Under Wraps

by Louisa Keller

  Carson opened his mouth to say something undoubtedly mediatory. Unfortunately, Dominic snapped before Carson could get a word out.

  “You get that I’m an adult, right?” Alistair’s eyebrows rose practically to his hairline. “Because you’re treating me like I’m a child. No crass language at the dinner table? This isn’t 1950, we don’t have to be prim and proper while we’re eating fucking takeout.”

  My jaw dropped. I was torn between finding Dominic’s temper irritating, and feeling thrilled that he was tearing down Alistair.

  “When you eat at my table, you will abide by my rules,” Alistair said stormily.

  “Alright, let’s take a breath,” Sydney said, looking back and forth between the two of them.

  “Mom, he’s out of line,” said Dominic.

  “There are a lot of different people with different backgrounds at this table,” Sydney said, reaching for Dominic’s hand, but he slid it off the table and out of reach. “It makes sense that it would take some time for us all to get used to each other’s quirks. But let’s all try, okay?”

  “She’s right,” Alistair said, deflating somewhat. “I apologize, change is…difficult for me.”

  I snorted loudly and all eyes turned to me.

  “Is there something you’d like to say, Ainsley?” Sydney asked. I felt a surge of affection for her—she really was trying to help us all come together.

  “I find it amusing that Alistair considers change difficult,” I said. “I rather think impossible would be a better word.”

  “Ains,” Beau said sharply, kicking me under the table. “Do you really want to do this here? Now?”

  Anger was rising up my body, constricting my chest and tensing every muscle. It was the anger of someone who has been neglected for a lifetime and never had the chance to process that pain, to heal from it. I forgot that we were at a family dinner, that Carson and Dominic and Sydney were watching this all play out. A coldness took over me, and all at once I was able to say the things that had been roiling inside of me since I was a child.

  “You were a terrible father, Alistair. You were terrible when Beau and I were children, and you are terrible now that Dominic has joined the family.”

  Alistair stared at me. “Well, go on. Get it out. Tell me how I was so terrible.”

  I narrowed my eyes, furious. This was not supposed to be on his terms. “You neglected us. Horribly, constantly, you were never there.”

  “You’ve said this before, Ainsley.”

  “Well, now I’m going to elaborate. You never should have had children. The minute we were born you handed us off to people you paid to care for us. They clocked in and out of our lives, went home to their own families between shifts. It was their job to look out for our wellbeing, but it was your job to love us, to cherish us. And you failed at your job. We never learned what it felt like to be loved by the adults in our lives, Alistair, because you never wanted us.”

  Alistair gritted his teeth. “We wanted children, Ainsley.”

  “No, you wanted heirs.”

  “Excuse me?” he snapped, and finally, finally he was affected by my words.

  “You wanted somebody to pass your money onto, and the Stapleton name. So, you had a couple of kids and immediately washed your hands of us.”

  “You were provided for, you received an unparalleled education. Your mother and I set you up for success, and look at you—you are successful philanthropists, entrepreneurs. It’s time to stop blaming the past for your unhappiness. Grow up, Ainsley. Face your problems like an adult.”

  “What the fuck do you think I’m doing?” I snarled. “I have spent my whole life trying to figure out how to live in this world, because you couldn’t be bothered to teach me yourself. Calling you out for your negligence, that is me facing my problems. I blame you because my unhappiness is your fault. You were an abysmal parent, and now you suddenly want us in your life because—what? You need help getting your affairs in order over the next couple of decades? You’re lonely? You want to see us suffer? Why the hell did you bring us here, Alistair?”

  Silence fell. Alistair and I stared at each other, both breathing hard as though we had just run a marathon.

  “Ainsley,” Alistair said sharply. “Sydney came into my life last year. She came into my life and she made me realize that family matters. She has spent the past twenty-eight years making sure that Dominic has everything he needs to be happy, to thrive. And she has been doing the same thing for Carson for nearly a decade. I understand that I failed you—though I thought I was doing right by you at the time. I can see now that I was wrong. I brought you here because Sydney makes me want to be a better person, a better parent. I am not going to get it right all the time, I will make far too many mistakes. But she makes me want the chance to make those mistakes, and to make them right when you point them out. I have plenty of people whose job it is to put my affairs in order—the only thing I want from you is to be family. I recognize that I don’t deserve a second chance, but I am asking for one anyway.”

  It felt like being hit over the head with a baseball bat. Never in my life had I considered that Alistair might one day genuinely want the chance to treat me like family. He had been a villain in my mind for so long that I could not quite fathom him in any other role.

  “You,” I said carefully, pointing at Alistair, “are a liar. You expect me to believe that you have good intentions? I have forty-five years of evidence that you do not give a shit about me. Only a fool would believe you.”

  “Ainsley,” Beau said, but I ignored him.

  “You do not deserve to be in my life,” I said very clearly. “And you will never have my forgiveness.”

  I expected Beau to try again, to drag me away or apologize for my outburst. But it was Carson who spoke next, his voice trembling with anger and sadness all mingled together.

  “Look around this table,” he snapped. “I mean it, eyes up, look around this fucking table.” We did as he said—how could we not, when the voice of reason was shaking with rage. “You have hurt each other, and that isn’t insignificant. But you are all here, you are all alive. Alistair, they have a right to be mad, but you are also right to keep trying. Stay the course. Dom, stop picking fights. You’re stressed out, you have a lot going on that you don’t want to share with everyone, and that’s fine. But you can’t take it out on them either. They are your family now, and if they treat you well, you should give them a chance. Beau, don’t rise to the bait. Any time someone starts fighting, you get pulled into it. It’s okay to let things play out sometimes. And Ainsley.” My eyes snapped to him, and I gulped. He was glorious, bright-eyed, sparking with passion. I wanted to sob just looking at him, radiating so much pain, so much wisdom. “Ainsley, these people are trying so hard. Please, please meet them halfway. I wouldn’t advise you to give Alistair a chance if I thought he had bad intentions. Your family is alive, they are here, you can talk to them, touch them, love them. I would give anything to have that chance. I would quite literally rip myself apart for a single minute with my family. Give your dad a fucking chance.”

  With that, he stood up and walked out the front door, letting it slam shut behind him.

  We all sat there, stunned. His words were reverberating through my head—and more than the words, the emotion behind them. He spoke from a place of loss, of grief, of healed scars that would always be with him. And he was right.

  I looked over at Alistair. “It…will take some time. For me to trust you.”

  “I understand,” he said, nodding. “It will take some time for me to make it through a conversation without multiple blunders.”

  “Well, let’s, uh, face those blunders as we stumble across them,” I said. Then I turned to Dominic. “I haven’t been fair to you.”

  “You’re damn right, you haven’t,” he said, but there was a hint of a smile there.

  “Do you think you can keep your temper in check long enough to give me another chance?” I asked.

  “I
can try if you’ll try too.”

  “Good,” I said, nodding. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find Carson.”

  “Uh, as someone who’s giving you a chance?” Dom started. “Give him some space. He’ll come back when he’s ready.”

  My whole body was pulsing with the need to find Carson, to comfort him, to sort through everything he had just said about his own family…but he had asked me to give these people the benefit of the doubt. And so I thanked Dom for the advice, and headed up to Carson’s room to wait for him.

  He would come back when he was ready, and he would find me waiting with open arms.

  Flashback

  Healing isn’t linear.

  Generally, you trend up, but there are a lot of little slips along the way.

  It’s true for physical injuries, and also for emotional ones.

  At a certain point you plateau—that’s the point where you’re told to transition to maintenance work instead of the real heavy lifting. For my shoulder and ankle, that looked like chronic pain that could be controlled without drugging myself into oblivion every single day. For my splenectomy, it meant that the wound was healed, but I had to make sure to be careful about infections. For my grief, it meant being able to get through each day without a breakdown. I kept going to therapy for years after I reached that point.

  But here’s the thing.

  Sometimes a healed injury gets exacerbated by something.

  My chronic pain, for instance, was aggravated by the thunderstorms that rolled through Seattle on occasion.

  And my grief, well, that was exacerbated by attending a family vacation where everyone was taking each other for granted.

  15

  Carson

  I walked around the farm for hours.

  It was a beautiful night, the full moon shining high in the sky, and the lack of light pollution allowed me to really admire those stars again.

  I walked until my ankle was aching and the tear tracks on my face were finally dry. And then I walked some more.

  When I finally got back to the Manor, it was nearly two in the morning. I tip-toed up to my room and pushed the door open, ready to collapse on the bed.

  But someone was already in it.

  Ainsley had fallen asleep fully dressed, the lamp spilling warm light across his face. Affection surged through me—this man had waited for me. He had risked getting caught, had stayed until he was too tired to stay up any longer and then he stayed some more.

  I closed the door as quietly as I could, trying not to wake him, and began stripping off my jeans. He stirred, his eyes fluttering open, and then he was sitting up, his expression urgent.

  “Carson—”

  “Hey,” I said softly, smiling down at him. “It’s okay, lay back down.”

  “No, I have to apologize, I have to tell you—”

  “Shh, baby, it’s okay. I’m serious, lay down. I’m getting into bed with you.”

  He burrowed down under the quilt and I crawled into the space he left for me, nuzzling at his throat as he wrapped his arms securely around me.

  “I am so deeply sorry, Carson. You were right, I will give Alistair another chance. And Dominic. I spoke with them, I…we are all going to try.”

  “Good,” I sighed, kissing his clavicle. “I’m so happy to hear that.”

  “Carson?”

  “Mm?”

  “I’m sorry about your family as well. I cannot imagine the pain you must have gone through, losing them.”

  I nodded against his chest, and hugged him tighter.

  “Stay with me tonight?” I mumbled, already succumbing to the tantalizing lure of sleep.

  “For as long as you would like.”

  I listened to the strong beat of his heart, the proof that he was alive and well.

  I fell asleep between one heartbeat and the next.

  One moment I was fast asleep and the next I was wide awake, sitting straight up in bed and descending into a full-fledged panic attack.

  My vision was tunneling alarmingly, the world pulsing around me, and the only thing I could feel was fear.

  I was vaguely aware of another body in the bed, but it seemed abstract, impossible to focus on in the wake of sheer panic.

  They’re dead, a voice chanted in my head. They’re dead because you didn’t save them. They’re dead because you were weak. They’re dead because you failed them. They’re dead and you could have stopped it.

  Some valiant part of me tried to fight back with my meditation phrases.

  May I be…

  May I be…

  May I be…what?

  It wasn’t there, I couldn’t access it.

  Shocks of hot and cold were shooting down my arms and legs, shaking me like a fever, and I could hear myself hyperventilating although I couldn’t feel it happening.

  Fuck.

  My legs seemed to move of their own volition, propelling me up and through the door, across the hall, into Dom’s room.

  “D—Dom?” I gasped out.

  My vision was so warped that I could barely even see him sitting up and rubbing his eyes sleepily. And my voice, well, it was swallowed in the sharp gasps of hyperventilation.

  I wasn’t even sure I’d actually managed to say his name, he might’ve just woken up because he heard me having a goddamn meltdown in his room.

  “Carson?” he asked, his voice gentle and concerned.

  “They’re dead,” I panted out. “They’re dead and I—I could’ve saved them. I could’ve. I—they’re dead and it’s—”

  “Hey,” Dom said soothingly, and I could vaguely feel his hands guiding me down to sit beside him on the bed. “Carson, can you hear me? Can you look at me?”

  All at once, I was aware that I was trembling all over.

  “I fucked up,” I rasped, “I fucked up, I fucked up, I—”

  “Carson,” Dom snapped.

  My eyes shot to his and I tried to focus on his familiar face, his concern.

  “I didn’t prioritize them,” I whispered, my mind careening wildly from one horrible thought to the next.

  “You had a broken clavicle and a shattered ankle, you couldn’t have saved them,” he said in an impossibly steady voice. “Remember, Carson? You were too hurt to help anyone. It wasn’t your fault.”

  I shook my head hard, provoking the sickening jolt of a migraine in my temples.

  “You don’t get it,” I gasped. “I didn’t prioritize them, I didn’t want to grieve them today, I wanted…I wanted…”

  He was rubbing my back, soothing circles of his hand starting to ground me a bit.

  “Okay, slow down, can you breathe with me?” Dom asked. “In, two, three four. Good. Out, two, three, four, five, six.”

  It seemed an insurmountable mountain to climb, getting my breathing back under control. Calming down would mean facing all of those terrible realizations, all of the shameful thoughts, all of the guilt.

  If I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t feel the pain.

  Just the panic.

  “In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four, five, six. Keep breathing Carson.”

  The panic was starting to splinter, the cracks showing, and my distressed mind was rollicking wildly between the lure of calming down and the familiarity of chaos.

  “Good, good job, Carson. That’s better.”

  The room was starting to fall into place before my eyes, the details coming into focus as my brain received the oxygen it needed.

  “Feeling a little better?” Dom asked, still rubbing my back.

  I shook my head, feeling the pain leeching back in now that the fear was receding.

  It’s my fault. This is all my fault.

  “Carson, talk to me. What happened?”

  I drew in a long, steadying breath, and somehow managed to meet his eyes.

  They were as patient and loving and nonjudgmental as ever.

  “I really fucked up, Dom.”

  “Hang on, slow down. Tell me what happened
.”

  “I can’t,” I nearly howled, the guilt curling around my heart and squeezing hard.

  My face was wet, and I wondered for a moment if there was a leak in the roof. But that made no sense—it wasn’t raining outside the window.

  Tears, my mind supplied.

  Oh, right.

  I was crying.

  “Okay, okay, you don’t have to talk about it. But…can you at least tell me what you need?” Dom asked, pulling me into a one-armed hug. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”

  “I need to not be here.”

  “At Abshire Manor?”

  “Yeah. And I need to not be sober.”

  “Okay,” Dom said, nodding. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Flashback

  One moment we were happy.

  Smiling in the sunshine, enjoying our vacation, looking forward to a future of endless happy family moments.

  The next moment, my parents were dead and my sister was in an irreversible coma.

  And there was no way to get back to that happy moment, where we balanced on the precipice of the end of the world as we knew it.

  16

  Ainsley

  I woke up in Carson’s bed all alone. For a moment I just lay there, smiling goofily, so unbelievably happy. I was not concerned about his whereabouts—surely, he had just gone to the bathroom, or maybe downstairs to find breakfast.

  The events of the night before had been utterly transformative. All at once I realized how foolish I had been to push Alistair away when he extended his hand to me. Dominic and I were going to make an effort, not just for Carson’s sake but because there was a chance that we could be family someday too. It felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, the weight of the entire world. Holding onto my resentment for so long had taken a toll on me, and now I had the chance to reframe my relationships, reexamine how I lived my life. I had a chance to strive for happiness, and with Carson at my side, it seemed imminently possible.