My head feels scattered with all the whisky, without any sleep, and it takes a minute for the words to hit. When they do, I’m transported back to that night with Chloe. I’m seeing the car spin out, and the tree move at us so fast, like it’s flying over the icy road instead of the other way around.
I feel a shaking inside me, deep in my chest. This was my grief and I kept it safe. I kept her safe and now she’s not. Her life is cheapened by Graham Quick’s words. She’s a bartering tool now. A weapon.
Chloe would have hated this.
But not as much as I do. As much as I hate that I let this happen.
“You’ve built a good foundation, Adam,” Graham continues. “Blackwood Enterprises is healthy, I’ll give you that much. You seem to have enough balls to get things started. A business. A marriage. But you’re a real fuck-up on follow-through. At some point, you’ll see that I’m helping you. You need me. But for now, it’s time to step aside and let a real businessman take over.”
“If you mention my wife to me again, I will beat the living shit out of you.”
Graham’s thick eyebrows climb. “Such violence. That’s it, son. Throw a punch so I can get you on assault, too.”
Something snaps inside me and I’m striding to Graham. He flinches and steps back. “You’re a fucking killer, Blackwood,” he says, moving to the front door. “But I’ve got you cornered. I think you know it already.” He reaches for the door handle. “Oh, there’s one other condition I forgot to mention if you’re interested in retaining your reputation and your company. Keep your hands off my daughter or I will destroy you.”
When he’s gone I head back outside, but I can’t sit down. I pace like a wild animal trapped in a cage. I can’t bring the glass up to my lips, either. Sky and ocean are everywhere around me, but all I see is twisted metal and blood. Then everything changes, and all I see is white snow. Ali’s long legs, stretched out all over the bed.
I grab the edge of the patio table and lift. The sound of glass shattering sounds wrong and right and perfect with the cry of seagulls and the crash of waves behind it.
I go to the key hook by the garage but I stop myself. I know better. I know not to get shitfaced and get behind the wheel of a car. I’ve learned at least that much in my life and her house is only a mile up the road. I pull on my Nikes and take off at a run.
Chapter 39
Alison
I trundle around the stable on my knee scooter, feeling perfectly useless and like I’m suffering the world’s first weeklong hangover. Luckily, my ankle’s only sprained and, now that it’s encased in a proper bandage and an orthopedic boot, it’s feeling better. But all of the rest of me feels bruised. No, broken.
The scooter and the bandages upset Persephone and Suede. I’m foreign to them. I must smell different, and I’m sure it’s like I’m a different creature—half girl, half machine. Suede backs up in his stall when I come over. He paws at his mat, kicking up shavings. His ears twitch like he’s on high alert.
“Come on, lovely,” I say. “It’s just me.”
I hold a palm full of oatmeal and raisins out to him, but he clomps around in his stall, turning his back to me.
“Great.” I’ll have to have Joaquin come in later and take care of them. Heat rises in my throat, and my eyes prickle. It’s ridiculous to feel personally rejected, but I do.
I start to wheel my scooter around to head back out of the stable when the door swings open, crashing into a wall full of tack and making a heavy iron rake drop to the ground.
It’s Adam. But not. He’s unshaven, disheveled. He’s wearing gym shorts and a band t-shirt. His brown hair flies everywhere, and his face is red with exertion. I’ve never seen him this way.
He stalks up to me, and I start to back away, but he seizes the handles of the scooter, anchoring me in place. The odors of alcohol and sweat waft toward me, and I can’t reconcile them with the person I know.
I feel suddenly, unaccountably frightened, and on this scooter, there’s not much I can do to protect myself.
“I will never give you and your father what you want, you hear me?” His gray eyes look darker, almost black, and they drill into me now with so much anger, it’s hard to believe I ever found tenderness there.
Calm down, I tell myself. Don’t let him rattle you. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell him. “But thanks for dumping me in the middle of a blizzard.”
“Come on, Alison,” he says, and every word comes out sharp and derisive. “I took you for a lot of things but never for a liar.”
“And I took you for a lot of things, too,” I say. “I guess we were both wrong.”
It hurts to see him like this. In some private agony I don’t understand. Part of me wants to rush in to try to make it better, but he doesn’t deserve that. He isn’t what I thought. He left me like I meant nothing.
Adam releases the scooter and steps back. Scrubbing at his scalp, he says, “I need to know whose idea it was. Yours or your father’s.”
“What idea? What are you talking about?”
“Please,” he says, and his jaw clenches. “Just answer me. I need to know what was real. If this was just some plan you had all along or if it happened later. You need to tell me. Now.”
“What plan? Adam, I swear to God I don’t know what you’re talking about! All I know is that we spent a night together that I thought—” I can’t say it. Can’t give it to him. I can’t tell him that I thought that night meant something. Meant everything. I can’t be vulnerable with him. Never again. He doesn’t deserve it.
“Thought what, Alison?” He comes back up to me again, and I see he’s unsteady, swaying. His eyes look glassier, and it’s like his body is draining of energy right in front of me. “That you’d make me feel like a complete asshole? Like the world’s biggest sucker? Is that what you thought?”
“No! Of course not. I don’t—”
“Really hope you’re getting the goods on Blackwood,” Adam says in a mocking tone. “Does that sound familiar? I’m getting everything I need.”
It does sound familiar, but for a second I don’t know why. Then it dawns on me. My cell phone. He read my texts. He thought . . .
“Adam, I didn’t . . . That’s not what I meant.”
My ankle throbs violently, and I’m having a hard time staying upright on the scooter. I need to sit down. I need him to hold me and to believe what I’m saying. But his expression, his rigid posture, tells me how impossible that is.
“Really? Because it’s pretty obvious what you meant. And it’s pretty obvious you went right to Daddy and gave up my life and my pain, so you could both get what you want.”
“No, I didn’t.”
But I did. I did exactly that. Only it wasn’t planned. It wasn’t a scheme I’d been concocting all along. “You have to believe me. It wasn’t like that.”
“Did it make you feel good to run her through the mud? That’s what you Quicks do, isn’t it?”
“Adam, that’s not fair. I didn’t mean—”
“I loved her, and you fucking used her. I just don’t understand why,” he says. “Don’t you get that Boomerang is the one thing I do right? That it’s the one thing in my life that’s not fucked up? Why would you want to take that away from me? Those people. The work. I created all of that. Maybe that feels like trivial bullshit to you and your father, but it’s everything to me. Everything.”
“No one wants to take it away from you,” I say.
He arches an eyebrow. “Right. No one except your father.”
“We’re just trying to invest, not control it.”
His laugh is an ugly bark, but understanding brightens his clouded gaze. “Jesus Christ, Alison. You really don’t know, do you?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Reaching out a hand to seize his, I say, “Please, just explain it.”
But he pulls away from me and backs off a few steps. “Ask your father to explain it,” he says. “Ask him about how
he just came over to my house to blackmail me. And call me a killer.” He puts his hands over his face, and his shoulders shudder. Muffled sounds fill the silence between us, sounds of raw agony that rake through me. “You gave him everything he needs to ruin me.”
I can’t stand to see him like this and know I’m the cause of it.
“I never said anything like that,” I tell him finally. “I never called you a killer. I’d never do that. I just said you drove drunk and had an accident. I know I shouldn’t have said even that, but I was so hurt. I didn’t know why you left me there. I felt like you used me and threw me out. Those texts. I was just giving him an answer so he’d leave me alone. I never planned to hurt you. I’m so sorry I did.”
I try to get off my scooter, to go over to him. I want to put my arms around him and help in some way, but I can’t. I know I can’t.
He sees my intention and backs closer to the door. “No, leave it alone,” he says.
“Adam, you’re not a killer. You’re good. You’re so—” There aren’t words for everything he is. Everything he means to me. “It was just a mistake.”
“You’re right,” he tells me. “It was a huge mistake. It should have been me. I should have been the one driving the car. But it was Chloe who drove.”
And then he disappears through the stable door, and I hear his footsteps, slower now, receding into the quiet night.
Chapter 40
Adam
After seeing Alison, I regress and end up back in the chair in my room. I want night. Darkness. The sunshine offends me. But the day seems to want to continue, despite what I want.
My phone rings on the table beside me. Linda and Lucky throw the tennis ball for an hour and go home. A family I don’t know has a picnic and rides boogie boards and builds a sandcastle. Don’t understand that, building sandcastles. Why build something if it’s only going to get washed away? All of this as the sun drops lower and lower.
At six at night, my phone is still ringing and buzzing every ten minutes.
Texts come from Rhett. Cookie. Brooks.
My mother. My father.
Rhett again. Brooks again. Mom again. And so on.
Even Jazz calls. Sweet of her.
But no Alison.
And I hate that that’s the one call I’d take. The one person I wouldn’t be able to resist right now.
She didn’t know? Is that true? Am I supposed to believe that?
The problem is I want to. I think I need to believe her.
Yeah. I do.
I tell myself I’ll go to work tomorrow—Tuesday. Tuesday I tell myself Wednesday, and the whole week disappears that way.
It’s a shitty mindset, but I didn’t build a company from nothing to end up having a minority stake in it. But I can’t think of a way to get it back without dragging Chloe’s memory through even thicker, shittier mud.
Finally, on Friday, Grey barrels into my room. It’s maybe noon. Midday, I think, and I’ve gotten too tired to sit and drink. I can’t keep up with the waves and the sun, and Lucky’s gone and sandcastles depress me so sleep has become my new thing.
“You know what?” Grey announces. “I changed my mind. You can fail, Adam. Actually? I think you need to fail. I think you need to fucking fail, and I’m here to help you.” He claps his hands together. “Let’s do this. Right now.”
I lift my arm and peer at him. Jesus. He almost fills the doorway. And when did he get so ripped? With his shaved head and his tattooed sleeves, he strikes me as the kind of guy you don’t mess with. Unless he’s your little brother.
“Shut the door on your way out, will you?”
“Get up, Adam. Get your sorry drunk ass up.”
“Okay. Fine. I’m going.” I roll myself up and wait for the room to stop spinning. Then I walk past him, downstairs, into the kitchen. To the bar. “Good call,” I say, reaching into the liquor cabinet. “It was about that time.”
Grey pins me so fast, I never even see him coming.
I’m reaching up one instant, the next I’m hitting the wall and staring right at my brother’s eyes.
“I need you to fucking listen,” he says, jamming his forearm into my neck. “Can you do that, big brother?”
I’ve seen this side of him, but it’s never been directed at me. Never, because I know the last person Grey would ever want to hurt is me. Which means he’s scared. Scared enough to go completely against his nature. That’s a wake-up call.
I nod. “I can listen.”
“Good. Sit down.” He shoves me toward the breakfast table. Then he pours a huge glass of water and sets it down in front of me.
For a few seconds, we’re quiet, and I can almost feel us both adjusting to this new order. To the Grey who challenges me as an equal. To the fact that maybe, for once, he’s the one with the right idea.
“Here’s what I think,” he says, crossing his arms. “You did this big cover-up about Chloe, right? About what happened to her. You spend almost four years hiding it, telling a lie. Telling our family and her parents that you did it. That you were driving because you think . . .” Grey lifts his shoulders. “Shit, I don’t know. Because you’re trying to exalt her memory, or honor her life by keeping her rep clean or some shit. But you know what? You didn’t just do it to protect her. You did it to punish yourself. You did it because you, Adam Blackwood, can’t fucking stand that it wasn’t your fault, because you’re a goddamn control freak, Adam. You’re so—”
“You don’t know what you’re—”
Grey uncrosses his arms and points at me. “You said you were going to listen so let me fucking finish, okay? Jesus. Thank you.” He drops his elbows on the table. “So you cover for Chloe, then you add another layer in the bullshit cake by covering up that lie from the public because you’ve got this fancy company, and no one can know the truth—which actually isn’t the truth, it’s your cover-up—about that night. So now you’re controlling Chloe’s past by rewriting history. And you’re controlling your company’s future by hiding your own lies. Are you seeing a pattern here, Adam? Mr. Puppetmaster? You’re fucking doing it with me by playing the go-between with Mom. Letting me live here and putting up with all my shit.”
Grey shakes his head and falls quiet for a moment. “You can’t make all our lives perfect. You can’t fix everything. You can’t take everyone’s bullets. You’ve got to let go, Adam. You’re going to kill yourself this way if you don’t. And if that happens . . . shit. I’m as good as dead too.”
I have to fight back tears for a few seconds. I think Grey does too. I can’t lose someone else I love.
We’re quiet for a long, long time. Just sitting. Just breathing. And when my thoughts turn to that night on Christmas Eve, I let it come. I let the images streak before my eyes in high definition, without pushing them back.
And I see Chloe, and how we fought because I just wanted a few more weeks of having her all to me.
“What does that even mean, Adam? Are you regretting this? Me?”
We were in the basement game room at home. Upstairs, the festivities continued without us, Christmas carols and eggnog and the sound of my dad’s laugh, followed by Grey’s.
“Chloe. That’s not what I said at all.”
I couldn’t find a way to explain. My parents’ marriage was so public. My mother and father had always moved in social circles. Their time together was restaurant openings and galas. Write-ups in the society pages. I was fine with that, someday. If Chloe and I both wanted it. But not yet. I wanted what we had for a while longer. The feeling of the two of us discovering the world together like we were tourists in a foreign country. Untouchable. Invisible.
I didn’t want to share her yet. I just wanted a few more months.
But no matter how much I tried to explain, she seemed to hear, “I don’t want anyone to know about you.”
“You’re embarrassed about me because I’m not rich, like you are. I don’t have a big house like this. I don’t have a goddamn pool table in a game room. I do
n’t have a perfect family like yours. Why can’t you just admit it, Adam? You made a mistake. You shouldn’t have married me.”
“Chloe, please listen to me. Come here.” But she wouldn’t come near me. We’d been drinking, and she was crying. She couldn’t keep still.
“You’re afraid of my moods, Adam,” she continued. “I’m not always calm and rational like you. Well, this is me! You’re stuck with this now!”
I’d seen her mood swings before. I wasn’t afraid of them. I loved everything about her. “The only thing I’m afraid of is losing you.”
“How is it so easy for you?”
“Because I love you, Chloe.”
She whirled and ran, snatching the keys off the hook.
My family went quiet as we tore through the kitchen and headed out the front door. Chloe jumped into the driver’s seat of my car and I didn’t want to tell her no. She was so upset. So mad at me. I just wanted her to be happy. So I took the passenger seat. As she gunned it out of the driveway, I saw Grey. Grey at just fifteen, skinny as a flagpole, standing in the driveway.
And it was too fast. Everything was. Our words. Her tears. The car. We’d only gone a few miles when she lost control and the tree came flying. And everything went black. And then after—on the bloody ice, where I found her, where she was thrown from the crushed convertible. In the ambulance, at the hospital and the morgue and the church and the cemetery, how all I could think was that I could’ve stopped it. I made her cry, and I made her run, and I made her lose control on the ice. I made that tree fly.
I should have been driving. I deserved to take the blame.
So I took it.
I made Grey swear he’d never tell the truth, that he saw Chloe drive away. Then I lied to my parents and hers. To the lawyers, who blamed the icy roads over the alcohol level in my blood—which wasn’t all that high. Not nearly as high as Chloe’s.
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