by A. L. Woods
Her eyes were laser focused on the cigarette nested between my lips, and didn’t I want to tell her to fuck off. I considered it for a moment longer, deciding I liked the idea more than deploying it. I wrestled the packet out of my back pocket, tossing her the lighter with a loose hand that she caught with careful ease.
“Thanks.”
My brow rose an inch, watching as she lit the cigarette with rehearsed proficiency. Sean hated smoking. So, it struck me as peculiar that not only was his sister smoking one of my cigarettes, but she was smoking it like she had done this thousands of times before.
I exhaled a plume of smoke from the corner of my mouth, training my stare on her profile. Maria was classically pretty in a European model kind of way. Her skin had the same golden undertones that I had seen in her brother, melanin rich, as if it just naturally gravitated toward the sun and soaked up its rays. She possessed a lot of the angular features that Sean had, too, with strong cheekbones and a widow’s peak. Her eyes were round in shape where Sean’s were almond-shaped, but they were that same russet shade of brown like freshly tilled soil after a heavy rainfall. Her straight dark hair fell over her shoulders like a thick and shiny blanket that looked she had spent a small fortune to maintain its luster.
“I never smoke when I’m here,” she confessed, the wooden split rails of the fence creaking as she leaned her weight against the same rail I was resting upon. Her legs hooked at the ankles, drawing my attention to the expensive-looking ankle boots on her feet. “I’m always on edge by the time I leave that I end up smoking half a pack on my way home just to compensate.”
My snort was ornery, drawing a glance at me before she continued speaking. “Addiction is a bitch, don’t you think?” She tried to make small talk with me as she handed me the packet and lighter back, but I didn’t bite. I wasn’t taking that bait. I’d already made that mistake with one Tavares sibling, and that fishing rod had sunk—hook, line, and sinker.
Maria bit her lip, taking a pull on the cigarette before blowing out the smoke. “You’ll have to forgive me for what happened in there.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” I took my own long drag, holding the nicotine in my lungs before letting it go, my eyes tapering as I stared at her. “I don’t know you.”
Maria exhaled to her left, her focus still registered on me. “You don’t,” she agreed. “And therefore, that means you didn’t deserve to be ‘put on trial’, as you so delicately put it.”
“You tried to tear me a new asshole.” I modulated my annoyance. “And I hate to break it to you, but the broads I deal with on the regular are a lot worse than you.” I tapped on the filter of the cigarette, watching as the ash fluttered to the ground, the heat hissing at the cold contact.
At that, Maria pursed her lips, her stare sweeping over my face until they fell on my neck, where the bruises from my mother’s attempt on my life throbbed under the lens of her microscopic eyes. “Yes, that is apparent.”
I jerked my chin away, avoiding her appraisal while I covertly stared at her from the corner of my eye.
“I’ve been a bit of an absentee older sister,” she said, staring at the glow of the lit tip pinched between her fingers. “Trina got pregnant a couple of months ago, and things got kind of hairy for her here with my ma.”
I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat, my muscles cramping trying to dislodge it. Sean hadn’t mentioned that, and I couldn’t help my thoughts going to Holly Jane.
Would my sister have kept her baby?
Ma’s words chose that inopportune moment to ring out in my mind as loud as a firecracker. “I even know who your sister’s baby daddy was.”
Holly Jane would have never told her that. Ma had been as oblivious to and befuddled by the coroner’s observation as I had been. She was an actress, but the way she had grown ashen at the news left me with impression that she wasn’t any more aware of Holly Jane’s pregnancy than I was. Why was she now behaving as though she knew something I didn’t? The math had all added up when I procured Holly’s cellphone bill. I noted that she had called Dom a hundred times, leaving me with the confidence to believe that he had been the one.
No one called him for his stellar conversational skill. All the signs pointed to him being the sperm donor—why else would she have been talking to him at length, if not to hold him accountable for what they had done together?
It all made sense. Holly Jane had hung around him when she was alive, had called him with the compulsion of a junkie; the proof was all there—so why couldn’t I shake that niggling feeling that I had grossly miscalculated things and had missed a crucial detail?
Worse: What if it wasn’t Dom? There was no denying Holly Jane had been a shameless flirt when she was alive; all of Southie knew it. In that respect, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. She was Ma’s daughter through and through, looks and all.
But the identity of her baby’s father was a thorn in my side I’d been trying to remove for years. Of course, I’d tried to solve this mystery back then. Flew off the handle when I learned she had been pregnant at the time of her death. The phone records made it easy to suspect it was Dom. He didn’t do me any favors when I presented my evidence to him. If anything, he smiled when the accusations flew, threw his head back and laughed. Terry said nothing, just like he always did—not that I thought he had any interest in my barely legal kid sister. And Cash, he never corrected my assumption, never steered me in another direction, and that was all the confirmation I’d needed.
It had to be Dom.
Ma was just trying to get under my skin when she suggested the answer was closer than I thought. Dom’s shit-eating grin had been all the confirmation I needed back then, regardless of the doubt from Ma’s remark burning in my gut.
Meeting Maria’s eyes, I took another pull on the cigarette that she apparently took as a green light to continue her spiel. “I would have loved to have taken Trina in, but Sean just…he springs into action whenever there’s signs of trouble brewing, y’know?”
Oh, I knew. I knew what it was like when you were in the throes of danger and he got wind of it. He didn’t hesitate to throw himself into battle, to lead the charge with his sword drawn from its holster pointing toward enemy territory.
“By the time I got to Fall River, Trina was already unpacking at his place. I spent the better half of the night with our other kid sister trying to talk some sense into our despondent mother over something that was easily remedied.”
She paused, flicking the cigarette, “Of course, there was the small issue with the destruction of the vision of my sister remaining an untouched little flower until her wedding day. And the overall viciousness of the Portuguese community in Fall River.”
My brow cocked north at the geographical confirmation and the dated, and frankly naive viewpoint the family matriarch possessed. “It’s two thousand eight.”
Maria rolled her eyes. “You’re telling me,”
I dropped my cigarette to the ground, crushing the tab beneath my boot, my arms crossing over my chest. Petite or not, Trina certainly didn’t look like she was expecting now…
“Anyway,” Maria continued, as though hearing my thoughts. “As I’m sure you’ve long since conjectured, Trina opted to terminate her pregnancy about six months ago. She and my ma haven’t really been the same since. I admittedly don’t enjoy being here, but something kind of came over me when this all happened. Our family was already so fractured after our father’s death that I just became…possessed with fixing things quietly from a distance.” She ran her fingers through her hair, her pert nose tilted toward the darkening sky. “Trina didn’t want to talk to anyone about what happened. I think it affected her more than she let on, but I recognized the importance of her having something she could absorb herself into. So, when Sean was working on the house in Eaton, I heard from someone at my firm that they’d just had their entire place redecorated by this sprightly designer who had a knack for seeing the potential in a space that al
ways seemed hopeless.”
“Penelope,” I breathed.
Something flashed over Maria’s face at the sound of my best friend’s name, but it was impossible to register what it was, exactly. Perturbed wasn’t the right word; she almost looked contrite.
She nodded stiffly. “Yes. Penelope.” She dropped her cigarette to the ground, emulating my movements to stub it out before folding her arms around her midsection, tucking her chin into the cape, her gaze pointed north down the road.
“Sean’s renovations and decorating have always been nice, but they missed the charm and warmth of a woman’s touch. I thought with Penelope’s presence and resume, it would be a two-for-one deal. She would be able to add that sparkle to make the house more attractive, and simultaneously act as a sort of a mentor for Katrina.”
Realization dawned on me in that moment like a white strobe of light across the inking sky above us. Maria had unknowingly been at the helm of this.
If it hadn’t been for her, Penelope would have never gotten that job. She would have never met Dougie. I would have never met Sean. I would be at home in Dorchester right now eating day-old Chinese food in bed, staring a hole through the peeling paint on my apartment walls, waiting for Penelope to get back from Connecticut so I could drink my problems away with her. I would have continued to fuck Cash faithfully on my sister’s anniversary. I would have never experienced that sliver of vulnerability of opening up to someone who didn’t belong in my world.
Without Maria’s interference, none of this would have happened. Our paths would have never crossed. The painful yearning inside of me wouldn’t exist. That change of rhythm in my heartbeat when Sean was present wouldn’t endure.
One sagacious action on Maria’s part had shifted the entire course of my life. To her, it had been a small solution that she hoped inspired her sister back to her former self. But to Penelope, and to me…
It was the rest of our lives.
Sean Tavares would never have been on my scope, and I wouldn’t have even believed that I had the capacity to conjure him up in my thoughts because guys like him didn’t happen to women like me. And even though I’d only gotten to experience the fleeting warmth of his affection for a couple of weeks, that time, as short-lived as it had been, had irrevocably changed the course of my life.
I pushed off of the fence, wrenching both hands through my hair, the pads of my fingers working at my scalp. The skin there ached. My legs carried me back and forth against the gravel like a pendulum swinging as I unpacked what she had unloaded.
“I’ve been overcompensating.” She tucked her hair behind her ears twice, as if she wasn’t confident the locks would stay in place. “I’ve been trying to improve my siblings’ lives and they haven’t needed me to do so,” she explained. “I was mistaken to judge you so harshly, Raquel. I thought that…” the words died in her mouth as my footsteps stilled in front of her.
She didn’t have to say it. I was familiar with her train of thought. Nearly everyone I’d ever met had them.
“You thought I wasn’t good enough.”
I watched through flinty eyes as she attempted to perjure herself in front of me. Perhaps she felt I didn’t possess the acumen to pick out a lie when I was confronted by someone of her caliber who was trained and paid an exorbitant amount of money to do just that.
Regardless of what my anxieties already told me, I couldn’t blame her for questioning my worth. I had caught a glance at my reflection in the Wrangler’s side mirror on my way outside, and I looked like I’d gotten into a fight with a racoon. I wouldn’t have exactly been elated if I had been in her position, either.
“Christ,” I exhaled, resuming my pacing. The back and forth movements on the uneven terrain pacified my racing thoughts. I wondered if Maria even realized the ripple effect of her actions. So much wouldn’t have happened without her influence. And despite the nature of the transient relationship Sean and I had shared, I had learned so much because of her single action that had come from a well-meaning place. She had done what I regretted not doing for Holly—she’d gotten involved. She had meddled. She had fostered resentment from her siblings as she tried to puppeteer to modify and right what she felt were wrongs. My eyes met hers as I plodded toward her in a charge, my legs working faster than my mind. She held up her hands, as though she wanted to brace herself from an attack, but she got a whole lot more than the punch to the face she rightly deserved for being an asshole.
I hugged her.
Her perfume filtered through my nose, her spine stiffening in my hold, her breaths momentarily ceasing under the warmth of my embrace. We stood there awkwardly for a beat of a second before her shaking arms nervously made their way around my back. Somehow I got the sense that Maria wasn’t a hugger. Not that I expected her to be.
Stepping out of our embrace, she cleared her throat, eyes shifting from side to side. I imagined she was recalibrating her brain into aloof attorney mode. “I’ll assume this means you forgive me.”
“Not a chance,” I replied. Maria’s head snapped back—she clearly hadn’t anticipated that response. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t start over on a clean slate,” I amended. I extended my hand to her like the metaphorical olive branch, a smile testing the edges of my mouth. “Hi, I’m Raquel.”
She stared at my hand like she was trying to reconcile the offer to the woman she was looking at. You can’t always judge a book by its cover, though, can you?
Penelope had taught me that.
Maria took my hand. It felt surprisingly warm in my own as our palms clapped together in amnesty.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Maria.” Her laugh was gentle, serving to take the edge off the stress that had settled between my shoulder blades.
Maria opened her mouth to speak, but her gaze drifted behind me, toward the house. Her shoulders squared and her pointed chin kicked forward, our moment fizzling out. I glanced over my shoulder to see what—or who—had captured her attention.
Sean’s gaze fell to where our hands were knitted together, an unspoken question in his eyes. His hand clutched an oversized black sweater. His long legs carried him down the sprawling driveway until he cleared the entrance and his footsteps died in front of us.
Maria cleared her throat, her neck elongating. “I’ll give you guys a minute.” She walked away, then glanced back at me, a slight smile touching her lips. “It was nice meeting you, Raquel.”
She didn’t look at her brother as she disappeared down the driveway.
Sean’s hand with the sweater stretched out to me. “Here, put this on. It’s cold.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he slammed me with a heated look that told me not to push it with him. I sighed, sliding out of my jacket, the frost in the air tightening my nipples through my bra as I pulled the sweater over my head. The sleeves made it impossible for my jacket to fit over it, so I draped it over my shoulders instead.
“What did she say to you?” he pressed, his eyes trained on the house.
“Does it matter?”
His gaze fell to mine. “Yes.”
“We’re fine.”
“What does that mean?”
My stare tightened on his. “Clean slate.”
The vexation that kept his jaw rigid seemed to slacken just a morsel. I dropped my weight against the arm of the fence, the rails straining when he joined me.
He shifted on the balls of his feet, hands tucking themselves into his pockets. “You don’t strike me as a second chances kind of girl.”
“I’m not.”
“But?”
I sighed. “Maria and I subscribe to the same values, I suppose.”
He blew out a dry laugh. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Why? We’re both older sisters. The only real difference here is that my sister is dead.”
He looked like a wounded animal as the brute force of my observation, but it was true. Maria and I weren’t that much different from each other, not in the grand scheme of things. I
understood the place her implacable mistrust came from better than anyone else in that house.
It didn’t require me to be an attorney to reconcile that.
Sean scratched the scruff at his chin, head tilted skyward as if he would find the answers he sought in the dark sky. “I’m sorry that I brought you here without asking you first.”
“What was your logic, anyway?” I looked at him dead on. I damned my heart to steel itself, but that steady rhythm thrummed a song just for him behind the cage of my chest, so loud that I was certain he could hear it.
His shoulder shrug was so weak I barely caught it. “I wanted you here, and you talked about a home…it just made sense.”
I shook my head, biting my lip. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why not?”
“Five days ago, you wanted nothing to do with me.”
“That was five days ago, and this is now.” The matter-of-factness in the way he spoke, as if there was nothing further to discuss, made my blood burn under my skin.
“This is now?” I repeated, glaring at him. “You don’t get to say all that shit to me and expect it to just go away when you’ve changed your mind. You can’t sweep this under the rug.”
The fucker glowered at me. Glowered. Like I had struck a nerve.
I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off before I got the chance.
“I didn’t change my mind. I was very clear with you; I’ve been nothing but clear this entire time,” he said. “My intentions have always been obvious.”
I frowned, my teeth clenching, watching as he swept his eyes over me, something possessive in the action. He exhaled audibly, rolling his neck before he spelled it out for me.
“I don’t want to share you with anyone, Hemingway. That’s it.”
His declaration held a detachment, as though he’d just read the weather forecast. But I picked up on what wasn’t being said. I caught it in the slight tic of his jaw, the tapering of his dark eyes, as if he was recalling something that left an abject and bitter taste in his mouth.
