The truth is that I'm kind of looking forward to being an aunt and having a nephew or niece.
I don't have much experience with kids and I’ve never really given it much thought on having my own, but I've been looking forward to playing with this little one.
“I'm sorry, Mitch, they don't have any French vanilla coffee.” Alex comes out from behind the corner, startling me.
I stare at him, at first unable to open my mouth and say a word.
“Oh, no worries, this is great,” my dad says, taking a sip.
“What are you doing here?” I finally ask.
“I came as soon as I heard. I'm really sorry, Emma,” Alex says and pulls me close to him in a half hug.
I quickly jerk away, but that doesn't seem to faze him one bit.
“Why did you call him?” I demand to know of my mom.
“Craig and I were having a meeting about his investment portfolio,” Alex says. “When he got the call from Lindsey, he took off straight for the hospital and I came as soon as I could.”
I clench my jaw and move it from side to side trying to alleviate the tension in my head, but it doesn't help.
Alex's involvement in my family is more than just irritating, it's offensive. I know that we are all a little bit incestuous here with Craig working for my father's firm and him investing money in Alex's hedge fund.
Up until the day of our engagement, I never saw anything wrong with that, but now?
I can't stop thinking about how involved Alex is in my life and how much I hate that.
“Can I talk to you?” I ask, pulling Alex to one side.
I lead him down the corridor halfway to the nurses’ station but hopefully out of earshot from my family.
When I look at him and his perfectly poised eyes and chiseled jaw, my thoughts scatter.
“I don't like you being here,” I finally say.
“I'm sorry, but Craig asked me to come.”
“I don't like you being so involved with my family.”
“You had no problem with that before.” He points out.
“Yes, that's when I thought that you were going to be joining my family. That's when I thought that you were an honorable person who wasn't going to hurt me and lie to me.”
“I'm sorry for what I did and I will keep apologizing for as long as you need to hear it. To tell you the truth, I wasn't going to come here, but Craig said that he really wanted me to be here. When I tried to leave, your dad insisted that I stay.”
26
Emma
An hour in the hospital is like two days on the outside. I bury my face in my phone, aimlessly scrolling through social media and the news.
It becomes an endless loop of information that just makes me feel worse instead of better.
It feels like I'm being productive, but I'm actually just losing track of time and the grip on my emotional state.
Finally, I decide to just pull out my laptop and do some actual work. I go to Google and again look up the name Parish. The name is relatively popular, but none of them seem like good options for who my Liam is.
I do a similar search on Facebook, Twitter, and even YouTube thinking maybe there are some videos of him out there under that name.
My search comes up with nothing.
Then I do the same thing for Peter Mueller Schmidt.
I was tempted to search that name as soon as I got into the car, but something kept me from doing it.
I guess I was scared of what I might find.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I find nothing.
That name doesn't seem to match anyone who I know as Liam, but that doesn't mean that…
What does that mean exactly?
I'm a journalist, but my research skills when it comes to identities is limited by my experience.
I should really contact that private investigator, but I won’t allow myself to do that until I’ve exhausted everything that I can think of myself.
“Try Liam Carson Benjamin Linville,” Alex says, looking over my shoulder.
I jerk to close my laptop but then pull it back open. He did say that he was going to tell me more about him.
This seems like as good a time as any.
“Carson Benjamin? How do you know that?”
“I went to school with him, remember? I remember because we did some project together in seventh grade and we talked about our names. I think it was a genealogy thing.”
“Tell me more,” I say.
I'm sitting somewhere near my father and our talking is clearly distracting him.
So, Alex waves me over to the window. I sit across from him, nursing my cold cup of coffee and ask him again.
“We were friends. Sort of. I had other friends, but he was kind of shy.”
“So, he's from California, too?” I ask.
“That's the thing, his parents lived there for some time and then in eighth grade, right before high school, they moved to Seattle.”
“What did they do?”
“Something in business. Real estate? I don't really know.”
“They still live in Seattle?”
“I have no idea. I know that's where they moved, but we didn't really stay in touch.”
“How did you connect again?”
“We just ran into each other in LA. I recognized him. We started talking.”
“What did he say he was doing?”
“He said that he was doing day trading. He had a lot of investments. We made plans for him to invest with our hedge fund.”
“Wow, that's a lot of clients for you,” I say. “Liam and Craig.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I'm just wondering if it makes sense to get so involved with your friends and family? Like what happens if you lose their money?”
“You’re worried about Liam losing money… Why exactly?” he asks, folding his hands across his chest.
“I'm not worried about that. Craig… He works hard for that money. He and Lindsey barely see each other.”
“Yes and that's exactly why I'm going to make him a millionaire so that he doesn't have to be such a workhorse for your father.”
I shake my head.
“I know that this is not what you’re really upset about, Emma. I know that this is a difficult situation that Lindsey's going through, but please don't worry about their finances. We take very good care of our clients.”
I shake my head, taking in everything that he’s just said.
I hate how intertwined he is with my family, but at the same time, I also know that Alex knows how to make money and that's probably a good thing.
“So, tell me what you think?” he asks.
“About what?”
“Liam. Do you think that he really made up being that famous writer? That would be… fucked up.”
“I don't know,” I say, shaking my head. “I don't know what to think.”
“Why don't you look up his full name?” he urges, tapping the top of my laptop.
Reluctantly, I agree.
I want to do this privately, but I also need his help. He may know something that I don't. In any case, he may be able to narrow down the list to the right Liam Linville.
I type his name into Google and go through the search results.
On the first page, the second from the bottom up, I read about a Medicare scam out of the state of Washington.
“Click on that one,” Alex says immediately.
“Liam Linville,” I read out loud, “The nephew of one of the largest nursing home chains in the Pacific Northwest testified against his uncle on the stand and became a whistleblower in what became one of the biggest Medicare scam cases in the western US.”
I don't like Alex reading over my shoulder, but I can't stop myself from continuing to read the article.
It goes on to say that Liam Linville testified in court against his uncle and then disappeared. The article is more about the case than Liam, but the word disappeared throws me for a loop.
“What do they mean by that?” I ask.
“I don't know,” Alex says, shaking his head.
I click on the next article that I find through Google and this one also mentions the fact that he had testified against his uncle and then was never heard from again.
A follow-up article mentions that he was difficult to reach but also states that he wanted privacy.
“Do you think that he just took off?” I ask.
I don't want to keep talking to Alex about this, but he's the only one here and the only one who has any answers.
Those other two did mention that he went missing or disappeared. Then again, he's an adult.
He's allowed to not answer phone calls or lose contact.
I bite my lower lip and think about it for a moment. It takes a lot for a journalist to actually use the word disappeared.
I mean, why mention that anything has happened at all?
I wonder what led them to believe that. I wonder why they used that particular word, but then didn't really elaborate on it in the story.
I make a mental note to reach out to the journalists who wrote the stories. If anyone were to have any answers, it would be them.
I continue to go through the next two pages of search results, but don't find anything else of significance.
“Well, I didn't see that coming,” Alex says, leaning against the wall.
There's a calmness to him that puts me at ease. I hate the way this makes me feel.
I'm still angry with him. He's becoming more and more entrenched and entangled with me when all I want is for him to go away.
Still, standing here next to him, I can't help but feel at ease.
Why did he have to do what he did?
Why did everything else change?
I go to the vending machine to get myself some pretzels and come back to find Alex with his head in his phone.
When I glance over his shoulder, I see that he’s reading my article.
27
Emma
“I read your article,” Alex says. “You really went out there like that?”
“Yes, of course.”
“That was a dangerous thing to do.”
“Not as dangerous as staying here with you,” I want to say, but I bite my tongue.
“So, what happened?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, struggling with the bag before popping a pretzel in my mouth.
“You did mention that you met him at your engagement party, but you didn’t mention me at all.”
“The article is not about you.”
“You met him at your parents’ house. Do you find that a little odd? What are the chances of him being this person that you were looking for?”
I look away. Maybe I should've thought of that earlier. Perhaps, it was all too good to be true.
Liam probably made all of that up and now my story is in print of who D. B. Carter is, in black-and-white.
What's going to happen when the real D. B. Carter approaches the magazine and tells them the truth?
The thought sends a chill down my spine.
What have I done?
Why did I write all of this?
“So… What happened when you went out to his house and found out that he's the guy you met at our engagement party?” Alex asks.
“You know what,” I say. “It's all in the article.”
“I have a feeling that you left a few things out.”
I dart my eyes to look at him with scorn and ask, “Are you really saying this to me right now?”
“Yeah, why not?” he asks nonchalantly.
The anger in the pit of my stomach begins to simmer.
I clench my fists and tell myself to take a deep breath to keep it at bay, but it quickly rises to the surface again.
“You are the one who cheated on me. You have no right to be jealous.”
“You are my fiancée and I am entitled to know where you are spending your nights.”
“Excuse me? Your fiancée ? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Emma, come on…”
“We broke up. We are over.”
“You can't be serious.”
“No, you can't be serious,” I say, throwing my hands in the air.
“I told you that I was sorry.”
“I don't care. We are over. You have been sleeping with your boss for five years. You were together longer with her than you were with me. Don't you see how sick that is?”
“It's all over now. I love you.”
“I don't care. I'm not going to put up with shit like that. I'm not my mom.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don't want to talk about it.”
“Are your parents having problems?”
I turn my body away from him, but he puts his hands on my shoulders. I shrug them off and take a few steps away.
“You want to know what happened with Liam?”
“Uh-huh,” Alex says, narrowing his eyes.
“You really want to know?” I say, tapping my foot on the linoleum floor. “I slept with him. It was nice. I liked him. Then he ended up being just another liar.”
“You did not sleep with him,” he says, shaking his head after a long pause.
“Believe what you want, but it's the truth.”
He drops his shoulders down and leans against the wall. He looks so fractured that I almost feel bad for him.
Almost.
Whatever he is feeling right now, he deserves every molecule of that pain. He hurt me and it feels good to hurt him back, but just like a sugar rush, the high from my revenge doesn't last.
“I'm sorry that I drove you to that,” he says after a long pause.
I bite my lower lip. I don't know how to take that.
It sounds like an apology, but it's really window dressing.
“You didn't drive me to do anything. We broke up. Liam is hot. We talked about writing and literature and I slept with him. I slept with him because I wanted to,” I say the words quickly to make little cuts with a sharp dagger on his heart.
Whether or not it’s successful, it's hard to tell.
“You're just saying that to piss me off,” he says after a while.
“Is it working?”
“No,” he says without giving me the satisfaction of seeing his reaction.
I hate to admit it, but he has won this round.
He pushed me over the edge, but I can do the same thing to him.
Partly it's our personalities, but partly it's the fact that he just simply doesn't give a shit about me.
I've had enough. I turn around and start to walk away from him back toward the waiting room.
Right before I get to the end of the hallway, he runs up to me and thrusts his arms around my shoulders.
“Emma, I'm really sorry. I'm such a fuck-up.”
I stand here, unable to move. It's not just the weight of his body pressed firmly against mine that makes me completely rigid, it's something else.
It's the pain that I suddenly feel, the pain that I had pushed away this whole time.
I loved this man. I thought that he had loved me, too.
Maybe a part of him did. I loved him with my whole heart.
I thought that we would be the perfect match and then suddenly, one afternoon, I discovered that everything I believed about us was a lie.
How do you get over something like that?
How do you just move on?
I thought I could do that by jumping in bed with the first interesting man that I met, but now I know that I need more time.
Now I know that I can't be with Alex, but that doesn't mean that a part of me still doesn't have love for him.
It is this part that needs space and it is this part that needs time to heal.
“Get off me,” I say quietly but calmly.
His grip loosens and he pulls away.
He’s standing so close behind me that I can feel his breath on the back of my neck. It sends shive
rs up my spine.
“We are through,” I say, still looking straight ahead but knowing full well that he can hear me.
I wait for him to ask me to reconsider, but this time he doesn't.
Instead, he inhales deeply and then leans over to my ear and whispers, “You're going to regret this.”
The hairs on the back of my arm stand up. This is a threat.
He’s saying this to scare me, to instill fear into me.
I've never heard him say anything like this before, but whatever shaky ground my decision to get away from him was standing on, it's only solidified it.
A person who really loves me and who really wants me back would never say anything like that. He would never try to frighten me or threaten me.
“What did you say?” I ask, turning around, my eyes challenging his.
“You heard me. I asked you to stay nicely and I told you that I want you back, but you don't seem to get that.”
“Get what?” I ask. “This is an optional arrangement. I'm not going to marry if I don't want to.”
“I know that,” Alex says, “but that doesn't change the fact that you're going to regret it.”
“Emma, Alex, good news!” Craig comes out from behind the corner with a huge smile on his face. “Lindsey and the baby are okay.”
28
Emma
As soon as Craig comes out and tells me that Lindsey and the baby are doing well, a wave of relief rushes over me and I feel like I have just stood up too fast.
“So, what do they think happened? Why was she bleeding?”
“They don't know for sure, but they’re monitoring her and she needs to be on bed rest. The baby's heartbeat is there and it's good. They're discharging Lindsey now.”
Craig looks like he has aged ten years during this one day at the hospital and I wrap my arms firmly around his neck and rub his back.
He lets out a long sigh, holding me tightly.
After we pull away, I head straight back to the waiting room and embrace my mom, my dad, and Brooke.
It's hard to describe the euphoria of relief that exists in that room at that moment, but it reminds me of what's really important in life.
All the Secrets Page 12
