Exodus

by Stewart , Kate

And yet you never once let me step forward and never will. And I’ll never understand it. The only conclusion I can draw is that at one point in time, you did love me enough to save me, to make sure our baby was safe, and I’ll remember you that way.

  Our daughter is so beautiful. She’s thriving, and I know it might be hard for you to look at her and see the mistake you made in loving me, but please try to open up, Roman, and show her the man I fell in love with.

  When you look at her, I hope you feel at peace with the reason for your sacrifice, because I’ve showered the piece you gave of yourself to me with the love I will forever feel for you.

  D

  I read the letter over and over, calculating and recalculating the timeline, all the while praying for the facts to change.

  My mother killed Tobias’s parents.

  My mother.

  Not my father.

  Horner Technologies was a chemical plant twenty years ago. She made a careless mistake and killed two people. Accident or not, my father covered it up.

  The only thing Roman Horner was guilty of was being a cheap, shrewd, and unethical businessman.

  I race to the bathroom and empty my stomach before sinking onto the cold tiles.

  I pull up to my mother’s house, a large three-bedroom on a lakeside lot. It’s not at all ostentatious, but the garden reminds me a lot of my father’s as I round the house following the music that drifts from an outdoor speaker. I find her there amongst the bare branches with a glass of wine by her side. Timothy is leaning over her, as they exchange words, pressing a kiss to her temple before he spots me over her shoulder. His greeting is warm, as is his smile.

  “Hey there, Cecelia. Didn’t expect to see you today.”

  My mother shoots from her chair, a ready smile on her lips as she turns to me. “Hey, baby. I was just thinking about calling you.”

  “Glad you’re in the mood for conversation.” Her smile fades when she sees the look on my face just before I pull the letter from my purse.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Timothy stands by eyeing us both as I make my way toward her. She flicks her attention to the letter again a second before her face goes ashen and turns to Timothy.

  “Give us a minute to catch up, babe?”

  Timothy nods and eyes me, clearly sensing the situation. “Will you be staying for dinner? I’m going to put a few steaks on in a bit.”

  “No, I have to get back, but thank you.”

  Tension fills the air even with the overabundance of it already between us as Timothy takes his leave, and my mother reaches for a cigarette, lighting it up as she watches me closely.

  “My letter?”

  “Why was I safer?”

  She blows out a plume of smoke, pulling her sweater tighter to her. She lifts the bottle of wine in offering, and I shake my head.

  “I’m not here to catch up.”

  “I see that,” she swallows. “Give me a second.”

  “To think of more lies?”

  Her eyes drop as she lifts the glass to her lips and takes a hearty drink.

  “Why was I safer?”

  “Your father was the most beautiful man I’ve ever laid eyes on. Truly. Not one woman in that plant went a day without fantasizing about him, I’m sure of it. And I was one of them.”

  “Answer my question.”

  She gives me a sideways glance, her tone biting. “Do you want the whole truth or a quick answer?”

  “How could you? How could you let me believe he didn’t want me, how could he!?”

  “Because it was safer that way.”

  “And you think he loved you?”

  “I know he did, as he loved you.”

  “He made us go without all those years! He regarded you like you were nothing, treated you horribly. You call that love?”

  “I call it penance. Sit down, Cecelia.”

  I walk up to where she stands, her scars shining in her eyes as she pleads with me to listen to her.

  I take one of two seats that case a small garden table in between and grab her wine.

  “Fine. Talk. And I swear to God, Mom, if you leave anything out, this will be our last conversation.”

  I don’t miss her faint, pained smile. “You’re so much like him in a way. Eyes that convey so much and at the same time cut so deep. But you’re horrible at hiding your feelings. You have too much heart to be anything but a beautiful and loving woman, no matter how much it hurts. I like to think that’s me I see.”

  “I don’t consider it a blessing. I’m nothing like you.”

  “Oh, baby, you’re so much like me. You love blindly and foolishly, and there was no way to keep you from experiencing it for yourself. I knew when you were little, you’d inherited my heart, and there was no way to keep you from loving the way you were created to love. There was no way to stop your heartbreak. You think I haven’t seen the change in you? You think when I look at my own daughter, I don’t notice you’ve been irrevocably changed by it? I taught you exactly about the heart you have long before you gave it away.”

  “Don’t credit yourself for being a parent to me the last seven years.”

  “I deserve that. And a lot worse. But it’s your father who saved me from that fate.”

  “Tell me.”

  She stubs out her cigarette and faces me. “He was a bastard, hard-nosed, straight-edged, power-hungry, money-hungry, and damn near impossible to penetrate. At first, I thought I was just a distraction for him, you know? And he made me believe it for a time. He was too focused on creating an empire to worry about a nineteen-year-old who had no future other than that damned plant. I knew it was stupid. I knew it was reckless to love him the way I did, and God did he make me question my sanity on more than one occasion. But then, one day, everything changed. It was as if he gave himself permission to love me back. We hid our relationship well. Your grandmother was oblivious. It was hard. In fact, I only confided in one person the whole time we were together. A gorgeous French woman by the name of Delphine.”

  I damn near let the glass slip from my hand but manage to bring it to my lips and take a large sip.

  “We bonded because she felt out of her element, she had moved from France a few years before, followed a man to America, and married him. But the first time she showed up to work with bruises…I could just tell she needed someone to confide in. And honestly, with your father, I did too. He was so secretive, so hard to love. It was as if we both needed permission to love them and found it in the other. As wrong as it was, we were both victims of our foolish hearts. We became great friends.”

  She swallows and pulls another cigarette from her package.

  “She was the only one who knew?”

  Mom nods, taking the glass from me.

  “That night…the night of the fire Roman and I had a huge fight about…you. He didn’t want me to keep you, and I refused to let him strong-arm me into aborting.”

  “So, he never wanted me. Big surprise.”

  “Not in the way you think. It had little to do with him not wanting to be a father.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “Cecelia, you came for an explanation. One you deserve. Let me talk.”

  “Fine.”

  “We fell hard. We were very much in love when you were conceived. So much so I thought…I thought him proposing was a real possibility. But it happened so fast. So fast. One minute I was his distraction, the next, he made me feel like his obsession. And it was the best I’ve ever felt in my life aside from the day the doctor put you in my arms.”

  She flicks her ashes as I soak in the still water of the lake.

  “Back then at the plant, there were a few labs, with specific and strict safety guidelines—and newly trained—I just wasn’t thinking. That fight we had was horrible. I thought your father a monster that night, questioned all my reasons for loving him. I couldn’t believe just how multifaced he was,” she swallows, and her eyes water. “Anyway, I was distracted. Distraught, so much so
I just wasn’t aware of anything or anyone around me. I was tormented about the idea that he wouldn’t have me if I kept you. I was so in love with him, I considered it, it was only a split second, Cecelia, but I did. And I hated him for it.”

  I keep my silence though her words sting.

  “Love will make you a complete idiot, and I’m no less guilty of being a slave to it than any other woman.” She takes another sip of wine. “So, I was working that night with a few other technicians who were on break. I just wasn’t…I wasn’t all there. So, when I messed up, I tried to contain it, in the event of a fire, you’re supposed to evacuate, and lock the door. That sets a chain of events in motion that isolate the threat. I followed protocol, not realizing I wasn’t alone in the lab. So when…” she turns to me. “I didn’t see them. I thought I was alone. The minute they appeared at the door, there was an explosion. I didn’t know…by the time I was made aware they were there—it was too late. I can still see them screaming, pounding on the door a split second before the blast. I can still hear their panicked cries. I watched it happen.”

  I close my eyes, the image of Tobias and Dominic’s parents pleading for their lives as my mother stood panicked on the other side of the door.

  “I called your father first, and Roman was upstairs, he was the first there and sent me away immediately, he refused to let me take the blame. I was almost three months along.”

  “But it was an accident, why couldn’t you come forward?”

  “At first, I thought it was a knee-jerk reaction to protect me, but it was for a different reason altogether. He took care of it—all of it. And refused to give me the details or his reasoning. He was so…adamant about it. And he’s a man you don’t question. For months I wondered what in the hell he was thinking…until after you were born.”

  She takes a long drag of her cigarette. “After the funeral, I quit the plant at Roman’s insistence. But I swore the day I saw Delphine on the opposite side of those caskets, she just knew. She looked at me in a way I knew she knew. She was outraged, she wasn’t privy to the details of the investigation and stopped talking to me when I clammed up when she questioned me. I feigned ignorance. Roman and I tried to move on, but it was the beginning of the end. He moved me into an apartment, away from my mother. I thought it was so we could have the freedom to be together, but shortly after, he slowly started to freeze me out. We were never the same after that night. But it was you that kept us glued together. Sometimes he would look at me—at my belly—and I could see so clearly he wanted to be more, to mean more to the both of us. Sometimes, I could see a hint of us again, but other than an occasional visit, he’d all but ended our relationship.”

  “He felt guilty?”

  “I know he did. He bore the brunt of it. This secret had the ability to bring all he worked for crumbling down around him.”

  “But if you had just admitted to it—”

  “He didn’t want to take the chance.”

  “I don’t understand why.”

  “Because he didn’t want anyone to know about us.”

  “So, you were his dirty little secret?”

  “No, my love, you and I were his biggest fear. I knew he was a cold man. I knew he was ambitious in his business dealings, but I didn’t know he had others keeping close tabs on him. He’d made enemies with old business partners, and he didn’t want anyone knowing.”

  “So, you fought because you were pregnant?”

  “I wanted you. He didn’t. And I didn’t fully understand why until three months after you were born.”

  She blows out a breath.

  “Your father came to see you for the first time that night. I can’t tell you how hard labor was alone, thinking he didn’t want to have anything to do with us, didn’t care enough to see you come into this world. He ignored my calls, my pleas for him to come, and I truly hated him for it, but I had you as consolation. You were everything beautiful about us before things got ugly. The day you turned three months old, I fell asleep in your rocker after putting you in your crib.” Her eyes are somewhere in the past as she speaks as if she can see it vividly. “I woke up in the middle of the night to see Roman standing and staring into your crib, and there was no denying it. His eyes were so full of love. And that’s what it was for him, something I experienced myself the day our eyes locked the first time. It was love at first sight for the both of us the minute he saw you. I stood and went to him, and it was the first time since the fire he let me in and see him. That moment was beautiful, and I’ll never forget it. He stared down at you with so much reverence, Cecelia, a father’s love. But it was when he reached for you that he went pale.” She looked over to me and swallowed. “When he pulled back the blanket to hold you for the first time, there was a loaded gun in the crib next to you, situated in an unmistakable way.”

  “A threat?”

  “A warning of retribution.” She looks out to the lake and back to me. “I went ballistic when I saw that gun, and I checked you from head to foot. I’ve never in my life been so terrified. It was then I knew he was distancing himself from us for my protection and yours. He didn’t want you because he knew having you made you a target. That was when I realized just how much he’d been hiding from me. As careful as he was, I knew immediately who was responsible for that threat.”

  “Delphine.”

  Mom nods. “I killed her family with my foolish mistake. But not once had it occurred to me that she was capable of anything like that. I assumed her grudge was my connection to Roman. And so I told him. He was furious.”

  She takes another steadying breath.

  “That night, he held you for the first time in his arms for hours before he looked up at me and point-blank told me we were over and that he didn’t want us anywhere near him. I fought him on it, but with that image of that gun in your crib, it didn’t take much to convince me.

  That night, we agreed that I get a court-ordered paternity test and take legal action in order to gain child support. He said it would look more convincing if you seemed an obligation on paper, in essence making you seem like a bastard child. Since we’d already been discovered, he was sure the best thing we could do was to try and make it seem convincing. He’d hired the best lawyer possible so he would have to dole out as little as possible.”

  “And you agreed to it?”

  “There was a loaded gun pointed at my baby’s head. Of course I agreed to it. I let him break my heart. I let him treat us like his dirty little secret. I let go of him and all ties because he was a dangerous man to love. And we were dangerous for him to keep. That was our deal.”

  “So, you moved us here, and never spoke to him after?”

  “I didn’t hear from him for three years. Not a word. And every conversation after was about you and negotiated visits. Roman made it a point to be as cruel as possible in our exchange. He was paranoid. He refused to even look at me the first summer I dropped you off.”

  “That’s why he sent me to camp on my first summers with him?”

  She nods. “He hired men to watch us twenty-four seven. We were under constant surveillance. Do you remember Jason?”

  I nod. It was one of my mother’s longer relationships that ended when I was in middle school.

  “He was one of them?”

  She nods. “It just sort of happened.”

  “How convenient.”

  “It was. I felt safer with him there. But my reasoning for starting it was entirely selfish.”

  “You wanted a reaction.”

  Mom nods.

  “One I never got.” She frowns. “Something must have happened that last summer you spent with him. Another threat, I assume. He caught wind of something and refused to take you again until he took you in. And even then, he’d made it seem like a business transaction.”

  “That’s why he contacted me by email?”

  She nods. “A paper trail to anyone watching.”

  “Why, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because it
kept you safe.”

  “Why did you go back to him after all that time?”

  “Because for nineteen years, I loved him. For nineteen years, I pined for him. For nineteen years, I paid for my mistake, and I just had to know. I had to know if he regretted it. If he at all felt the same about me. He cruelly turned me away when I went to him, but at your graduation, a few months later, I caught him looking at me. Timothy was by my side, holding my hand, but Roman looked at me in a way I knew I wasn’t alone in what I’d been harboring. It was still there, between us, the man I fell for was still in there. And I knew. I just knew. A woman knows these things. And it was when he looked at me like that…it felt worse than not knowing. It destroyed me. But it was all he had left to give. Just those few seconds in the crowded stadium.”

  “Jesus, Mom.”

  “I thought about that look every day. I still think about him every single day. Was he a good man? No. But he is the man I’ll die loving.”

  “And you think that’s fair to Timothy?”

  “It hasn’t been fair to any man, and sometimes the guilt eats me alive, but what would you have me do? Timothy lost his first wife, and I know at times he feels the same guilt that I do. We all don’t end up with the one we hoped to. He doesn’t resent me no more than I do him. We’ve made peace with it. And we’re happy.” She turns to me. “We are happy. We’re content.”

  “Content is not love.”

  “It is our version of it. I don’t think Roman would have made me happy. In fact, I know he wouldn’t have. Doesn’t make my feelings for him less crippling.”

  “This is…”

  “Roman loved you, Cecelia, he did. But he was a hard man to love and be loved by. Impossible. And it wasn’t just my mistake that cost us. It was his. He needed to own a piece of the world. There was some insatiable drive inside him, and it was his ambition that made him enemies, that cost him his family. All of his wealth wasn’t protection enough for him and the damage he’d already done.”

  “Don’t make the same mistake she did.”

  I set her wine glass down and stand. “You’re right, Mom. I inherited your heart. And don’t flatter yourself about it, because it’s been nothing but a fucking curse.”