Her hair is still wet from the clean-up job. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. My poor little girl. Attacked by bullies and then this.
She’s stiff, unbending in my embrace, and I pull back to look down into her small face. “Lex? Honey? Do you want to talk about what just happened?”
“My father is Alexander Craven.”
It isn’t a question. It’s a statement. One that comes out in a weirdly robotic monotone. I squeeze her tighter. “Yes.”
Lex shakes her head, then her eyes meet mine. “I’m a Craven, and you never told me?”
Holding in a sigh, I pull her over to the couch and settle her next to me. “Lex, I wanted to. But the way this town is about the Cravens—the way the Cravens are themselves—” I realize I have too much to say and no good way to say it. “I thought keeping quiet about it would be easier,” I finish lamely.
“Easier?” My daughter lets out a mirthless bark of laughter, and I wonder when my nine-year-old became so cynical. “For who?”
I understand that whatever I say will be disappointing. The situation is a shit show, one of my own making. I always knew the big reveal would be difficult, but I thought I’d be doing it in the absence of a flesh-and-blood father. Now that Ax and Lex have met, things seem a thousand times harder.
“I’m sorry,” is all I can think to say. “I’m sorry that I kept this from you. But please believe me when I tell you, I didn’t want to see you hurt. I only wanted to keep you safe.”
My words seem to galvanize my child to action. “You didn’t want to see me hurt?” She stands up, her hands balled into little fists. “You know what, Mom? I don’t buy that for a minute. Maybe you didn’t want to get hurt, but as for me, I’ve been hurting for a long time now. How could you keep this from me?”
I hang my head, ashamed. She’s right, I should have always been honest with my daughter. But in a situation like this, there are only a few answers, and none of them seem to be the right one.
“Alexa, I’m sorry that I hurt you.” I feel a tear slip down my cheek, and I make no move to wipe it away. “Just please believe that—”
“Why should I believe anything you say?” Her pitch swings higher, and I can see she’s on the edge of hysterics. “And don’t you dare start crying now! You don’t get to cry! You’re the one that fucked up!”
My mouth drops open. “Alexa, language!”
She shakes her head. “Just shut up, Mom.” Her face is red, and as I watch her lip starts to twitch. She’s barely holding onto her emotions, and in that moment she reminds me of her father so much that my heart feels like it’s collapsing into itself in my chest.
“Why did he walk out, Mom?” she asks, her words watery. “He left without saying a word.”
“It’s complicated,” I say, holding onto the final shred of my adult dignity, which is mercilessly being stripped away by my betrayed child.
“I don’t think it is,” she says, then swipes at the tears that start to tumble onto her flushed cheeks. “I think you drove him away then, just like you drove him away now.”
I shake my head, not sure how to respond. “Lex, it’s not what you think.”
“Don’t bother!” she yells, then turns on her heel to head down the hall toward her room. “Just don’t bother ever talking to me again!”
I hear the door to her room slam, and I feel it physically. She’s shut herself away from me. I almost lament over putting the damn thing back on the hinges.
The sorrow that washes over me feels heavy enough to drown me. For a moment, I consider letting it pull me under. I could collapse onto the couch and weep until there is nothing left.
Instead, I stand. Numb, I walk to the kitchen. My mother is standing at the counter. I know she overheard every word. I take a seat at the small table and stare off out the window into the backyard with unseeing eyes.
Mom sets a glass of ice tea in front of me, then settles herself carefully into the chair across from mine. “I wish I had something stronger to give you.”
I ignore the tea and slide my head into my hands. Ever since Ax returned, I’ve held this worry in the back of my mind. What if he finds out about Lex? What if Lex finds out about him?
Five years ago, I had the same worry. But then, Ax seemed to be considering putting down roots. He bought a cabin, was making visits to his father’s estate. When we’d spent that night together, I let myself consider what might happen if Ax came back to town for good.
After that night, I half-convinced myself that I could tell him, that he’d forgive me for keeping it from him and that he could get to know his daughter. She’d been four then, too young to be pulled into the drama surrounding the situation.
It’s a whole different ballgame now. She’s nine going on nineteen and drama has become her middle name. She understands exactly what hangs in the balance, perhaps better even than I do.
I feel my mom pat my arm. “Sabrina, honey. It was bound to happen someday.”
She’s right, but I somehow think this is likely the absolute worst time it could have happened. I lift my head and take a drink of the tea.
“So now what?” she asks me.
I pin my mom with a withering look. How the fuck am I supposed to answer that question?
Mom stares back at me with the weight of motherhood behind her. I sigh. I’ve never perfected that look. Maybe it would have worked on Lex.
“I don’t know,” I say through the lump in my throat. “I guess I wait it out until she’ll talk to me again. And I’ll have to talk to Ax, apologize.” The thought sends a shock of cold fear through me. The look on his face when he drove off was so icy I’m surprised I’m still not frozen to that spot in the driveway.
“Maybe it’s a good thing Lex has gone all silent treatment,” Mom says thoughtfully.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” she says, leaning back and looking away, “I mean, maybe she won’t go talking about what happened. Maybe she’ll keep quiet about knowing who her dad is.”
My brows furrow. “Mom, I don’t quite get what you’re saying.”
Mom sighs. “I’m saying, maybe you should convince Lex not to talk about her dad in public. Especially right now, since you don’t know how Ax feels about this whole thing.”
Oh, I have an idea how he feels. And “pissed” is putting it mildly. “Mom, my daughter won’t even let me in her door to talk to her right now. How am I supposed to tell her that she has to keep her dad a secret?”
Mom’s shrug ignites a spark of anger inside me. I know my mother only wants what’s best for all of us, but this time, I don’t think she’s right.
“I’m sick of secrets,” I grumble. “I’m tired of holding things in. This fucking town and its unhealthy obsession with the Craven men. I’m not going to let it punish my daughter for things she can’t control.”
I stand, running my hands over my face. “I’m not going to tell her not to talk about this. She can’t help who her daddy is. And if someone has a problem with it, then they can come see me about it.”
“Okay,” Mom says, raising her hands in defense. “You don’t have to shout at me.”
I realize then that I’m breathing heavily and my hands are balled into fists, just like Lex’s had been. Like mother, like daughter, I think, wryly, and unball my fists.
“I’m going to take a hot bath,” I say, longing for the quiet of the only room in which I can be assured of being alone, at least for a little while.
“Good,” Mom says, then grabs my glass and takes a drink. “I’ll hold down the fort.”
I cock an eyebrow and don’t bother to say the response that comes to mind. What’s left to be held down? Hasn’t the fort been entirely blown away at this point?
The bath helps my body to relax, but my mind is still whirring along at a mile a minute. I make supper but eat little of it, and end up leaving Lex’s plate outside her door since she refuses to open it.
Turning in early, I pray for the oblivion of sleep
, but it evades me. I lie awake, replaying the momentous events of the day. Ax knows he has a daughter.
I’ve always figured I’d tell Lex at some point who her daddy is. My daughter is too curious and too stubborn to let a mystery like that persist forever. But, ever since Ax was carted off to prison, I decided not to inform him of his part in the making of my beautiful baby.
Perhaps it has always been the wrong decision, but I’ve had to do what I’ve had to do, and Lex has to come first. Still, seeing the matter from his side, I know he has every right to be furious with me.
For one brief second, I consider calling him. Or better yet, I think about driving out to his cabin in the woods and trying to explain things. To lay bare everything that’s been in my mind and my heart since the day a decade ago when we’d created something together that’s become the center of my universe.
Would he understand, if I lay out all the issues clearly, why I did what I did? Or do those points really matter? The truth of the situation is, I kept his daughter’s existence from him a secret. And Ax isn’t the type to let a rational argument sway him once his stubbornness has come into play.
Like father, like daughter.
As I toss and turn, I realize the reality of the matter is, I’m afraid. I don’t want to see Ax, don’t want to have to face the coldness in his expression again. It hit me too hard the first time. Could I take another dose of it so soon?
Not only am I afraid, but I’m downright embarrassed. I’ve always prided myself on my sense of morality, of doing what was right. I can’t say that happened in this case, even though I thought it was the right decision for my child.
Shame floods me, and I curl into a tight ball. No matter which decision I made, someone would have been hurt. My daughter or her father. Or worse, both of them, as has happened now. I’m the only one whose hurt doesn’t matter since I’m the one that put us all in this situation.
It’s all my fault.
The tears that spatter my face are warm, but inside I’m cold.
23
Ax
It feels like an army of tiny lumberjacks is trying to chop their way out of my skull with minuscule hatchets. I lug myself out of bed and to the kitchen sink where I gulp a couple of glasses of water down and squint into the bright sunshine pouring through the windows.
Fuck.
As the fog from my massive hangover begins to clear, I remember what happened yesterday and decide the headache is better than thinking about it.
I’m a father. I’ve been a father, in fact, for almost a decade and didn’t know about it. For ten years I lived in ignorance, never lifting a finger to raise my child because I never knew I had one. And now—
Now I’m still doing nothing.
I punish myself with a cold shower, hoping to clear away the lingering booze-inspired cobwebs. But the freezing water does nothing to wash away the pain inside me.
I pick up my ax and hoist it onto my shoulder, then head out into the forest. A tree fell not far from my cabin in the last wind storm, and it should provide enough wood for winter when it comes. A little physical exertion should help work away this restlessness inside me, I figure.
As I begin to hack up the fallen tree, I can’t stop going over circumstances in my head. Sabrina had a daughter. One she claims is mine. I won’t deny that claim; the girl looks enough like me to be mine, without a doubt.
That means ten years ago, when I packed myself off to join Uncle Sam’s fighting forces, trying so hard to prove that I was a man, Sabrina was here in Cape Craven, unexpectedly becoming a mother.
All alone.
No wonder she’d hung around town. How was she supposed to take advantage of a full ride to college with a baby on her hip and no one in the big city to help her take care of it? The thought that Sabrina had given up her dreams to raise our child by herself made me grit my teeth in anguish.
She should have fucking told me. I never would have left her to raise a baby by herself. To give up everything she’d ever wanted. Fuck no.
But she didn’t tell me. And she wouldn’t have told me now if I hadn’t pushed my way into her house and seen the evidence myself.
Sabrina had to have known that I would have married her. Hell, I was halfway there before I left. The only reason I didn’t propose on prom night was the fact that she was headed off to pursue her education and her dreams. In the back of my mind had always been the thought of coming back, of finding her again.
So why didn’t she tell me if she’d known she wouldn’t have to raise her daughter alone? The only reason I can think of is one my brain doesn’t want me to uncover. So I chop harder until my arms are shaking with the effort.
She didn’t tell me because she didn’t want to marry me.
Sabrina didn’t want to raise our child with me.
“Fuck!”
The thoughts come to the surface, and I start to feel unhinged. I attack the tree like it’s an insurgent come to blow up my unit. I don’t realize that I’m screaming as I hack at the log, but even that force isn’t enough, so I throw the ax away and batter at the bark with my fists, needing to destroy something to banish the feelings inside me.
I fall to my knees, my knuckles bloody, my chest heaving. My breath saws in and out of me as the thought runs circles in my mind: Sabrina didn’t want me in her life. She didn’t want me in her daughter’s life.
And she still doesn’t, or she would have told me about Alexa. Instead, she kept the little girl hidden, and did her best to avoid me.
Fuck.
I pick myself up, feeling empty inside. The next hour is spent lugging the firewood to my cabin and carefully stacking it, then covering it with a tarp. I find myself something to eat among the meager cabinets in my kitchen, then crack open the laptop.
I check the share price of Craven Industries and consider another trade, but decide that it’s too soon after the last one. I need to see Brent again, to establish a timeline that will hold up in court.
The financial blogs are still bemoaning my brother’s leadership, or lack thereof, and warn of a possible shareholder revolt in the future. I lean back, considering the state of things at my father’s company.
Brent has trained his entire life for this moment, and he’s somehow fucking it up so royally, they’re going to push him out if things continue as they are. It doesn’t make sense. My brother had the best education money could buy, and no one could accuse him of being an idiot. Could there be something else going on here, something behind the scenes? Something I’m missing?
It seems I’ve been missing a lot recently. Maybe I should have my own head examined. My thoughts return to Sabrina and the child I never knew I had, and things spiral down from there. I know that I need to focus, but I can’t keep my brain on task.
This thing with Sabrina is fucking me up more than anything that’s come before. Not my experiences overseas. Not the shit that went down in prison. Being betrayed by the one person you trust most in the world can turn your world upside down quicker than riding a rollercoaster.
Revenge has been the solace I’ve pinned my hopes for the future on, as pitiful as they are. It is the thing I should be putting all of my energy into, especially now that I know what I know. But something keeps me from turning entirely to my plan.
Something keeps me too distracted to devote myself fully to my dear brother’s demise.
I grab my jacket and wheel Delilah out of the shed. It isn’t long before I’m on Main Street, parking behind the general store. There are no bottles of almost 100-year-old scotch on the shelves, but there’s bound to be some liquid available to occupy my time and keep my thoughts off the ever-spreading devastation that is my life.
I’m standing in the aisle, eyeballing a bottle of red wine that looks like a headache in the making and lamenting the low alcohol content of the general store’s offerings. I’m halfway to deciding to head over to the next town and the state-owned liquor store when I hear an intake of breath from behind me.
&
nbsp; Turning around, my mind blanks when I realize Sabrina is standing at the end of the aisle, staring at me. Her mouth is opening, and it’s like the world is suddenly in slow motion, the way the time seems to slow down during an accident or a precise military operation.
She’s going to say something to me. But is it something I want to hear?
Just seeing her sends a streak of righteous anger through me, and I realize I’m holding the bottle so tightly, it’s a wonder it doesn’t shatter in my hand.
I didn’t plan on seeing her so soon after, and so I haven’t rehearsed my speech yet. Right now, the only thing I can think to say is so laced with profanity that the real words are few and far between.
To make a long sentence short, I’m too pissed to think.
But, beyond that, beneath the anger, something else is clutching at my insides like it has claws. If I have to put a name to it, I’d say it’s a cross between terror and disillusionment. If I stand here, if I let her approach, let her say what she has to say, she might confirm all of my theories about why she kept silent about our daughter for so long.
I can’t let that happen.
My chest is so tight, I can barely force a breath through. The walls of the world seem to close in around me, leaving only a tunnel with Sabrina standing at the end. Panic is stampeding toward me like some wild beast, starving to sink its fangs into me.
“Ax?” Her soft voice penetrates the rising fog around me, and the part of me that still can’t let go of what we had and what we were embraces that voice like a seasick man longs for dry land.
“Ax, I’m—I’m sorry about what happened. I should have—”
She could have still been talking, but I don’t hear her because I’ve turned my back on her. I walk down the aisle away from her with as much composure as I can manage, although I feel like my legs might go out from under me.
When the discharge officer discussed the symptoms of a panic attack engendered by post-traumatic stress, I dutifully paid attention but assumed it wouldn’t pertain to me. In prison, when the walls would close in and the weeping from a few cells down would drill into my brain like it was tunneling to China, my heartbeat would accelerate, and I’d remember those symptoms. Usually, the memory was enough to calm me down, to allow me to focus on my breathing.
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