Someone I Used to Know

by Blakney Francis

  Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Fran beaming like a proud mother whose child had just taken their first steps. She hastily wiped at her coconut-brown eyes, knowing just as well as I did, it was best to keep Madeline in the dark to her own personal growth.

  “I’ve got to get back to the room before Maria wakes up…The little hellion is so excited about finally getting to go to Australia with me she only sleeps in two-hour intervals. She really is convinced we’re moving in with a mermaid princess’ brother.” Fran stood, covering up the previous heaviness with a twinkling snicker. “I’ll send Alfred to get the car. I’m sure you’ve got class tomorrow, Adley.”

  She hugged me, again swamping my senses with something I wistfully recalled as motherly. It was me holding onto her a moment too long the second time we embraced. Madeline walked us to the door. Alfred was standing just outside, ever the consummate bodyguard.

  As the four of us gathered together for what was undoubtedly the last time, I shook my head with bemused amazement. I’d finally realized what I should have seen months ago.

  Against all odds, in the most unlikely of places, I’d unknowingly made three real friends.

  The knowledge didn’t fill me with peace though. If anything, the gaping hole Declan had left in my chest seemed to double in size.

  I’d felt love again, and even that warmth did nothing for the encompassing chill that had frozen my heart.

  Chapter Twenty

  Adley

  Back in the car with Alfred, my restless hands showed my inner turmoil where my silence did not. I had nothing to say, and everything to know. Did Declan’s irritability have something to do with me? Some twisted part of me wanted it to be true. I knew he’d cared for me, but I was also sure it had been a passing fancy. It was perverse to be delighted by the idea that my loss still hurt him, but I soaked up the possibility that I wasn’t the only one subjected to the agony of longing.

  Absently I trailed Alfred’s charm, the Fish Bone Hook, along the palm of my hand, enjoying the distracting tickle. The bracelet jingled, jostled by my anxious movements. Alfred glanced at me pointedly, annoyed with my edginess.

  “Madeline was right, you know.” I turned his charm over and over again, admiring the way it caught the lights of the interstate as we flew past. “I don’t deserve this…I’m a coward. That’s never going to change.”

  He didn’t even blink, his focus solely on the road. I’d given up on him responding when he finally spoke, a familiar gruff edge scratching his deep voice, “Did I ever mention that I was adopted?”

  I was not so shocked that I couldn’t cast him a look that said ‘when have you ever mentioned anything to me.’ I was still pretty shocked though.

  “I left the hospital with my adopted parents. I never lived with my birth mother,” he continued.

  “Do you hate her – your birth mother?” I blurted the same question that plagued me every day.

  He shook his head.

  “My mom spent her whole life thinking she’d made a mistake. Her regret consumed her. It was all she could think about. Her obsession pushed her past the point of rational. She worried constantly about me, convinced the family who’d adopted me was mistreating me or that I thought she didn’t love me. I met her when I was in my twenties, and she told me all of it, how she’d spent every moment since my birth dealing with the repercussions of her decision.”

  “But you knew she loved you then.” I felt some subconscious need to defend the woman I’d never met. “You didn’t have to think that she just threw you out without a second thought.”

  “Yes, any miniscule worries I’d had were cleared, but it didn’t make me feel any better. All that time I’d been growing up, having fun, making memories, loving my parents, and she’d been stuck in the past, unable to climb out…All meeting her made me feel was guilt and pity. Ever since I’d known I was adopted, there had always been this thought in my head that the sacrifice meant there was some higher purpose to the whole mess.

  “Seeing her, the shell she’d become, it didn’t make me feel loved. It made me feel useless.”

  “You think that’s what I’ve done? You think I’m stuck in the past?” I demanded. There was no accusation in his voice, but it felt like my own fingers were turning against me, pointing back to me as he pointed them at his mother.

  “I think that pretending your hand isn’t broken doesn’t make it any less broken. How can you heal if you won’t even accept that you’re broken?”

  Somewhere in the back of my mind his words clicked into place, and I knew.

  He was right. My daughter was the broken hand I refused to accept. I’d never let her be real to me. I’d never seen her; never heard her cry; never smelled her, or held her. I’d made her nothing more than a fantasy. I’d dissociated myself because it was easier, and in the process, I’d unknowingly sabotaged any chance I ever had of moving on.

  How was I supposed to mourn something that had never been real?

  “So what? I’m just supposed to move on? Forget it ever happened?”

  “No,” he replied somberly. “I think you need to forgive.”

  “Forgive?” I scoffed. I was past the point of caring how rude I sounded. “Forgive who? I wouldn’t even know where to begin…Cam? My parents? Thomas? The whole fucking world?”

  He didn’t flinch. He only shook his head before speaking softly,

  “You have to forgive yourself, kaikuahine.”

  It was the last thing in the world I expected him to say, and it left me stumped.

  Forgive myself? Did I even deserve to be forgiven?

  The thought jarred me further. Until that moment, I hadn’t even realized I was punishing myself. It had become an engrained part of my life. I hadn’t deserved happiness. I needed to suffer.

  It was masochistic…It was twisted, and only faced with it, could I see that it was wrong.

  The first sob took me by surprise. It welled up inside of me, bursting out of my tear ducts and chest. It gutted me, and left me unprepared for the second. I didn’t cry. I sobbed.

  My body was expunging a poison, or maybe it was expelling a demon. It was rough and ugly and unapologetic. It went on forever, one tidal wave after another.

  “I don’t know why I’m crying,” I managed to say when I could speak. He made no move to comfort me, and for that, I was thankful. Pity was one thing I couldn’t take.

  “You do it for the same reason you do when making up with an old friend after a long fight…You cry because you feel relief…and because it means peace.”

  I didn’t know about peace, but I certainly felt relief. I’d spent so much time trying to make things right. I wanted to make the perils of my life worth something more. I thought my pain was a price my daughter deserved.

  Alfred’s mother had wasted the sacrifice. I had no intention of doing the same. The only way I could keep that from happening was to forgive myself. I wouldn’t do it for me. I’d do it for my daughter.

  But peace was not mine to have. How could it be? I was still scarred with a grievance that wasn’t mine to forgive. I could forgive myself for my daughter…But I’d never be able to forgive myself for inflicting the same fate on Cam.

  Some things really were unforgivable.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Adley

  “Seriously, Hannah!” I barked with real anger, climbing back to my feet from where I’d just hit the ground. My volume was quite a few decimals higher than necessary for my dorm mate, who was just a couple feet away, but near decapitation by stiletto boot will do that to you.

  “What?” Her big brown eyes blinked up at me innocently, honestly perplexed by my irritation.

  I let out a sharp exhale though my nose. It was unable to escape through my clenched teeth.

  I would have had more respect for her if she had been faking her ignorant act, but unfortunately, Hannah really was that clueless.

  Finally, I relaxed my jaw and sighed as I retrieved the flying shoe and tossed it back
to her florally-inspired side of the room. Deep down I knew I really wasn’t angry at her. It was the Christmas holiday in general that was causing my sourness, and Hannah in her childish snowman sweater, was just an easy target.

  “Sorry everything’s a mess,” she apologized, placing the boot in the no-pile.

  She wasn’t wrong. A semester’s worth of possessions – hers and mine – were strewn about the room: bras draped off light fixtures; clothes lining the floor as thick as carpet, disguising the linoleum floor; stacks of used, frayed, over-highlighted books hidden in the rubble like booby-traps waiting on us to stub our toes on. The closet, all the while, was clean, stripped bare of its proper possessions.

  “I’m sure you’ll be happy to have me out of your hair and the room to yourself for a while.”

  Usually she would have been right, but her impending departure loomed over me like a dark storm cloud. For the first time, in a very long time, I didn’t want to be alone. The holidays had never felt so large, so heavy, so unmanageable before.

  I did have another option. Cam had sent me a plane ticket home and a pass to the Hollywood premier of The Girl in the Yellow Dress. It was one of the four invitations to the premier I’d received. I hadn’t been terribly surprised by the predictably courteous one from the studio, or the one from Madeline, but Georgia’s kind, hand-written invitation had been a little out of the blue.

  I kept them all in a neat pile on the right side of my underwear drawer. Sometimes, I’d forget they were there, and I’d just stand there, staring at my opportunity to escape the North Carolina weather and my loneliness. I couldn’t do it though; I couldn’t see him.

  In the few weeks since I’d seen Madeline, Fran, and Alfred, the rumors had turned from a possible relationship brewing between the movie’s leads, to sparks flying with his dialogue coach. I remembered Fran mentioning he liked giving her a hard time. The situation seemed all too familiar. He’d liked teasing me in the beginning, too.

  Maybe, I’d been right about his affections all along.

  “Um, why do you have the first chapter of The Girl in the Yellow Dress sealed in an envelope?” Hannah poked her head up from a messy pile. She held the thick stack of folded papers in her hands. The envelope laid discarded, torn open, on the floor beside her, and I could still make out the smudged ‘Just read it’ scrawled on the top.

  “Wait, you’ve read the book?” My mind tripped over the revelation.

  “Duh,” she said, rolling both her eyes and a strand of curly blonde hair. “Who hasn’t?”

  “You’ve just never said anything,” I stuttered, baffled by her blasé attitude. Most people aware they were sharing a roof with someone who’d had an international bestseller written about them might be inclined to mention it. Hannah had never given a single indication she’d known anything about my past.

  Her vacant stare settled on me blankly. “Why would I tell you that I’d read some book? Are you like in a book club or something?”

  My eyes widened. She couldn’t be serious, could she? I studied her a minute longer. Yep, she was dead serious. Hannah didn’t have a clue that I had anything to do with the book. If I wasn’t so happy to avoid having to fill her in, I would have been offended for blondes everywhere, including myself.

  I shook my head, trying to clear it of any air-headedness that might be floating about, contagious, and fought my way back to the original point of the conversation.

  She stood, shaking off debris, and came towards me, clutching the papers. My eyes zeroed in on her hands.

  Why had Declan sent me pages from Cam’s book?

  “Just read it,” his message had instructed. But what could he possibly have to tell me using someone else’s words?

  Hannah was carrying a bomb; I was sure of it. That envelope was never supposed to be opened. I was a deer standing frozen in the headlights of their doom.

  She stubbed her toe on some unseen obstacle and stumbled the rest of the way to me. Cursing, she thrust the sheets into my unwilling hands, so she could sprawl across my bed, clutching her foot as she howled.

  I wanted to drop them – to throw them away. I knew that once I saw Declan’s message hidden in Cam’s words, that I could never un-see it. More than anything, I wanted to hold onto my ignorance, but against my will, my eyes turned to the page, and I read.

  To the girl in the yellow dress,

  I remember the first time I saw you. You were incomparably beautiful – the perfect nose, perfect smile, perfect pouting, pink lips – but even your perfection could not explain what made you truly exquisite.

  I coveted you instantly, in your shining yellow dress –

  But you were not mine to keep.

  I wish love was enough. I could love you until there was nothing of me left, until I was reduced to nothing more than pencil shavings and old scraps of paper. You deserve more than that though.

  My sweet, beautiful daughter, in your sunflower, yellow dress, one day I hope you’ll understand.

  As I stare down at you, I know the truth. I see you swathed in happiness, bathed in the love of your parents, and I know this is right. This is where you’re supposed to be. This is your home, just another thing I cannot give you.

  There is one thing I can give you though, something that is already yours, even if you don’t know it.

  There is someone you deserve to know. I can already see so much of her in you. She’s in the sharpness of your eyes and the gentle sigh of your breath.

  She was a ballerina, and sometimes when she danced, I forgot to breathe. She had all the wrong kinds of strength, and the kind of beauty she always forgot to appreciate. She was smart and funny, if you knew the right way to look at her jokes. She loved sleeping late and being right. She loved the beach at night; candy that turned her mouth red; and her family…

  But most of all, more than anything else in the world, she loved you.

  Her name was Adley Adair, and she was your mother.

  Little girl in the yellow dress, this is the story of how much she loved you.

  I wasn’t the girl in the yellow dress. I never had been.

  The truth had been there all along. What sweet irony that I’d spent so much time thinking the world didn’t know anything about me at all, when they’d known the story better than myself.

  Cam had seen her, touched her; maybe, even held her. He’d broken his promise. Jealousy burned like sandpaper against my raw skin. He had the strength to walk away.

  I’d been wrong.

  I let the knowledge wash over. I was wrong.

  I waited for it to bite me, to sting me with shame…

  But all I felt was exhilaration, freedom; the texture of air exploding in my lungs. It was relief. It felt like I’d been holding my breath for years, weighed down underwater by the pressure tied to my feet. For the first time since I’d found out I was pregnant, I could breathe again.

  Cam had made his own decision. He did what he had to do, whether it was for the best or would cause him pain. He had honored our daughter, not by achieving his dreams, but by allowing the past to become a part of him. All I had done was wallow inside an unmoving bubble for three years.

  Cam’s words, hidden in plain sight all this time, and the truth stored within them, had come from Declan. Even without speaking a word, thousands of miles away, he could still make me come back to him.

  It wasn’t my turn to make decisions anymore. I’d lost all credibility. It was my turn to feel, to act…to go home.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Declan

  Nothing about California was as I remembered it. I’d only been gone three months, but the colors had dulled, the air soured, and the sun was an obvious imposter of the one the Beach Boys had waxed lyrically about. I couldn’t even blame the neighborhood. Even the most kept-up parts of Los Angeles had looked droll as I’d ridden past.

  My car jerked to a stop, and I cringed, biting my tongue to keep from cursing the driver. I wasn’t too keen on the new bloke, but Lazarus
was busy on another job. The partition cracked, and the grey haired driver peered at me through the rearview mirror. Speculation arched his eyebrows.

  “Are you sure this is the right address, Mr. Davies?”

  I looked out at the rundown streets and overrun lawns; a crimson door stood out amongst the browns and rusting metals. I smiled.

  “Yep, this is it.”

  I left my hat and sunglasses in the car. There wouldn’t be any paparazzi lurking about there.

  It took two knocks for the red door to fling open. A child stared back at me from the shadowed doorway, her excitement over having a guest fading into suspicion after she’d completed a head-to-toe inspection of my expensive jeans and button-up shirt. Her eyes landed on my face unimpressed.

  “Who are you?” she demanded with familiar sauciness.

  I grinned, and opened my mouth to answer her.

  “Casey, who’s at the door?” A voice I knew shouted from somewhere deep in the house. My guess was the kitchen.

  Casey never took her narrowed eyes off me as she yelled back, her pitch reaching an unnecessary volume, “Some man. He won’t tell me who he is. He’s got one of those stretch limousines.”

  “Unless he’s got one of those big checks with him, tell him he’s got the wrong house…He’s probably looking for Amanda’s three houses down,” the older woman yelled back, unconcerned.

  I rolled my eyes, and gave the little girl guarding the doorway one last look before shouting over her head, “I’ve come all the way around the world to see you and this is the reception I get!”

  Heavy footsteps marked the tiny woman’s steps, louder than anyone her size had a right to be. Aurelia turned the corner with a scowl on her mouth and delight in her eyes. Pleasure spilled out of my heart at the sight of my beloved housekeeper, and I was almost sick with it. Happiness can do that to you when you’ve grown so unused to its presence.