Haunting Olivia

by Janelle Taylor

  Zach placed his hand on Marnie’s arm. “Marnie, please let me—”

  Marnie yanked her arm away. “I guess someone doesn’t like cheaters,” she said to Zach, then rushed out of the room. “Brianna, we’re leaving!”

  The girl came rushing down looking full of secrets.

  “We need to leave right now,” Marnie said to her daughter. She hurried the girl out the door.

  “Marnie, wait,” Zach said. “I—uh—”

  “There’s nothing to say,” Marnie snapped and pulled the door closed behind her.

  Zach let out a deep breath. “What a mess.”

  “Why don’t you go after her,” Olivia said. “She deserves that. I’ll take Kayla out to breakfast. And I’ll try to put that picture out of my head.”

  He nodded. “She came over here this morning to ask what’s going on with us. With you and me. With me and her. And I wasn’t honest with her. I should have been, but I wasn’t ready to tell her about what happened last night between you and me. I blew it.

  She deserved the truth.”

  Olivia squeezed his hand. His handsome features were so troubled. She didn’t know what to say, what to think.

  “Look, Olivia, I don’t even know what last night was. I don’t know what it meant. What it means. It just happened.”

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  “You don’t have to explain or understand it, Zach,” she said. “Let’s just let it be.”

  “Daddy, Olivia,” Kayla called from upstairs, “I’m almost ready! I’m deciding between outfits! Brianna has no taste at all. She said my sweater was all wrong for my body type.”

  Olivia smiled. “At least she didn’t hear the scream. Zach, this is my department. I’ll go up. You go after Marnie.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s meet back here around noon.”

  A few precious hours to spend with her daughter.

  Olivia forced herself to put the picture, the warn-ings, Marnie, and even Zach out of her head.

  “So should I call you Olivia or Mom?” Kayla asked as they arrived at the Eat-In Diner.

  Olivia was so touched she couldn’t contain it. She squeezed Kayla’s hands. “I would love it if you called me Mom.”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Kayla said, spinning a lock of her light blond hair around her finger. “I might just not call you anything for a while, okay?”

  Olivia smiled. “Perfectly okay.”

  The waitress came over and took their orders, then returned in seconds with coffee for Olivia and a glass of orange juice for Kayla.

  “Ick,” Kayla said. “Don’t look now, but a girl I totally hate just came in.”

  Olivia glanced at the door. A beautiful blond girl and her equally lovely mother were led to a table by the window.

  “Why do you hate her?” Olivia whispered.

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  “She thinks she’s so perfect. Perfect grades, perfect face, perfect body, perfect hair. Perfect life. She’s a total fake. Her name is Cecily and I hate her guts.”

  “Did you two have an argument or something like that?”

  Kayla shook her head and sipped her orange juice. “She goes to the high school, but tutors in math and science at my school. I got stuck with her like ten times for help with tests. She thinks she’s too good to even speak to lowly me. I asked her if I could borrow a pen in math class a couple of weeks ago, and do you know what she said?”

  “What?”

  “She said, ‘We don’t use pens in math class. Pencils only.’ In this total tone. So I asked if I could borrow a pencil, and she acted like I was asking to borrow her head or something.”

  “Did she give you a pencil?” Olivia asked.

  “Yes, but with attitude.”

  Olivia tried to remember being thirteen. Every slight felt like the end of the world.

  “And she entered the Inner-Beauty Pageant, too,” Kayla continued, shooting sulking glances at the blond girl. “So of course she’ll win. She wins everything.”

  “You have a lot of inner beauty, Kayla,” Olivia said. “And that’s all you need.”

  “You really think so?” Kayla said, brightening.

  “You think I can win like you did?”

  Olivia nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “It’s so cool that you’ll be coordinating the pageant,” Kayla said. Olivia had explained about Pearl’s request on the ride into town. “You’ll be able to help me win.”

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  Olivia sipped her coffee. “Actually, that’s the reason we’ll need to get the permission of the other contestants and their moms before I can officially be named coordinator. The other girls and their moms might not think it’s so fair that your mom is coordinating.”

  “But you’ve only been my mom for a day,” Kayla pointed out as the waitress returned with their breakfast. “Not even a day. A night!”

  Olivia laughed. “I’m just glad that we’ll get to spend a lot of time together over the next couple of weeks.” She squeezed Kayla’s hand. “We have so much time to make up for.”

  Kayla smiled, then gobbled up her pancakes.

  Olivia’s cell phone rang. It was Pearl, informing Olivia that she spoke with the other five contestants’ mothers and the meeting was set for tomorrow evening at six at the town hall to discuss the open coordinator’s position.

  If Pearl had managed to get hold of Marnie, she must have just spoken to Marnie. Very bad timing.

  “There’s an Inner-Beauty Pageant meeting tomorrow night to discuss the coordinator issue,”

  Olivia told Kayla. “We’ll see then what everyone thinks.”

  She had no doubt what Marnie would think.

  Chapter 11

  “Just tell me the truth,” Marnie said, her hands on her hips in the doorway of her house. “Did you sleep with her?”

  Zach glanced away from her intense stare. Although he was still standing in the doorway, her expression and body language said she might take the vase of flowers on the coffee table and crack him over the head with it. “Yes,” he finally said.

  Her expression changed from fury to sadness and back to fury within seconds. “Then turn around and go.” She pointed behind him. “We have nothing left to talk about. If it was only some kissing, I could live with that.”

  “Marnie, I—”

  “What could you possibly have to say?” she asked.

  “You cheated on me. You let me look like a fool.

  You’re total scum.”

  He had cheated on her. But he hadn’t meant for anything to happen between him and Olivia. Not last night, anyway.

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  something to happen. Wanted something to happen. He’d been so focused on his daughter’s feelings that he’d forgotten to check in with his own. Last night there had been no time to think about repercussions. He’d felt, and he’d acted on that. And Olivia had responded.

  He certainly hadn’t meant for Marnie to get hurt. She was a good woman, a good mother, and their relationship had seen him through some rough patches with Kayla this past month. The last thing he wanted was to hurt Marnie.

  He reached for her hand, but she backed away. “I hate how you found out—about last night, about Olivia being Kayla’s mother. I wish I could take that back. I should have told you myself about both, and I did plan to this morning, but then you saw the photograph. I’m very sorry.”

  “Sorry doesn’t cut it,” she said. “No one cheats on this,” she added, waving her hand down the length of her body. “No one. Do you know how many men wish they could be with me?”

  She certainly had a high opinion of herself. “I have no doubt of that, Marnie,” he said. “You’re a beautiful, sexy woman. And I’ve been very lucky this past month. And I’m not saying this in defense, but we never said this was an exclusive relationship.

  You yourself told me that you didn’t
want labels, didn’t want rules.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why would you want to be with someone who abandoned you with a newborn? That’s who you’re choosing over me?”

  “You don’t know the whole story,” he said. “It’s a huge mess and was completely out of Olivia’s control.

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  What we both learned in the past couple of days was so overwhelming that—”

  “That you needed to screw each other to make things less overwhelming. Right. Just answer this,”

  she said. “Was it a one time thing, a roll in the hay for old time’s sake, or are you two dating?”

  “I honestly don’t know what we’re doing,” he said as gently as he could.

  “Just get the hell out of here,” she screamed, shoving him backward. “You make me sick.”

  “Marnie, I am sorry.”

  “Oh, trust me. You have no idea how sorry you’ll be,” she said before slamming the door in his face.

  He rang the bell again, needing to say again that he was truly sorry he hurt her, but Marnie didn’t answer.

  He hated this. Hated hurting someone, making her feel the way Marnie felt right now. He did wish she could cut him a little slack, though. He was going through something crazy, something totally unexpected. The mother of his child was back. And something had happened between them last night.

  Marnie didn’t have to take that into account, of course; cheating was cheating. But sometimes there truly were mitigating circumstances. Marnie didn’t seem to think so, though. It wasn’t as though he’d made love with just anyone.

  Maybe he was rationalizing. Maybe Marnie could have been a little more understanding. Who the hell knew?

  Actually, he did know. He’d been having these kinds of scenes with women since he was seventeen.

  They wanted more. He couldn’t give it. Either they were hurt or they were hurt and angry.

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  That first year in Boston, when he had an infant and no clue how to care for her in any sense of the word, he’d started seeing a woman named Jen, a college student who lived in his apartment building. He’d thought his life circumstances would be explanation enough of what kind of commitment he could make to a relationship, but Jen had been devastated when he had responded to her inquiry about status with: “I just don’t know.” Those words had come out of his mouth so many times over the past twelve, thirteen years.

  But he had known; he’d always known. Not one of the women he’d dated, even down the line, when he was older and more settled in his life as a single father, could he possibly imagine as the mother of his daughter. Because he didn’t love them? Because he’d loved Olivia, however short and ultimately heartbreaking their relationship had been, in a way that could never be measured up to?

  That was crazy. People fell in love again all the time.

  He did believe it was possible to feel the way he’d felt for Olivia again. He’d just never felt it. Not with Jen all those years ago and not with Marnie. Nor with anyone in between, and he’d known some wonderful women.

  He sat in his truck for a few minutes, just staring out at the forest surrounding Marnie’s property. A vase came careening out a second-floor window and landed on the hood of the truck. It missed the windshield by a sliver.

  Get off her land, already, he told himself. Before she hurls a desk at you.

  He planned to drive over to the police station for a status report on the break-in at Olivia’s and the HAUNTING OLIV IA

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  tire slashing, but he found himself stopping at the turnoff for Blueberry Point, the stretch of beach where he and Olivia had met. He pulled over and walked down the narrow, icy path to the ocean. It was beautiful even in winter on a gray day like this one. And it was just the same. Primitive and age-old and natural, as their feelings for each other had been.

  Zach picked up a rock and threw it in the water, hard and fast. It felt good to release . . . what? He wasn’t even sure what was pent up in him. Just the suddenness of it all—Olivia, back in his life. But he’d always expected it. Countless times he’d come down here to the beach, this particular strip, where it had all started, and he’d stare out at the water, brilliant blue or a cold gray, as it was now, and he knew with absolute certainty that the day would come, that Olivia would come back. He’d never had any idea when. He used to find himself looking out the window on Kayla’s birthdays, even when they still lived in Boston. And when he moved back to Blueberry five years after he’d been handed a bus ticket and a newborn, his college degree and new job as an architect, albeit low on the totem pole, had meant something to the snobby neighbors who’d once deemed him as worthless as his parents. The important thing he’d come back home with was confidence in himself, something he’d never had growing up, something Olivia had had in him.

  Zach picked up another rock and flung it as far as he could, angry at himself for not believing in her back then. He had believed what he’d been told: that rather than ruin her life with a no-good 146

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  punk like him, she wanted nothing to do with him or the baby and was going to college, where she planned to forget she ever knew him. He hadn’t believed it at first, of course. Scrounging for change to call all the way to New York, he’d rushed to every phone he could find, and then taken the train down to try to find her. But when she remained so unfindable, so unreachable, he began to believe what he’d been told.

  But then Kayla, an unnamed baby girl who looked just like him, had been placed into his arms, and scared as he’d been, his life suddenly had a purpose. If he couldn’t be the guy Olivia wanted, he’d damn well become the father Kayla needed.

  And he had.

  And now here Olivia was, all of a sudden. No matter what happened, Olivia was good for Kayla.

  He believed that even though he hardly knew Olivia.

  He stared out at the ocean. A little self-control would have done a lot of good too last night. It was crazy to bring sex into the mix. Or maybe bringing sex in would clear things up.

  At least he could clear his conscience about one thing: he hadn’t lied to Marnie about the status of his relationship with Olivia. He really didn’t know a damned thing about how he felt.

  The police station was across from Zach’s office.

  He stopped in and asked to speak with the detective handling the Olivia Sedgwick case, but apparently, there was no case.

  “Hijinks,” the officer said, stamping paperwork.

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  “Or she got on someone’s nerves and they paid her back. There are no leads.”

  “Someone did break into her house,” Zach reminded him. “Isn’t breaking and entering a crime in Blueberry?”

  For that Zach got a steely stare. “We’ll let Miss Sedgwick know if there are any developments.” He then continued stamping.

  Yeah, well, I wasn’t planning to report the latest incident anyway, jerk, he thought as he left. Blueberry was a small town, and the last thing he wanted was Kayla affected by what was going on in his life. With Olivia coming into her life and with the pageant, his daughter had enough for one thirteen-year-old.

  At noon, Olivia and Kayla were in the kitchen of Zach’s house, making hot chocolate. Zach came in, his expression letting Olivia know that things hadn’t gone well with Marnie or the police.

  As Kayla chattered on about how she liked her hot cocoa super chocolatey, Olivia realized that this was all she cared about. Being with Kayla, getting to know her daughter, sharing tiny moments about hot chocolate on a cold winter day. They were together. And not only did Kayla not hate her for being absent from the first thirteen years of her life, but she seemed thrilled by Olivia. Kayla would be staring at her one moment, then peppering her with questions the next. When did Olivia get her period? Had she also been thirteen? When did Olivia go to second base with a boy? Startled, Olivia had asked Kayla i
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  boy, and Olivia had been happy to hear she hadn’t even French-kissed yet.

  Zach had to go into the office for a few hours, and Olivia had been delighted to stay with Kayla all day. They gave each other facials and pedicures, talking and laughing and having a blast—until the doorbell rang.

  Standing on the welcome mat were two girls who looked to be Kayla’s age.

  “So she’s not a total liar?” one of the girls said.

  “You’re really her mother?”

  “If you’re talking about Kayla, yes, I am her mother,” Olivia said, startled by how rude the girl was.

  “You’re not so great,” the other girl said, blowing a bubble, which she popped with her finger. The girl looked Olivia up and down.

  “Olivia? Who’s at the door?” Kayla asked, cotton balls between her toes to protect her freshly pol-ished lavender toenails. At the sight of the girls, Kayla’s smile was triumphant. “Told you,” she said to them.

  “If she’s really your mother, why do you call her by her first name?” the red-haired girl asked.

  “If she was really her mother, they’d look alike,”

  the other said. “And they totally don’t. Except for the hair. But you could have dyed yours,” she told Olivia. “There’s no proof she’s your mother, Kayla.

  Nice try.”

  “She is my mother, you stupid freak!” Kayla shouted.

  “Don’t call me a freak, loser!” the redhead shouted back. “You’re the freak. Only a freakizoid loser would pretend her dad’s new girlfriend is her mother.

  You’re only doing it to win the ugly girl pageant.”

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  “Okay, that’s more than enough,” Olivia said.

  She’d read that thirteen-year-old girls could be very cruel to each other, but this was a little too much proof of that. “For your information, girls, I am Kayla’s mother. Excuse us, please.” Olivia waited for the girls to turn and go, but they didn’t.

  “I have a new name for you,” the redhead said to Kayla. “Kayliar.”

  The other girl snickered. “Later, Kayliar.”

  “I hate you both!” Kayla yelled at them. “Go to hell!”