This was where Aaron had grown up, Lily realized. Not just on the “poor” side of town, but in a drab dreary house with filthy windows, a broken couch on the sagging porch and a netless basketball hoop nailed to a tree in front. She bit her lip to keep from blurting out how bleak the house seemed, how sorry she was that he’d had to grow up there. Aaron was strung so taut the merest hint of pity might be enough to make him snap.
“I don’t even know if she’s home,” he muttered, although lights shone through several of the windows, both upstairs and down. He climbed the porch steps, pressed the doorbell beside one of the two doors, then stood back and watched one of the upstairs windows.
After a minute Evie Mazerik appeared at the window. “Who’s there?” she shouted through the screen.
“It’s Aaron. I’ve got my key.”
“All right. Come on up.”
He crossed the porch to the door. “It’s hard for her to get up and down the stairs,” he explained to Lily as he unlocked the door and held it open for her.
She entered a narrow hallway that led directly to a steep, dark staircase. Aaron flicked a switch near the door, turning on a ceiling fixture at the top of the stairs that spilled an uneven light on them. The air smelled musty.
Climbing the stairs, Lily wondered whether she’d made a mistake in forcing Aaron to confront his mother the way she’d confronted her father. But she wanted him to take a chance. Thanks to him, she’d been taking chances ever since his first visit to her house, and taking those chances had opened up new worlds to her. She’d stopped feeling paralyzed by guilt, blaming herself for everything that had gone wrong in her marriage. She’d discovered a perilous flaw in her parents’ relationship and forced them to attempt to repair it. She’d found the courage to invite a few friends to her house—even though most of them hadn’t been able to come—and to think big with her painting. She’d broken through, broken out. Come alive.
She’d opened her heart to the possibility of love. Love for the man who had brought her back to life.
Now she had to do this for him. Even if the possibility of love was never realized, she had to give Aaron something as valuable as what he’d given her. Not money for his summer program but something far more essential: himself.
By the time they reached the top of the stairs, Evie Mazerik had opened the door to her flat. She seemed surprised to see Lily, but her fleeting scowl gave way to a gracious smile. “Hello,” she said, peering past Lily at Aaron. “You didn’t tell me you had someone with you.”
“I have someone with me,” he said belatedly, flicking a humorless smile at Lily. “Can we come in?”
“Of course. I only meant, if I’d known you were bringing a friend, I would’ve straightened the place up a bit.” She led them into the cramped living room of her apartment. Lily took in the yellowed walls, the faded curtains at the open windows, the brown carpet’s pile flattened in places, bald in others. Metal wall brackets held adjustable shelves filled with clutter—vases, figurines, magazines, souvenir ashtrays. A small TV on a stand in a corner broadcast the fabricated frenzy of a game show, cheers and whoops and flashing dollar signs on the screen. The stale scent of cigarettes hovered in the air.
“You’re Lily Bennett,” Evie said when Aaron failed to introduce them. “I guess I know just about everyone in this town. You work at the Sunnyside Café long enough, you get to know everyone.” Clad in a plain T-shirt and slacks, her reddish hair slightly disheveled, gaudy paste-and-glass earrings adorning her ears and traces of pink lipstick trapped in the tiny creases in her lips, she had the same slightly faded, slightly cluttered look as her living room.
“Thanks for letting us stop by, Mrs. Mazerik,” Lily said, then realized “Mrs.” wasn’t right.
“Would you like a cold drink? I’m sure I’ve got lemonade or iced tea or something.” She made her way to the kitchen. Aaron followed her, and Lily followed him.
This room was smaller and smokier, thanks to the cigarette still burning in a glass ashtray on the circular table near the window. Used dishes were stacked in the sink, but the countertops were clean. The appliances were almost old enough to be vintage, except for a relatively new microwave oven. Despite the open window, the air in the room was stagnant, tinged blue from the smoke.
Evie inspected the contents of her refrigerator, then closed the door and spun around, a smile stretching her mouth. “I could fix some lemonade, no problem. Or would you like me to make some coffee? I know it’s hot, but—”
“No, really, that’s all right,” Lily said. Coming here had seemed like a terrific idea when she’d been at Aaron’s house. But now, trapped in the stuffy kitchen with his mother, Lily was having second thoughts.
Evie was trying so hard to be a generous hostess, offering things Lily and Aaron didn’t want. What they wanted she wouldn’t easily give. Lily might have made as big a mistake tonight as she’d made yesterday, when she’d assumed Evie and Aaron had a loving relationship.
He crossed to the table and stubbed out his mother’s cigarette, smashing it until smoke stopped curling from the ashtray. Lily chose to view that as a loving act, or at least a caring one.
“I’ve got some cookies,” Evie continued, moving in a lopsided gait to one of the cabinets and swinging the door open.
“We didn’t come here for food,” Aaron said, placing a hand on her shoulder and drawing her away from the cabinet. “We came because Lily wants to ask you about my father.”
Evie’s smile vanished. Her eyes narrowed and her brows angled into a frown as she glared at Lily.
“Sit down, Mom.” His hand still on her shoulder, Aaron guided her to one of the chairs by the kitchen table and gently pushed her into it. She reached past the napkin holder, a plastic wedge shaped like a butterfly, for the pack of cigarettes lying there. Her hand shook slightly as she lit a cigarette, but that could have been a result of her stroke rather than anger or apprehension.
She inhaled, then blew out a stream of smoke. “I’m not going to talk about that, Aaron,” she announced.
Aaron shot Lily an I-told-you-so look.
Refusing to be discouraged, Lily pulled up another chair and sat, resting her hands on the table and smiling, as if she could will Evie back to her former cheeriness. “You probably think this is none of my business, Ms. Mazerik, but Aaron believes his father is my father. So, you see, it is my business.”
“I’m not going to talk about it,” Evie said, her voice coarse from the smoke.
“I appreciate that it’s your own private life—”
“It’s not just her life, Lily,” Aaron broke in. He leaned against the counter, his arms folded across his chest and his expression grim. He’d been through this before, and he clearly wasn’t in the mood to cheer his mother up. “It’s my life. But she doesn’t care about that.”
“Don’t start, Aaron,” his mother warned. “I’m tired of having this argument with you.”
“We haven’t had this argument in years. And the reason we haven’t is that I know Dr. Bennett is my father. So there’s no point in discussing it anymore.”
“I know Dr. Bennett isn’t your father,” Lily stated, then turned back to Evie. “He won’t take my word for it, or my father’s. You’re the only one he’ll listen to.”
Evie’s expression was completely shuttered now. “Julian Bennett is a gentleman, and that’s all I’m going to say about him.”
“You’ve got to say more than that!” Lily experienced a wave of empathy for Aaron, even though his mother’s intransigence amused her in a strange way. She admired stubborn women. She’d recently discovered a wide streak of stubbornness in herself, and she liked it. “I know my father’s a gentleman, Ms. Mazerik. Aaron thinks he’s the kind of man who would father a son and pretend that son wasn’t his.”
“You’re implying that’s what Aaron’s father did?”
“It is what my father did,” Aaron remarked dryly, still leaning against the counter, refusing to join the women at the
table. “Here I am. Where is he? When is he going to throw an arm around my shoulder and say, ‘Hello, son’?”
“I won’t have you speaking ill of your father,” Evie declared. “I mean it. Your father…” Her voice shook the way her hand had before. She steadied herself by taking another drag of her cigarette. “All I’ll say, Aaron, is he’s a better breed than I am. Everything that’s good inside you, you have him to thank for it.”
“Wonderful. I’d like to thank him in person. Could you tell me who he is?”
“No! You know I can’t!” She was openly irate now, her cheeks flushed, her hazel eyes glinting with resentment.
“Why can’t you?” Lily asked quietly.
“I gave my word. He begged me, and I promised. I would never do anything to ruin his reputation.”
“He didn’t have any compunctions about ruining yours,” Aaron retorted.
“For crissake, I had no reputation to protect. I was just a farm girl come into town because my folks had too many mouths to feed. I was what I was—and that’s what I am. Him? He was so much better than me, Aaron. I couldn’t believe he’d even look at me, let alone love me.”
“He didn’t love you. He got you in trouble and walked away.”
“He never walked away. He did what he had to do.” She pressed her lips together and glared at Lily.
“We all do what we have to do. That’s the best you can say for any of us.”
Lily longed to reach across the table and take Evie’s hand, tell her that she wasn’t under attack, that she didn’t have to defend herself. “So much time has gone by, Ms. Mazerik. The past isn’t going to change. How can anyone’s reputation be ruined at this point? All Aaron wants is a name.”
“And what do you want?” Evie accused.
Lily smiled hesitantly. “A name that isn’t Julian Bennett.”
“I start talking about who it isn’t, it’s almost the same as talking about who it is. And I gave my word, Lily. He knows that.” She jabbed an accusing finger in Aaron’s direction, then took a final puff of her cigarette and smashed it out in the ashtray. “Respect and honor come from keeping your word. You can give birth to a bastard child and still have your respect and honor in this world. But only if you live by your word, if you don’t break your promises. And I won’t break mine.”
Lily glanced over her shoulder. Aaron no longer wore an I-told-you-so expression. He looked both exasperated and deeply hurt, and she didn’t blame him.
She pivoted back to Evie. The woman wasn’t going to grant her son his only wish, the one bit of information any son deserved. Out of respect and honor—or out of sublime selfishness—she wasn’t going to do it for him. Lily’s only hope was that Evie would do it for her.
“I’m falling in love with your son, Ms. Mazerik,” she said quietly but fervently. She wouldn’t look at Aaron now. She didn’t want to see his reaction to her words. It might make her falter, regretting that she’d verbalized her feelings when they were still so new. “If he and I share a father…You see the problem? I love him.”
Evie seemed stunned. “You just lost your husband,” she reminded Lily.
“Seven months ago,” Lily told her. “And it was…complicated. My marriage and my mourning aren’t important right now. What matters is Aaron and me, and finding out if my father is his father. Our future is riding on it, Ms. Mazerik. We need to know.”
Evie’s gaze traveled back and forth between Lily and Aaron. Lily still refused to look his way. If Aaron was staring at her with contempt or disbelief, she didn’t want to know.
“No,” Evie blurted, then turned to gaze out the window. “It wasn’t Julian. And I won’t say another word about it. I’m done.”
Lily let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Her spine went limp; sweat slicked her palms. She felt wrung out.
But it wasn’t her father. Aaron wasn’t her brother. And through her exhaustion crackled a spark of energy: she and Aaron were liberated. They could be anything they wanted to each other, anything at all, because they weren’t brother and sister.
She heard footsteps behind her. Turning, she saw him exiting the room without a word. She hastily stood and covered Evie’s hand with hers, just as she’d wanted to before. “Thank you,” she whispered before darting out of the room after Aaron.
He was already halfway down the stairs when she closed the apartment door behind her, already at her car by the time she reached the front steps. He waited stoically while she hurried across the scruffy grass to the street. As soon as she unlocked the car doors, he flung himself into the passenger seat, slammed his door and stared straight ahead. His face might as well have been a stone sculpture for all the life in it.
She took her place behind the wheel, ignited the engine and drove away from his mother’s house. Sending him a sidelong glance as she steered around the corner, she saw that he was still rigid, his eyes cold, his mouth set. “This is good news,” she ventured gently.
“Sure.” The single word was like a chip from a sculpture, a sharp, cold piece of stone falling from his mouth.
“We aren’t related.”
He said nothing.
“Aaron, it’s a start. She’s revealed this much. Maybe in time she’ll tell you more.”
“Sure.”
He was as stubborn as his mother was, refusing to acknowledge that he’d gotten more from his mother tonight than he’d gotten in his entire life. He sat beside Lily, obviously seething, denying himself even a tiny smile of triumph. It seemed he would rather dwell on what he hadn’t gotten, instead of what he had.
She tried not to be annoyed with him. She was so happy—for her parents and especially for Aaron and herself. He wouldn’t have to hold back any longer. They could explore the attraction that had been simmering between them for so long, and it wouldn’t be wrong.
Aaron had desired her since high school, and in the past two weeks he had awakened her to her own strength and courage. He’d opened her eyes to everything an honest relationship between a man and a woman could be. Surely this was a moment to celebrate.
She concentrated on her driving, figuring she’d goad him back into a conversation when they reached his cabin on River Road. The few times she glimpsed him—when they passed beneath a street lamp, when the headlights of a passing car flashed across his face—he appeared forbidding. But even the glowering lines of his face, the implacable furrows of his brow and the austere angle of his jaw couldn’t squelch her joy.
She and Aaron shared no blood. They could be lovers. Now, or tomorrow, or someday. The path lay before them, and they were free to take it if they chose.
She pulled up the dirt driveway to his cabin and set the parking brake. Before she could speak, he had yanked open his door and leapt out.
“Aaron!” She raced after him, up the path to his front door. He stomped inside but didn’t slam the door shut behind himself, so she followed him in.
His home was nothing like his mother’s. The walls of the main room were paneled in raw pine. Solid comfortable-looking furniture was arranged around a wood-burning stove. The shelves in his house were filled, not with knickknacks, but with books and a compact stereo system. A counter separated the living area from the kitchen, which was clean and brightly lit.
Aaron marched around the counter, through the kitchen and out the back door to the deck. Lily marched out after him.
He stood by the railing, his fingers curled around the wood, his gaze fixed on the river, which was barely visible through the trees as the last pink of dusk gave way to night. She studied the unyielding lines of his back, the tension in his shoulders.
She wanted to close the space between them, to wrap her arms around him. She’d do it—if she wasn’t afraid he’d toss her over the railing.
She remained near the door, leaving him some space. “Why are you angry with me?” she asked.
“I’m not angry with you.”
With his mother, then. Lily didn’t need to ask him the reason fo
r that anger. “Despite everything, Aaron, something good came out of this.”
“For you, sure.”
“For us.” She hoped she wasn’t presuming too much.
“Lily.” He rotated slowly until he was facing her. She saw cracks in his stony facade, fissures through which heat seemed to leak, red-hot with rage and pain. “She won’t tell me. She’ll never tell me. It’s like getting stabbed through the heart again and again. You wanted to ask her, so we asked her. Don’t expect me to be thrilled that I got stabbed through the heart one more time.”
“She told you my father—”
“Swell. Great news about your father. He’s off the hook.”
“I thought you’d be pleased.”
“You can be pleased for me, Lily.” He gazed skyward, as if searching for the right words in the fading light. “Of course you should be pleased. She gave you your father, She didn’t give me my father, and she never will.”
“Yes, but…” It hit Lily then, a jab to her solar plexus so fierce she almost couldn’t breathe. Her relationship with Aaron was irrelevant at the moment. He was hurting so badly, nothing else mattered—certainly not her, her love for him, his longing for her.
She wanted to weep, to take Aaron’s suffering onto herself. She wanted to heal him the way he’d healed her, and she had no idea how to begin.
He seemed to recognize the change in her. “Go home, Lily,” he said, the harshness gone from his voice. “I’m not fit to be around right now.”
“That’s a good reason not to leave you.”
“I’m cut up inside, okay? I’m bleeding.” He turned back to the river. Anguish underlined his voice, shaped his posture, shimmered in the air. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”
She had already seen him. And it only made her love him more.
Her love gave her the strength to cross the deck, to circle her arms around him from behind. She pressed her cheek to his back and linked her hands around his waist.
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