Storm Shells

by G. J. Walker-Smith

  My dad leaned back. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on his desk.

  “Son, you cannot predict what will happen in the future. There is an extraordinary amount of money at stake, and as it stands your wife could make a claim for a substantial amount of it.”

  I didn’t know how to win this argument. I looked to my brother for help.

  “Charli wouldn’t go after money, Dad,” Ryan defended. “Glitter isn’t expensive.”

  “I’m very fond of Charli,” insisted my father. “I’m truly sorry things haven’t worked out. But it’s time to put an end to the unfortunate episode and move on. You have a busy year ahead.”

  He spoke as if my union with Charli was nothing more than a blip on my radar. I felt sorry for him, and then felt lucky for knowing better. I remembered the five-minute rule. Five minutes of something amazing would forever trump a lifetime of nothing special.

  February 15

  Charli

  I went for a long walk that morning, ending up so far down the coast that I ran out of beach. At the base of the cliffs I took the trail up to the road, ending up in the car park opposite the café.

  “Hello, my first born,” crooned Alex from behind the counter. “How are you feeling?”

  “Hi. Shattered. I walked here.”

  “All that way?” Even he sounded impressed.

  I walked to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water. “Can you please drive me home?”

  “I can’t right now. I’m the only one here.”

  I batted my eyes and pouted a little, to no avail, so I pulled out a stool at the counter and settled in for the morning.

  Nicole walked through the front door a few minutes later, and looked horrified to see me. I liked that I had that affect on her.

  “Hi,” she said timidly.

  “Hey, Nic,” replied Alex.

  I purposefully said nothing, making her even more nervous.

  “Ah, I just collected the mail from the post office,” said Nicole, waving a stack of envelopes in Alex’s direction. “Sorry I took so long. There was a queue.”

  “Were you worried that he’d think you’d done a runner?”

  “Charli,” chided Alex, taking the mail.

  I felt no remorse. If she was embarrassed, it was because she deserved to be. Finally, her eyes drifted upward. “Are you always going to hate me, Charli?”

  I’d almost forgotten how brash Nicole could be. It was impossible not to be impressed.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Alex thumbed through the mail, eventually handing me a big white envelope addressed to Charlotte Décarie. Ryan had struck again.

  “Nic, do you think you could drive Charli back to the cottage?” he asked. That was my punishment for being a bitch to her.

  I glared at him, then across at Nicole. He looked fed up. She looked petrified. “Sure,” she replied, sounding like it was the last thing on earth she wanted to do.

  “Great.” I tucked my mail under my arm. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  The distance from the café to the cottage was short by car – no more than five minutes. Neither of us said a word. I grabbed my mail and clambered out of her car as soon as it stopped. Nicole didn’t take the opportunity to make a quick getaway. Instead, she turned off the ignition. I didn’t slow to ask why. I kept walking to the house.

  “Aren’t you lonely, Charli?” she called.

  I stopped and slowly turned back. Nicole stood leaning on the open door. “What are you talking about?” I asked roughly. “Why are you even talking at all?”

  “Be honest,” she pressed. “Both of us have ended up back in the Cove because things didn’t work out. Neither of us would ever have come back here otherwise. I’m really lonely here, Charli. I just wondered if you felt the same.”

  I’d realised weeks ago that life in Pipers Cove was going to be undeniably quiet. Refuting it was pointless, so I avoided the question altogether. “What do you want from me, Nic?” I asked angrily. “I’m not going to invite you in for coffee and tell you all my troubles.”

  “Yeah, well, you probably should cut back on caffeine while you’re pregnant anyway.”

  I gasped, stunned. “Who told you?”

  “I can see it, stupid.” She tried a twisted laugh. “If it’s supposed to be a secret, you might want to invest in some Spanx.”

  “You can’t see a thing!” I yelled, putting my hand to my stomach. “Who told you?”

  “Settle down. I overheard you talking to Alex. I’m happy for you. Why are you keeping it a secret?”

  “It’s no one’s business,” I said sourly. “Including yours.”

  I stepped onto the porch. Nicole called out again as I jammed the key in the lock.

  “Charli, where’s Adam?”

  I practically yelled my snippy response. “I don’t know, Nicole. Where’s Ethan?”

  “Invite me in and I’ll tell you everything,” she offered. “You know you want to hear it.”

  I should’ve ordered her off the property. But I couldn’t. As much as I hated to admit it, she was right. I’d been dying to hear her story since I’d found out she was back in town.

  * * *

  We sat drinking tea at the dining table. Neither of us seemed particularly comfortable with the grown-up setting. Back in the day, our deep and meaningful conversations generally took place in her cluttered bedroom while we listened to loud music and ate copious amounts of chocolate. It was a lifetime ago.

  “So? What happened?” I asked.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Hmm, let’s see.” I drew out the words theatrically. “I’d like to know what possessed you to betray your lifelong best friend for the sake of a bit of money and a loser boyfriend.”

  Nicole shook her head, making her brown ponytail swish behind her. “It was never about the money.”

  “So it was about Ethan. Was he worth it, Nicole?”

  Her lips pressed into a tight line as she stared into her mug.

  “My punishment for betraying you was dished out early, Charli.” Her voice faltered as she fought back tears. “Being with Ethan was a nightmare.”

  I didn’t want her to cry. I wanted her to be unrepentant and proud of her criminal ways. It would have made hating so much easier to do.

  “Tell me what happened,” I pushed.

  “Well, the beginning was pretty great. He filled the void of losing my best friend to the American tourist.” She smiled crookedly and I scowled, refusing to let her put any of the blame on me. “He said all the right things and promised the earth. I tried to keep it casual but I guess he suckered me in.”

  I couldn’t quite believe that that was all it took for her to cross to the dark side, especially considering she’d been successfully warding off the advances of Ethan Williams since primary school.

  “So how long before it turned bad?”

  She shifted in the seat and let out a long sigh. “As soon as we left town I knew it was a mistake.” A hard laugh escaped me. “I’m glad you find it funny.”

  I shook my head. “Nicole, I’m genuinely sorry that your decision to skip town with a bad boy resulted in you being treated badly.”

  She dropped her head and began to cry, which is something I’d only ever seen her do a few times. I had no idea how to comfort her, or even if I wanted to.

  “Look, just tell me what happened,” I urged.

  Nicole composed herself as best she could and launched headlong into the whole sorry saga.

  As it turned out, life on the run wasn’t such a great gig. Nicole and Ethan spent an entire month holed up in a dodgy backpacker’s hostel in Melbourne because he was too paranoid to leave the country.

  “Ethan was worried that the police were involved,” she explained, grimacing. “He was convinced that if we left the hostel, we’d be picked up. It was ridiculous.”

  I shook my head, frowning at her. “I didn’t call the police.”

  I should’ve ca
lled the police.

  “Ethan wasn’t worried about you,” she mumbled. “He was worried that Adam had caught wind of it. He actually made me call him to find out if he knew anything. Adam was totally oblivious, of course.”

  I’d long considered that phone call to be her biggest betrayal of all. It hurt to even think about it.

  “You told him I’d done a runner with Mitchell,” I growled, drumming my finger on the table. “You screwed me over all over again.”

  “I had to tell him something, Charli,” she replied, clearly ashamed. “I had no real reason to be calling him in the first place.”

  “You should never have called Adam.”

  “Of course I shouldn’t. I did a lot of things I shouldn’t have done.”

  I frowned. “Why didn’t you just ditch him? You could have come home.”

  The look she gave me was one of the strangest I’d ever seen. “I just couldn’t.” She shuddered then, reliving a memory that didn’t seem pleasant. “He kept the money, my passport, everything.”

  She smoothed back her hair, composing herself. “Eventually, he figured out that no one was coming for us so we jumped on a plane and went to Fiji. And that’s as far as we got.”

  Nicole spent a year and a half in a small resort town, working two jobs to support her surfer bum boyfriend. Inexplicably, their bounty of stolen money ran out within weeks.

  “You had thirteen thousand dollars!” I cried in disbelief. “Where did it all go?”

  She scowled down at her now cold cup of tea. “Ethan likes the good life. We were always broke. I cleaned rooms at two different hotels to keep him cashed up. It was a vicious cycle. I couldn’t even scrape together the money for a ticket home,” she said bitterly. “But Ethan lived like a king, full of drinking, surfing and women. I guess I got what I deserved.”

  I’d wished the worst on Nicole more than once in the past two years. But in my mind, the worst entailed getting stung by jellyfish or losing her luggage. It didn’t feel good knowing that things had gone so awry for her.

  “One day we got into a terrible fight. I can’t even remember what it was about. Ethan was raging drunk. “

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the rest, but something in Nicole’s expression made me listen.

  “He hit me.” She paused, steadying herself by drawing in a breath. “I knew that had to be the end. It could only get worse. I called Mum that night. She sent me a plane ticket so I could come home.”

  I remembered how distraught Carol had been when Nicole had taken off. “She must have been so thrilled to have you home,” I said quietly.

  Nicole smiled for the first time since the conversation had begun. “She howled when she saw me. I looked completely down and out.”

  I’d always known Ethan was a controlling pig but I never suspected he was a thug. “Are you still afraid of him?”

  A pained frown flashed across her face. “When I got home, I took out a restraining order. Even if he does follow me back, he can’t come near me.”

  I stared at her for a long time, weighing up my options. There were two. I could forgive her and move on, or continue being infuriated by her betrayal. Perhaps she’d been punished enough.

  “I’m sorry for what you went through,” I murmured. “But I’m having trouble forgiving you.”

  Her shoulders sagged. “I hate what I did but I can’t take it back,” she said shakily. “It’s been miserable here without you.”

  I picked up the cold cups of tea and carried them to the kitchen. “Why haven’t you been hanging out with the Beautifuls? I hear they’re recruiting,” I asked, lightening the conversation considerably.

  Nicole groaned. “I couldn’t stand it. They’d probably grant me membership, though. They’re down on numbers now that Lisa’s gone.”

  I poured both cups of tea down the sink. “Yes. Where is Lisa?” I hadn’t given Lisa Reynolds a single thought until that moment. I felt a little bad about that. She’d always been a key member of the Beautifuls.

  “Well, it turns out that Lisa actually has a brain. She’s attending university on the mainland. Engineering, I think.”

  “Wow,” I marvelled. “Who knew?”

  “I know, right? I thought she’d end up working at Jasmine’s salon. Have you been there yet?”

  “Hardly,” I scoffed.

  “Her daddy bankrolled it,” she explained. “It’s three doors down from Mum’s salon. You can imagine how that went down.”

  It would have been World War Three. I was almost sorry that I hadn’t been around to witness it. Then I imagined Carol and Jasmine going at it on the main street. It would have been a blur of fake tan and sequins. I shuddered, relieved that I was on the other side of the world at the time.

  Conversation remained light while I made more tea. The scene had been set. It was my turn to be interrogated.

  “So, what’s your story, Charli? What brought you home?”

  My story paled in comparison to hers, especially considering I only gave her minor details, starting with the year I spent with Mitchell. “Mauritius, Madagascar, South Africa and then I made my way to New York,” I explained, ticking the list of destinations off on my fingers. “We had a great time.”

  She nodded, but seemed uninterested. “I want to hear about Adam.”

  I was unwilling to give her details. “It didn’t work out. He came here and we tried again, but it didn’t work.”

  She nodded. “How does he feel about the baby?”

  I sucked in a long breath, debating whether to lie or tell the truth. Honesty won out. “He doesn’t know.”

  Her eyes widened and she leaned back. “Are you going to tell him?”

  “When I’m ready.” My tone instantly took on a dark edge. “I have to be the one to tell him, Nicole. If he finds out before I’m ready, I’m going to know it was you who sold me out.”

  Her hands flew up in the air as if I’d threatened her at gunpoint. “I’d never do that, never.”

  I didn’t trust Nicole one iota. She’d had no problem screwing me over in the past.

  The heavy turn in conversation wasn’t welcomed by either of us. Nicole glanced at her watch and made an excuse to leave. I was happy to let her go.

  * * *

  It had been a long day. After a lazy dinner that consisted of a handful of almonds and a sandwich, I headed to my room with my Billet-doux mail and a pen, preparing to spend the next twenty minutes signing my name. I settled in bed and tore the strip off the top of the envelope.

  It wasn’t paperwork pertaining to Billet-doux. It was something much more serious.

  I’d been served divorce papers.

  My first inclination was to bury myself in the covers and cry, but I willed myself to take a more grown-up approach. I’d demanded that Adam let me go. He was doing it in spectacular fashion.

  I began reading through the twenty-three page document, distancing myself as if I was interpreting how someone else’s life was being broken down in dollars and cents. I was actually quite curious to see what an errant Décarie wife was worth.

  From what I could tell, Adam was playing extraordinarily fair. I’d retain co-ownership of Billet-doux and all my personal possessions. At first it seemed like a silly clause to include, but then I remembered the clothes and shoes that were still boxed up in the spare room. I had a wardrobe worth literally thousands of dollars.

  My eyes drifted to my left hand. The curly fry rings glittered under the low light of the bedside lamp, reminding me that they were also worth a small fortune. I glossed over the part pertaining to ‘an adequate cash settlement.’ It made me feel like a whore.

  I forced myself to keep reading.

  According to the documents on my lap, Adam owned four properties in New York City. I’d only ever known about the apartment he shared with Ryan. It highlighted the fact that I was clueless when it came to his finances. It made me wonder what else he hadn’t told me.

  In fairness, I couldn’t exactly take the moral
high ground. I had a contraband baby growing inside me and, he knew nothing about her.

  I bundled the papers together, stuffed them back in the envelope and cried myself to sleep.

  * * *

  My father always seemed to know when things weren’t right. I didn’t think my demeanour was any different than normal, but within ten minutes of being in the cottage his interrogation began.

  “What’s going on, Charli?”

  “Why would you ask me that? What do you think is going on?”

  “You’re fidgeting and you haven’t touched your food. If I’m going to bring you breakfast, the least you can do it eat it.”

  I slunk down in my chair, looking at the spread on the table. Alex had gone all out that morning, appearing at my door with enough food to feed the whole Cove.

  “There is something going on,” I volunteered.

  I stood and picked the envelope of doom off the coffee table. I didn’t want to explain it to him. I didn’t even want to talk about it. I handed it to him, demanding that he read it for himself, which he did with the slow speed of a first-grader.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “But he’s only doing what you asked him to.”

  “I didn’t ask him to divorce me!”

  “Charli, you had him arrested to get him out of here. That seems pretty final.”

  “If I sign those papers, it’s all over,” I said sadly.

  Alex’s face twisted into a frown. I knew that look. It was the one he gave just before launching into a conversation he didn’t want to have. “You know it might never be completely over, right?”

  “He doesn’t want the baby.” He didn’t even want me any more.

  Alex brought both hands to his face and let out a long moan. “You don’t know that. You haven’t given him the opportunity to decide whether or not he wants to be involved. As far as he knows, there is no baby. You might have written him off too early.”

  “I don’t think I did.”

  He shook his head. “You didn’t give him time to think it through, Charli. Adam doesn’t go with the first thought, like you. He probably constructs pie graphs and flow charts, analyses them and then makes a decision.” He smiled wryly. “That’s why he’s Boy Wonder.”