by A. L. Woods
“I’m a lot of things, Cherry, but an almost deadbeat dad isn’t one of them,” he roared, spittle leaving his mouth. “I take care of what’s mine. Your sister’s pregnancy wasn’t my problem to deal with, and I made that perfectly fucking clear to her before she rolled her car off the fucking turnpike.”
The visual of what happened to Holly Jane made me break eye contact with him, squeezing my lids together to hold in the tears.
“If not you,” I said, doing my best to steady my voice, “then who?”
His jaw flexed. “It’s time for you to leave.”
“Tell me,” I demanded, unable to keep the plea out of my tone. For a split second I saw something in his face that made me believe he really didn’t have the answers I sought—that maybe he wasn’t lying to me at all.
Was he covering for someone? All I wanted was the truth.
“Dom, do you know what this has been like?”
His eyes glinted with transitory remorse, his lips pursing in contemplation, before I continued.
“I need this,” I pleaded. “If you know, put me out of my misery.”
The spell broke.
He threw his head back and laughed darkly. His bottom teeth pressed into his upper lip, his jaw turning to stone. “Now why the fuck would I do that?”
Silence prolapsed between us for what felt like several minutes before he was overcome by his own impatience. “Go home, Cherry. We’re done here.”
My commute out here had been futile. I deceived my boyfriend in hopes of finding closure and the truth, only to leave empty-handed. If I’d gotten something out of this trip, maybe it would abate my overwhelming guilt. I couldn’t justify this to Sean, and it made my stomach roil. I had nothing to show for my efforts other than arousing Dom’s ire, and making enemies with a girl who looked like she had more than enough on her plate.
I’d fucked up, again. None of this was worth it.
Heavy footsteps smacked down what sounded like a stairwell beyond the door. The door swung open again, the girl from earlier returning, her eyes like daggers as she pulled her coat off of a garment tree.
“Allie,” Dom called, watching her with hooded eyes, heat rolling off of him in a way that drew all the air out of the bar.
Her nostrils flared, appraising him with tapered eyes. Slipping into her jacket, she turned and left, the creak of a door in the distance opening and closing behind her.
He took off after her, leaving me standing there to track down his prey.
I worked the knot in my throat. This had been pointless, and I’d been wildly naive if I had thought there could have been a different outcome. I made for the front door, the cold winter air enveloping me in its frosty embrace. My Docs crunched under the unevenly layered snow-capped gravel.
Sliding into my car, I leaned forward, placing my warm forehead against the frigid steering wheel. I had nothing. I don’t know why I thought this would be helpful.
Still, Dom’s social circle was so small—it was only a matter of time before I figured it out. I considered holding a stakeout until Terry inevitably made an appearance—he couldn’t be too far away. Not that I was holding my breath that he would be any more willing to have this conversation with me than Dom was. In fact, I suspected the conversation would go the same. The only real difference here was that Terry never looked at me with anything but boredom. He would have had more interest in fucking the opening of a shampoo bottle, and for that, I was grateful.
The sound of movement made me lift my eyes.
“Allegra.” Dom’s voice was clear in the air. The girl-woman from earlier tossed him a fleeting glance over her shoulder, her countenance twisted with pain. Her shorts-clad legs cut through the parking lot in long strides, the wind parting her unzipped jacket as she stalked forward.
“You don’t fucking walk away from me,” he yelled.
Dom’s legs ate the distance between them, the wind touching the sleeves of his T-shirt. A shiver didn’t even so much roll through him. He was a hunter. I could make out the reckoning that was coming in his eyes from the bunkered safety of my car.
This wasn’t going to end well for her. I had known Dominic for almost half my life—no one told him no.
Especially a woman.
“I’ll do what I want. You’ve made it perfectly clear that I’m nothing to you,” she spat back.
As much as I appreciated her feisty nature, she walked a fine line—and as open as this wooded pocket of Massachusetts was, she could run all she wanted, but she would never be able to hide.
Not from the likes of him.
I sat upright, watching as Dom caught Allegra and pulled her to him, his hands framing her face. She appeared stiff in his arms, and when it looked as though she couldn’t stand it anymore, she shoved him off. He was like a tree, though, barely moving a foot away from her, her eyes an inferno of fury like the seven gates of hell. She turned to leave, but he caught her by the waist, subduing her, his arms sandwiching around hers as she struggled against him, his face burying into the crook of her exposed neck, her hair whirling behind her.
A sliver of fear rolled through me, the still images of my childhood running through my mind like fast snapshots. My father backhanding my mother, and my mother busting a bottle over his head.
My hand trembled as it moved for the door handle, pushing it open. I stepped out of the car, staring at them both. I wasn’t a child anymore. I wouldn’t sit back and watch another person be subjected to the hell my parents had put themselves through.
Allegra wrestled her way out of his grasp and sent her hand soaring in the air. She must have thrown all her body weight into the slap that clapped across his cheek; the sound cut through the winter day like a whistle. My breath hitched in my chest. I watched as Dom’s hand found his cheek, his brow cocking upright curiously. Something washed over Allegra’s face. Fear? No, I realized. It was satisfaction. A smile tilted her mouth north, her deep dimples registering in her cheeks.
She took off in the direction of a dilapidated trailer that was tucked against the edge of the property line, bordering the point where the trees started to thicken. She made it all of ten feet before he was on her tail again in pursuit. She let out a strangled cry when he caught her by the wrist, backing her against the trailer, her eyes wide as he pinned her with his hips. The breadth of his body practically masked hers, and I would have lost sight of her entirely if it wasn’t for the fact that she was no more than four or five inches shorter than Dom’s six feet.
That was it; I couldn’t do this. I was about to shut the door, but Allegra’s next move stopped me.
Her arms twined around his neck, drawing his head closer to hers.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” he remarked loudly.
I watched with parted lips, her moan of approval swallowed by the sky. “Just say yes and you’ll be everything to me forever, Allie.”
What the hell did that mean?
It became clear to me in that moment that this was a ruse of their own machination. Entirely purposeful, a game of cat and mouse. He had told me himself inside: He preferred her hot and bothered.
These people were emotional sycophants, riling each other until the moment they almost snapped, before sucking all the life out of one another.
I shook my head, got back in my car, and closed the door with a slam that drew their attention for the briefest of moments before Dom’s hand disappeared between them. I didn’t need to see what he was doing. He tossed me a smarmy smile from over his shoulder, blowing a kiss in my direction.
He wasn’t above fingering a barely legal girl in front of me.
Disgusting, voyeuristic fuck.
Turning the key in the ignition, I didn’t spare them another glance as I pulled the car into drive, the gravel kicking out from beneath my tires as I left with nothing but my guilty conscience to keep me company.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
I wrestled the ringing cell phone from the cup holder with one hand. My eyes were trained
on the freeway, plumes of smoke from the lit cigarette clouding the interior of the car. I’d smoked enough in the past hour that I was giving myself a headache, but I had no intentions of stopping. I hadn’t even bothered opening the windows.
With the cigarette trained between my lips, I swept my eyes over the caller ID on the screen before I flipped the phone open and hit accept. “Pen, hey.”
“Don’t you ‘Pen, hey’ me, Raquel Marie.”
A hybrid of confusion and fear uppercut me. I pulled the phone away from where it was sandwiched between my shoulder and chin to glance at the screen one more time to confirm it was in fact Penelope and not some terrifying amalgamation of my mother and hers.
It appeared she had taken my advice—she was definitely ready for motherhood.
I took another fortifying drag from my cigarette. “Who pissed in your Cheerios this morning?”
She ignored the remark. “Where are you?”
“In the car,” I offered. The impromptu grilling was spurring anxiety. What the hell was her deal?
“Fine,” she said, and I could practically see her smoothing out her shirt with her free hand just from the gritty lilt of her voice. “Where were you?”
“Penelope, what the fuck is with the twenty questions?”
I heard the soft kiss of a door being shut in the background, the sound of the construction that surrounded her dulling. She drew in a long breath, and I could almost see her pacing the room and tugging nervously on her earlobe.
“Hello?” I pressed. She was starting to freak me the fuck out.
“Cut the shit, Raquel.” My stomach dropped, “Did you go to see Cash?”
Of all the damn things for her to ask me right now.
“What?” I challenged.
“Did you or did you not go see Cash?”
Why was she asking me that? I slid the window button to the down position, cold air clearing the nicotine from the cabin. Words evaded me even though my thoughts were loud and rampant in my mind.
“Raquel, just tell me.”
Annoyance blanketed me. My left leg began to bounce nervously as I considered what she was really asking before I growled, “Why the fuck would I go and see him?”
Her silence was almost as pregnant as she was. Seconds ticked by before she said, “So, you didn’t go and see him?”
“No.” My left hand that had just opened the window came to a pitched rest on the steering wheel. “He’s the last person I want to see.”
She must have heard whatever she needed to hear, because an exhale of relief blew through the speaker. “Jesus Christ, I honest to God thought you had done something stupid.”
Oh, I had done something stupid. Profoundly so, but it wasn’t the thing she thought.
Pinning the phone between my ear and my shoulder, I stabbed the butt of the cigarette into the overflowing ashtray. “Why would you call me and ask me that?”
It was Penelope’s turn to take on a vow of silence, but I wasn’t buying it. “Penelope, you do not get to call me, put me on the spot like that and then not tell me why.”
“I just had a weird feeling this morning.” Her whisper sounded a whole lot like a hot and steaming pile of bullshit served to me on a 24K gold tray. That shit might have gone over better if I was impressed by shiny things.
“Try again,” I suggested, steering onto the exit ramp, and slowing the car to a stop at the stoplight.
My gut told me he knew.
My molars involuntarily ground together, a tightness pervading in my chest. I apparently hadn’t been as stealthy as I had thought, and Sean had done the honorable thing and let me bury myself. My throat felt like sandpaper when I croaked out, “And I suggest leading with the part about Sean.”
I watched the shame lave over my features in the rearview mirror as the gravity of what I had done swept in like a deluge and washed over me. My body was stiff in the driver’s seat as the light changed to green, my foot finding the gas with too much enthusiasm. My tires shrieked, eliciting a gasp from my best friend, who had seemingly decided to go mute on me.
The unending silence that stretched between us was stressing me out, so I broke the monotony while she battled with her moral compass.
“Well?” I pressed.
She heaved a tight sigh before launching into her explanation that all but confirmed what I had already suspected. Sean had been off all morning and had just been entertaining me with the story about his near matrimonial hell. He had hoped that by sharing something, I would do the same. When I didn’t react to the story the way my anxiety wanted me to by losing my shit, Penelope knew I was hiding something. All my behavior had done was hung a flashing neon sign over my head that screamed, “I have a secret!”
I palmed my forehead, massaging the incoming tension headache that was brewing there. “Fuck.”
“Yeah, fuck,” she repeated. “What’s going on, Raquel?”
It was my turn to provide her with a silence that stretched on for too long. I knew it would have been hard for Penelope or Sean to understand; that was why I had been so surreptitious. It was easier to ask for forgiveness than it was for an apology, and this didn’t feel like an exception. When you had spent nearly ten percent of your life desperate to learn about the final months of your kid sister’s life that you weren’t a part of, you would stop at nothing to get the answers, even when the ground beneath you began to crack.
“I had a suspicion I had to act on.”
“Meaning?”
“I had thought…” I drew a deep breath, “I’ve believed that it was Dom all these years, but now I’m not so sure.”
Penelope’s hesitation to speak did nothing to relax the nervous eddies that spun inside my gut. Dom and Penelope had met in passing a handful of times. The last time had ended with Penelope dumping the contents of her drink in his lap and sauntering off with a sashay of her hips and her middle finger hung proudly over her shoulder in his direction.
“Why?” she finally asked. “Why would you go and see him?”
“My ma had the same theory I did back then that it was Dom. Holly Jane was around him and Cash a lot, so Dom being the one had always made sense to me.”
“And now it doesn’t?” There was something she wasn’t saying.
“No. Ma was singing a different tune on Thanksgiving when we…” I swallowed, rapidly blinking my eyes to dash away the visual assault that flocked to my memory. “Anyway, it wouldn’t have made any sense for her to elude to it not being him after all these years, unless she knows something I don’t.”
“Raquel.” Penelope exhaled. Her nervous energy had my skin crawling. “Are you sure these are stones you want to go flipping over?”
I dipped my chin. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t want you to end up finding more than you bargained for.”
She didn’t get it. I knew she wouldn’t. I dragged my teeth over my bottom lip, releasing it only when I spoke. “My ma said the answer is closer than I think. I’m confident that the answer is right under my nose, I’ll sniff out every lead I have until I get the truth.”
“You might not like what you find, Raquel,” she gently said. “Is it worth hurting people in the process just so you can sleep well at night?”
“I’ve been asleep my entire life, Penelope. This is a delayed awakening.”
I worried my bottom lip out of habit with my teeth as Eaton bloomed before me. My eyes tracked the people who ambulated through the whimsical downtown core that was lined with unique shops, not a single big box store to be seen. These people—the ones I had always scowled and rolled my eyes at–they laughed, and smiled, and experienced joy. They lived, fully, unashamedly. I wanted what they had, that liberation that allowed them to live their lives without their pasts cloaking them like an unshakeable shadow.
The streetlamps that lined the street were festooned with festive wreaths and bows, lights strung around them. In the town square, a massive holiday tree adorned with ornaments that caught the sunlig
ht during the day and twinkled under the lights at night, lit up an epiphany inside of me. I wasn’t going to be alone for Christmas this year, and if I wanted it…I would never be alone for Christmas again. In such a short time, the one thing I had been seeking in my entire life was mine—and all I had been doing was keeping Sean at arm’s length, because that felt safer than allowing myself to let go of what I had always known to be the truth.
They said the truth sets you free, right?
“I’m not trying to hurt anyone, and I do love him, Penelope. I know this is hard for either of you to understand, but I keep you guys safe by not telling you everything.” The four-lettered word hung high in the air, too far for me to reach them and take them back. It was the first time I had articulated that word beyond an inner monologue. They hadn’t weighed me down like I thought they would once I said it aloud—instead, I felt free.
“That is…” she trailed off, and I suspected she was trying to keep the joy from my spontaneous confession out of her voice. Clearing her throat, she managed to complete her train of thought. “You should tell him…he thinks…”
Unexpected tears stung the back of my eyes, a sniffle escaping me. “I know what he thinks.” But he wouldn’t think that much longer; I wasn’t going to let him. Who the fuck cared if it had only been a couple of weeks? Who made up these arbitrary rules and indoctrinated them as law?
I loved him, and right now he was going through life unaware of it. I didn’t want him to spend another second not knowing.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“With Dougie, scaring the shit out of some kid who has his eyes on Trina,” she said with a snort, I could practically see her eye roll. I pulled the car onto the street that housed The Advocate, the historical edifice standing proud amongst the trees. I was actually looking forward to being there for once in my life. For the first time I finally had it all—the guy, the job, the sisterhood that, while it would never replace Holly Jane, had fulfilled the part of me that had been empty.
