Secondhand Sinners

by Genevieve Lynne

  All these years Miller had been so mad at Emily for leaving like she did and for lying to him about being pregnant with his child. He’d justified his deception by telling himself that since she didn’t give him a choice, he didn’t owe her one. Now he could see she never really did have a choice. He suddenly understood what his own mother meant about hope being a two-edged sword. Sometimes the only thing that kept you going was the very thing you feared the most. Like letting go of a child you desperately wanted so she could be somewhere safe. Like wishing to God that the love of your life would come home in the same heartbeat you prayed you’d never have to tell her what you did because you knew she’d hate you for the liar you became. It was clear to him now, she and Daniel did have sex, and maybe it was only once. Once was all it took. She didn’t lie about whose child she was carrying. She hoped it was his. She probably never realized she was wrong.

  Miller took a deep breath and steeled himself to tell Emily the daughter she gave up fourteen years ago was five miles down the road at Rock Creek Middle School. Once he got that out, he’d tell her how Chester blamed himself for Emily’s trouble, for trying so hard to keep the peace with Violet that he couldn’t even see that his own granddaughter was in trouble.

  Would she believe him? If she did, how would he broach the subject of the truth that Daniel was the father of her baby, not him? He could show her Abby’s medicine bottle full of Galzin. No doubt she would recognize it as the same medicine Daniel took for his Wilson’s. There was no way she’d be able to deny the fact that Abby had Daniel's genetic disease.

  He waited too long, thought it out too carefully, because before he got to say that, Emily said, “I think about her all the time. I wanted her so much. The only thing I wanted more than her was to keep her away from my family. It was the hardest thing I ever did. You have to believe me.”

  Ouch. Not only did Miller essentially help Chester lie to Emily, he’d brought Abby back to live under the noses of the very people she ran away from.

  “I do,” he said. “I believe you.”

  “What was it like?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “The funeral.”

  “Oh. Well…” Miller let go of Emily’s hand and then stood up. He walked to the dresser and looked at the picture of Sara, yet another piece of collateral damage in this whole ordeal. He slapped the frame down and sat in the chair by the door. “It was pretty miserable. Everyone was talking about how they knew it was a matter of time. He was bound to do something crazy like that, while I sat there wondering why no one did anything if they all knew it was coming.”

  “And you were all alone too, weren’t you? When I heard you and Sara got married, I was devastated even though in a way glad that she was there for you after Daniel and I abandoned you. I thought you lived in Durant.”

  “Technically we lived in Blue.”

  Emily smiled. It was weary, but it was a smile. “Why the hell did you come back here?”

  “Good question.” Miller laughed a little, hoping it didn’t sound as nervous to her as it did to him. “Your granddad had always said I could have a job if I wanted one, so I came back here. They needed help, so I got the job.” He was getting pissed at himself. Why couldn’t he just blurt out the words?

  “I saw the drawings you keep in those books by your bed. I wasn’t snooping…I mean…well…I guess I was. I noticed you have a drawing I gave to Daniel.”

  The Sum of All Fears. “Yeah. I like to look at it every once in a while.”

  “How’d you get it?”

  “I cleaned out his room. You know…after.”

  “I was wondering…” Emily brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, forcing Miller to steel himself. She was about to ask something difficult. If she knew he had something difficult to tell her, she’d let him go first. Nah. He should stick with the ladies first policy his dad taught him. “Do you have anything else from him I could look at?”

  “It’s stuff from his room, trinkets and old Matchbox cars. Nothing special.”

  “Anything of Daniel’s would be special.”

  Suddenly Miller was a seventeen-year-old kid with a crush on a girl who loved his best friend. What kind of an asshole was jealous of a dead man? A pathetic one. “I’d have to get it down from the closet, but first—”

  “I dreamt about him a lot. Did you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “At first they were good dreams, more like memories. Even in my dreams, though, I knew he wasn’t supposed to be there. Then they changed. He was bloody, with that hole in his neck, and he was asking me why I didn’t help him. I didn’t even realize I had forgotten the sound of his voice until a month or so after he was gone. I realized after having one of those good dreams that the voice coming out of his mouth was Levi’s, not his. His voice was the only thing I had left of him.”

  Bloody, with that hole in his neck.

  Damn. In all the years since the night he lost everything, it never occurred to Miller what Emily must’ve gone through when she saw Daniel that last time. His voice wasn’t the only thing she had left of Daniel. She had Abby. No. He had Abby.

  “Lemme see…there’s a box in the hall closet. I’ll be right back.”

  Miller retrieved the box from the closet and set it on the bed, opening it.

  “Is that all that’s left of him?” she asked.

  “Yeah, and he didn’t have much either. See?” He reached in and pulled out a set of keys and a ring.

  Emily took the ring. “I stole this from Ma'am and gave it to him that night. He was going to pawn it the next day to get money for his medicine.”

  “How long had he gone without it?”

  “Couple of weeks. That was after he put himself on an every-other-day schedule of taking it.”

  “Then…I don’t understand…” No. He wasn’t going to question her choice to tell Daniel she was pregnant when his mental state was already so fragile. No good could come from that, and it was way too late for anything he said on the matter to make a difference. She’d thought Daniel could handle hearing about her secret relationship with Miller. Although she was wrong, that still wasn’t her fault.

  “What?” she asked, looking up from the ring for the first time since he handed it to her.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “No. Tell me.”

  “I…well…” He took off his cap, scratched his head, and put his cap back on. “I don’t understand why you told him about us and that you were pregnant when you knew he was already having such a hard time.”

  “It’s not like he didn’t already know about us.”

  “He knew? How?”

  “I told him. He was happy for us. Daniel really did love you, you know? He hated lying to you. We both did.”

  Those words might’ve been the confirmation Miller had waited years to hear. Except confirmation that Emily and Daniel had sex had come years earlier, when Abby was still a baby. In really bad moments, he used to blame Emily because she cheated, except he never could figure out if she cheated on Daniel with him or on him with Daniel. Thank God he was past all that now. Otherwise he’d be blubbering on the floor at her feet asking what went so wrong.

  “Well, you two were together for a lot longer than we were.”

  She flinched. “What?”

  “Mom! Mom!” Jack called out.

  “It’s okay,” Miller answered. “You were a couple for over a year before we got together.”

  “Oh my God.” She shook her head a few times. “All these years later, I forget you didn’t know.”

  “Hurry, Mom! Hurry!”

  “Didn’t know what?”

  “Moooooommmmm!”

  Emily sighed and then yelled, “In a minute, Jack!”

  “Come look! Hurry!”

  She took a deep breath and focused back on Miller. “I should go see what he’s doing.”

  “Tell me first,” he begged. He needed to hear it from her. “Didn’t know about what?”

  “Daniel
was gay.”

  “W…w…what?”

  “He wanted to tell you. I tried to get him to. He wasn’t sure how you’d feel about him, and he was scared of Hoyt finding out.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Do you remember that summer before our sophomore year when Daniel spent a few nights in the hospital?”

  “Yeah. He broke his collar bone.”

  “He didn’t roll his four-wheeler. He got beat up. Some guys followed him home from that job he had at the movie theater in Durant. They tricked him. One of the guys flirted with him, and…well, I’m sure you can guess the rest. After he got better, I pretended to be his girlfriend so I could protect him. Both of them.”

  Miller cocked his head. “Both of them?”

  “Daniel and Levi.”

  Miller’s eyes snapped wide open. “Levi?” He ran his hands through his hair again and remembered his conversation with Levi in the jail. She protected us, and we let her down. That made sense. Nothing else did, though.

  If Emily and Daniel never had sex, then whose child was Abby?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Emily

  The blood drained from Miller’s cheeks. He really didn’t know Daniel was gay. She always wondered if he suspected. By the look of horror on his face, she could tell he didn’t have a clue. He certainly seemed to be taking it harder than she thought he would.

  “God, Miller, I’m so sorry.”

  He stood, paced to the doorway of his room and back a few times. Then he plopped himself back in to the chair. “I…I don’t…” He was up again, back and forth, back and forth until he halted in the middle of the room. With his back to her, he rubbed the back of his neck and then adjusted his baseball cap.

  “Miller,” Emily went to him, put her hand on his arm, and tried to turn him around to look at her. When he wouldn’t budge, she moved to face him. “I really am sorry. I promise it wasn’t about whether or not he trusted you. He was so scared and so messed up, you know?”

  “So you never had sex?”

  “Never. I thought you’d be relieved. I mean…not about the lying, but about hearing the truth.”

  “No. There’s gotta be…” He snatched the box off the bed, dumped its contents out, and started rummaging through it.

  “Miller?” Emily grabbed his hand. He pulled it out of her grasp. “What are you looking for?”

  “An answer, an explanation.”

  “There’s no answer, no explanation.”

  “There has to be.”

  “Daniel was gay. That doesn’t—”

  “You don’t understand. All this time I thought the two of you had been together. But now…” Miller picked up a book, thumbed through it, and tossed it back on the bed.

  “Now what?”

  He sighed deeply and shrugged. “Abby.”

  Oh that’s right. They were talking about Abby before she’d completely sidetracked them with her talk of Daniel’s funeral and her desire to see something of his. “You’re right. You were telling me about Abby. I’m so sorry. I should have waited until we had finished our conversation.” She scooped up a handful of Daniel’s stuff and put it back in the box. “This can wait. Let’s talk about Abby.”

  “Mom!” Jack called out from downstairs.

  “In a minute!” she called back.

  “You gotta come see this!”

  “I said, ‘In a minute!’” Emily sighed. With Jack around, minutes to talk with other adults were luxuries. The fog was creeping into Miller’s eyes. It must’ve felt like some kind of bombshell went off in his past when he heard the truth that she and Daniel had lied to him for so long. No doubt he needed time to survey the landscape and look for something familiar to pull out of the wreckage.

  Something downstairs slammed, sending Emily’s senses into a heightened state of alert. “What was that?”

  “Door slamming.”

  “That was the screen door, wasn’t it?” Did someone come in, or did Jack go…“Oh, God. Jack. I’ll be right back.” Emily raced down the stairs. She shouldn’t have left him down there alone for so long. She should have gone to him the moment he called out to her. Did he go out the front door or the back? Did the front door even have a screen? She couldn’t remember so she rushed to the back door as soon as she hit the bottom floor.

  She was relieved that Jack was only a few feet away from the porch. He was jumping up and down and flapping his arms, clearly happy about something. When she stepped outside and saw a police car ambling up the gravel drive, her stomach sunk under the weight of the bad news she knew was coming.

  “A police car, Mom! A police car!”

  “Yeah.” She put her arm around his chest and pulled him closer to her for fear he’d take off running for the car, too excited to consider his own safety.

  “You think it’s coming to take me for a ride?”

  “I doubt it, baby. That policeman is probably coming out here to tell me something important about your granddad or Uncle Levi.”

  “Then I can go for a ride?”

  “You can’t ride in the police car, Jack.”

  “He’ll let me talk on the radio.”

  “It’s not a toy.”

  The car stopped about five yards away, and that was when Emily saw who was behind the wheel. Alan.

  Shit.

  She looked behind her to see if Miller had followed her down the stairs. There was no sign of him. Hopefully he’d stay in the house until she could get rid of Alan. Until a few days ago, when she walked into the police station and saw Daniel’s stepbrother standing behind the counter in that uniform looking like he was expecting her, she’d assumed he was still in the Air Force.

  He got out of the car, put his cowboy hat on, and took long, slow strides to get to her. “Hey there,” he said after he stopped a few feet away and looked her up and down. “Damn. You make even Miller’s t-shirt look good.”

  “Hi, Alan.” Emily moved Jack in front of her, creating a barrier between herself and the last man on Earth she wanted to see, hating the fact that it bothered her so much that he noticed she was wearing Miller’s shirt. Not that she cared if he knew she stayed with Miller. She didn’t want him to care where she stayed or with whom she slept. More precisely, she didn’t want him to make a big deal about it. Not in front of Miller, anyway.

  “Miller here?”

  “Yeah. He’s busy, though. You didn’t come out here to talk to him, did you?” She prayed he’d say no, hoping it was crazy to think Alan came out there to tell Miller about their one-night stand ten years ago. Even though it happened years after she ran away and Miller was already married to Sara, she wanted to be the one to tell Miller so she could explain herself, especially now that she knew Sara cheated on Miller with Alan.

  “Why else would I come out here to his place?”

  “I thought you were here to see me.”

  His smile grew wide, optimistic. “Oh yeah?”

  “Thought you had some word on Levi. Police only come out for a visit if there’s bad news.”

  “Levi? Your dad’s the one in a coma. Maybe I’m here to tell you something’s wrong with him.”

  “If something’s wrong with my dad, then something’s wrong with Levi.”

  “I wanna talk on the police radio! I wanna talk on the police radio!”

  “Shh.” Emily pulled Jack closer to her.

  “No! I wanna talk on the police radio!” Jack was leaning so far forward, she thought he might break free from her grip and fall flat on his face.

  “Well?” she asked. “Why are you here?”

  “I was out at Levi’s. Your car was there. You weren’t. Naturally I got worried. Thought I’d drive around and make sure you were okay.”

  “Why were you at Levi’s?” she asked.

  “Looking for something,” Alan said, readjusting his belt.

  “What?”

  He smiled. “You.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

&nbs
p; “Smile at me like that. You know it creeps me out.”

  “Come on, Em.” Alan took a few steps closer. She tried to step back, but Jack was an anchor. “How many times do we have to go over this? Ain’t nothing wrong with what we did. Daniel was my stepbrother.”

  “This has nothing to do with Daniel. You know that.”

  “I care about you.” He took another step. At least now he was close enough to whisper to.

  “One lonely, drunken night ten years ago does not entitle you to care about me.”

  With his final step he was close enough that she could see his pulse beating in his neck as he looked down on her and said, “I wasn’t drunk.”

  She gulped. How the hell was she going to get out of this before Miller came looking for her? What would he think if he saw her like this, standing so close to Alan, with that hungry look on his face that would announce to anyone around that he was standing face to face with something he thought he owned?

  “Excuse me, Mister Policeman?” Jack’s voice came from below.

  “Yeah, kid?”

  She looked down, more to break eye contact with Alan than to see what Jack was doing.

  Jack was pulling on Alan’s pants leg and looking up at him. “Can I talk on your police radio?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  She pulled her arm tighter around Jack’s chest. “I’m not comfortable with that.”

  “Come on, Em. Let the kid talk on the radio. What’s it gonna hurt?”

  She looked behind her to the back porch. No sign of Miller. Would appeasing Alan get him out of there sooner? “Well, okay. Make it quick. We have lots of stuff to do today.” She let go of Jack and backed up to regain some ground while Alan sat behind the wheel and hoisted Jack onto his lap.

  “Did you save money by switching to Geico?” Jack asked Alan.

  “Did I do what?”

  “You can save money by switching to Geico.”

  He ruffled Jack’s hair. “I’ll keep that in mind. Now this here…” Alan started with the police radio, “…is what we use to talk to the people back at the station.”

  “What do they say?”

  “They tell me what’s goin’ on around town.”