Finding Tranquility

by Laura Heffernan

  “Why’d you leave Canada? What happened?”

  She eyed me and took a pull from the bottle. “You don’t give a flying rat’s ass about me. Don’t fake it.”

  “You haven’t exactly given me a reason to want to be besties,” I pointed out. “I don’t even know you. Maybe if I did, this could be easier for both of us. Maybe we’ve both had hard lives and it would feel better to commiserate a bit. But mostly, I’m just curious where you’ve been. Honestly, after all this time, I thought you were dead.”

  She still seemed suspicious, and I didn’t really know why I wanted to talk to her, but it seemed better than sitting around and wishing she would leave. Maybe she’d say something that would help us connect, help me convince her to leave me and my family alone.

  “When I was real young, real stupid, I got involved with this guy. He was good-looking, a sweet talker, but mean as a rattlesnake when he got drinking. And some days, he got drinking enough for two people. I had no job, no money, no education, nowhere to go.”

  “What about your family?”

  “They disowned me when I ran off with Harvey. Insisted I was making a mistake, and I was too proud to go home and tell the truth.”

  I pictured telling my older brother, Brad, who’d spent most of my teenage years teaching me to “be a man,” that I’d transitioned. Today, I could probably do it. But I remembered the fear that seized me before I left and knew I’d never have been able to tell him if I hadn’t gotten the opportunity to escape. The fear of telling Jess, the certainty my parents would disown me…

  “Yeah, I know that feeling,” I said.

  “So, one day, I took off. Found a trucker driving down to Boston who agreed to take me as far as Albany. Hitched a ride. We stopped at a motel as soon as we crossed the border. I was young and stupid, he’d been nice to me, so I let him fuck me. When I woke up, he was gone. So was all my stuff. How’d you get it?”

  “I bought the backpack at a second-hand store in Boston. Guess the trucker sold it when he got where he was going. Your passport was in one of the pockets.”

  “So why’d you take it?”

  I took a deep breath. She could be recording this conversation. But if she wanted to turn me in, I was in trouble anyway. Identity theft in Quebec could be punished by up to five years in jail. So could using a fake social insurance number to get a job. So could several other things I’d done. I’d looked it all up when I moved here. And I had no defense. It would be easy enough for her to prove what I’d done.

  “On September 11, 2001, I was supposed to be one of the passengers on United Flight 175,” I said. She widened her eyes, telling me she knew what that meant. “Had a panic attack at the last minute and didn’t board the plane. When it hit the World Trade Center, I had the perfect opportunity to start a new life. Everyone thought I was dead. But I couldn’t get across the border without a passport. We had similar coloring, and Canadian border patrol wasn’t that concerned with citizens returning to the country, so I decided to give it a shot. I had nothing to lose.”

  She shook her head. “Maybe we’re not that different. Tell you what: You leave, give me the house keys, never show your face in Quebec again, and I’ll forget all of this ever happened.”

  That sounded simple, but the house was worth over $250,000, and I bet Tina knew that. Even if she took on the remaining mortgage payments, she’d be getting a lot of money.

  “How long do I have to think about it?”

  “I’ll give you one week. I’ve been living in a commune near Albany for the past sixteen years, working hard without any modern conveniences. I need to relax. I’m going to book a stay at a spa—on you, of course. When I get back, we’ll talk more.”

  After a quick trip to the basement safe, I pushed a wad of cash at her. Then I named my hotel. “You stay away from Jess and Ethan, or there’s nothing else. I lose them, I don’t care what happens to me.”

  She snatched the bills from my hand without hesitation. “Deal.”

  ∞ ♡ ∞

  Jess

  About an hour before lunch, Christa texted me that Tina was gone and wouldn’t be back for at least a week. We hadn’t checked into the hotel yet, and Christa was confident that she was gone for now, so we returned to the house for the evening.

  Dinner was a quiet affair, with Ethan worn out from going up and down the mountain all day and Christa and I both lost in our own thoughts. I wondered if she regretted running away. If she was thinking about running away again now. What would happen when Ethan and I returned to Boston? Would she really stand by her word and continue her relationship with Ethan? With both of us? Did I even want her to? Everything happened so fast, and I kept moving forward, reacting without really thinking.

  When we finished eating, I told Ethan to help with the dishes and went to sit on the back porch, rocking back and forth and staring out over the frozen landscape. I didn’t know how much time passed before Christa found me there.

  “Hey. Mind if I join you?”

  I scooted over to the side of the bench without looking up. “Plenty of room for two.”

  She sat, our shoulders touching. I thought about when we were kids, sitting on my parents’ front porch, looking up at the same stars we saw now. Never in a million years would I have guessed we’d wind up here, not like this. When we were kids, I didn’t even understand what “transgender” meant, and faking your own death was reserved for Christopher Pike novels. Throw in an unplanned pregnancy and a bit of identity theft, and I couldn’t believe this was my life. I didn’t have the slightest idea what to do or say anymore.

  Part of me longed for the days when everything made sense. Tomorrow morning, I could pack up my son, fly home, go back to my practice, fix up my online dating profile, and pretend that all of this had been a dream. Ethan and I could live a good life, without Christa. And Christa wasn’t my problem. She’d made her bed, and she would have to learn to live with those choices. She’d forfeited the right to my love and help the day she’d let me think she was killed in a terrorist attack.

  But… you couldn’t control how you felt about someone. Love wasn’t about rights and obligations. The girl inside me who’d spent day and night with her best friend, with the only person who’d understood what it was like to be constantly at war with her father, who’d spent eighteen years feeling like half of her was missing, couldn’t walk away.

  Plus, as confusing and frustrating as all of this was, we still had a connection. Our old easiness was still there, along with buried emotions that needed to be explored. I needed to figure things out. Walking away and abandoning her wasn’t an option.

  “Is she gone?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she’s gone. For now. But she says she’ll be back in a week. I don’t think we’re lucky enough for her to just vanish.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. My options are pretty limited: I can go to jail, I can pay a blackmailer for the rest of my life, I can disappear somewhere up north and hope she doesn’t find me a second time. A realtor can sell the house and send me the money when it’s all over. There’s a lot of land in Canada, not a lot of people once you get closer to the Arctic Circle.”

  At those last words, my blood ran cold. If she took off, I’d never see her again. Ethan would never have a real relationship with his father. All of my indecision about helping her vanished when the sheer terror of losing Christa a second time hit me. It was too soon. Even if I couldn’t forgive or learn to trust her enough to be friends again, and even if we never regained the intimacy we had when we were kids, I needed more time with her.

  “What’s she asking for?”

  “She wants the house. And before she left, she asked for twenty thousand dollars—Canadian. That’s about fifteen thousand U.S., I think.”

  “I have the money,” I said. “If all she wants is fifteen thousand dollars, I can give it to her.”

  “I can’t take your money, Jess.”

  “Sure you can. We�
��re still legally married. Part of it technically belongs to you, anyway.” She started to reply, but I stopped her. “Your ‘death’ gave me the money to go to medical school. I’d have nothing without you.”

  “We’d have found a way to make it work. You’d have gotten loans and been just as successful.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe you’d have resented me for the fact that you had to work long hours to support us, and we’d have wound up going through a bitter custody battle.”

  “I doubt that,” Christa said. “More likely, we’d be living together, me silently hating myself but still loving you, and hoping my self-loathing didn’t drive you away.”

  I squeezed her hand. “Never.”

  “So you forgive me?”

  “Don’t press your luck.” My smile took the bite off the words. In truth, I understood why she had left. It hurt, and understanding maybe wasn’t the same thing as forgiveness, but it went a long way.

  “You’ve got a great kid, you know. Ethan’s in there doing the dishes. I didn’t even have to ask.”

  He’d never once voluntarily done the dishes at home. I swallowed back a sarcastic reply. “Thank you.”

  Even after our time apart, Christa still knew me better than anyone else. “You okay? You seem a bit too laconic.”

  “Just thinking about things. You and Ethan and holidays and how we’re going to do this.”

  “Whatever makes you comfortable,” she said. “I’d like to get to know him better, but it’s ultimately up to you. You know that.”

  Deep down, under the frustration and resentment, I did know that. The person I used to know wanted me to be happy, first and foremost. She’d never fight for half my earnings, not after everything that happened. Even if she wound up losing her house. The million-dollar question, of course, was: What would make me happy?

  We swung back in forth in silence, lost in our thoughts.

  Finally, I spoke. “What are you going to do about Other Christina McCall?”

  “I don’t know.” She sighed. “She said she’d leave me alone if I paid her off. But what’s to stop her from asking for more? When does it end? Will she show up at work, get me fired? Try to take over my job? Decide she wants hush money each month?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “And do you have to change your name? Get new ID, a new job, everything.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Fuck. How do I even do that? Who am I? What do I do?”

  The panic in her voice brought tears to my eyes. All I wanted was to make her pain go away. Without even thinking about it, I said the last words I ever expected to hear myself utter—but what seemed like the most natural solution in the world.

  “You should come home with us.”

  Chapter 19

  Christa

  “You should come home with us,” Jess said.

  I hadn’t set foot in America since I left. Watching Bo get beaten, knowing that it wasn’t really the Land of the Free for people who weren’t born straight, or cisgender, or exactly as society wanted them to be, terrified me. The world had progressed, sure, but it also took a huge step backward at the end of 2016. It would take a long time to repair that damage. Also, I didn’t have a U.S. passport anymore.

  “I am home. I have friends and a job and a life here.”

  “You know what I mean. You’ve made a good life for yourself, but this isn’t home. It’s not where your family is, where you grew up.”

  “Home is where the heart is, right? I feel safe here.” I’d never feel safe in America again.

  “Things have changed since you left. Massachusetts is far more advanced than most of the rest of the country.”

  “But I’m dead,” I said. She couldn’t argue with that.

  “Actually, you won’t be for much longer,” she said.

  Her words sent a shiver down my spine. I blinked at her for a long moment. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “After I ran into you in September, I started the process to have your death certificate rescinded. You’re alive, and your name shouldn’t be listed on the plaques with the victims of 9/11. It’s not fair to everyone who lost someone that day.”

  She had a point about that, but still, anger flared within me. “You can’t do that! You don’t have any right—”

  “I have every right,” she said. “In the eyes of the world, I’m your widow. But I’m not. I have a living spouse, which means I’m legally married. If I want to date anyone else, have sex, have another baby, all of those things would make me an adulteress. Getting remarried would make me a bigamist. That’s a felony, and I don’t want to go to jail.”

  “The odds that anyone would ever find out, that they’d report you, are—”

  “About as good as the odds that the real Christa McCall would turn up on your doorstep?”

  I flushed, but couldn’t refute her point. It didn’t matter. This wasn’t a tit for tat situation, where my lie justified her taking action without my knowledge. I had a right to make decisions about my own life.

  She continued. “It’s not just that. I received a settlement as a family member of a 9/11 victim that I’m not legally entitled to. That money needs to be repaid. I can’t stop you from vanishing again, can’t make you come home and tell everyone the truth, but I needed to get you declared un-dead so I’m not living a lie. It’ll take time, but I needed to get the ball rolling.”

  I fumed. “Still, you should’ve told me about it first. What if the insurance company wants the money back? I don’t have a quarter of a million dollars lying around!”

  “I do,” she said quietly. “I’m an orthopedic surgeon, remember? My partner and I run a successful practice.”

  She’d said earlier that she was a doctor and doing well enough, but I hadn’t dreamed she’d become wealthy over the years. Good for her. Still, I started to protest. She interrupted me.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. My lawyer said because so many years passed, the insurance company can’t sue for it now. The money’s mine. Ours, I guess.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s yours. Life insurance money is for the survivors.”

  “You survived. In fact, you did better than that. You prevailed. And now you’re in a tight spot, and you need someplace to go. Come home.”

  Her words lit a beacon of hope inside me. Could it be that easy? Go home, change my name legally to the one I’d been using, start a new life? Spend time with my son and my best friend, even if she no longer wanted to be my wife? It sure beat spending twenty years in a Canadian jail for identity theft and fraud.

  I squeezed her hand before settling back onto the bench. She leaned against me, and I put my arm around her like I’d done a thousand times when we were kids. My mind never allowed me to remember those days, but my heart stirred at the feel of Jess nestling against me, the scent of her shampoo, the touch of her face against a shoulder that had far less muscle than during my football days.

  With a start, I realized how much I still loved her. No matter how much I’d changed over the years, we had a history that couldn’t be ignored. That I didn’t want to ignore. Jess had always been my soulmate. When we started hanging out in high school, it wasn’t because I wanted to date her—we’d been friends for years before I felt anything romantic toward her. Our relationship naturally developed and became physical over time, but our love was rock solid before that happened.

  When I asked her to marry me, it was because I loved her and wanted her by my side for the rest of my life. Leaving Jess had been the hardest thing I’d ever done. I didn’t want to do it again.

  Asking her to take me back could prove to be harder. If not impossible.

  “This is nice,” she mumbled.

  I agreed. “I’ve really missed you, Jess.”

  “I missed you, too.”

  With one hand, I stroked her hair. She looked up at me, and our eyes met. Could she still read my every expression the way she used to? “You know, I never stopped loving you.�
��

  She sat up slowly, eyes roaming over my face. She stroked my hair, my ears, as if re-memorizing my features. Or trying to reconcile the woman in front of her with the man she married.

  “I tried,” she said. “I wanted to stop loving you. Everyone fixed me up—my mom, my partner, everyone. I set up online dating profiles, I went on a lot of first dates. A couple of times, I tried to force myself to feel something I didn’t. But it was always wrong. Like, on some level, I was waiting for you to come back, even though I knew it was impossible.”

  As if in a trance, she leaned forward, placing her lips within a hair’s width of mine. For a heartbeat, we almost kissed. Indecision froze me in place. The last thing I wanted was for her to back away, but I didn’t want to make any move that might scare her. It had been a long time since I’d been this close to anyone. Much, much, too long.

  She licked her lips, and I gave in, pressing my mouth to hers, just for a heartbeat. When she didn’t pull back, I kissed her again. This time, her lips definitely moved beneath mine. I cupped her face, giving in to the temptation to show her all the feelings I’d been holding back since the moment I first spotted her.

  After a minute, the intensity of what we were doing overwhelmed me. I pulled back, our foreheads touching.

  I whispered, “Is this okay? Is it too weird?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” she said. “It’s weird. I’m not sure I forgive you, and so much has changed, but you’re still the person I used to love.”

  “But I’m a woman now.”

  “Yes. I am also a woman.”

  “And you’re straight,” I said.

  “Am I? You know me well enough to say that I’ve never felt any desire for a woman? Never dated a woman? You assume I’m exactly the same person I was in college, just like you are?”