If I don’t show him who I am, and invite him to do the same, then I suspect he’ll never finish nudging that door open. We’ll never know if we could have been something more.
So I draw in a breath, telling myself to woman the hell up, and say, “I had a breakthrough moment with Mary today.”
“Oh?” he says lightly, as if the mere appearance of interest might shut me down.
“Yeah.” I pause, thinking about what to say, and land on, “I’m going to tell you about the first investigative story I broke.” I force a smile. “Yours would be the second. I don’t count encouraging jackasses to act like jackasses investigative.”
He just nods, encouraging me to continue.
“My parents bought a commercial building together before they died. They were going to pay someone like you to update it and then sell or rent it.”
Another nod.
“It was a side project. A way to make some money because Dad’s position had gotten cut at the private school where he taught music theory. Dad had all these wild plans for finding a new career, like opening an ice cream stand or converting the bunkhouse into something we could rent to visitors.” I grimace. “Actually, that could have worked, but he wasn’t the type of person who would’ve actually gone through with it. He’d just talk about it for weeks without coming up with a plan. Mom was an accountant, good with numbers and making plans, like Mary. Anyway, she suggested buying the property as a money-making venture. They bought it from a widow. Her name was Lacy Caser. I guess she used to rent it to some small business, but it tanked, and she decided to sell rather than keep renting it.” I snort. “With the housing prices so high, I’ll bet she feels like an idiot now.”
“What happened then?” he asks softly.
“My dad started to get jumpy whenever his phone vibrated or rang. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who noticed. One day the text alert went off when he was in the bathroom, so I checked it out. The message was from a private number. It just said, ‘Meet me tomorrow at 2. Our place.’” Cal flinches at that, and I can tell he knows what’s coming, or at least he thinks he does. “I thought maybe he’d gotten himself into some trouble. I’d just read about underground gambling circuits, and I figured maybe he’d gotten swept up in something like that to make money.”
“So you followed him.”
“I did,” I say. “I borrowed my friend’s car so he wouldn’t figure it out, and I trailed him. I stayed two cars behind like all the manuals say to, and I parked a good distance behind him. But I already knew where he was going.” I feel my hand tighten around the beer, and Cal layers his free hand on top of it, the warmth of him suffusing my skin and calming my muscles. “It was the property my parents had bought. I found a place behind a rhododendron bush, and I watched while Lacy opened the door for him. She had this huge smile on her face, like he belonged to her, and then she pulled him to her, and he kissed her. It wasn’t in public, I guess, because nothing was built up around there back then, but it was public enough.”
“Shit,” Cal says. “I thought this was where your story was going, but I’m sorry it did.” He squeezes my hand. “What did you do?”
“I left. I didn’t want to see if they’d try to bang it out before they got inside. But later that night I asked my dad if he’d have coffee the next afternoon to talk about my writing. I…I thought I should confront him first, before I told my mother.” I set my beer down on the table, my gaze fixing on the wicker, but Cal shifts, turning a little so we’re facing each other, his arm still around my shoulders.
“But that never happened,” I say. “None of it. Because my parents went to the grocery store the next morning to make us brunch, and they never came home.”
“That’s when they had their accident,” he says, understanding dawning in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Molly.” I search for pity, expecting it. Fearing it. But there is none. Just sympathy and warmth and something deeper that I can’t interpret.
He looks like he wants to say something, but he just bites his lip and nods. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
“Mary came home, of course, and I tried to tell her about it. Because she was the person I saw as the authority figure in our family, after Mom and Dad. I…I needed to tell someone. I said I thought that something inappropriate had been going on between Dad and Lacy, but she refused to hear it. She said he would never, ever do anything like that, and I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. I could have told her that I’d actually seen them together—”
“But you didn’t.” Something flashes in his eyes again, and there’s a slight sheen to them. The emotion I see in him stuns me. I think I see anger there too, although it’s not aimed at me. Does he feel all of this on my account?
“No,” I say softly. “I didn’t. And when Lacy showed up at their funeral, crying as if she had some right to that grief…” Rage creeps into my voice. It’s not that I blame Lacy for the affair—Dad was the married one—but I hate her anyway, and if that makes me small and spiteful, so be it. “…I didn’t say anything then either. And I didn’t say anything when Maisie decided she wanted to use Lacy’s old building to open her dog shelter, although I sure as hell didn’t want anything to do with it. I applied to all out-of-state colleges and used every cent of my inheritance to get what Mary would call a mostly useless journalism degree at the University of Washington. Asheville didn’t feel like home anymore.”
His eyes widen a bit. “So Maisie still doesn’t know about all of this?”
“No,” I say. Then, softer, “I guess maybe we should tell her. Or not. I can’t decide. She’s always looked up to him. I…I wish I didn’t know. I used to idolize my dad. He’s the one who encouraged me to write. He was always so funny and charming, so alive. But now I can’t think of him and not think about what he did and how no one else knows.” I feel my expression darken. “No one besides Lacy, I guess. And now Mary.”
His arm tightens around me. “Mary should never have asked you to keep quiet about it. It was too much for someone so young to carry. You’re strong. Maybe stronger than anyone else I’ve ever met, but you were just a kid. You shouldn’t have needed to be.”
Something flutters inside of me. When has a man ever told me I’m strong and meant it as a compliment?
Maybe you’ve been spending time with the wrong men.
The thought is disarming, and I’m not sure I have the headspace for it. So I focus on the rest of what he said. “Mary gets that now. We talked about it today, and she apologized. At the time, she couldn’t let herself believe Dad was being unfaithful, but it stayed with her just like it did with me. Still, you’re not wrong…it felt like I was the only person in the world who knew the truth, and I had to carry it on my own shoulders.”
I half expect him to say something like, So that’s why you distrust men and enjoy ridiculing them. Or, Ah, now I understand why your dreams of writing meaningful things withered on the vine.
But he doesn’t try to psychoanalyze me, which I’ve been doing enough of for two people, thank you very much. He just holds me, his grip and his eyes telling me that I might have been alone then, but I’m not alone now. And I don’t feel alone. Back in Seattle, did I ever really feel anything but alone? Living there, writing for the blog—it was a lot of fun in the beginning, escapism at its finest, but the grief and rage and sadness were always there, barely under the surface, threatening to burn me up.