by Kent, Alison
“I need you,” he said, and he reached for her then, cupping her nape, bringing her close, one eye on the road—she hoped—as he kissed her.
His lips were soft even as he pushed against her, the kiss firm and possessive and urgent. She fell into him, body and soul, giving him the assurance he seemed to be searching for, that she was here, and she wasn’t going anywhere, and to ask because she wanted to give.
He lingered at the edge of her lips, finally moving back to his seat, but his hand stayed on her shoulder, then her arm, and finally he opened his palm. Asking. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pull away. I’m probably as nervous as you are. And I’m trying not to think about the reason we’re making this trip.”
She leaned an elbow on the console and nuzzled her face to his shoulder. “They’re not going to want to see me. Or have anything to do with me. I don’t know why I agreed to come—”
“You came because I asked you to—”
“—and I don’t know why you asked me to.”
“You’re as much a part of what’s in Sierra’s box as I am. We’re the only two she told about it. You told the Gatlins because Oscar can’t. We’ll tell my parents, and then we’ll tell yours.”
“Oliver may turn out to be less of a dick than he’s been acting like all this time.”
“Don’t let his big check fool you.”
“It’s not just the check. He really was apologetic.”
“He should’ve done his own thinking instead of letting that piece of work Merrilee think for him.”
“He wants to help with the center—”
“He wants to get in your pants—”
“Angelo!”
“What, you don’t think it’s true? Because, trust me. Guys know these things.”
That had her thinking back to what Will Bowman had said about him. “I don’t care if it’s true. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. The center needs volunteers and money. And if Oliver wants to offer both as an olive branch, he’s welcome.”
But Angelo had stopped listening, his focus snagged by the near distance. She followed the direction of his gaze, and a yawning pit opened up in her stomach.
“There’s the turnoff to their place,” he said, pointing at an approaching road sign and slowing the car. “Are you ready?”
“To go back eight years and have them hate me again?” What was she saying? “Not that I’d have to go back eight years for that.”
He made the turn and then rolled to a stop, the long road ribboning ahead of them, an open pasture on one side, a fence on the other, a cluster of buildings huddled tight in the distance. “I want you with me while I share all of this with them. But if it’s too uncomfortable, I’ll understand.”
But she was shaking her head before he finished. “It’s not about me. It’s about them. I’ll stay by your side through anything, but if they don’t want me there, I’ll wait outside or in the car or wherever. I’m not going to add to the pain this is going to cause them. I can’t do that to them. I love them too much.”
His eyes softened, his dark hair and dark lashes and the dark stubble on his face giving him the look of a pirate. And yet his eyes were so kind, the same eyes that had seemed to shoot fire at her so often in the past. He reached up to cup her face in his hand, and she rubbed against him, a cat, hungry, selfishly so.
“Do you know how much I love you, Luna Meadows?”
“Do you know how happy I am that you didn’t let another woman snatch you up?”
“No other woman ever got that close. You were always in the way.” This time when he kissed her there was a deep desperation mixed with his desire, as if his finding her after all this time wasn’t enough. As if the future they faced was too harsh, and their connection too fragile.
It wasn’t fragile at all. She knew that, and she did her best to tell him so, to tell him to trust her, using her hands and her mouth, holding him, tasting him, breathing him in. Learning again the sharp edge of his cheekbones, the ridge of his brow. The hollow of his throat where his rumbled groan vibrated against her fingertips. Showing him how strong they were together, because of all they had overcome.
When she finally pulled away, his eyes were shining with so much emotion she was convinced she’d reached him. And for the things ahead awaiting them, that was enough.
“Are you ready?” he asked again.
She nodded. “With you? For anything.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The house his parents lived in was small, the yard clean and well-kept, with beds of flowering succulents, but still resembling a desert. The size would suit having only their youngest still with them, maybe their youngest two, if Teresa hadn’t left home, though he wondered what it had been like when they’d moved here eight years ago with the four children they’d claimed. Two now underfoot where there had once been six. Sierra’s passing had reduced the number to five. His ostracism had made it four.
Isidora and Emilio, if they’d gone to college, would have their degrees by now. Teresa, at twenty, would be in her third year. Felix, at eighteen, a high school senior. But Angelo knew nothing of what had gone on in his parents’ or his siblings’ lives. Felix’s notes had been little more than his saying hello. Eight years ago he’d brought Luna with him to the house on Three Wishes Road. Eight years ago he’d been told to leave and to never come back.
He’d thrust the girl he’d loved into the madness that the Caffey home had become, hoping to force his parents to stop blaming her for something that wasn’t her fault. Sierra’s death had been a horrible accident. She had not died at Luna’s hands. But his parents looked at Luna, who’d spent hours and days, weeks in their home, and seen only what they no longer had.
Luna reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I always imagined your parents living in a house the size of the one in Hope Springs. I don’t know why. I guess it’s how I knew them, and it’s what seemed to fit.”
“Yeah.” His throat was tight, his nape sweating. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. All he could think of was the day he’d last seen them. His father telling him he was dead to them. His mother chastising him for his disrespect, bringing that whore to the house after what she’d done, when all Luna had done was survive. His mother had spit on the ground in front of him. She’d actually spit.
He couldn’t imagine the next few minutes were going to go well, but he opened his door, and Luna, because she was as much a part of this moment as he was, opened hers. The smells of fried meat and fried onions reached him, as did the sounds of clattering pans, the strains of his father’s flamenco guitar. And a voice—his mother’s?—singing plaintively in Spanish. Dinner hour at the Caffeys. Except there was no cello. Ten years now, and there had been no cello, but the fact that there was music again gave him hope.
They slammed their doors, one, two, and the guitar stopped. The singing ceased. Moments later, as Angelo and Luna were halfway to the porch, the front door opened. His father stepped out, his expression blank, as if he hadn’t yet recognized his son, or hadn’t yet processed the reality that his son, after eight years and being banished, was standing in his yard. Angelo couldn’t imagine he looked that much different, and yet his father…
Mike Caffey appeared not to have aged a day. He was still trim, his dark hair full, his boots and the tan knit slacks he’d favored so similar to what Angelo had last seen him wearing, the moment felt like déjà vu. And then his mother walked out, a dish towel in her hands, a colorful skirt of turquoise and red swishing around her knees. She wore the last eight years less favorably. Her hair had gone gray, and her cheekbones stood out sharply where the knot at her nape pulled it away from her temples.
“Mom. Dad.” The two simple words nearly choked him. He squeezed his hand around Luna’s, then let her go and moved forward. She fell behind him, giving him this time, waiting, respectful. “It’s good to see you.”
“Angelo,” his father said, and his mother nodded, twisting the towel around her hands.
&nbs
p; He wished he’d held on to Luna a bit longer, but knowing she was there… What had he expected? For his parents to jump from the porch in a stage dive and wrestle him joyfully to the ground? At least they hadn’t turned and walked away. “I’ve brought you something.”
They both looked at the box he held, and a stillness settled over them. They would recognize the box from St. Thomas, of course. They would know he was here about Sierra.
He waited on the porch for Luna to join him. She was hesitant, at first, her smile, when he turned to look at her, honest and true but filled with trepidation. Her hand was trembling, her fingers cold when he squeezed them with his. They followed his parents into the front room… hardwood flooring, a braided earth-colored throw rug, squat pottery lamps, furniture he’d never seen. His father’s flamenco guitar in the seat of a leather recliner, as if waiting for him to return.
“She can stay in here,” his father said, gesturing toward a cushy corduroy sofa facing a big-screen TV before walking into the next room.
His mother started to follow, then paused, and asked without looking at Luna, “Would you like something to drink? Tea or coffee? A soft drink?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Caffey,” Luna said, her voice catching. “I’ll be fine.”
Carlita Caffey nodded with what Angelo swore was relief and left them alone.
He went to Luna as she sat on the couch, knelt in front of her, feeling as lost as she looked, as helpless. As hopeless, too. “I didn’t think this would be easy. But I did think, being Mexico and all, it wouldn’t be quite so cold.”
Tears welled in her eyes as she smiled, as she lifted a hand to brush his hair from his face. He reached for it, bringing her fingers to his mouth for a kiss.
“It’ll be fine,” she said. “We’re here. We’re inside.”
“Yeah, but you’re in here. I need you in there.”
“And I’ll be with you,” she said, leaning her forehead against his, then kissing him the way he needed in that moment to be kissed, a desperately powerful clinging of lips and shared breath. “Now go.”
He swallowed hard and pushed to his feet, carrying the box into the kitchen where his parents waited. He set it on the table. It was a table he didn’t recognize. One everyone in his family—except for him, except for Sierra—had sat around to eat dinner after their move from Hope Springs. The table he’d grown up knowing was in the house on Three Wishes Road. Soon it would be part of the Caffey-Gatlin Academy, maybe in the teachers’ lounge, maybe in the conference room.
The old table was solid, one his father had built, one with eight chairs Angelo had helped him construct. That had been one of their first projects together. To this day that time with his father was one of his favorites, holding memories no others did, his father sharing his knowledge of the wood they’d used, explaining the best use of his copious collection of tools, setting Angelo on the path to his own career. He was glad the table would still see years of good use. He would’ve hated to see it destroyed. He had Luna to thank for that, and he was happy about that, too.
His father sat at the table’s head. His mother sat to the right. He pulled out the chair across from her, scraping it forward, wishing for more elbow room because he felt as if he were being crushed by expectations. He flipped the lock on Sierra’s box with his thumb, then cradled it unopened between his hands.
“Luna bought the house on Three Wishes Road out of foreclosure.” He didn’t ask how they’d let things get to that point. That conversation could wait. “She’s been… we’ve been going through everything that was left there, and she found this in the tree house,” he said, hearing his mother’s sharp intake of breath, his father’s slower, deeper, shaky inhalation. On the drive down he’d worried they wouldn’t be strong enough to look through the contents. Even thinking about what he and Luna had found inside still left him gutted.
It also left him to realize that as close as he and Sierra had been, allies growing up, he had no clue as to the rich life that had thrived in his sister. The letter she’d written to Luna… How could anyone at eighteen know another person that well?
“What is it?” his mother asked, bringing him back to the present. She reached a tentative hand toward the box lid, placed the tips of her fingers there, and then curled them into her palm as if she’d been burned. When she raised her gaze to his, tears swam in her eyes. “Angelo?”
He nodded while he gathered his thoughts, found his voice, cleared the choking emotion from his throat. “Sierra left letters inside. One for Luna. One for me. One to both of you, and one from Oscar to the Gatlins. There’s also a music CD. Songs Sierra and Oscar played together. Some that they wrote.” He braced his elbows on the table, rubbed at his temples to push away the pain throbbing there. “There’s also a photo from a sonogram.”
His mother gasped. His father’s head came up, and then he stood, shoving away from the table, knocking his chair to the floor. He left it there as he walked to the kitchen sink and slammed his hands down on the countertop, slammed them again and again. “I knew it. That son of a bitch. I knew it.”
“No, Dad. It’s not like that.” Angelo opened the box, reached into the bottom beneath the papers there for the narrow gold bands buried at the bottom of the box. Wedding rings the couple had never worn. Had Sierra left hers because her fingers were swollen? Had they intended to stop at the house for the box on their way out of Hope Springs? He set them on the table, watched them spin to a stop. “They were married.”
“Married?” This from his mother. “Angelo, what are you saying?”
“Oscar and Sierra got married the Friday before the accident. Luna was their witness.” He nodded toward the box. “The CD contains the music they played at the ceremony.” And in the hospital during Sierra’s delivery, though he kept that thought to himself.
“And the sonogram picture? Was Sierra pregnant when she died?” His mother pulled the box closer, shuffled the letter and CD aside to find the photo. She lifted it out with shaking hands. “Why wouldn’t the authorities have told us? Did they not know?”
“I’m not sure what they knew or didn’t know. But, no. She wasn’t pregnant when she died.” He closed his eyes, swallowed. “She’d already given birth.”
“What?” his mother asked, gasping, the photo fluttering to the floor as she covered her mouth with both hands.
His father returned to the table, planted both palms on the surface, and leaned forward, an angry bull bellowing. “Where’s the baby? Does that damn Merrilee Gatlin have our grandchild?”
“Angelo,” his mother pleaded. “Tell me what happened. Where’s my baby’s child?”
“Listen to me, please,” he said, reaching for the photo where it had fallen and dusting it off. “Don’t jump to conclusions. Don’t think you know what you can’t. I get that this is hard to hear, but the Gatlins didn’t know about any of this until recently. Only one person knew.”
“One person?” his father asked, slowly straightening. “One person? The person you brought here with you? Luna Meadows knew all this time, and you brought her here with you? How dare—”
Angelo pushed to his feet, steaming, holding his father’s gaze. “No. This isn’t on Luna.”
“Of course it’s on Luna,” the older man said, and gestured wildly. “She saw the accident. She spent that weekend with Sierra. Is that when she had her baby? That weekend?”
He nodded. “They arranged the adoption through an attorney. All of Sierra’s medical bills were paid. She was well cared for.”
“How did we not know she was pregnant?” This from his father. “How did she hide that from us?”
And this—“No one knew? But you? And Luna? And Oscar? She told no one else?”—from his mother.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” His father again. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t know about the adoption until recently. Until Luna told me,” he said, feeling battered by their questions because the answers they wanted had gone to the grave
with his sister.
“Did you know she was pregnant?”
He scrubbed both hands back over his head, holding his hair from his face, listening to his father’s words echo. “Sierra called me near the end of her junior year. She asked me to come home and be with her while she told you.”
“You didn’t. You wouldn’t.”
He answered his father with a shake of his head, shame and guilt both weighty.
“Please, Angelo. You’re the only one who gets me. And you know what this will do to them.”
“You should’ve thought about that sooner.”
“I should have. You’re right. But I can’t go back, and I need you now.”
“I can’t. Not this weekend. I have plans.”
“Next weekend then? Can you come next weekend?”
“No. I’ve got plans then, too.”
“Plans not to come home at all?”
“Something like that.”
“I was selfish. And stupid. I was getting ready to go to Rome. I was wrapped up in my own life.” He’d been a jerk, and worse, not much of a brother.
“We could’ve taken the baby,” his mother said, her voice rising, her fingers knotted together, her knuckles chapped and red. “We could’ve helped her while she finished high school. She didn’t have to give away our grandchild! Now we have nothing left of her. Nothing! Do you understand?”
He understood more than they could know. “I thought she would tell you. I never thought otherwise.”
But his mother was crying now, hearing nothing he said. “Oh, my baby. My Sierra. Why didn’t she tell us?”
His father walked around the table to where Angelo was standing. “Do you know why she changed her mind?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, his hands going to his hips. “I think so, only I just found out.”
