“Go home,” she told me. “I mean it. You need time, Henley.”
I simply nodded.
She squeezed my arm. “Can you drive or do I need to call Rio?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I’m fine. I promise.”
She let my arm go. She didn’t promise it will all be better soon and I was glad. I didn’t think I could hear that right now.
I didn’t go back to work the next day either. Hillya called and told me she didn’t want to see me back there for the rest of the week. She said I was welcome at her house any time but not to return to the shop. I knew she was concerned but staying home was not going to be a distraction.
Gran had a box of photos sitting in her room beside an album that looked unused. I had noticed it when I first arrived and the thought of Gran buying the album and how she had never gotten the chance to use it. She wouldn’t be returning to finish that job. Going into her room, I picked up the box and the album and went to the living room to work on it. The photos weren’t old. They were pictures from her life over recent years. I could tell by the one on top of her and Betty posing behind a table at what looked like a yard sale.
I found myself enjoying the images from her life and seeing how happy she had been here. Even after Granddad’s death, she had continued to live and find purpose. I slid another photo of her at what appeared to be the same yard sale into the album and realized it was something the church had held.
The pictures were mostly of church events and there was one with her and Wanda sitting in a garden with glasses of iced tea. She must have been visiting Wanda that day. I saw Lily’s face in the next picture and my chest constricted. It hurt to look at a reminder. Any reminder. I started to put the box away and stopped when I noticed something odd. Lily’s stomach.
I reached for the photo and picked it up. This wasn’t Lily as a young woman but how she looked now, except her stomach was large and round. Lily was very pregnant. She was sitting in her penthouse, smiling at the camera with her feet propped up on the white sofa that sat in her living area. I stared at it confused.
I turned the photo over because Gran often dated her pictures when she had them printed. There was a note on the back instead of a date. “For Keerly,” it said simply. Keerly?
I turned the picture back over and looked at it again, searching for something to make sense of that. Then I checked in the box for another photo. Something else of Lily or possibly Keerly. Understanding was starting to click… and what I thought this meant… but if that were true… then oh my god. My heart began to race as I dug in the box, looking through the pictures. Then I saw it.
I grabbed the photo and stood up as I looked down at the image in my hand. Covering my mouth on a cry, I shook my head as realization was dumped on me like a bucket of ice water. This could not be it. If it was then… oh God.
I turned the photo over slowly, afraid of the words but hopeful at the same time.
“For Keerly – April 15, 2018” were written clearly and I stood there putting it together. Every moment. Every single detail. It seemed impossible, but here it was.
The picture was Lily in a hospital bed, looking exhausted and sweaty. In her arms is a baby wrapped in a pink and white blanket. A little girl born three years ago. To Lily.
“Oh my god,” I whispered aloud.
“Gran, why didn’t you explain this to me?” I asked the empty room.
Sitting back down, I went through every picture in the box. There were six more with “For Keerly” on the back of them. I sat them all aside. Three were of Lily in different stages of pregnancy. One was of Isla and her husband holding the baby while Lily sat there in the hospital bed smiling up at them. Then the last one was of Saul holding the pink bundle in his arms. His younger face smiling at the camera.
Forty-Two
Rio sat on the sofa with the photos laid out on the coffee table in front of him. The same disbelief I had experienced mixed with so many other emotions. Guilt being the main one. At least for me.
“Holy shit,” he said, lifting his head to look at me. “Why didn’t he tell us? Or me? Back then he didn’t tell me. Why?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean Lily is, what in her late forties? She was old when she had Keerly. I just… I just don’t understand why he didn’t tell me. When I yelled at him and accused him of having an affair with a married woman. Why didn’t he explain? Why did he keep so much from me?” I hadn’t thought the pain could be worse, but I had found that mixed with guilt and shame it was, indeed, much worse.
“Saul has always been closed-off. It’s just this, he has a sister. He never told me. Not even when I went to the house and confronted him.”
“Was that before or after you punched him in the face?” I asked.
Rio winced. “Uh, before, and how did you hear about that?”
“Drake,” I replied.
He sighed and dropped his head into his hands. “This is my fucking fault. I assumed for years that woman was an affair. I never would have guessed the truth. An affair was all that made sense. I didn’t give him a chance to defend himself.”
I sat down in the chair across from him. “He could have told me. Sure, I yelled at him, but I didn’t punch him. I stood there waiting and he just left.”
Neither of us spoke for several minutes. My gaze was locked on the teenage Saul holding the baby girl in the photo. What had happened there? Why didn’t he tell me?
“I owe him an apology,” I said. “But this doesn’t really change anything. I love Saul and if the roles had been reversed, I wouldn’t have walked away. I would have explained. I would have begged him to listen to me.”
Rio turned his head and looked at me. Understanding in his eyes.
“He doesn’t love me. If he did, he wouldn’t have let me go without a fight,” I said for myself more than anything. I needed to hear it and accept it.
“Saul is different, Henley. You know that. He doesn’t react like normal people.” Rio tried to sound encouraging but he failed at it.
“That may be true but if he loved me, he wouldn’t have been able to walk away.”
I waited for Rio to argue and when he didn’t, I had to accept the truth.
Rio didn’t leave that night to go see Saul. I knew he wanted to make things right with him, but he refused to leave me. I don’t know what he thought I’d do if left alone. I went to bed and stared at the ceiling for hours before sleep finally came, and when it did, the dreams were all of Saul. His clear blue eyes, dark curly hair, and his smile. I knew it would forever haunt me.
The sound of a lawn mower woke me and at first I thought it was a dream. One created from my memory. However, the sound got louder, and when I opened my eyes, the sunlight streaming into the room made it very clear I was not dreaming. Sitting up, I swung my legs off the bed. My feet hit the soft rug and I walked over to the window to look outside.