“Then who did tell her?” Eli asks.
I keep eye contact with him and purposely ignore that Violet exists. For all her faults in the past few months, I still love her and I will never rat her out. I’ll protect her because that is what family does. “You either tell Emily the truth before she goes home or I will.”
I show Eli my phone containing her numbers and a muscle in his jaw ticks.
“That is not your decision to make,” he says.
“Since I’m in love with her, it is my decision.”
It’s like the air is sucked out of the room as Eli and I glare each other down. I sense the million questions forming in everyone’s mind, but Olivia sticks with what’s currently important. “I’ve told you before, Oz, you don’t know the whole truth.”
“Does anyone? Emily’s right. This entire family is messed up and dying. We all have cancer, problem is it’s the lies that are making it fester.”
I yank my keys out of my pocket. “Because I have always respected you, Eli, you have until she touches down in Florida to make it right with Emily or I’ll tell her the version I do know. Then you and Meg can decide on whatever lie you’re going to tell next.”
I told Emily that I never said I love you before and I was serious. Not to some girl and not to anyone else in my life. I decided to tell her because, to be honest, I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again. Looking at Olivia as she watches her family implode, I finally understand that Emily isn’t the only person I’m going to lose.
I wrap my arms around Olivia and it doesn’t take long for her to hug me back. I kiss her cheek. “I love you.”
She presses her lips to my cheek and whispers, “I love you more.”
A lump forms in my throat and as fast as I let the moment happen, I abandon it and walk out the door.
Emily
MY BIOLOGICAL FATHER tried to kill my mother’s brother. My biological father tried to kill my mother’s brother. I flip the cell in my hands over and over again as I complete the thought. It’s one in the morning. Oz tore off on his motorcycle a long time ago and like he promised he hasn’t contacted me. Yet I flip the phone over again.
My biological father tried to kill my mother’s brother.
No wonder Mom ran and never looked back. No wonder she never told me about this and she refuses to discuss the past. How do you get over someone you loved trying to kill your family?
I’ve sat on the window seat watching the party aftermath. The clubhouse is still lit up like runway lights. The bonfire that had been raging before has now simmered down to where the logs glow red. A few stragglers hang out in the clubhouse and around the yard, but most everyone left shortly after my screaming fit with Eli.
Eli has stayed in the same spot since after Oz left and while I hate to admit it, it’s the reason why I’m sitting here. He leans a shoulder against one of the massive Lincoln log poles and peers out into the yard. Occasionally, he smokes a cigarette and I’ll watch as the red butt burns brightly in the dark night, but mostly he stands there and stares. All seventeen stars still on his arm. All the questions in my mind unanswered.
I know more now than I have before and yet the truth still eludes me.
My biological father, the man who treats me like a princess, the man who taught me how to drive his truck, tried to kill my mother’s brother.
It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense.
In less than twenty-four hours I’ll be heading home and I don’t trust anyone to tell me the truth...not my mother, not my father, not anyone. A few weeks ago, I believed everything my parents said, now I’ll second-guess.
My biological father tried to kill my mother’s brother.
I slip off the window seat and crack the door to my room. Once in the hall, I spot Cyrus asleep in his recliner with his hand extended over, touching the top of Violet’s head. She’s curled up in a ball on the couch also sound asleep.
My heart flashes with a quick ache. I never knew they were close, but as things go around here, I don’t know much of anything.
I move down the hallway and pause in the doorway of Olivia’s room. Her light is on and she’s tracing a picture in a photo album.
“I lost a son once,” Olivia says without looking up. “His name was James. He was restless living in Snowflake and died in an accident in Louisville. He never met his own son. Never knew that a woman was pregnant with his child. In a sad, pathetic tribute, we named your elephant after him.”
She removes a photo from the album and holds up the one she had shown me when I first arrived. It’s of me and her and pink, fuzzy James.
“You sent me on this bizarre scavenger hunt so I could find out that your surviving son is an attempted murderer.”
“No. I did this so that you and Oz would end the vicious cycle and stop making the same damn mistakes of the generations that came before you, me included.”
“My mom left. She broke the cycle. Me returning here, it’s messed everything up.”
She slams the album shut. “All your mother did was run and all she’s taught you is to run. Running is still running. It doesn’t matter if it’s a physical move from one place to another or if it’s to within yourself.
“Yes, her leaving Snowflake, marrying Jeff, placing you in a padded bubble of a world did give you opportunities you would have never had here, but it didn’t get rid of the problem. You’re still doomed to repeat the same mistakes your mother and your father made. You do it now. You ignore the truth, the world around you, in order to keep your illusions of safety. That’s not living, Emily. The only way for you to break free is to understand the past so you don’t continue to follow in their footsteps.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “So Mom was in the wrong on this? She was wrong to run from a man who tried to kill her brother?”
Olivia closes her eyes and I’m reminded how sick she is when she presses her fingers to her forehead. My stomach completely drops. “I still don’t want you to die.”
A bitter smile pulls at her lips. “I still don’t want to die, either. There’s more to the story and I’m praying that Eli will tell you before you leave.”
Of course there is and of course she won’t tell me and part of me understands why. I’ve lost respect for my parents—my mom and my dad—and they’re going to have to work to get that trust and respect back. The three of us have time, but Olivia, she doesn’t.
“Go to sleep.” This time I’m the one flinging the orders.
I push away from the door and Olivia stops me. “Emily Star?”
“I love you, too.” I glance over my shoulder to catch her placing a hand over her heart.
My throat tightens. Because I can’t handle any of the emotions colliding inside me, I walk back into my room. The clock is ticking down until I return to Florida and I have no one in my corner who will tell me the truth.
I change out of my clothes and into a pair of jeans and new shirt. A brush of my hair and I tie it into a ponytail at the nape of my neck. A slide of my finger across the cell and I pray that the internet isn’t having temper issues. It isn’t and I do something it never crossed my mind to do before: I type my mother’s maiden name, Nader, then Kentucky into a search engine. A ton of listings pop up.
If I want the truth, then what better place to get it than from the source, but to make that happen I need a first name and I need a ride.
I slink into the living room and crouch by Violet at the end of the couch. Her eyes snap open and I bring a finger to my lips. Olivia is more right than she can imagine. According to Violet, her mother once drove my mother out of Snowflake and my goal is to force history, in this case, to repeat itself.
“You once said you could get me out of here undetected.” I raise my phone to her line of sight and she reads my internet search.
Violet peeks
over at Cyrus as she slowly sits up. “We’ll have to go through the woods.”
I yank on the ends of my hair as the urge to vomit overwhelms me. Dad said this visit was about conquering fears. It appears he wasn’t wrong.
Oz
I ROLL OVER and inhale the smell of the beach. Emily’s scent did transfer to the pillow. My eyes open and rays of morning light highlight the empty spot beside me. This bed never felt solitary before. Never felt like a deep, aching pit.
I’ve dozed, not slept, and a low murmur of conversation beyond my door causes me to slip out of bed. I snatch my shirt off the floor and rub a hand over my chest in an attempt to wake up.
Mom’s on the couch with her feet tucked underneath her. Dad’s beside her holding her hand. They’ve been a couple since they were sixteen and have loved each other through parents who smacked the hell out of them, an unplanned pregnancy, the years they could never make ends meet and then through the years where they blamed each other for life being tough.
They love each other and somewhere along the way, they learned to love me.
I shrug my shirt over my head and straddle the chair I had dragged into the living room over twenty-four hours ago when I had talked to Emily. I rest my forearms on the back of it and look at Dad. “Are they kicking me out?”
“You hit another brother.” Dad scratches the back of his head and Mom presses her other hand over their joint fingers. “Even if he was a prospect, the club doesn’t tolerate violence toward one another.”
“But Oz was defending Emily,” Mom says.
Dad and I glance at each other. Brothers have hit each other before and rarely are they kicked out the first time. There’s a suspension from events and a fine. But none of those brothers had been intimate with the offspring of the two most important men in the club.
“They’re holding Church tonight,” he says. “And I’m going to fight to keep you in.”
The seat creaks as I readjust. I fucked up, not him, and the thought of Dad placing his rep on the line for me doesn’t sit right. “You said I have to be my own man in the club.”
“That’s the reason why I’m going to fight for you to stay in. If you want the truth I wasn’t sure you were ready for the club. They had to talk me into letting you skip your prospect period.”
My eyes flash to his and Mom’s stroking Dad’s arm in support.
“Standing up to Eli last night,” he says. “That was the first time I’ve seen you be your own man.”
What the hell? “Standing up to Eli last night is what’s going to get me kicked out.”
“No, son, the club is about standing up to things bigger than yourself. If you get kicked out it’s because you didn’t show Eli respect and go to him when you developed feelings for his daughter. But as I said, I like the changes I see in you and I’m going to fight by your side.”
I edge back in the chair—a retreat.
Mom shifts so that her feet are on the ground and she snags my hand. I try to pull back, because the touch catches me off guard, but she maintains a firm grip. “Did you know that your dad and I are here for you?”
“We were talking about club stuff,” I say.
“You were and you weren’t,” Mom presses. “You do this. You’ve done this since you were little and I try to tell myself that it’s understandable, but I need you to know—me and your father...we are here and we are on your side.”
There’s a warning siren in my mind. The threat of a familiar bleeding wound creeping forward from the recess of my memories. “I know that.”
“I don’t think you do, or maybe you know it in your head, but you don’t feel it. You’re a great son, but when we try to be there for you in the major moments, when we try to give you advice or stand by you, it’s as if you don’t trust us.”
“I trust you.” The automatic answer is easy, too easy, so easy that I understand that it might not be the truth, but what they prefer to hear.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to figure out how to be your mother.” Mom’s voice breaks at the end. “I’m sorry that I was young and selfish and that you learned to rely on and love Olivia before you could love and rely on me.”
I push back all the way in the chair until I’m standing. “That’s not how it is.”
“It’s exactly how it is. But you can rely on us now. It’s killing me to see you go through losing Olivia alone. It’s killing me to think that your father and I are sitting right here and you can’t let us in.”
The buzzing of phones. Dad releases Mom’s hand and she inches to the end of the couch as she watches us check the message. Dizziness disorients me for a second then both Dad and I are moving. Digging keys out of our pockets. Grabbing our cuts off the table.
My phone rings and I answer it as I sprint out the door. “What’s going on, Eli?”
The text was my worst nightmare.
Everyone come to the clubhouse. Emily is missing.
Emily
“DO YOU WANT me to answer?” Violet’s in the driver’s side of a nineteen-seventy-something-older-than-me Chevy Impala. Her cell rings and this time it’s Oz’s face that pops onto her screen. The first five times, it was Eli, followed by Olivia and now Oz is on the job.
He’s worried about me and while I care for him and he cares for me, Oz doesn’t understand this need to unravel my past, especially since he was instrumental in hiding it. “No, not yet.”
It’s eight in the morning and Violet’s back to her kick-ass self. She assesses the house we’ve parked two properties down from. It’s a nice neighborhood. The houses aren’t stacked on top of each other. Instead, there’s quite a bit of land between them. The buildings themselves aren’t grand. Some are one story. Some resemble the house I’m interested in and are two stories. They’re modest brick and vinyl with do-it-yourself colorful landscaping.
“So this is where your mom grew up?”
I squish my lips to the side. “My mom said she grew up in Snowflake.”
“My mom said that your mom came to live with her grandmother who lived in Snowflake during high school.”
“Anything else I should know?” She’s filled me in on what she does know—that my mother and Eli were an item, that they were tragically in love, that they got pregnant with me while they were still in high school, had me, got engaged and that my mother’s brother got into a fight with my mom and in retaliation, Eli found my uncle and almost beat him to death.
Mom’s family wasn’t thrilled with her marrying a biker and Eli decided to shut my uncle up. My mind separates as I attempt to reconcile the man I’ve been around the past few weeks with the man who tried to kill his almost brother-in-law.
“Other than I’m sorry for losing my mind last night?”
She’s already apologized for that. A million times. “Will you tell me what’s so horrible in Snowflake that you totally spazzed?”
“Let’s handle one dramatic event at a time. So what exactly do you hope to accomplish by talking to these people?”
These people would be my grandparents. Violet didn’t know my mother’s brother’s name, but I remembered her parents’ names and this was the only listing in the Louisville phone directory that matched. “I’m hoping they’ll tell me the truth.”
Violet offers me a tilted head with a “whatever” gaze. “There’s no such thing as the truth. There’s what people wish would have happened.”
True. “Maybe they’ll give me enough of a picture that I can piece together the rest of the story.”
“So we’re clear, you’re not visiting with grandma and gramps to get the truth. You’re wandering over there in the hopes they’ll say something that will make you like Eli again.”
The skin on my arm itches and I sort of hate Violet for speaking so plainly. “Possibly.”
“You know my opinion on
the men in the club, right? That they aren’t redeemable?”
“If you feel that way, then why are you helping me?” Then why did she fall asleep so close to Cyrus?
“Because you’re the type who’s determined to learn the hard way.”
I’m not the only one. Her phone rings again and now Chevy’s face appears on the screen. She glances out the window and I reject the call. “I think he cares for you.”
“I think I’m two seconds away from leaving your ass on the curb.”
Well played. “Wish me luck.”
“Do you want me to go in with you?”
“No. This will be awkward enough without an audience. Mom gave me the impression that the reason they threw her out was because they weren’t thrilled she was pregnant and that she’d decided to keep me. I’ve always pictured them being superconservative and from what you’ve told me, that guess is becoming solid. Could you imagine them having a daughter who fell in love with and had a baby with a biker? They had to go insane.”
“Sounds like the makings of a true tragedy.”
“Yeah.” Yeah. I wonder what Oz and I will be. “If I don’t wave or text or something in two minutes, I’ll need you to call in the cavalry.”
I smile, she smiles and I’m out the door.
I chose the loose-fitting jeans and the purple top Eli bought me in Nashville in case Mom’s parents really are conservative. The summer morning is warm enough that I’m starting to sweat, but that could also be the nerves.
The porch is nice. It’s the plastic type that mimics wood. My footsteps sound strange against it and I lift my bangs away from my face as I stand in front of the door. Big deep breath in. Then another. A tickling flow of adrenaline leaks into my veins.
A push of the doorbell and I can hear the loud chimes from outside. One second. Two.
The door opens and across from me stands a much older version of my mother. She wears a pair of jeans and a blue button-down shirt. Nice and pressed. There are pearls in her ears and a gold cross hanging from her neck. Like Olivia, she owns older. Her hair is still blond and I can’t help but wonder if it’s dyed of if I’ll have fantastic genetics. There are lines on her face. Particularly around her blue eyes and her mouth.
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