Down Shift

by K. Bromberg

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For telling me.”

  He looks my way for a split second and then shifts in his seat so his back is against his door, gaze focused to his thigh where his fingers intertwine with mine. I can sense he’s uncomfortable by his lack of response, that he hates discussing his past, and yet for some reason he’s doing it, so I sit patiently and wait.

  “At some point Rylee and Colton started dating and they seamlessly included us in their relationship. All of us boys felt like we were a part of it with them. It was so cool as a kid to come from this broken life and then be a part of something we all knew was special. Fairy tales weren’t a popular topic in a house full of boys, but we knew theirs was one.” His smile flashes again, good memories leading the way. “Once I’d found my voice again, I was able to give a statement to the police about what happened. Formally identify my dad as the killer. And true to his words, he came back for me.”

  Jesus. How much can one little kid take? “Zander—”

  “No. Just let me finish,” he says with a shake of his head and a squeeze of my fingers. “I’m giving you the short version, but even that’s pretty fucked-up.”

  “I’d say. . . .”

  “I know it sounds like a soap opera, so bear with me. He tried to take me from the House. Kidnap me, in a sense. He held a gun on Rylee when she refused to let him take me. There was a police standoff and they ended up killing him before he killed her.” He pauses, his voice stoic, disassociated from the traumatic events. And while I hear it, I also attempt to fathom the selflessness of this Rylee woman who risked her life to save his. “Rylee and Colton married. And right when they were about to have a baby of their own, my long-lost uncle sought me out.”

  He blows out a breath while my mind reels, trying to comprehend how he’s as normal as he is with his violent family history.

  “He wanted to foster me, when all he’d ever wanted before was to chase his next high. I was petrified of going back to my old life. And luckily Colton and Rylee feared what would happen if he was successful in getting custody and so with the support of my brothers, they adopted me to save me. And then we all lived happily ever after . . . until a few months ago.”

  He finally looks back up to me, face serious, eyes intense, and after being hit with all of that, I can’t even begin to imagine what he could say now to shock me. But I know whatever it is, it’s the reason he’s come here to the island and into my life.

  “A package arrived at my house from that uncle’s wife. The letter attached said he’d died and enclosed were some things he’d kept that I might want to have.” He shakes his head, and I immediately want to know what was in the box. “I have nothing of that life . . . my childhood . . . or anything of my mother’s at all. No pictures, no trinkets, no proof that I even existed until I arrived at the House besides her state-written obituary. Obviously I was anxious to see what was in it.”

  “You don’t have to continue.” I need him to know that this is enough. That I get why he’s doing this now. He’s crossing that boundary we set on night two. The one we don’t cross and we don’t ask about. The one he’s obliterating right now in the hopes that maybe I’ll be comfortable enough to tell him who the man was at the bar today.

  I showed you mine—now you show me yours type of thing. But he continues anyway.

  “The first thing I pulled out of the box kind of rocked my world. Fucked with my head to the point that I shut the carton, taped it closed, and promised myself I’d never look at it again. Didn’t need to know more. Didn’t need to open the skeletons in my closet regardless of how much I wanted one little piece to prove I existed.” He falls silent, runs a hand through his hair. His internal struggle feels palpable in the small space between us.

  “I told myself what I saw didn’t matter. It wasn’t the truth. And then I started realizing that Rylee and Colton had to have known about it and they’d kept it from me all this time. They’d lied to me. And the combination of the two made me kind of spiral out of control.” His self-deprecating laugh fills the car, while his cryptic comments leave me wanting to ask about what he saw in the box. About what was so devastating it would derail him to the point he’d hurt the family that he’d been given a second chance to have. As much as I want to, I tell myself that he’s being an open book and I can’t just flip to the epilogue to see how his story ends up before he wants me to.

  “I fucked up every way possible, Getty. Had no regard for my job because Colton was technically my boss. I kept my brothers at arm’s length, pushed Rylee away, was late to meetings, blew off sponsors. . . . It was bad,” he admits with a resigned sigh. “And then one day Colton stepped in and told me I’d lost my sponsor because of it. God, I was such a selfish prick to him. So fucking angry at the world, and I took it out on him. So he fired me. Told me I needed some time to sort through whatever it was that was messing me up. And once I dealt with it, then I could come back and we’d talk about what’s left of my career. If there was one left to talk about.”

  “And so that’s why you’re here,” I finish for him. Shocked and hurting for him all at the same time.

  “That’s why I’m here.” He nods. “I hurt a lot of people. Fucked up so many things. I was way off base in blaming Colton and Rylee for not telling me about what I learned on that damn sheet of paper. And as much as I want to make things right with my family, I can’t yet. Not until I deal with going through the contents of that box and the fallout I fear, so that I’ve proven to myself I’ve got a handle on it. Then maybe I can prove to them I’m the man they believed me to be.”

  He blows out a loud breath and leans his head back on the seat. “God, you probably think I’m such a pussy that I let this one stupid thing . . . filled with who the hell knows what . . . fuck me up that much.” He keeps his eyes closed and I debate whether he wants me to answer. A man’s ego is a mysterious, fragile thing and all I’ve known are my father’s and Ethan’s and theirs are so overinflated they’d never admit anything like this.

  To them, vulnerability is an emotion to be manipulated. Toyed with. Taken advantage of. And yet here’s Zander, freely telling me things—readily making himself vulnerable—when I get the impression it’s not something he does often.

  So sitting here looking at him—dark hair tousled by the wind, lips pursed as he contemplates the situation, dark sunglasses hanging in the neck of his shirt, allowing me to see his eyes, and strong hands linked with my slender ones—I go with my gut.

  That’s all I can do.

  “No, Zander. I don’t think you’re being a wimp. At all. That’s a lot for anyone to handle. I’m just trying to figure out how you’re such a normal, functioning guy who hasn’t lost it sooner.”

  His laugh rumbles through the car. It’s long and deep and I can tell a little levity was what he needed from me right now. I’m glad I could give him that.

  “I’m far from normal.”

  “Ah yes. Not normal at all. Just pretty.”

  “Getty,” he warns, but the laugh he follows it up with has more humor than cynicism this time. When our eyes meet, I can feel a part of me—the walls I’ve kept high to guard my past, my reasons, my motivations—start to crack.

  And with that simple notion, I realize the spotlight has been turned toward me. Suddenly feeling trapped, I abruptly get out of the car. The breeze is chilly but feels good on my skin. I gulp in a deep breath and try to calm my nerves as I walk toward the front of the car.

  The slam of a door tells me Zander’s not going to let this go. Crossing my arms in a false pretense of toughness, I lean my hip onto the hood of the car. He follows suit.

  “Are we really going to do this?” My question encompasses all aspects of our relationship: cross boundaries, tangle sheets, and hopefully not break my heart when he sorts himself out and returns to his old life.

  “What this a
re we talking about?” he muses with a lift of his eyebrow while one side of his mouth curves up into a knowing smile. His eyes tell me yes, to all of it, and yet the tone of his question remains benign.

  “Are you answering a question with a question, Mander?”

  “Only if you’re going to keep avoiding answering it.” Our eyes clash in a battle of wills as the smirk on his lips challenges me to talk.

  I sigh in resignation. “What was the question again?” I ask, knowing damn well what it was.

  He laughs when I ask another question and bumps his shoulder against mine. Reaching out, he links our fingers and narrows his eyes. “Yes, Getty. We’re really doing this. Crossing boundaries.” He twists his lips and just stares at me for a second. “You know . . . I had no intention of telling you any of that. Zero . . . but I want you to trust me. How can you trust me when I’m not being honest with you?”

  And there he goes. Laying down the gauntlet to see if I’ll pick it up and reciprocate. I tilt my face up to the sky and focus on the swaying pine trees above me to buy time as I gather my courage by the bootstraps.

  “My father came to visit me today.” My voice is steady, even, and yet all I hear in my own ears is the sound of my nerves. My anxiety over letting someone know about my old life. I hate the feeling that comes over me, anticipating the flush of shame when I confess who I used to be, what I used to let happen to me.

  Then I try to pull my hands from his, create some space between us, anything so he can’t feel my hands grow damp or the nerves tremor through them, but he squeezes them tighter. “No,” he says resolutely, and brings the back of my hand to his lips and kisses it.

  Tears burn in my eyes. At a kindness I don’t deserve from this man who has withstood so much more than me and yet is standing here asking me to trust him. And in the safe moment he’s created for me to purge my fears.

  My gaze scans the horizon, the ocean and its continuous ripples, before I find my voice again. “My name is Gertrude Caster-Adams. Or rather Gertrude Caster, since I’m no longer married.” I laugh nervously because the name that’s been mine for almost twenty-six years sounds foreign to my own ears. And I’m not sure if I expect him to recognize the last name, but a part of me sighs in relief when he does nothing more than brush his thumb over the top of my hand in reassurance. “I grew up in Silicon Valley. Computer giants may have run the town, but my father built an empire selling real estate to these overnight millionaires.”

  Recognition flashes across his features and yet he remains quiet. Allows me to move at my own pace. And my mind’s a scattered mess. Unsure how to start. Where to go. So I begin when it all changed.

  “When I was eleven, my mother died of a pulmonary embolism. A freak thing after a routine knee surgery.”

  “Oh, Getty.” The sound in his voice almost breaks the dam holding back the tears that I don’t want to shed. He knows the pain of losing a mother. I take comfort in the thought and clear my throat to continue. “At a young age, I recognized my father as being a controlling elitist. Or as much as a child can understand that concept . . . but I never knew the full obsession of his need to maintain his societal status until after she died. It was crazy how much she’d sheltered me from it, but once she was gone, I was the only one left to bear the brunt of his wrath. A teenager who needed her mother more than anything, and his solution was etiquette classes and debutante balls. Education was imperative—the best private schools where who you were friends with was way more important than your grades.” I shove away the memories of being told I couldn’t play with kids who were just as miserable as I was in the prison of a school. How I was forced to go to social events and boring teas just because of who was hosting it or its attendees. Barbies were unacceptable child’s play. Video games were akin to the devil. But hours spent with the women’s Junior League was time well spent.

  “I was miserable. All I wanted was to be a normal teenager who listened to music way too loud and talked back enough to get put on restriction so I could have time to myself.” My laugh sounds miserable at best. “My junior year, I was introduced to Ethan Adams. I knew of him because his father ran a commercial development company that was growing by leaps and bounds as much as my father’s was on the residential side of the business. Little did I know that chance meeting—or I guess I should say orchestrated meeting—would be the beginning of the end of me.”

  So many memories flash through my mind from that time.

  “My father was this cold, harsh man. He demanded perfection. A lady never makes mistakes or causes a scene, Gertrude.” I sneer at the thought. “So when I met Ethan, he was like a source of the warmth I’d been missing in my life. He made me laugh. He focused on me, when for years I’d been focusing on how to make my father happy. He courted me properly. Stolen kisses here and there because sex was for marriage and he planned on marrying me. He made me feel loved when for so long after my mother’s death, our house had been like a morgue. He made me feel hope . . . like if I just hung on through my father’s demands long enough, then he’d marry me and whisk me away and it would all be better.”

  “Now I know how hard it was for you to sit here and listen to me without saying anything.” The strained resignation in Zander’s voice pulls my eyes toward him. I can sense his anger at where he thinks this story is going. There’s concern, warmth, compassion there too. Three things I haven’t felt in so very long and yet I now know why I’d been hesitant to believe they were genuine.

  Because Ethan had made me feel that way and look how that turned out.

  “I know.” I smile, because it’s so easy to do with him. I nod, ready to unload more of the weight from my chest. “What I didn’t know until after the storybook wedding was that I was basically a dowry in a business merger. The tying bond between two families that allowed my father to take over the Adams empire when Ethan’s father passed away and gain someone to take over all of his when he eventually retired.”

  “A pawn.” Disgust laces his tone.

  “Yep.” A lone tear slides down my cheek. I rub it away instantly. I’ll allow myself only one. Retell this like the story it is, Getty. Like you’re the narrator, and then you can break down in private later over the memories that still hold your heart hostage. My breath is audibly shaky when I draw it in. “It was gradual at first, but it didn’t take long for Ethan’s true colors to shine through: He was as cold and callous as my father was. Maybe even more so, now that I’ve had time to reflect on it. Our wedding night should have been my first indication, but I was too nervous to really comprehend how bad of a situation I’d gotten myself into.” Silence falls as the memory that stains my soul and stands out as the one that hurt the most replays in my mind’s eye. And I’m so glad that Zander is polite enough not to ask more, because the wounds are still raw all this time later.

  The fairy-tale first time was anything but for me. There were selfish demands and disregard of my pain instead of soft words of encouragement and proclamations of love. A few grunts, some criticism from Ethan, and then I was left alone in a gigantic bed with tears drying on my cheeks and blood on the sheets as he left the hotel room for a while. Only to return later with the scent of perfume on his collar and alcohol on his breath.

  “Getty?” Zander’s searching tone pulls me from the black memory.

  “Sorry. I was just . . . Never mind.” I force a smile to my lips to tell him I’m okay. “If I’d felt controlled under my father’s thumb, living with Ethan was more like a noose around my neck. Perfection was expected and anything less was punishable: organization, white-glove cleanliness, appearance, manners, meals, everything. His paranoia grew over fears he was going to lose his position in the company and lose everything. That fear was taken out on me. Ridiculous accusations, constant criticisms, complete control over my life.” My voice breaks on the last sentence, too many memories haunting me to remain unaffected.

  “So you left?” Zander
prompts in a way that tells me I don’t have to explain about the reasons any more. That he understands how personal they are and he doesn’t need to know the specifics because he can infer.

  “Yes.” I swallow over the lump in my throat. “I filed for divorce in secret and then left in the middle of the night, but somehow he was prepared for it, because he’d already frozen all my accounts. My father did the same to my trust accounts, when it shouldn’t be possible.”

  I can all but see the cogs of his mind clicking into place. How upset I became at his accusation of being a trust fund baby. Why I have expensive things but need my job desperately.

  “And now they’re here,” he says in affirmation.

  “Just my father—that I know of.” And I hate that momentary panic of wondering whether Ethan is lurking nearby in town. I push it away. Focus on getting it all out. “I knew he’d find me eventually. The long-reaching arms of Damon Caster are inescapable. But I needed enough time to make sure I was strong enough to face him. That their hold over me had lessened. And those words, hold over me . . . I’m so embarrassed to even admit that I let someone have that.”

  Shame has me averting my eyes from his. I look out to the water, watch the ocean breeze create patterns in the water, and bite back the self-reprimands over the life I used to live.

  “Getty, don’t. Please don’t.” He tugs on my hand for me to look at him, and I can’t just yet. “No one knows anything about being in your shoes unless they’ve walked in them. But I’m not thinking that. Not at all. I’m thinking how much courage you must have had to leave that life. One others thought was full of privilege and perfection, but instead it was like a prison.”

  “Not so courageous now, though, when I saw my father standing in the bar today and my first thought was to run again.” I choke on the words. Another tear falls. The heat of the confessions feels like they’ve stained my cheeks red. “And then you brought the car and it was running and . . .” My words trail off and my train of thought gets momentarily lost in the emotion.