“You really convinced her to reach out?” Lio asked over the phone. “To the people who kicked her out and never said a word to her again?”
“Yeah, I mean, I know it sounds horrible, but I’m really excited about it.”
“Ever, you have to remember to go into this as Everly, and not Penelope,” he said, sounding sympathetic and a little worried. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I won’t.” I promised. “I just want to know them, especially as Everly, as me, and I really want Claire to have her family back. I can’t imagine going through life without my own mom, and I know she must miss them a lot.”
“Okay, I believe you.” He sighed. “Keep me posted on this little mission of yours, okay? I’m sorry I can’t be there for this.”
“It’s fine, I understand you have a lot on your plate.”
We hung up and I stared at my reflection in the mirror. The girl staring back looked happy and less stressed.
Tomorrow would be a huge step in either the wrong or right direction, but that wouldn’t be determined until I had taken the leap and just did it. Claire was probably going to hate me, since I had left this small detail out of the plan when I suggested she reach out to him because what I really meant was that I was going to reach out.
Yeah, that was probably, most definitely going to backfire on me.
I really hadn’t thought this through. Claire left to the store and as soon as I heard her car leave the driveway, I barged into her room and started my search of a phone number, or anything really that would lead me to Claire’s parents—my, uh, grandparents.
There was a part of me that felt guilty for going through her things while another part of me was anxious to find anything about them. All I knew were Penelope’s memories and those were twenty-plus years old. A lot could happen in the time, and I was a testament to that.
I mean, who knew, when I first started this life that I would be where I am now? I know I sure didn’t.
I stood in the middle of the room, eyes searching everywhere, trying to figure out where she might have hid tangible memories of her parents. She had been betrayed by them but at the end of the day they were her family, so I knew there must have been something.
I walked over to her closet, the most predictable hiding place, and moved her clothes aside. There, in the bottom right corner, buried behind some old bags, was a small box. It could have been anything, but as I reached in, pulled it out, and lifted the lid, my heart deflated in relief. Inside were photos–hundreds of them.
Sometimes things that were hidden in the most obvious places weren’t always easily found.
I think that’s why I had never given it a second glance before. I had been in her closet many times before and not once had I noticed the memory-filled box.
I sat on the floor and set the box down on my thighs. I released a deep breath and picked up a stack of photos. My throat dried and my heartbeat raced against my chest.
I looked at the first photo and gasped. In the photo were a man, a woman, and two little girls. One with fair skin and blonde hair and the other with caramel-colored skin and brown hair.
A sob broke out. I was staring at a photograph of Penelope and her family, her very happy looking family. Bright eyes and smiles lit up the photo in front of me, and my heart filled with a sense of pride. She had a good life, and a good family. She had love.
My fingers lightly grazed over the faces staring into the camera. This is what Claire had lost when her parents shut her out. I wanted her to have this back, to have her family back again. I would make it happen, I had to. There was really no other option.
You lost your family, too.
I shook that thought. I did lose them, but I never knew them, they were never really mine. They were Penelope’s and she wasn’t me, just like I wasn’t her.
I hadn’t thought of myself as Penelope in a really long time. Separating myself from her had been liberating and eye-opening. Sure, in the beginning I was tied to her through her memories and my dreams but when I let go of the grip I had on her, I was able to let go and live life as me, as Everly.
Acceptance is the final step of grief, and I was done grieving Penelope and the life I—that she never got to finish. Life had a reason, we all had a purpose, and I wasn’t going to spend mine grasping onto a past I would never get back.
My hands were unsteady as I flipped through each picture, and the memories and reminders of Penelope’s life tugged at my heartstrings.
She had been happy, and she really, truly had been loved. What more could anyone want?
Maybe I had been wrong. Maybe she had lived her life to the fullest.
I smiled, getting lost down a memory lane that didn’t belong to me, and that realization felt really good.
I had been so distracted though that I hadn’t heard Claire come home.
“Everly, what are you doing?” She asked, slightly panicked.
I dropped the photos as if they had burned me and looked over at Claire. Her face had lost its color and she was shaking her head.
“I just wanted to find something, anything that would give me any indication of who they are,” I said, defending myself. I knew it was wrong, sure, but the million other times I had asked were stealthily ignored and pushed aside until I brought it up to her again. “I’ve asked but you’ve never provided me with anything, Claire.”
“That’s because I didn’t want you to be disappointed,” she said solemnly.
“Disappointment is going through life without knowing your family,” I said. “I haven’t ever asked you for much Claire, and I know this is a lot, I do, but I at least want the chance to know who they are.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding her head. “Okay.”
“Okay?” I questioned, releasing a breath of relief.
“Yes.” She gave me a nervous smile and walked over to me, sitting cross-legged in front of me. “There’s just something I have to tell you first, okay? I made a mistake.”
“You did?” I asked, taken aback.
“Yeah.” She admitted. “But first let me say that there were moments while you were growing up when I felt I really needed them, whether for advice or words or encouragement, but I never reached out because I was afraid. I’m sorry for keeping them from you.”
“It isn’t your fault, they were the ones who forced you away after your sister passed, right?”
She looked down, guilt transforming her features. She said nothing.
“Right?”
“I might not have been one hundred percent honest with you, Everly,” she said quietly, so quietly I almost didn’t hear her.
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.
“They didn’t push me away like I said. I was the one who pulled back after Penelope’s accident. I missed her too much, and I had you, and my boyfriend was being a jerk, so I packed my bags one day, snuck out in the middle of the night, and haven’t been in contact since.”
“Please tell me you’re not lying right now.” I asked numbly.
“I’m not, Everly. I’m so sorry.”
“You lied to me about possibly the most important thing and that’s all you have to say?”
“I was young, I was hurt, and I didn’t know what else to do,” she said, resigned.
“So you just left them? While their hearts were breaking just like yours, you left?”
“I called a few years ago, but I couldn’t reach them,” she said almost cautiously. “So I called a friend of mine from high school and she said they had moved away sometime before that.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me right now.” My voice raised. “When I brought them up the other day and asked if you would reach out, you acted like you knew where they were, and this whole time you kept on the lie that they threw you out when really it was you who left. Why would you pretend? Why did you lie?”
“It was easier,” she said, sounding defeated. “I left them because I wasn’t strong enough to be there for them. I’ve liv
ed with that every day, and I’ll continue to live with that for the rest of my life.”
I stayed silent. I had nothing to say, nothing good anyway.
She had lied to me. I had felt sympathy and compassion for her situation when it was them I should have been feeling those emotions toward.
From what little I remembered of them, Penelope was their whole world. But so was Claire.
“Everly?” She sounded pained and regretful.
Good. She deserved to feel some pain for this. I had never felt more betrayed.
“I really don’t have much to say to you right now, Claire.”
And with that, I dropped the photographs back in the box, packed a bag, and jumped on the first bus out to College Station, Texas.
It took a little more than three hours to for me to get from Dallas to Lio’s bedroom door. His roommates, who were also his football buddies, were reluctant to let me in. Apparently they had some rule about letting groupies into the house, which I was not.
I walked right on past them, threw them a couple of middle fingers, and trekked up the stairs that led to his room.
I paused in front of his door, gathering the emotions that had been building since Claire had told me the truth. She had texted a few times but all I told her was where I was headed and nothing else.
I needed Lio. His arms, his lips, his heart, his trusting brown eyes—all of him.
With my bag in one hand, I opened his door with the other. My eyes narrowed in on the scene before me.
“Funny,” I snarled. “I thought there was a rule about letting groupies into the house.”
Taylor’s perfectly pouty lips formed into a smirk, and Lio’s eyes widened.
Without saying another word, I turned on my heal and booked it down the stairs, running out the front door and onto the sidewalk in record time.
My chest heaved as I searched for air, and my lungs begged for more breath.
“Everly,” Lio said as he stood in front of me. He swiped a hand through his head and shook his head, seemingly at a loss for words.
That was okay because I had enough words for the both of us.
It was just one bombshell after the next that day. Did the universe conjure up some kind of plan to ruin my life or something? If so, it was on the right track.
“You said you weren’t friends with her anymore.” I stated, ignoring the hurt that was blossoming inside my chest.
“I never said that,” he said softly.
“No? Well you certainly alluded to it.” I rolled my eyes. “We’re graduating soon, which means we’re officially going to enter the adult world, and here we are still playing these high school games. I don’t have the space for that in my life anymore Lio, and I refuse to make room for it right now.”
“And how long have you been practicing that little speech huh?” He asked, spreading his arms out in frustration. “Why is it that you’re always searching for the bad in me? I could do a million good things for you but as soon as I mess up, even a little, you forget about them all and immediately go on the defense.”
“Well, I sure hope so. I would rather my heart didn’t completely shatter, thank you very much.”
“Ask me, Everly.”
“Ask you what?” I bit out.
“Ask me why Taylor was in my room just now.”
“I would really rather not,” I said with disgust.
“Did you even notice how far apart we were from one another? Or the fact that there were three other people in the room with us?” He said angrily. “Three. Other. Freaking. People. Everly. She’s in one of my classes and we had a group project to work on, and they suggested we do it at my place for some reason, but the guys were being too rowdy so we took it into my room. That’s it.”
I thought back to what I saw when I opened his door. I was so focused on the fact that she was there and he was there and that they were there together that I ignored the other people I had seen from the corner of my eye.
“I reacted, okay?” I shook my head and a lump formed in the middle of my throat. “I jumped on a bus to come see you after one of the worst days and I walk in on you and your ex. How am I not supposed to be upset about that?”
“How? Are you serious, Everly?” His voice rose in anger, and I swear I heard some disappointed mixed in. “You’re supposed to trust me, not assume the worst without talking to me about it first.”
“You’re right.”
And he was. My head and heart were tangled in a fight, and I couldn’t keep up with all of the emotions. It was overwhelming. This whole day had been hard to cope with.
“You’re damn right I am, Ever.” His voice lowered and his eyes were shiny with what looked a lot like unshed tears.
I stepped toward him and pressed my hands against his chest, twisting his shirt and holding it between my fists. “I’m sorry, Lio.”
“I love you, Ever, and if I’ve given you any reason to ever doubt that then I need you to tell me, not jump to conclusions.”
My bottom lip trembled and tears blurred my vision. Lio had been my one constant, and he didn’t deserve my jealous outburst. We had come a long way throughout the last few years, since we first officially started dating.
I fully, wholeheartedly blamed my emotions for being untrusting in that moment; they could be a real turd sometimes.
“Come here,” he said, pulling my body against his. “I love you, Everly Hope Davis. You’re my North Star, the brightest star in my world, and if something is ever bothering you, I want you to come to me first, alright?”
“Alright, I promise.” I whispered against his lips. “I love you, too, Elliot Smith.”
We sat on a bench in the middle of an empty park. He was silent while I couldn’t seem to shut up. I told him everything that had happened that day, from the box of photographs in Claire’s closet to her confession about what had really happened between her and her parents.
His eyebrows kept pulling together in confusion and his mouth kept opening and closing, at a loss for words.
“This whole time, my whole life, she’s been lying about them,” I said, shaking my head furiously. “I mean, if she has lied about this for so long, it makes me wonder what else she has lied about.”
“Okay,” he said calmly. “I’m going to play devil’s advocate and although you might not like what I’m about to say, I need you to hear me out.”
I narrowed my eyes, a decline ready on my tongue.
“Everly, please?”
Well, since he had asked so nicely.
“Fine. I’ll hear you out,” I said, wary of what he was going to say. With Lio, you never really did know. I mean, anything was possible at this point.
“She was grieving, and you and I both know that when people grieve, they do it differently. No one grief is ever the same,” he said. “Because of her grief, she did the only thing she really could do at the time and that was run. She ran from the life that reminded her of her sister and started a new one, one where the loss of her sister wasn’t so obvious or prominent. Her parents were a daily reminder of Penelope, and on top of all of that, she was pregnant with you. I can’t even imagine what she must have been going through, Ever.”
“I get all of that, I do, but…” I paused, not really knowing what else to say. He was right in all that he was saying, and I started to feel that same sympathetic pull toward Claire that I did before she told me the truth.
“Everly,” he said, stressing my name. “It might have been selfish, but she did what was best for her during that time, and Claire is the kindest person I’ve ever met. I can’t imagine her doing something that rash out of hate.”
I absorbed his words, the beating of my heart increasing with each one he said.
“I know.” I swallowed over the lump in my throat. “I do, but I just reacted. My first instinct was to run.”
“Doesn’t that sound at all familiar to you?” He asked pointedly.
I closed my eyes for a brief moment. “Claire and I are
alike in a lot of ways, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I think you should go home and hear her out. Telling you the truth and keeping that secret couldn’t have been easy on her.”
“I know that just as well as anyone.” I fiddled with the star-shaped pendent around my neck. “You’re my voice of reason, you know that, Lio?”
“I like to think we balance each other out, the way only two souls that are meant to be can,” he said with a smile, his eyes twinkling.
“Since when did you turn into such a romantic?” I asked, my eyes widening in surprise.
“I’ve always been one.” He winked at me before leaning down to press his lips against mine.
I sighed into his kiss, and my body buzzed from the gentleness he used with me. There was a side to him I never knew existed until I gave him my heart and it was a side to him that only I got to see, a side that I never wanted to lose.
Most days Lio knew me better than I knew myself, and I knew going home to face Claire would be difficult but he was right, it was something that needed to be done. Running would only take me so far. Besides, true strength came from facing your problems head on, not by running away from them.
Claire and I had been sitting across the table staring at one another for forty-five minutes straight, neither one of us wanted to start the conversation.
It was awkward, it was painful, and it was extremely unfortunate because we had been in such a good place for us to revert back to this. It made my stomach twist and knot. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be.
“Claire,” I said slowly. Her eyes widened in surprise and beneath that I could see fear.
She was afraid of what I was going to say. I couldn’t fault her that though because I hadn’t spoken a word, not when I came home the night before and not when we both woke up and wordlessly took seats at the opposite ends of the kitchen table.
I hated it.
Every silent excruciating, painful second of it.
“I shouldn’t have left like that, but I was hurt, and I didn’t know what else to do so I left.” My voice cracked on each word, and I cursed myself for already wanting to cry.
This Life Isn't Mine Page 15
