“Jack?” I call out as soon as I unlock the door and push it open.
All the windows and curtains are closed, and the place smells musky. Like it hasn’t been aired out in a couple of days.
“Jack? Where are you?”
I head down the hallway and check all three bedrooms and the bathroom. I return to the master bedroom on my way back down the hallway and grab a few weeks’ worth of clothes, shoving them into an empty suitcase that’s hiding at the back of the huge armoire.
That’s one thing I’d miss about this house. My parents had it built when they first bought the house twenty-seven years ago. All it needed was to be sanded down and a new coat of polish when I bought it back from the in-between owners. It’s huge and takes up half the back wall of the bedroom. I love it and hope I can find a carpenter who’ll be able to create something similar to it when I find a new house.
Just the thought of finding a carpenter has my mind racing back to images of Nate. A sharp pain pings across my heart, forcing me to stop for a minute and take several deep breaths before I grab the handle of the suitcase and pull it behind me down the hall.
On a whim, I decide to check the kitchen and the carport. And I really wish I hadn’t.
A scream echoes through the neighbourhood and I’m not entirely sure that it isn’t me screaming. Hanging by a rope from one of the wooden beams is Jack.
* * *
The next several days pass by in a blur. This time, though, I don’t have to make the call to my in-laws alone. Xander is here and so are my parents. When Deb starts spilling bullshit about how I drove her son to this, how if I was just a better wife to him then he wouldn’t have turned to suicide, Xander pries the phone from my tight grip and walks away to talk to his parents in private.
It’s no surprise that Deb and Ron never approved of our young marriage, but one would think that after nine years, they would’ve gotten over it. Apparently not. I guess they thought that I was the reason why their perfect son decided to enlist in the Navy and become a SEAL rather than become a pro-football player or doctor, or whatever the hell they had planned for him. I guess I was the reason why he came back different after being held prisoner in the Middle East for two years. It’s all my fucking fault. Well, they can go fuck themselves.
When Xander comes back into the living room of my mom’s house and says that his parents have not-so-politely requested that his body be sent back to Miami to be buried there, I readily agree. If they want their precious can-do-no-wrong son back then they can have him. I’m officially washing my hands of the Carter family. Except for Xander. I’m keeping him. Xander doesn’t seem to have a problem with that either. Over the last few weeks, he seems to have really found his place within my family and within Cape Town. He seems happier here like maybe this is where he was always supposed to be.
We don’t have a funeral for Jack in Cape Town. Instead, with help from my dad, I organize for Jack’s body to be sent back to Miami and his parents. Xander and I already said our goodbyes to him during that first funeral when we thought he had died while on a mission. To us, that’s when the Jack we knew had truly died. He may have continued to live physically for the next few years after that, but he was in no way the same person who left for that mission.
I thought I’d have a hard time releasing his body to his parents, but it was actually a relief. At first I felt guilty for feeling relieved. Relieved that I could put my past to rest. A past that was filled with memories of Jack. Relieved that I won’t have to wake up every morning wondering if this is the day that Jack snaps and won’t be able to stop before he kills me. Relieved that I won’t have to endure that kind of pain again. But with Xander’s and my parents’ help, I’m quickly coming to the realization that it’s okay for me to feel whatever I’m feeling. It’s okay to feel relieved. It’s okay to feel guilty, within reason, and it’s okay to grieve and mourn even if the person didn’t deserve it towards the end.
For the first time in a very long time, I feel free.
Chapter 27
“Something smells good,” I say, walking into the kitchen of my mom’s house.
“Good timing. Can you set the table for us, please?”
“Sure thing.” I drop a kiss on my mom’s cheek and then go about collecting placemats and cutlery from their drawers, followed by the plates, and go about setting the dining room table for us. “Where’s Xander?” I ask when I’m done and go to fetch a few glasses.
“Your dad’s taking him for a check-up and then I think they were going to get dinner with Dave.”
I move out of her way when she pushes past with a steaming hot glass dish filled with homemade mac and cheese. This isn’t like that boxed crap. Mom makes the white sauce from scratch and adds bacon bits to it. Then she mixes it with penne noodles and grates more cheese on top of the mixture before putting it in the oven to bake. It’s so good. Sometimes she’ll add thinly sliced tomatoes to the top before putting it in the oven. Just like granny used to, she would say when I was younger.
My mouth waters at the sight of the dish sitting in the middle of the table. After she goes to fetch the salad and takes a seat beside me, I remember that I was wanting to see how she was doing with the divorce.
“I’m okay. Really,” she says, leaning across the table to fill her plate with a little bit of salad and the mac and cheese. “I think I always knew that something had happened between your dad and Dave in college, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it, so I buried the suspicions deep and pretended like everything was just dandy.”
“Mom,” I say, filling my own plate. “You really don’t have to talk about this if it makes you uncomfortable.”
Her fork clangs against the plate when she lays it down. “I don’t have anything against your father being gay, Annika. I told him as much when I asked for a divorce. What I do… did,” she corrects, “what I did have a problem with was that he lied to me about it for years.” She puts her hand up to stop me when I try to interject. “I know it was a different world back then, but he could’ve still confided in me. And then when I saw how he and Dave acted together that night, I knew that your father had never truly gotten over his feelings for Dave.”
I try not fidget and wonder how she can feel so comfortable talking to me about all of this. Other parents would want to hide as much from their kids as they can. Not mine, though. They never tried to shelter me or hide the truth from me after I turned sixteen.
“I’m just… I’m happy that he’s happy.”
“And what about you, Mom?” I stab a piece of lettuce with my fork and move it around my plate. The hunger I felt earlier, dissipating.
She shrugs, taking a bite of the noodles. “I think there’s somebody out there for me, but I’m in no hurry. I have all I need right here,” she says, placing a hand over mine and giving it a squeeze.
“So, you’re okay with everything? With Dad and Dave being a couple?”
Her lips curl into a slow smile as she takes her hand back and picks up her fork again. “I am.”
Chapter 28
Twenty-nine years old
“Annika?” The deep voice says from behind me, sending my heart into a staccato rhythm. I haven’t heard that voice in a year.
“Nate?” I ask after turning around and meeting the whisky-coloured eyes I fell in love with so many years ago.
After everything that happened with Jack, I often found myself wondering what happened to Nate over the years. If he was still teaching grade one at P.N.P.S. and still coaching the boys’ field hockey team. I missed him. A lot. I missed us.
“Howzit?” he asks, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and pulling me into a side hug in the middle of the baking aisle.
God, he still smells the same. Like coconut rum and ocean breeze.
“Good. Good.” I nod my head and avoid looking him directly in the eye.
Something about this random run-in is unnerving me and I can’t put my finger on why. This man knew the most intimate places o
n my body, he knew the sounds I made when I… yeah. And I can’t work up the courage to look him in the eye. Not only that but I feel ashamed of the way I left things. Nate was right. I should’ve left Jack back when he and Xander pleaded with me to. Before Xander got hurt and before I miscarried.
“Talk to me. How’ve you been?” He reaches out to grab my arm and move us out of the way of a lady with a buggy filled with groceries. He releases me right away when he sees me flinch at the contact. I glance up at him then, ready with an apology but words die on my tongue when his eyes turn a darker shade, the gold practically disappearing.
I clear my throat and glance down the aisle. “Things have been… okay.” If okay meant only in the last six months after Jack’s death. “Jack, um. He, uh… died last year,” I stammer out, not sure why I feel the need to disclose that information.
I honestly don’t know why half the shit leaves my mouth.
Nate rubs a hand across the back of his neck, a pained expression briefly crossing his face before it’s gone. “Ja, I heard about that from your dad.”
Of course, he had. Dad and Nate developed a kind of friendship back when Nate began rebuilding the closets and other pieces of furniture for my house. I hadn’t been aware they had kept in touch after we broke things off, though.
Nate grips my chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing me to look him in the eyes again. “I’m sorry, Nika. Your dad said you were the one who found him.”
“Are you, really?” I ask, pinning him with a glare. Nate never was a fan of Jack.
“I am. I may not have liked the man or what he put you through, but I know how you felt about him.”
I swallow hard and nod, but Nate doesn’t let go of my chin. His brows pull together in a frown as he searches my eyes for what… I don’t know.
“You know I’m always here for you, yeah? Things may not have worked out between us,” he pauses to clear his throat. “But I’m here.”
Tears I didn’t know I was holding back suddenly begin rolling down my cheeks and before I know it I’ve thrown myself into Nate’s arms, sobbing against his chest. He tries to soothe me by rubbing circles against my back but there’s no stopping the dam now that’s its broken.
God, my heart hurts so much. I thought I was doing well dealing with my parents’ divorce, losing Nate, Dad and Uncle Dave starting to see each other, healing from the abuse, losing a baby, and then Jack’s death. But if me sobbing into Nate’s chest while he holds me in the middle of the grocery store is anything to go by, I’m not handling it as well as I thought. Not by a long shot.
“C’mon,” Nate says, picking up the shopping basket I dropped to the ground beside us. “Let’s go get a drink for old time’s sake.”
“Nate?” I ask around a hiccup. “Take me to Dunes.”
A slow smile pulls at the corners of his lips as he stares down at me. “Dunes it is,” he says, pressing a soft kiss to the top of my head.
* * *
Suggesting Dunes was my first mistake. I thought if we were in our bubble, where only the two of us exist then nothing from the outside world could touch us. I should’ve known it was a fairy tale. I don’t know why I expected Nate to be single all this time. It isn’t like I was so why should I have expected him to wait for me. But hearing him say that he was engaged to be married to another woman cut deep.
Was this how he felt when I told him I had to stop seeing him because I owed it to Jack, or when I refused to leave Jack after the abuse started.
God, I hope not.
I don’t say anything. I just sit back and begin gulping down gin and tonics like they’re water. Our poor server can’t seem to bring them out fast enough for me, but I need something if I’m going to sit here and listen to him go on and on about his fiancée and their wedding this Christmas. He wants a small wedding on the beach somewhere, and she wants the whole nine yards. Big church, big dress, big guest list, and big party.
Through all of this, the one thing that keeps popping up in my head is, that’s supposed to be me. I’m the one Nate’s supposed to marry, but I’m not and I can’t. So, I sit and gulp down another gin and tonic and paste a smile on my face, trying to be happy for him because he does look happy. And that’s all I want for him.
“You were married Annika. I didn’t think there could ever be anything between us,” he says while I nod absently, my eyes locked on the calm, clear water of the beach in front of us.
I try not to flinch from feeling like a sword’s been driven through my heart when Nate says he’s glad to have me back in his life as a friend. I was just friend zoned and it’s my own fucking fault. I had my chance with him, and I fucked it up.
Chapter 29
Two months later
“Jislaaik!” Nate exclaims jumping away from the side of the boat.
I grin, leaning slightly over the side and barely make out the outline of a shark swimming away from the boat. Oh, this is going to be fun. I managed to score a couple of tickets for this shark expedition and invited Nate to join me.
“You sure you want to do this?” he asks, looking out at the vast ocean surrounding us.
“Definitely!”
“They’re huge!” Chantel, Nate’s fiancée, says beside him.
Oh yeah, Nate ended up buying her a ticket when she found out he was coming with me. So now I’m stuck on a boat with my ex-boyfriend and his current fiancée.
Oh joy!
Cage diving with sharks, especially Great Whites, has been on the top of my bucket list for as long as I can remember but I’ve always just put it off… until now. I mean, how many people can say they got to go cage diving with one of the regular divers and cameramen from Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. Never, that’s how much. But I have the opportunity to do that today, and there’s nothing on this earth that’ll be able to stop me from living out this bucket list item. Plus, I feel like it’ll go a long way in making me start to feel like myself again, and to prove to Nate that I can be his friend and hang out with his fiancée.
After Jack put me in the hospital the last time, I began to realize that I’d been slowly losing focus on who I was and what brought joy into my life. I was aging but I wasn’t really living. Jack’s suicide made me realize just how short life really was, and I was just wasting it. Sure, I wasn’t wasting days away in bed, but I wasn’t living. I felt like I was on auto-pilot. Doing things by routine because it was so ingrained in me that I didn’t have to spare a thought as to what it was I was doing. But I wasn’t living. I wasn’t enjoying life. Even my laughs had become fake.
No one really knows when they’re going to die. But if I’m to go tomorrow, I’d probably be one of those ghosts who comes back because they have some sort of unfinished business. It’s a stupid metaphor but an effective one. There’s still so much I want to do before that time comes. Cage diving with sharks in False Bay is just one of those things.
I watch as Nate gingerly leans a little way over the edge, just enough to see the water below. I feel like I’ve come a long way in the last few months where dealing with all the hurt is concerned, and I owe a lot of that to him.
That day at Dunes with Nate, before he dropped the bomb about his fiancée, it felt good to have someone else to talk to other than my parents, Londyn, and Xander. I talked, I cried, I yelled… not at him… talked and cried some more that day. By the end of it, I was spent, and Nate was cradling me in his arms. People must have thought I was crazy, but I didn’t care, and Nate didn’t seem to mind either.
After I was done, he still encouraged me to talk to a counsellor. Jack may have gotten abusive towards the end, but his suicide still scarred me and left a hole in my heart. I understood why Nate may not have wanted to be the one I talked to about that, and when I brought it up he made it clear it was absolutely in no way about that. He thought I needed someone who was skilled in helping people grieve and heal from a loved one’s suicide, and he was not that person. He said he hadn’t ever experienced something like and that all
he could do was be there when I needed an ear or a shoulder to cry on. He feared I would need that extra support a counsellor could provide. Then he dumped the news that he was engaged.
He was right though. While just having him here to talk to or even just be around when I want company but don’t want to talk is amazing in itself, having a counsellor is helping tremendously.
I began seeing her twice a week for the first two months after which we decided to drop it down to once a week. However, if I need to see her more than once in a particular week, she makes time for me. I’m grateful for that. There’s a lot I had to adjust to in a short amount of time and it may still take me awhile to work through it all.
Dr. Fester helped me work through my anger issues towards my dad and even invited him to participate in a session, which he gladly accepted. We both spent the entire session in tears, and I don’t know about him, but I left there feeling utterly wrecked, but with a new understanding of what my dad had been going through.
Our relationship still isn’t what it had once been before I learned the truth, but it’s getting there. I’ve even started going over to have dinner with him and Uncle Dave once a week. I really have to stop calling him Uncle Dave. It just seems wrong now, but that’s all I’ve ever known him as. Dave seems to understand and hasn’t blown up at me when I’ve let it slip a time or two during those dinners.
“Ready?” Chris, the owner of Apex Shark Expeditions asks, zipping up his wetsuit while moving towards the back of the boat where Chantel, Nate, and I have taken up residence.
I nod enthusiastically while Nate groans, curses, and shakes his head before taking a deep breath and standing up to pull up his own wetsuit from where it was sitting around his hips. Chantel stays seated on the bench, flapping her flip-flop against her foot and texting. I didn’t even know you could get cell signal this far out from the shore. She doesn’t seem really into this and I wonder why she agreed to come along. She also doesn’t seem like the type Nate would be into, but what do I know. I realize I sound bitter, but he kind of just dumped her coming on this trip on me this morning so I haven’t had time to come to terms with her being here yet. I sigh and paste a smile on my face as I move closer to Nate.
Then There Was You (Twist of Fate) Page 19
