,” he said.

  What was it about Lucas that brought back so many memories of New England? Was it his accent, the crisp northeast tones rolling off his tongue? Or was it his quest to fill in the blanks from his past that made me think about my own? Like now. I’d first tasted apple cider while driving to a county fair with Andrew. We’d pulled to a roadside stand and shared first a cider in his car, then a make out session not a mile down the road.

  I needed to shake off the past like a dog sheds water, flinging droplets everywhere. I stood and walked to the living room. The light from the open kitchen had a steep fall off in here. Lucas, thankfully, took the hint and sat next to me on the couch. For not the first time in my life, I thanked God or whomever created testosterone, the hormone that gave men a single-track mind.

  Pushing everything from my overactive brain, I leaned forward, tracing the sweep of his brow. I moved my fingers toward the hair that curled around his ears to his jaw. Lucas entwined his fingers in my hair and drew me to him. I closed my eyes and waited for the kiss that would devour me, that would send me to any place but here where ghosts were haunting me.

  Instead of lips and tongue, Lucas’ eyes locked with and held mine. I tried to keep from shifting on the couch, tried not to blink or look away. I think I failed miserably.

  “Are you attracted to me, Nari?”

  Of all the possible things he could have said or asked, that one threw me for a loop. Hesitating for only a fraction of a moment, I nodded in response. “I wouldn’t have slept with you if I wasn’t.” I made my tone as glib as I could muster.

  “I know you slept with me those first few times to forget.” The contents of my stomach formed into a ball of lead. Fully clothed, I felt naked and raw in front of him. I was made of glass and he could see right through me. Right to the heart beating out of rhythm, to my brain, its electric impulses broadcasting all my secrets. “The next time we make love, I want it to be because you want to remember.”

  I leaned forward again, letting my eyelids flutter closed, offering up my lips, trying to get him to forget all that integrity. He cupped my shoulder, moving me back a fraction. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes, Lucas.” I tried to fill my nod with solemnity. “But memory isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes sex can be a good way to blow off steam, push away the hard stuff of the day.” I concentrated my efforts in a different place this time, pulling the tongue of his leather belt from the buckle, disengaging the pin. I loved his little jolt at the soft clink of animal hide against metal. I pushed a finger under his shirt, tickling the whorl of hair surrounding his navel.

  All his breath came out in a huff. Taking that as a sign of acquiescence, I popped the snap on his jeans, undid the zipper, and ran a single finger down the erection tenting his boxers. His chest expanded with a sharp intake of air. Taking the lead, I unbuttoned one shirt, easing it from his shoulder and pulled the knit one under it over his head.

  Before Lucas, I’d never thought much about chest hair, but I have to admit that I liked the smell and feel of Lucas’. I got all shivery just thinking about him over and above me, the friction of that hair across my body, like a thousand downy feathers on my skin, while he thrust deep, burrowing toward my womb.

  Deliberately, I pulled the faux wrap blouse over my head. The little bandeau bra I wore out of a sense of propriety more than need followed. Lucas’ eyes dilated, his hands moving to my breasts as if they had a mind of their own.

  Now we were getting somewhere. I slipped my hands into his boxers and pulled his taut little butt forward. Our bodies connected and it was like the Fourth of July all over again. He ducked his head and kissed me. It seemed like we went on like that forever, his hands roaming from my breasts, through my hair, down my sides, finally cupping my ass and grinding us together. A single human hair couldn’t have found its way between us, we were so close.

  “Can we move this party to the bedroom?” I said. Then I looked down. “Or the couch can do if you like.”

  Lucas pulled his undershirt from the couch. “Here. Put this on.” He bunched up the shirt and pulled it over my head. Like a child reluctant to get dressed, I stuck my arms through the holes. He looked away toward the kitchen while zipping, snapping and buckling his pants and belt. “Damn, it’s still like a wet t-shirt contest without the water.”

  At my look, which I can only assume was perplexed, he gestured for me to sit. This time he sat at least a foot away. I turned toward him, our knees touching, trying to keep us connected in any way I could.

  “What?” I wanted to get back to the sex part. I hadn’t bargained for a discussion. Talking was not my strong suit. Seduction was.

  “Do you like me Nari?”

  “What do you mean? I’m practically naked in your apartm
ent. I would think the answer is obvious.” Lucas shifted in his seat. He rose from the couch and paced out his frustration. “If you come here, I know a way I can show you.” I grabbed for his hand, ready to pull him toward me, but he snatched it away like I was fire and he was about to get third degree burns.

  “I’m serious. I need to know you like me, not the idea of me.”

  I nearly lost my breath, but for a different reason this time. He’d hit far too close to the truth. “I’m here,” was all I could concede.

  “I need more than that, Nari. Joyce and Matthew adopted me because of the idea of having children. Sometimes I feel like the reality of me has to compete with what they imagined a son would be.”

  “But they’ve had you in their lives for thirty plus years. Surely who you are has replaced any idea of who you’d be.”

  “I’d have said yes, absolutely until this finding my own parents thing came up. Now that I’m no longer the adopted son grateful for the Huxtable-like family upbringing, their carefully crafted reality has been shattered.” He paused a long time. I could see his throat working, Adam’s apple bobbing below the squared off jaw dotted with late day stubble.

  I patted his arm, awkwardly. I had never been good with outward displays of emotion except in the examination room. It was easier to feel for complete strangers, hold their hand, wipe their tears. Real life wasn’t clinical, but messy and difficult.

  “Even Laura had an idea of me. I can only begin to imagine what she’d filled in during the last thirty five years. But whatever it was, I couldn’t have been it.”

  “I don’t have an idea of you, Lucas,” I said. “I guess this is maybe the one advantage of having known you for only a couple of years. What I know about you is from what you’ve said, done, been in the office and with me.”

  “Do you promise that you don’t see me as a replacement for Andrew? For what you lost? I don’t want to be the stand-in for the husband you wish you’d had.”

  “I’m not…you’re not…Andrew…” I protested as the possible truth of his words sunk in.

  “You haven’t had a single relationship in the last decade. I think that says something.”

  Anger fizzed in my veins. Why in the hell were we arguing and not fucking? I wrapped my arms across my breasts. “Since you seem to be the expert on non-verbal cues, what does this one say?”

  “That you’re using me to get past your grief. Maybe you need to figure that out first.”

  “I’m not grieving,” I said, mentally scrabbling for purchase. “I’m trying to love you. Maybe you’re the person grieving for something you can’t have. I’ve made peace with my reality.”

  “Love me?” Lucas paused a long time. “What do you mean, love me?”

  “I’m not sure what in the hell I mean.” Escape plans formed in my mind. I pulled a tight knot in the right side of his shirt and walked straight to his front door. “I can’t deal with this kind of passive/aggressive bullshit.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home. Either you want me or you don’t. But you have to figure that out. Maybe today is not the best day to be having this conversation.” Even in my most bitchy moment, I had to acknowledge that meeting his birth mother had amped up the stress level far too much. He needed time just to process that.

  “Is that how you deal with the hard stuff, Nari, by obliterating it? If you can’t use sex as your drug of choice, you’re going to hide out?”

  “Maybe you’re right, Lucas. Maybe I’m not ready for you, this, whatever there is between us.” I didn’t care how juvenile it looked or felt, I was taking my toys and going home. It was the best thing for both of us.

  Chapter 18

  Lucas

  “You forgot something,” I said, making no move to physically stop Nari from leaving. She’d scooped up her shirt and jammed it in her purse.

  She dropped her hand from the brass doorknob, turned and looked directly at me. Something in her eyes made me hesitate for a moment, but only a brief second. There was no way we could continue if we danced around her using sex as her drug of choice.

  Nari glanced down at the sparkly purple top spilling from her stiff leather bag. “What did I forget?”

  “Your courage,” I said.

  “What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re refusing to face your demons head on.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because you think fucking me will somehow rid you of Andrew.” Crude language wasn’t my standby, but seemed necessary to scrape away the layers.

  “That’s really beneath you.”

  “Is it? Because nothing I’m seeing says you can make any kind of relationship with me until you resolve whatever’s going on with your past. I don’t know if you need to put it to rest or what…but do you seriously think you could love me, fall in love with me when your heart is elsewhere?”

  “I will never be able to forget Andrew. I don’t think it’s fair that you would ask me to push aside my first husband. I may love him, but I’m not in love with him.”

  “When did you reach that little revelation? Because I distinctly remember you saying just the opposite to me.”

  “You’d kind of persuaded me to change my mind. To give you a chance. To try this—us. But I’m starting to think I was wrong.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why?”

  “If you’ve really changed your mind, what was that little performance over there by the couch earlier? You had that same single-minded determination to get my pants off that you did those nights at the bar.”

  “I’m not some shrinking violet, Lucas. I thought you knew that. So what, I wanted to have sex. I wanted to have it with you. Is that a crime?”

  “It’s not a crime if that’s the truth. It’s just that…” I didn’t know what it was. Maybe she’d finally moved on from Andrew, but I hadn’t. It wasn’t that easy to stop loving someone.

  “What?” Her voice had gone from shriek to whisper. She dropped her bag and padded toward me. The sexually aggressive panther look was back. My cock responded while my brain rebelled.

  “That…” I closed my eyes for a second. A willing woman had a way of distracting me from logical thought. I knew she was doing it on purpose. I took a step back. “Let’s get all of the stuff with Andrew on the table, then.”

  “I’ve told you all there is.”

  “I don’t think so, Nari.” Something flickered at the back of my mind. I hadn’t had this feeling since I took boards exams. I hated knowledge that was just outside my grasp. “I wasn’t a history major, racking up dates of wars and battles, but I did my fair share of memory tricks in school,” I said, trying to pull a bunch of disparate facts together.

  “What are you talking about? I don’t like this push-pull. It’s you who’s throwing up the barriers now.”

  A light bulb flickered on—came to life. “What happened at the end of June, Nari?”

  “Don’t…”

  “Don’t what? Get at what you’re holding back?”

  She shook her head. Big movements. “I can’t do this…”

  “And there you go, running away again. We can’t have any kind of relationship without the truth on the table, Nari. That’s a rule I live by. Finding out you’re adopted changes everything. Deception—even the most passive obfuscation of the truth hurts.”

  “Why do you need to know every little thing about me? Love shouldn’t be a deposition.”

  “I’m not asking for every little thing. I’m asking about the big things.” I swept my arms in huge arcs. “The elephant in the living room.”

  She was silent. She wasn’t saying a thing. But she hadn’t left either.

  “There’s something here. But we can’t…I can’t move forward without all the cards on the table. I’ve shared all my demons with you. I’m looking for a little reciprocation here.”

  Nari squatted on the floor and started pulling objects from her bag. First, her pu
rple blouse floated to the floor, loose sequins pinging against the slate entryway tiles. Next came tubes and containers of different sizes. Then her phone skidded across the floor.

  Finally finding what she was looking for, Nari removed her wallet, and unzipped an inner compartment. She pulled out a small square of paper. My heart dropped from my throat to my intestines. It looked like a photo. I didn’t want to see a picture of her first love. What guy did? How would her showing me the picture prove she’d moved on? What did this have to do with late June?

  When she extended her hand, I reluctantly met it with my own. Because I’d asked for this bare-naked honesty instead of a bare-naked Nari. The latter of which frankly seemed like a better idea right now. Me and my damned ethics and morals.

  Clear to muddled went my brain. The tiny square was the picture of a newborn. The little pale face looked as exhausted and befuddled as I remembered babies looking during the six weeks of my obstetrics rotation.

  I looked up and met Nari’s unblinking gaze. “What does this baby have to do with Andrew?”

  “That’s our daughter.”

  “Daughter?” She’d said that girl in her apartment was her cousin, not her daughter.

  “That’s the little girl Andrew and I made. It’s why we got married sooner rather than later.”

  But there was no baby or little girl or bigger girl in Nari’s apartment. My normally agile brain felt like sludge. “Where is she?”

  Nari’s sigh was long. She stood, holding out her hand for the picture. I placed it back onto her outstretched palm. “I gave her up for adoption…eleven years ago.” Nari looked at her watch. “Eleven years and two months ago.”

  “June…”

  “Twenty-fourth is her birthday.”

  Vibration on the tile floor broke the tension.

  “Are you on call?” I asked.

  “I should probably answer it.” On hands and knees she sought out her phone.