Deceiver

by Robin Lovett

  “First, though.” He puts down his coffee and turns to face me. “Daisy.” He lets out a shuddered breath. “Could you, would you, might you . . . forgive me?” He lifts a tentative hand and caresses my cheek in a light touch.

  The look in his eyes. The darkness has waned, and in its place is something no less enrapturing—it’s a gentleness I want to lie in. His heart is exposed, he’s put it on a plate for me to decide. I can accept it and love it or refuse it and break it.

  He’s left it up to me.

  I savor the feel of his touch and hold his hand to my cheek. “I forgive you.”

  He rests his forehead against mine. “I don’t deserve it.”

  “Maybe not. But it’s true. So get over it.”

  He leans back from me. “I’m a mess of a man, Daisy. My mistakes aside, being with me is not going to be easy. I have too much baggage not to warn you.”

  “But you’re richer for it. And I don’t mean money. Being with you is an experience of the greater emotions I haven’t known—even your pain and anger. You feel with a greater depth than I have. I want to be with you.”

  “I’m going to make many more mistakes.”

  “But as long as you tell me the truth and as long as you’re willing to work through mistakes as they happen.” I stroke his hand. “I want to be here for that. Here with you.”

  “I need the truth as much as I need you. I’ve never had it, but I want it.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “Ask me anything. I’ll tell you. I want to tell you.” A happy sound bubbles up his throat and his smile is free of strain, full of hope.

  I already know my first questions. “Penny showed us the house yesterday.”

  He cringes. “What did you see?”

  “It was like a museum, all the antiques and paintings.”

  “It was all for show. He would bring large parties of people to entertain here. He wanted to impress.”

  I feel invasive letting him know I saw inside, but I have to bring it up. “She showed us your room.”

  He pinches his lips and holds his breath.

  “It seemed like . . . something private.”

  His voice scratches so low I hardly hear him. “Yeah.” His reluctance is different from before. It’s not the defensiveness he used to get that I would need to help him break through to get to the other side. No. This is pain, old pain, and I don’t like thinking it, but his shoulders hunch and he crosses his arms over his chest. Almost like he’s trying to cover up how he used to be, the thing he swore he never was—afraid.

  I place a hand on his thigh, worrying he might push it away, but he grasps it and holds it, tight, as though he’s desperate for something to hold on to. Or, desperate to hold on to me.

  I want to help him be brave, to help him tell me. “Were you afraid to get help?”

  “He was good at that. He suppressed any urge I had to get help.” He says it like a warning, like the explanation that comes after isn’t good. And I remember.

  “When he tried to drown you . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “He would’ve hurt your sister. You had no choice.”

  He meets my gaze and opens his expression up to me, shows it to me—the terror he lived with each day. The terror that still lives inside him, as though it’s still happening.

  I hug him. I can’t help it. “It’s over. You don’t have to live that way anymore.” He relaxes against me, holding me to him like his life depends on it. “You never should’ve had to live through that.”

  “Yes,” he murmurs against my hair like it’s the thing he most needed to hear in the world.

  I release him and find his gaze fixated on a spot by the lake. “What is it?”

  He points to the lakeshore. “You see that little tree beside the stone bridge to the island?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s where he did it. In the water there.”

  I grip his hand, encouraging him to say more.

  “He’d hold my head under for a minute, then let me up and say, ‘This is what I’ll do to your sister if you tell anyone,’ then he’d shove my head back under.”

  I’m too stunned to do anything but listen.

  “I don’t know how many times he did it. Five. Six. Enough that by the time he was done all I could do was lie there wheezing on the grass.” He swallows, staring at the spot like he can see it happening. He scratches his neck like he can still feel the choking. “Mr. Tanner found me like that of course. I never told him what happened, but I think he suspected.”

  He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay? Was it too much?”

  “Me? Why are you so worried about me? You were the little kid who—” I realize my hands are shaking.

  He pulls me to him. “It was a long time ago. I’m okay.” I feel his heart beating, hear it with my ear pressed to him.

  “You shouldn’t be afraid to tell us. You need to tell your sister. She deserves to know.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  I pat his chest. “Your instinct to protect her is a detriment to both of you. She deserves the same pledge of honesty you’ve given me.” I kiss his cheek. “Mostly, it’ll help you to not have to bear it alone anymore. Maybe if you trust more people with the truth you won’t feel so angry all the time.”

  “How did you grow to be so wise?”

  I smile. “I just want to help.”

  “I’m going to get therapy. This isn’t all on you to help me.”

  “I know.”

  “Blake!” A voice yells from across the driveway, and I look up to see Logan walking toward us.

  “The world invades,” Blake mutters to me.

  “It’s just Logan. He probably has one sentence to say and he’ll leave us alone.”

  “Let’s hope so. I want you to myself today.” He kisses my neck and goes to meet him.

  I’ll never be able to look at that peaceful lake the same way again. I want to help him make a life free of the horrible things he’s known. I want to give him new memories.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “We’re going to town,” Logan says. “To meet some auctioneers for selling the antiques and architects for renovating the house.”

  “Selling—renovating? Why?” My sister’s husband is many things, but stupid is not one of them.

  “For the shelter.”

  “Okay.” I want nothing more than Daisy, and I’m already bored with this conversation.

  Logan, the intelligent man that he is, takes the hint. “Just to let you know, we’re all leaving and won’t be back till late this afternoon.” He turns and walks away.

  “Wait.” I call after him. “All? As in the Tanners as well?”

  He gives me a broad smile, one of the very few I’ve seen him give. “Yup.” He disappears around the house.

  “What did he say?” Daisy comes up beside me.

  “They’re all going out.”

  “Oh, that’s right. The renovations.” She starts to walk. “I should probably go with them.”

  “Oh, no you don’t.” I pull her back to me. “We have this place to ourselves and I’m not missing that chance for anything.”

  A car travels down the drive—two cars. They’re gone.

  We stand, watching until we can’t see them or hear them anymore.

  I don’t want to but I do want to, so I make myself say it. “Do you want to see my old room?”

  Her eyes widen with a soft surprise. “I’d love for you to show me, if you want.”

  It’s like this black spot in my mind. That house. These memories inside my head that I veer around, pretending each time I get near it that I can’t see it. But really, I’m just wasting energy, causing myself more misery by never looking at it. It’s just a house. It’s just a bedroom.

  They’re just memories.

  There’s nothing to fear from an inanimate object. Or the past.

  I’m feeling it now. The old fear, that I’d blocked out because I didn’t ha
ve the time or space to feel it when I was young. It’s making my limbs shake, but Daisy is here to steady me.

  She urges me forward. “I think it’s a good idea, if you’re up for it.”

  I inhale a large breath. “Yeah.”

  Throughout the walk to the house, up the front steps, through the front door, I’m fixated on the feelings coursing through me—the rush of them, the strength of them. I’m awed at myself, my younger self, and how I coped with this blinding fear as a child.

  I stand in the front hallway. “I was a badass little kid.”

  Daisy’s laughter echoes through the foyer. The sound bounces off the marble stairs and the vaulted ceiling and fills the place with the kind of sound that it should always have been filled with. It calms me and I look at her, stare at her, standing in this place.

  I have nothing to be afraid of when she’s with me.

  “Come on,” I tug her arm and she follows me up the stairs.

  I don’t stop until I open my old bedroom door. Looking inside, seeing it, I’m even more at awe of my young self and the choices I made for survival. I made the best out of what I had, and I lived to tell it.

  She follows me inside the spartan room, with its white walls and colorless furniture. “Did you choose for it to be this way?”

  “I did. Well, sort of. It was the best option I had.” The words come more easily than I expect. “He broke everything of mine. In his rages, anything I owned would get broken or thrown at me or . . .” I pause to check her, to see how she’s doing. “I said I’d tell you the truth, but you have to promise if it’s too much to handle, you’ll tell me when to stop?”

  She gives a half smile and a squeeze of my hand. “I want to know you. What would he do?”

  The words tumble out with relief, a relief I didn’t know I was craving. “He’d hit me with things. So I didn’t bring things home. I owned nothing so he could break nothing. I liked having a bare room. There was nothing in it he could turn into a weapon.”

  “Wouldn’t people notice your bruises? You don’t have any scars?”

  “He would hurt me where clothes covered, mostly. Otherwise, I’d be forced to stay home from school. He was calculating and careful in his rages to never leave any proof.”

  I turn my eyes away from the room—a room that used to be mine, but isn’t anymore. It’s full of memories, but that’s all they are. Things that are over and done.

  I look at her instead and am beyond grateful she’s here beside me. “Thank you.”

  She kisses my cheek and flashes her trademark mischievous smirk. “Are you ready?”

  I have to smile back. I love her mischief and everything it does for me. “For what?”

  She lets go of my hand and backs away from me. “Follow me and find out.” She runs out the door, her little sandals clapping against the hardwood floor of the hall.

  I’m startled and incapable of doing anything but chasing after her.

  I race from the room but she’s already galloping down the stairs. I watch her go for a moment. The lightness in her step, the swing of her skirt, the flow of her hair—she’s here. She wants to know me, and love me.

  I can’t not follow her.

  I run down the stairs and out the front door in time to see her disappear down the hill to the lake. I keep after her, wondering what sort of smiles she’s going to put on my face today.

  I don’t see her, but I find a trail of her things in the grass.

  First one sandal, then the other. Then a shirt, a bra, and finally a skirt, all her clothes, like a path for me to follow. I’m almost to the lake front, but I still can’t see her. I search the water, expecting her to have gone in, skinny dipping.

  “Yoo-hoo!” I see her arm wave above the grass—right beneath The Tree.

  My stomach turns. I told her what happened at that spot. She could’ve gone anywhere. Why there? I walk closer, about to protest, to ask if we could go somewhere else, anywhere but here.

  But I see her and stop.

  Gloriously naked—her flesh a picture of perfection—she lies in the grass, her hair a crown around her head, her lithe limbs spread in invitation. Her expression one of infinite lust and even greater love.

  I will never be able to look at this tree again and not think of her lying here, bare and waiting for me.

  She arches her hips in a seductive plea. “Make a new memory with me.”

  I’m unable to look away or even breathe, but I manage, “I love you.”

  Taking pity on me and my static state, she stands and whispers, “And I love you.” She reaches for the hem of my shirt. “May I?”

  My throat clogs, unable to make words, but I nod.

  She lifts my shirt and gracefully pulls it over my head and off. I expect her to reach for my shorts, but instead she kisses my chest.

  Her mouth in that small peck is like a provoking fire. She does it again and again onto my shoulders. Her little lips slow and lazy, savoring, unhurried.

  With each kiss, it’s like I can feel her saying over and over I love you, I love you. And it undoes me. Any anxiety I had about this place melts. There is only her and her mouth.

  She urges me to my knees, and she feathers kisses across my cheeks and my nose, my brow and my eyes. When she reaches my mouth, I am overflowing with a need to return the favor.

  I grasp her hips and spread her in the grass. “My turn.” I make love to every inch of her with my mouth until she’s crying out, with only the birds and the trees to hear—and me.

  “Now. Please,” she begs.

  I take off the rest of my clothes, and I cover her. Sliding inside her, I hold her eyes with mine. Unguarded, honest, with nothing to hide. All of me hers for the taking.

  I need nothing more in this world than this.

  And her eyes tell me as she moves beneath me, that by some miracle, she feels the same.

  Epilogue

  My parents come for dinner at the estate the next night, and I am grateful for all of Blake’s family being there. It makes the awkwardness of my parents’ skepticism toward Blake a little less tense.

  Dad’s already committed big money to Penny’s charity, with more to come from his firm, we hope. That plus the blood money my father kept from Blake’s father. There’s lots to talk about over dinner.

  I’m in the kitchen helping Mrs. Tanner bring plates and dishes out to the patio table.

  “Daisy, will you open the closet there and pull out another ladle for me?” Mrs. Tanner asks.

  “Absolutely.” We all decided the Tanners should join us for dinner tonight. Involving them in on the renovations of the house seems fitting. They’re as excited about giving the place a rebirth as Penny is.

  I spot a door inlaid in the wall. It almost blends in with the woodwork and I never would’ve noticed it if she hadn’t pointed the way. I tug on the small handle, but it doesn’t budge right away.

  “Oh no, not that one!” Mrs. Tanner cries, but the door gives and opens before she finishes the sentence. “Daisy, I’m not used to having help in my kitchen. Please try this closet instead.” She tries to take the door from my hand and points to the one behind me.

  But my eyes catch on the interior of the first one, and I refuse to let her close it. “What’s in here?”

  “Old things no one cares about anymore. Let’s close it.” She tries again to yank the door from my hand, but I stand in front of it, pressing it open with my shoulder.

  Inside are shelves, floor to ceiling, full of trophies, banners, pictures—all with BLAKE VANDERSHALL stamped on them. Looking closer, there are some in pieces, glued back together. In some cases only nameplates survived the carnage.

  Blake played lacrosse. Apparently very well. Among other achievements.

  “Oh, dear. Please close it.” Mrs. Tanner tries to push me out of the way, her face flushing red as a cherry.

  “Mrs. Tanner, you saved them.”

  “Well, of course I did. I couldn’t just let him throw them away.” She stands a
little taller.

  “What’s wrong?” Penny sneaks up behind us and gasps when she glimpses the closet. “Let me see.” She presses past me and Mrs. Tanner.

  She stares at Mrs. Tanner in shock. “You kept them?”

  “I’m sorry. It was something I shouldn’t have . . .” She’s stopped by Penny leaping on her in a hug. “Oh, dear. It’s all right.” She pats Penny’s back, and I realize Penny has started shaking and sobbing into the woman’s chest. “There, there, child. They’re just things. Nothing to cry about.” But in between her words, Mrs. Tanner starts hiccupping too, tears moving down her cheeks.

  I stand back and look around, trying to see if Blake is here, not sure whether I want him to see or not see.

  But I don’t have to decide. He’s standing in the kitchen door. “Why’s Penny crying?” He asks, his brows drawn in concern. “What happened?”

  “It’s nothing. Well, it’s something. It’s just—nothing is wrong. Not now anyway.”

  “That makes no sense.” He walks up to Penny and Mrs. Tanner. “What’s going—” He sees the open closet.

  His face masks over into that dark coolness I remember so well from when I first met him. I see him fall back into it—cutting himself off from the truth of what he sees, hiding his feelings like his life depends on it.

  Which I guess, as a child, it did.

  I touch his arm. “Talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  He blinks at me, bringing me into focus. “I—I—” He looks at Mrs. Tanner. “Why?”

  She walks to him. “I couldn’t bear to throw them away at the time, but if you want me to get rid of them now, I will.”

  “No!” Penny pulls on her arm. “We’ll put them out. Somewhere.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Blake snaps. “They’re plastic.”

  “It’s not ridiculous,” I snap back at him. “You never got to have a childhood. Maybe you should get to have one now.”

  He sighs and his mask softens. “You want some truth? Maybe it would hurt me more to see them every day. I don’t like being reminded of the past if I can help it.”

  “That settles it. I’ll put them in the trash tomorrow,” Mrs. Tanner says.

  “Blake,” Penny says in her quiet way that makes everyone listen. “Why aren’t these in your room?”