by Jessie Evans
“I’m her mother, Caitlin,” Aoife says. “There’s nothing wrong with her calling me mama if she wants to.”
“I’m not going to have this conversation right now,” Caitlin says in a voice like ice. “In fact, I’m never going to have this conversation. As soon as the funeral is over tomorrow, I want you gone.”
Aoife sighs, but the look in her eyes is anything but defeated. “I didn’t want to discuss this until after we finished everything for Dad, but…there’s another reason I’m here.”
“Of course there is.” Caitlin’s smile is viciously sweet. “I wouldn’t expect anything else, but I don’t know what you’re hoping to get. Chuck left Veronica this house, and he signed Aunt Sarah’s place over to me last summer. There may still be some of Aunt Sarah’s money left in his account, but you and Veronica will have to fight it out for that.”
“I didn’t come here for money,” Aoife snaps. “I came for my daughter. When I go back to Florida in a week, I want Emmie to come with me.”
Caitlin’s eyes widen slightly, but when she speaks she sounds amused. “Emmie is staying with me, and the boys—the people who love her, and have always been there for her. You’re out of your mind if you think I’m letting a stranger take her away.”
“I’m not a stranger, I’m her mother.” Aoife’s voice rises, attracting the attention of the older women drinking in the kitchen, who stop laughing and turn to peer into the living room. “And it’s not your decision to make. I appreciate everything you’ve done, but—”
“But nothing,” Caitlin says, still calm and collected. “You lost your chance to play the mother card when you left your daughter hungry and crying in her crib, and didn’t call, write, or send a dime for four years.”
“So you want money?” Aoife asks. “If that’s it, I’ve got it. I’m married now, and Mitch has a good job. We’ve got a house with a pool in a beautiful gated community. We can give Emmie everything, even a baby sister in four months.”
Aoife caresses her stomach with one hand, and I feel Caitlin stiffen beside me. “She’ll be happy with us,” Aoife continues with a dreamy smile, as if she’s already watching Emmie’s perfect new life play out behind her eyes. “Mitch understands that I was young and messed up when I left my daughter. But he’s forgiven me, and he wants me to bring Emmie home. He’s going to adopt her, and we’ll be a family.”
“Mitch sounds like a swell guy,” Caitlin says, sarcasm dripping from the words. “But the court awarded me full guardianship of Emmie last summer. I’m her legal caregiver. She’s flying back to Hawaii with me when I leave in ten days, and that’s the end of the discussion.”
Aoife’s nostrils flare, but when she speaks again, her voice is as cool as Caitlin’s. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I sure as hell do,” Caitlin says, her hands balling into fists at her sides, making me worry that the brawl I thought I saw coming a few minutes ago might be happening after all. “In every way that counts, I’m Emmie’s mother. You’re just an egg donor.”
The women eavesdropping across the room suck in a scandalized breath, and Aoife lifts her chin. “You can say whatever you want to hurt me, but I am Emmie’s mother, and I have rights. I was hoping we could keep things from getting nasty, but if you’re not willing to do what’s best for my daughter, we can take this to court.”
“You don’t give a shit about what’s best for Emmie. This is about you, the way everything always is.” Caitlin steps closer, before adding in a whisper, “But you will never take that little girl away from her family. Do you hear me? I will destroy you first.”
The words are so soft I know no one but Aoife and I heard them, but they still lift the hairs on the back of my neck. Caitlin isn’t making idle threats. When it comes to defending her family, she doesn’t fuck around.
The thought is followed by a flash of memory. I see Caitlin straddling a man—Pitt, on the night he chained Caitlin up in his attic. She’s half naked, with tears running down her face, but I can see the determination in the way her muscles strain and her hands lock around his neck. I watch the agony creasing her features become resolve and then a strangely peaceful expression that is chilling, even on a girl barely five feet tall. She steps over the threshold from prey to predator without a single look over her shoulder. I remember thinking at the time that she was like a dark angel, beautiful and deadly.
But what do I think now?
I don’t know, only that I doubt Aoife understands how dangerous it can be to get on Caitlin’s bad side.
I’m still half lost in the memory when Caitlin takes my hand and starts toward the door. I thread my fingers through hers and follow her out into the hot, humid day, but for the first time since I pulled her back into my arms, I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into. Once upon a time, I was the kind of man who could not only handle Caitlin’s dark side, but match it, shadow for shadow. We were a perfect pair, but now…
I don’t know if I can be the person I was, and I’m not sure I want to be. The straight and narrow path my parents have laid out for me doesn’t feel right, but careening down a winding road at a hundred miles per hour, flattening anyone who gets in my way, doesn’t, either.
“Okay guys, load up,” Caitlin shouts to the kids before lifting her hand to Sherry. Her friend stands near the road next to two men smoking cigarettes. The guys look about our age—wearing the same faded jeans and tee shirts from high school, but with the start of the beer bellies that come to early twenty-somethings who drink a six pack every night—but I don’t remember meeting them before.
Though that doesn’t mean much lately…
“Sherry, I’m going to head to the hotel and let the kids swim,” Caitlin says. “You want to come with us, or do you want to catch a ride over later?”
“I’ll catch a ride over,” Sherry says, smiling when she sees we’re holding hands, blissfully ignorant to the sisterly showdown that took place inside the house, or all the conflicted thoughts racing through my mind. “Have fun!”
“Doubtful,” Caitlin mutters beneath her breath as she starts for the van. “I’m sorry about this,” she adds, glancing over at me. “Aoife always did have shit timing.”
“It’s all right,” I say. “Too bad you and my dad are on the outs, or I could probably get him to represent you for free.”
Caitlin freezes a few feet from the van, where Danny is helping Emmie get buckled into her booster seat and Ray and Sean are arguing about whose turn it is to sit in the back.
“We’re not on the outs, Gabe,” Caitlin says, frowning up at me. “He wrote me a letter telling me not to come to your funeral. He and your mom faked your death to keep us apart, and I, for one, would like to see them rot in hell for it. You need to believe me about this, okay?”
“I believe you,” I say, though a part of me is still hoping there has been some insane mix up that will allow Caitlin to be confused, and my parents to be redeemed.
They’ve lied about how much they knew about my relationship with Caitlin, but I assumed it was because she wasn’t the sort of girl they wanted me tangled up with. I know in my parents’ eyes—my mother’s, especially—a girl without a pedigree, and good standing at an Ivy League school, is beneath me. Deborah would see a girl like Caitlin as a weight that would drag me down, and Mom wouldn’t be above pretending not to remember her in the name of sending me back to college a free agent.
“Are you sure?” Caitlin asks, hurt in her eyes. “Because you don’t look like you believe me. You look like you think I’m crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy.” I reach out, but she takes a step back before I can touch her, making it clear this isn’t something I’m going to be able to sweep under the rug.
“I promise, I don’t think you’re crazy,” I say in my most soothing tone. “But I am hoping there is some other explanation.”
“Like what?” Caitlin asks, shaking her head.
I lift my hands. “I don’t know. Just give me a chance to have
a look around Darby Hill and see what I can find. I’ve looked through my parents’ emails before, but maybe I didn’t go back far enough, or—”
“You do that.” Caitlin cuts me off in the same cool tone she used with Aoife. “And if you can’t find anything, and decide to believe your parents have your best interests at heart, then…good for you. But I will promise you this…”
She glances toward the van where the kids are obviously trying to eavesdrop—they’ve left the van door open and are being quieter than they’ve been all day. She steps closer and lowers her voice. “The Gabe I used to know understood that his parents were horrible, and he did everything he could to be the opposite of the selfish, heartless people who raised him.”
“The Gabe you knew was also dying,” I say, frustration creeping into my tone. “I’m not.”
She’s quiet for a moment, but the steel in her eyes doesn’t waver. “Yes, the Gabe I knew was dying. But he trusted me with all the life he had left, and he would never have doubted my word. Not for a second.”
She turns and moves around the front of the van, moving so quickly I have to jog to, catch the door in my hand before she slams it. “So that’s it? You’re just going to run away?”
“I’m not running away. I’m taking the kids swimming.”
“Don’t play games,” I say, anger making my fingers press harder into the metal of the door. “I don’t know everything, but I know that’s not the way we were together.”
Her calm mask falters, but she doesn’t move to get out of the van. “Well…maybe we have further to go to get back to the way we were than we thought.”
“Maybe we do.” I brace my other hand on the warm aluminum of the window frame. “And maybe you’re going to have to meet me halfway.”
She lifts one pale brow. “Meaning?”
“I’m not on board for anything like what you told me about this morning,” I say carefully, aware the kids are listening. “I want to keep things on the level from here on out.”
Caitlin’s jaw drops and for a second I think I’ve rendered her speechless, but then she says, “You are a piece of work, Gabe Alexander. Only you could make me want to slap you the same day I think I’m going to die from happiness that you’re alive.”
She hauls on the door, and I let it go, wincing as she slams the door hard enough to shake the entire van. Before I can step away from the door, she shifts the vehicle into reverse and peels down the driveway into the street.
I stand, watching her leave with a nasty sinking feeling in my chest.
I clearly don’t know how to handle Caitlin Cooney anymore, but I sure as fuck don’t like watching her drive away.
Chapter Fourteen
Caitlin
“Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.
Yet love—wilt thou?”
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
By the time I get the younger kids into their swimsuits and down to the hotel pool, regret is swelling inside my stomach, making me feel like I’ve swallowed a balloon filled with poison.
He’s alive; that’s all that matters. He’s alive, and he wants to love me again. It’s every impossible dream come true, and I turned my back on it and drove away. I shouldn’t have left the way I did, no matter how much it hurt to listen to him defend the people who made the past year the most miserable of my life—and from a person raised by my mother and father, that’s saying something.
But Gabe’s been through hell, too, and lost pieces of himself through no fault of his own. He clearly doesn’t remember all the reasons why he used to loathe his parents. I, on the other hand, remember everything, and I owe it to Gabe to help him to the truth, to hold his hand as he pulls back the curtains and discovers all the dirty secrets Aaron and Deborah are hiding.
I call him from a deck chair by the pool, intending to apologize and ask him to come join us at the hotel, but I get a message that the number is no longer in service.
I hang up with a frustrated sigh. I should have known Aaron and Deborah wouldn’t let Gabe keep his old number. They wanted him to have a fresh start so badly they faked his death. Getting him a new cell phone number is nothing compared to the ashes, or the funeral invitation, or the official letter from their lawyer announcing that they were contesting Gabe’s will, and I wouldn’t be receiving the trust fund money he’d wanted to leave me anytime soon.
“You’re sure there’s nothing?” I ask Sherry when she calls from the hotel room, having graciously offered to do some recon online while I watch over the kids at the pool.
“I’ve looked through all the newspaper archives,” she says. “There was never any mention of Gabe’s funeral, or a memorial service, or anything. Not even in the society page, which is totally fishy since they like to document it every time the Alexanders take an interesting-shaped shit.”
I almost smile, but I can’t. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice last summer. I should have realized there was nothing official.”
“You got an invitation in the mail, that’s pretty official,” Sherry says. “Don’t you dare beat yourself up about this. There was no reason to think anything was going on except that the Alexanders wanted to keep their son’s funeral as private as possible. And that’s not that weird, considering he died so young. I mean…” She makes a frustrated, confused sound that I can empathize with. “Didn’t die. Jesus…what a crazy day.”
“I know.” I force a smile as Emmie waves to me from the diving board. “I still can’t believe it’s real. And I don’t know what was up with my dad.”
“You think the Alexanders paid him off?” Sherry asks. “Gave him some cash to keep quiet about Gabe being back from the dead?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Gabe said something similar, but it’s hard to imagine the Alexanders and my dad even having a conversation, you know? They might as well have been from different planets.”
“I hear you,” she says, hesitating a moment before she adds. “I’m just so sorry about all this, Caitlin. I keep thinking how everything would have been different if I’d stayed in Giffney. I know we didn’t run in the same circles, but I would have run into Gabe sooner or later. And then I could have called you and—”
“If I’m not allowed to get self-blamey, you certainly aren’t allowed to,” I say, cutting her off before she can go any further down that road. “And honestly, it would have been hellish to do this much sooner. Gabe said he only remembered my name in January, and even now he only has…pieces of our history. There’s so much he doesn’t remember.”
“But he loves you,” Sherry says. “You two are soul mates, Caitlin. That much was clear from the way you made out like the world was ending the second you laid eyes on each other.”
My cheeks heat for reasons having nothing to do with the August sun beating down on the Residence Inn pool. “Yeah, I bet Danny would be giving me shit about that if he weren’t giving me the silent treatment for fighting with Gabe. He’s been in the exercise room this entire time watching Sports Center. He wouldn’t even look at me when I asked what he wanted for supper.”
“He’s as confused as the rest of us,” Sherry says. “Give him time. He’ll come around. Especially when I bring a pizza feast back to the room.”
“That reminds me.” I stand, stepping farther from the shallow end, where Emmie and Sean are playing Marco Polo. “Don’t get pizza from Isaac’s dad’s place, okay? I don’t want them to know we’re back. Isaac still thinks we’re on the Big Island on vacation.”
Sherry sighs. “I know. He’s texted me six times today, begging me to talk to you for him, asking if he can take a few days off from work and come meet us before we do the volcano hike. The poor guy is going to be devastated. He’s never going to believe you didn’t know Gabe was alive when you broke up with him, no matter how many times I’ll swear it’s true.”
“This is the same ‘poor guy’ who lied to us both, and said you thought I was headed off the deep end,” I remind her, feeling defensive.
“He could sense he was losing you, C. It was making him a little crazy,” Sherry says, more empathy in her voice than I would like. Fair or not, I want my oldest friend firmly on my side, even if she has been friends with Isaac almost as long. “Ever since we were kids, all he ever wanted was to live happily ever after with you.”
“With who he thought I was.”
“Well, that’s all we have, right? Who we think people are?” I can practically hear her shrug. “I guess Isaac kept hoping that if he believed in his version of you long enough and hard enough, you’d start to agree with him, the way I did with Bjorn.”
“It’s different.” Sherry’s boyfriend, Bjorn, is the man who finally convinced Sherry that she’s worthy of all the hearts and flowers.
Bjorn, a Norwegian pro-surfer who has lived in Maui half his life, thinks Sherry is brilliant, funny, beautiful without makeup, and the sweetest woman on earth. He seems ready to settle down and worship at Sherry’s altar, and Sherry feels the same way. I know she treasures the self-love and acceptance Bjorn has helped her find, but Isaac didn’t want to help me get in touch with something lovable about myself. He wanted me to change the parts he found unlovable, the unpalatable parts that are nevertheless an undeniable part of who I am.
“I know it’s different, but I understand why he kept trying,” Sherry says. “He fell hard for you when we were kids, and he hasn’t been able to put the old Caitlin to rest the way I have.”
“Right.” Pain flashes through my chest and I suddenly feel more alone than I have in months. Sherry’s never said anything, but I worry that she likes “old Caitlin” better than “new Caitlin,” too. When I still had the memory of Gabe’s unconditional love and acceptance to fall back on, I didn’t let other people’s opinions, even my best friends’, matter too much, but now…
Now, I’m not sure if Gabe is a fan of “new Caitlin,” either. The look he gave me when he talked about not being “on board” with killing anyone else made me feel like I was going to be sick. I wasn’t on board with killing anyone, either. It just…happened. And I dealt with the aftermath as best I could, while carrying the secret all alone.
