John continued to talk as Easton turned his attention to me. His eyes were filled with emotion, and I knew he’d seen what I had. I popped to my feet, breaking our gaze, and padded to the restroom before I lost it in front of John. I closed the door, locking it tight before pushing my back up against it. I sucked in several shattered breaths, none of which filled my lungs. I turned to the sink, gripping the cool porcelain top, and closed my eyes. I was not crazy. I was not crazy. When I opened my eyes and I saw my reflection staring back at me in the mirror, I was no longer a mother with a gaping hole in her heart. I was a mother with hope. I nearly didn’t recognize myself.
I knew I couldn’t hide in the bathroom forever, and it was a cowardly move in the first place to leave Easton out there alone. He’d probably been going through the same thing that I had been, but he was out there on the sofa having to act his way through it. I felt bad for him and all the acting that he had done in his lifetimes. I went to rescue him, but not before splashing cold water on my face.
“Hey, are you OK? It looks like you’ve got something up with your eyes?” John asked the second I sat back down.
“Oh, yeah. I’m allergic,” I said.
“To what?”
“Cats,” I said.
“Dogs—” Easton said.
“Oh?” John looked between us.
“Well, it’s fur, really. I’m allergic to fur.”
“That’s too bad. It’s probably me. We have a big cat at home. He’s got the long fur and everything.”
I snapped my fingers. “That’s got to be it,” I nodded.
“Well, I should get going. I don’t want to make you sick,” John said.
“Oh no, you just got here. . .” I checked my watch again. “Hey, I don’t know if you guys are busy next Sunday, but it’s Clara’s sixth birthday, and we were going to throw her a little party. If you guys could make it?”
“Next Sunday?” John asked.
“Yes, just a small party. A couple of friends and the neighbors,” I shrugged.
“That’s so weird. That’s Nora’s birthday too.”
There it was, the proof I didn’t need. I tried to speak but couldn’t. “A. Um—” I stammered.
“All the more reason to celebrate,” Easton said, opening the front door with a stoic face.
“Yeah, you’re right! Let me just talk to my wife and make sure she doesn't have any plans, and I’ll get back to you,” John smiled before calling for his daughter. Our daughter. Easton, Clara and I stared as the two of them walked down our driveway with sad eyes and heavy hearts. Watching her go was hard on all of us. Easton closed the door but didn’t say anything. He only stood motionless with his head hung.
“Mommy, Nora says that we all have glowy lights,” Clara said, raising her hands in the air.
“She does? All of us?” I asked.
“Yes. All of us,” she said. My heart skipped a beat, causing me to cough. “What’s the matter, Mommy?”
“Nothing, baby. I’m just so happy you made such a good friend.” I kneeled in front of her and tucked her blond hair behind her ear. “Um, so do you see these glowy lights, too?” I asked.
“No. I can’t see them. But she says they’re there. She says she’s going to catch one and give it to me.” My chest tightened. I didn’t know what it meant, but judging by the feeling it left behind; it wasn’t a good thing. I turned and looked up at Easton to see the same grave look on his face that I felt in my heart. “Why are you sad, Mommy?”
I turned my attention back to Clara. “Well, baby, she’s a good friend for trying. Those little glowy buggers can be hard to catch sometimes,” I said, thinking back to the time that I tried to catch one myself. They were as real as the breath in my lungs, but when I grasped at them, my hand only passed through a pocket of warm air.
“I’m hungry,” Clara said, snapping me back to the present. I stood up and passed by Easton to get Clara a snack, but not before I snuck a quick glance at him. His face was pale and somber. Eyes transfixed, distant. I didn’t know what it all meant, but there was something in his demeanor that told me he did.
Dinner passed incredibly slowly as the conversations we needed to have hung just out of reach. I was bursting inside with every emotion. So much so that I couldn’t pick the most prevalent one. My mind was running a marathon while my heart was sputtering. Clara talked about her new best friend—her only friend—while Easton and I stole glances at each other over the roasted chicken. Neither one of us had much of an appetite, and most of dinner had to be packed up as leftovers. By the time Clara went to sleep, and we finally had our chance to talk, neither one of us could find the words.
I sat on the sofa with a lap blanket pulled up to my chin while Easton made a wood-burning fire in the fireplace. Once the fire ignited, he sat next to me, and I draped his lap with half the blanket. A minute of heaviness passed between us before my head found his shoulder. The flames grew taller and wider, crackling and popping. My eyes glued to the white-hot flames. I still didn’t know how to feel about the recent news, but at least I wasn’t alone. I knew I could get through anything with Easton by my side. I had before. Surely, we would get through this, too.
“You know, I thought I was losing it? I thought I was actually going crazy. I felt myself slipping away . . . and this . . . monster . . . taking over me. It was a monster,” I trailed off.
“You could never be a monster, Beck,” Easton reassured me.
“I wanted to steal that little girl and run away with her,” I said.
“Oh.” Easton looked down at me, and I lifted my head off his shoulder to meet his gaze. “Really?” he asked.
“Well, I wasn’t going to do it!” I said defensively. “For better or worse. You married me, for better or worse, just in incase you needed a reminder . . .” I said. I raked my hands through my hair. “I don’t know. . .I just felt so helpless. And all I wanted to do was protect her as a mother should. It’s my only job, and I failed.”
“You didn’t fail. You're an amazing mother. You’ve done everything you could—”
“But I lost her. I lost Molly.” It was the absolute truth.
“Beck, I didn’t want to tell you, but I did some background searches some time ago. Some of it was illegal, and some of it was—most of it was—on social media . . .” I straightened my back attentively. In all my crazy moments, I’d thought of kidnapping, breaking an entry, stalking . . . But I’d never thought of looking up the doctor’s social media profiles. It should have been alarming to me, but I moved past it effortlessly. I never claimed to be a saint.
“And?” I asked.
“And, it looks like they adopted Nora when she was around six weeks old.”
“They adopted her?”
“Yes.”
“So, it is . . . Molly. . .”
“I can’t say for sure. But—”
“But you know, don’t you? You know deep down inside, that little girl is our Molly, don’t you?” My voice was broken with the pain. It was in six weeks that I finally turned the corner on my depression. It wasn’t because we had a memorial and I said goodbye to Molly; it had been because Molly was no longer alone. Someone adopted her and showed her the love she had deserved all along. That someone should have been me. Easton’s eyes locked onto mine as he held in what he really wanted to say. He wasn’t fooling anybody. I saw the way he looked at her.
“You know, she has your eyes. . .” I said.
And that’s when Easton broke. He held his head in the palms of his hands. Elbows digging into his knees, his back began to quake. I didn’t intend to hurt him, and the sight of him crumbling before me wasn’t easy to witness. But I knew it was the sight of his confession. He didn’t have to say he knew it was Molly because his body was screaming it from the inside out. We both knew it.
I rubbed Easton’s back as mindless tears ran down my cheeks. I watched the fire dance till it no longer raged. Then, when Easton had no more left to give, he laid on the sofa and pulled me
close to him. My back pushed to his chest and his arm wrapped around me tightly. I traced my finger over his skin mindlessly as I wondered if my life was back on track to becoming untethered. Surely having Molly back would put me on the path of living a happy and fulfilled life. That was if I could find a way to stay in it. Because it was a tremendous threat that the doctor would move, or even something so simple as stop returning my calls. It was all so fragile, like a house of glass. I needed to watch my every move, become strategic. Calculated. Because this was one game I couldn’t afford to lose.
After Easton fell asleep, my fingers trailed from the skin of his arm to the metal of my cell phone. I was afraid of what I might find on the internet. All the secrets that were hidden right there in plain sight this whole time. Finding the doctor was easy. Too easy. Within seconds I was browsing through private moments. A baby wrapped tight in a blanket, a close up of Nora that looked identical to Clara. It stole my breath away, yet somehow my thumb found the strength to continue scrolling.
Several pictures with groups of people, family reunions, medical awards—I skipped it all. I scrolled and scrolled until I chanced upon the close ups of my precious daughter. Nora laughing with the tongue of a dog licking the side of her face. Nora at a dance recital when she was so tiny, her pink tutu could have swallowed her whole. Nora blowing out the candles on her third birthday. That’s where I stopped because I could no longer take the sight of everything I had missed and shouldn’t have.
Chapter 25
The week passed by slowly in anticipation of the girls’ birthday. Every day a challenge new in itself, but one day closer to spending our first milestone with Nora. It was the driving force that kept me moving through the week. I would need to make this memory the best one yet. The birthday party had to be perfect, and I had to make a good impression on Nora’s mother. We had exchanged a few texts about the party throughout the week, and she seemed nice enough, but if she didn’t absolutely love me, it would destroy my chances of watching Nora grow up.
The doorbell rang, causing me to sweat through my second blouse even though it was the dead of winter. I opened the door, relieved to see it was only the neighbors. “Hi, Jackson! So nice to see you!” I said, waving the family inside.
I was changing my top for the third time when the doorbell chimed again. I took off running down the hall and ripped the door open—Brooklyn. “Oh, thank god you’re here. I’m freaking out. I can’t do this,” I said, fanning myself in the doorway.
“Hey, hey, it’s OK. You're going to be great. They’re going to love you.”
“You don’t understand. They invited their parents too. I have many people I need to impress. And what happens if they recognize the similarities between Nora and Clara?” I asked.
“Come on,” Brooklyn said, taking my hand and leading me back down the hall.
“Where are we going?”
“You can’t meet them with sweaty armpits, and we can’t have this conversation here in the doorway, either,” Brooklyn said. I lifted my arm again and huffed at the sight of my underarms. I really had to pull myself together. Brooklyn closed the bedroom door behind me, and I ran my hands through my hair. “Look, remember what I told you? It’s all going to be alright. You have to calm down,” she said.
“But how do you know Brooklyn? How do you know?” I searched her eyes, looking for a sign that she knew something I hadn’t. She sighed, then turned away from me to dig through my closet. “Brooklyn? Did you have a dream that you're not telling me about?”
“This one. Put this one on,” she said, holding up a sun-kissed yellow top.
“Not that one, because yellow is cheery, and I don’t want to appear too bouncy or energetic because what if she’s an introvert and I just—”
“Put it on!” Brooklyn barked, causing me to jump. I did as she said. I would self-detonate if I didn’t have her in times of weakness.
Brooklyn tweaked the buttons, and I asked again. “Did you have a dream?”
“I—” The doorbell rang, and I sucked in a breath. “Forget it. Let Easton handle it,” she said. My eyes flickered from my closed bedroom door back to Brooklyn. “I . . . I haven’t had a dream, but I know everything will be fine. Who wouldn’t love you? Just go out there and be yourself.” It was the worst advice. If only she had known just how unstable I had grown to be over the last several months.
I could hear the guests arriving, and I instantly regretted inviting the entire kindergarten class. I did so hastily when I thought the doctor was hesitant about my eagerness to have them over. I figured he couldn’t say no if the entire class was coming. It turns out, I was right. He accepted the invitation for the shared birthday party when I announced to the class that invitations would be passed out after school. I had to run home and print off twenty invites that day. High-pitched squeals sounded through the walls, and I assumed Nora and her family had arrived.
“But what if they see through me? What if they can tell that something is off? We’re not exactly the family next door,” I said, rubbing out the worry across my forehead.
“And I’m not the girl next door, but I do a pretty damn good job of covering that up, don’t I?” Brooklyn asked, placing her hands on my shoulders.
“That’s because you 're a witch,” I joked.
“I’m no such thing.” Brooklyn smiled.
“Easton’s an actor. He’s been doing it forever. It’s normal to you guys.”
“Becca, Clara is six. You have been doing this for the past eight years now. You have got this. Nobody is going to think a thing about you or the girls. Honestly.”
I took a minute to relax. Fill my lungs with one last breath before stepping into the interview of a lifetime. “I’m scared, Brooklyn. I don’t want to lose my chance,” I said.
“Honey, what’s waiting for you out there is not a loss by any means,” Brooklyn said, and for the first time, I believed it. I believed that life happened this way for a reason. I couldn’t possibly know what that reason was, but I had to believe that I could make the best of it. I smiled and nodded. I started to walk out of the bedroom and into the rest of my life when, “Wait! That yellow is all wrong!” Brooklyn said.
When Brooklyn and I finally emerged from my bedroom, I wore a sky blue sweater and jeans. The house was filled with kids and parents alike. I waded through the crowd, handing out pleasantries and getting caught up in warm hugs. The small talk was encapsulating, and I excused myself several times as I looked for John and his family. I spotted Easton and made my way to him. His eyes looked me up and down, and a grin set in. “You, look—”
“Are they here? Have you seen them?” I asked, my eyes searching the crowd.
“Um, no. But your mother is,” Easton’s brows rose.
“My mom?” I asked. Last I heard, she would not make the party and living so far away it was completely understandable. Easton tipped his head in her direction, and I followed his line of sight to where my mom stood talking to Clara. I passed by Easton. “Mom?”
She turned to me and smiled pleasantly enough. “Becca! You look marvelous.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Well, that’s not a warm welcome,” she stated dryly.
“I’m sorry. Hi. Hello.” I hugged my mom, and Clara took off running when she saw new friends show up. So far, none of them had been Nora. “I just didn’t think you were coming,” I said.
“I know, but then I got thinking. This weekend was probably better than next month anyhow. Plus, I couldn’t miss my only grandchild’s sixth birthday party! What kind of grandmother would I be if I did that!” Only grandchild. The words rang through my mind, swirling till I felt dizzy. “I see your father didn’t come. . .” My mom said. I didn’t know what she had against the man. As far as I knew, she was the one who sabotaged their relationship. I shook my head, dispelling the unnecessary stress, and spotted Tanner making his way to the backyard dressed in uniform.
“Excuse me, Mom. I’ve got to say hello to my brother-
in-law,” I said, squeezing her shoulder as I left her side. As I approached Tanner, I saw Brooklyn intercept. I hadn’t seen them together since the day they ended their relationship. I knew they had spoken, I just hadn’t seen it myself, and it was nice to see them together. Tanner was smiling, and it actually looked genuine. I looked down at my watch, which revealed that John and his family were now nearly an hour late. My heart sank, thinking they might not show. I checked my phone to see if they had left any messages when Clara stopped me and asked if we could do the piñata. I sighed, looking around at all the kids. They were growing restless. Regardless of whether the Faye’s showed up, I had an obligation to throw one heck of a birthday party.
“If everyone would like to grab a bag over here, and write their name on it, then we can line up and take turns at the piñata!” I called out. The kids ran to the bags, and I fought against the crowd to get to my cell phone. When I did, I had several messages unseen, but only one that I cared about. John had a delivery and would show up late if they could make it at all. Disappointment washed over me, but I still had a sliver of hope that they would come before the party was over. Either way, the show must go on. I owed it to Clara. And for the moment, she hadn’t noticed that her sister wasn’t here. Sister. I hadn’t allowed myself to say that word until now, and it made my stomach flip.
I turned on the outside speakers and pushed through some party music. The kids jumped and danced in anticipation for their turn at the piñata. Easton yanked the rope, sending the candy stuffed unicorn soaring through the air. Clara spun, missing her strike, and we all cheered her on. She smacked it when Easton let her, and the crowd of parents clapped. The grin on my face, once wide, shrank when I scanned the yard again. It’s an odd thing that happens when you're surrounded by people, yet still feel alone.
The Kindred Soul of Nora Faye: The Tethered Soul Series, Book 3 Page 18
