A Family Affair: Winter: Truth in Lies, Book 1

by Mary Campisi

  “Besides, one of the children is in a car seat”—she pointed to the direction of her Toyota Corolla. “I’d have to bring that, too. Thank you, but this is too much to ask of you.”

  Jesus, women drove him crazy. He started back up the driveway and held out his hand. “Give me the keys and I’ll get the car seat. Not another word, Greta, I mean it. You’re driving me nuts.”

  She barely said a word for the first fifteen minutes of the drive. He watched her out of the corner of his eye: hands pressed tight on her knees, back hardly touching the leather, eyes fixed straight ahead. She needed to relax. She was acting like he was a complete stranger or a kidnapper. Didn’t she know she should feel honored? Harry Blacksworth never did people favors. Didn’t she at least know that much about him?

  Maybe she did, and maybe that was the problem. He was starting to think he’d have been better off pulling out a fifty and letting her call the damn cab.

  “Turn up here,” she said, pointing to the right. “Take this road to Brookside, then turn left.”

  Harry turned, noticed the change in scenery. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out they were now in the low-rent district. The houses were tiny boxes, some vinyl, some wood, folded and stuffed onto a piece of property with a scrap of front yard and a strip of side driveway. A few homes had awnings over the front stoop and wrought iron railings supporting cement steps. If there was a garage, it was detached, in the back, and he guessed used to store anything that wasn’t an automobile.

  It was sure a hell of a lot different than Essex Estates. Was that why she hadn’t wanted him to drive her home? As if he cared. But what did he know, really? He’d never been without, not even a meal unless he was trying to shave off a few pounds after the holidays. But he’d bet Greta knew about not having; he bet she knew a hell of a lot about it.

  “I thought your mother lived with you.” He pulled that from nowhere and couldn’t even say why.

  “She does.”

  “Then why isn’t she watching your kids?”

  “She had a meeting tonight.”

  “With a man?” he said, trying to loosen her up.

  “With Father Mahoney at church.”

  “Oh, well, you know what they say about those priests.”

  “Is everything a joke with you, Harry? Is nothing sacred?”

  “Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just trying to get you to relax. Hell, you’re sitting there like a scared rabbit. Did I do something to offend you? Other than the priest joke, I mean.”

  Her shoulders eased a bit, and she slipped back against the leather seat. “No. It isn’t you.”

  He waited for her to continue. Okay, it wasn’t him, so what was it? “Greta?” A full minute between sentences was fifty-five seconds too long and yet he’d given her the opportunity, just in case, and still, she remained silent. “What’s on your mind? If it isn’t me, what is it?”

  “I’m not comfortable with you doing this.”

  “What? Driving you home?”

  She nodded.

  “You don’t trust my driving? I’m going too fast? I’ll slow down.” He lifted his foot off the gas. “There, though I was only eight miles over the limit.” He flashed her a smile. “That’s practically a crawl for me.”

  “Your driving is fine, but you shouldn’t be doing this.” She turned to face him. “You’re driving your sister-in-law’s cook to pick up her children in a car that cost more than her home.”

  “So?”

  “So it isn’t right.”

  “You think you don’t deserve to be in this car? You think your kids don’t?” She didn’t answer. “You think my goddamn excuse for a sister-in-law is better than you because she was born into money, because she married into it? And me, Christ, don’t tell me you’ve got me on some goddamn pedestal, too.”

  “No, Harry, I don’t think you’re better than me, or that Mrs. Blacksworth is, but I do think I need to remember where I belong. That way, I don’t start to want things I can never have, things that could destroy me with the wanting, even though I know they’ll never make me happy. I can go home at night to my second-hand stove and cook pot roast instead of filet mignon and be completely happy because I know it’s how God meant things to be, and I will not feel the least bit of jealousy or want.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “You mean to tell me you wouldn’t like to have a little bit of this life?” He swept his hand over the seat, “Feel the leather, sink your fingers into it. And what about the houses, the trips, the bank accounts? You’d rather live hand to mouth in some shithole for the rest of your days, cleaning up after some rich bitch?”

  “I’m proud of my work. It’s decent and honest.”

  “Okay, okay, but is that all you want? Don’t you have a dream, you know, something you’d really like to do if you could erase the limits?”

  She didn’t answer at first, and he thought maybe she wasn’t going to. “I have dreams.” The words came out softly, slowly, as though she weren’t used to speaking them out loud. “In Germany, my grandparents owned a restaurant. When they came to the United States, they wanted to start one here, but my grandfather died, and my grandmother couldn’t bear the thought of carrying out their dream alone. So she taught her children and then her grandchildren how to cook and bake according to tradition. That’s my dream, Harry, to start a restaurant, for my grandparents, my children, and myself.”

  “That’s a very noble dream, Greta.”

  Her full lips slipped into a faint smile. “Yes, it is. And you, Harry, do you have a dream?”

  “Me? Hell, Greta, I’m living my dream every day. I can go anywhere I want, do anything I want, buy anything I want. If that isn’t a dream, what is?” He said the words with gusto, pushed out of his lungs full force, and only he knew the emptiness behind them, the lies that draped the pathetic truth; his dreams had been stripped years ago, his hope crushed, leaving him with nothing, nothing at all.

  Chapter 20

  Lily stared out the window, head tilted skyward, faint whispers slipping through her lips.

  “Lily?” Christine entered the bedroom and stood beside her half sister. “What are you doing?”

  “Shhh.” She lifted a finger to her lips.

  “Sorry,” Christine lowered her voice. “What are you doing?”

  A smile streaked Lily’s face like a burst of sunshine. “Talking to Daddy.” Her eyes remained glued to a patch of bluish white sky. “Up there, in heaven,” she said, pointing a finger skyward.

  “Oh.”

  “Do you ever talk to Daddy in heaven?”

  “I guess I do, sometimes.”

  “I miss him.” Her lower lip started to wobble. “A lot.”

  “I know. Me, too.”

  “I wish he wasn’t dead.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I want to go to heaven, so I can see him again.”

  “Lily...you have to die first and then you go to heaven.”

  She nodded her head, “I know. Some day...some day, I want to go to heaven.” Her voice shook, fell apart. “Miss him, miss him.” The tears started then, great sobs of grief spilling down her cheeks, pouring over her small body.

  “Oh, Lily—” Christine reached for her. “I know...” She folded her into her arms, stroked her back, and murmured, “I know.”

  Lily’s shoulders started to shake, “Daddy... Daddy...”

  Her grief seeped into Christine, filling her deep, deeper, until every inch of her body was saturated with loss. Christine had only made a few trips to Magdalena, and already she sensed its growing power over her, the pull of one small town and its people. Against her will, without consent or even acknowledgment, she found herself counting days, gazing out windows, thinking thoughts that had nothing to do with life in Chicago, her real life.

  Was Chicago her real life? Did she still belong there with the Blacksworth name and all that it implied or did she belong here in Magdalen
a with her father’s mistress and illegitimate daughter? And Nate?

  She hadn’t seen him since the night of the accident. Miriam had her own thoughts on why. Something happened between you two that night, something happened and you know it. He knows it, too. Why do you think he’s avoiding you?

  Christine supposed they did need to talk but the thought of it made her uneasy. He wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around when he got into one of his moods, which was most of the time. Odd that she could recognize his moods. And yet, there was another side of him that was kind, decent; she’d witnessed it with Lily and again the night of the accident, though she was sure he hadn’t wanted her to see it.

  Lily’s crying quieted to a soft whimper, muffled in the folds of Christine’s sweater. “It’s okay, Lily.” She stroked her thick hair. “It’s okay.”

  Lily sniffed and looked up. “Can we look at pictures of Dad? It makes me less sad.”

  “Sure. Of course, we can.”

  “I’ll go get them.” She scrambled out of Christine’s arms and hurried to the bookshelf. Row after row of books, lined up by size and shape crowded the top three shelves. But it was the bottom one that drew Lily’s attention; there were four albums, pink vinyl, stacked on top of one another. She pulled them out, carried them to the bed, and plopped them down on the sunflower comforter. She looked up at Christine and smiled. “Now we can see Daddy when we talk to him.”

  ***

  He heard the car in the driveway and knew it was her. Who else would be coming uninvited? Nate went back to the plans in front of him. He was going to build his mother a curio cabinet with recessed lights. The wiring was always the trickiest part with these kinds of projects. A car door opened, closed. If you messed up the wiring you were pretty well screwed. Why was she here? Was Lily with her? Then you had to start all over and wood wasn’t cheap. It would be better if Lily were with her. Black cherry garnered top dollar, but mahogany and maple cost a pretty penny, too. What was there to talk about anyway? Maple was his mother’s favorite; the cabinet was going to be maple. Nothing, there was nothing to talk about.

  Footsteps, he heard them coming up the drive.

  She was alone.

  He didn’t answer the doorbell the first time, waited instead for her to press it again before he pushed back his chair and moved toward the front door. So what if he looked like hell in his flannel shirt and faded jeans? He’d gone into work at ten o’clock last night to fix a machine that was down and didn’t get home until 2:00 A.M. So what?

  He opened the door. God, she was beautiful, even with the fading purple and blue seeped into the skin around her right eye. Somehow, it made her more exotic looking, more fragile. She wore jeans and a flannel shirt with an oversized jean jacket that looked like the one he’d given his mother years ago.

  “Hello, Nate.”

  He nodded, stepped aside to let her pass. “What brings you here?” She smelled of lavender and roses.

  “I needed to talk to you,” she said, shrugging out of her jacket, “and I figured if I wanted to see you, I’d have to come out here.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “I’m sure you have been. What’s this?” She pointed to the drawing on the kitchen table.

  “I’m making my mother a curio cabinet for her birthday.”

  “Impressive.”

  “What did you want to talk about?”

  She pulled out a chair and sat down. “I came to thank you again for helping me the night of the accident, and,” she hesitated, “to apologize for misjudging you.”

  “No thanks necessary. Or apologies.”

  “You give this mean, gruff show, like you don’t care about anything or anybody except your mother and Lily, and, well that’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, Nate, it’s not. I saw it that night, the way you took care of me when you could have dumped me at your mother’s. But you didn’t and I can’t say many people in your position wouldn’t have.”

  “In my position?” What, now she thought he was a pansy-ass do-gooder?

  “You know, your position, my position, our history.”

  “We have no history.” His gaze flitted across her lips, full, pink, soft. He turned away, opened the cupboard over the stove and pulled out his bottle of Jack Daniel’s. What the hell was wrong with him? He poured a shot, downed it in one swallow. Christ. He’d been looking at her lips, thinking about them, the feel, the taste, as though he wanted to... He poured another shot, drank that, too, and then turned around.

  “We have no history,” he repeated.

  “We do, Nate, whether we like it or not,” she said. “I think I’m finally realizing that.”

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “I can’t help it, can you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I came to this town hating Lily, hating the Desantro name. I didn’t want to try and understand anything other than my pain, my betrayal. I wanted to meet my father’s mistress, get her face ingrained in my brain so the hurt would stay fresh, the pain always just below the surface, and then I wanted to pay her off and leave. But then I met Miriam and I couldn’t hate her. And Lily...no one can hate Lily.”

  “I hated your father.”

  She didn’t answer at first. “I think they really loved each other.”

  “Probably, but that wasn’t the point.”

  She met his gaze, her eyes a vibrant blue. “I think he didn’t love my mother the way he loved yours.” Her voice cracked, split, fell apart. “He did love my mother, in his own way.”

  “He should have made a choice; it wasn’t fair to either side.” It was the weakness of Charles Blacksworth that left him raw, even after all these years.

  “It would have killed my mother. Even now, I worry I’ll slip up, maybe she’ll get suspicious about where I go every month, who I’m seeing.”

  “You think she had no idea your father was seeing somebody on the side?”

  “No, she never knew about your mother...or Lily.”

  Nate grabbed a glass, poured her a shot. “Drink this”—he shoved it toward her and refilled his own. “No woman sleeps with a man that many years and doesn’t know when he’s double dipping.”

  “I’m telling you, she doesn’t know. You should have seen how she used to spend days planning these huge welcome-home dinners for him. Do you think she’d do that if she knew he was returning from seeing your mother?”

  He shrugged. “Depends on the arrangement; maybe she got money and a house and he got his freedom.”

  “Their marriage wasn’t arranged.” She took a sip of whiskey, coughed. “They did things together, like a couple.”

  “Maybe they didn’t sleep together anymore.”

  “They did. They slept in the same room, I know that.”

  “Maybe they slept in the same room but they didn’t sleep together as in exercising conjugal rights.”

  She polished off the rest of her drink, coughed twice. “She doesn’t know and she isn’t going to find out.”

  “Fine. Just don’t be surprised if down the road you don’t discover I was right.”

  “Are you trying to rip apart every piece of my parents’ marriage?” She didn’t give him time to answer. “Why? So you can punish me for being a Blacksworth? Do you really hate me that much?”

  “I don’t hate you,” he said and realized it was true.

  “Then why are you trying to punish me?”

  “I’m not.” She looked so fragile sitting there gripping the empty shot glass, so alone. “It’s just that”—he searched for the right words, words that he didn’t even know how to say—“you’re an intelligent woman and I don’t want to see you get blind-sided.”

  “By whom? My own mother?”

  Now he sounded like an asshole. “You’re right. I guess I’m way off base.” So what if the mother knew?

  “You are.” She pushed back her chair and stood. “Thanks for the drink.”

  He watc
hed her shrug into her jacket, the one he thought was his old one. It looked good on her, made her seem more relaxed, the faded jean material bringing out the highlights in her hair. He felt like a shit. Why hadn’t he shut up and let her believe her story? Why did he have to push just to prove a point?

  “Christine, I’m sorry.” He was behind her, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “I was out of line.”

  When she turned to face him, there was pain in her eyes. “I need to hold onto this, Nate. I need to; it’s the only way I can keep from hating him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, pooled, spilled down her cheeks. He reached out to catch one, his fingers stroking across her soft skin. “Don’t cry.” The simple request only made the tears fall faster. “Christine.” He traced a tear to her chin, wiped it away with his thumb. “Please don’t cry.” And then he was leaning toward her, close, closer, until his lips touched hers, soft at first, feather-light, his breath fanning her face. She moved toward him and pressed her hands against his chest.

  He tasted the salt of her tears, traced her lips with his tongue. It only made him want more. She was strength and softness, light and dark. He reached for her, eased her against his body. More. It was the moan that brought him back, reminded him what he was doing and with whom. He broke the kiss and pulled back.

  “This is insanity.”

  She looked away.

  “What the hell’s wrong with me?”

  “It was just a kiss.” Still, she wasn’t looking at him.

  “Was it? Do you mean you didn’t want more?” He waited for her answer and when she didn’t respond he went on. “Because I sure as hell did.”

  “Wanting and doing aren’t the same,” she said. “I want a lot of things but I don’t go after all of them.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Exercise self-control.”

  That made him laugh. Leave it to her to compartmentalize what had just happened. “So you’re exercising self-control with me?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  Finally, she looked at him. “It was just a kiss.”