And now, he was the liar for finally admitting the truth he’d held secret for so many years. Though leaving had changed the trajectory of both their lives, he didn’t regret saving his brother from certain ruin all those years ago. Maybe it had been shady, but Trey had gone on to make something of himself and put aside the crap that had landed him in all that trouble in the first place. And his father had kept his good name, made a life for himself outside of the Howard empire after he’d walked away from them. And who knew where his own life would have gone if he’d stayed here. At least now he had something to offer. Becca Howard simply didn’t seem to want what he was offering.
“Still here?” came a female voice from behind him. He turned to find Lana Larson proffering him one of the two champagne glasses she was holding. “Well, shittle-dee-dee, Nio, looks like you could use another nightcap.”
He smiled and took it. “Thanks. Actually, a bottle of whiskey would be better, but I’ll settle for this.”
She joined him at the rail, leaning on it with her elbows and staring out into the restless black of the ocean. “You know, I heard what you told her. Sorry, I was right there. You did the right thing, telling her. She needed to hear it. To know the truth. She’s my friend and I’ll defend her to the death, but God bless her, she needed to hear it to move forward.”
“I can’t decide if she would rather have heard that I was the one who chose to abandon her, or another half-truth about her perfect old man.”
“Far from perfect. Even she knows that. But I think she’d accepted that it had been your choice to go, though she never knew why. Now, with that myth blowing up in her face, she’s got to piece it together again. She never stopped loving you, though. Even when she hated you, she loved you.”
Had she? Cold comfort. Maybe the scale was leaning back in the wrong direction again.
“She’s had a rough couple of years. She’s a little like the ocean these days,” Lana said, staring out at it, “full of tricky rip currents and undertows. But hey—” she nudged him in the arm “—you’re a surfer. You know you have to swim sideways out of those currents, right? Parallel to the beach? Trying to swim straight through will always take you right down.”
That much, he supposed, was true. “Duly noted,” he said with a half-smile.
She patted him on the arm. “Night, Nio. Hope we see more of you.”
*
At the rental house, it was after one a.m. when he pulled a beer from the fridge and noticed Paul sitting outside on the deck, a beer of his own in his hand. The stars were out in full force over a velvet swath of ocean and the sound of the waves was like a heartbeat in the quiet night.
Nio walked outside.
“Wedding go late?” Paul asked, motioning him over to join him at the rail.
“Late enough,” he said.
Paul gestured at the deck chair beside him. “One thing about using this damned thing,” he said, indicating his wheelchair, “I never have to wonder if I’ll have a seat.”
Nio sat down, propped his feet on the rail. “You’ll be out of it soon.”
“That’s what they said two prosthetics ago.” He took a sip of his beer. “We’ll see. I was just taking a last hit off of the ocean here. So nice at night. Peaceful.”
“Yeah,” Nio agreed. “So you leave this morning?” He already knew the answer to that question, but stating the obvious seemed the best he could do conversation-wise tonight.
“Early. Thanks for this weekend, Nio. While I’m at it,” he said, “thanks for everything. I mean…everything. I’m not sure I’ve ever really said that.”
Nio shrugged. “No need. You’ve paid me back a hundredfold in friendship. And fantasy football.”
Paul chuckled. “How was the wedding? Did you patch things up with Becca?”
“Those are two separate questions. With two distinctly different answers.”
“You told her though?”
“Uh-huh.” Nio nodded and sipped his beer. “It did not go well.” He braced his forearms on his knees and stared at the deck.
“She’ll come around.”
“Maybe she won’t. Maybe I…should have left her alone.”
Paul rubbed his thigh absently as the two sat in companionable silence for a while. “Know what I love most about the ocean?”
Nio stared into the dark sea, waiting for him to tell him.
“The steady quiet,” he said at last. “Hey, I never saw it ’til I was fourteen. But that first time my father drove me to the shore back in New Jersey, I thought…here’s a place I could sort everything out. Cut out the noise of my life, my family, the neighborhood.”
“What’d you need to sort out?”
“All the usual teenaged BS. Why Canace Rinaldi liked my best friend more than me. Who the hell I was gonna be. What I wanted. Maybe more important, what I needed. I think right there was when I decided I needed the Navy. I saw the way forward that day. SEALs came later. But I recognized my path or maybe it was my ambition that day. It was weird, me bein’ fourteen. But I never questioned it after that day. Never veered. Naval Academy, then straight in to the service. Then SEALs. Well…” he added with a frown, “except for Mel. I never exactly planned on her.”
Nio stared out into the black horizon, wondering where he was going with this. He only knew that Paul had married young and that sometime after he’d joined the SEALs, that marriage had ended. As many marriages did among the elite forces. But he rarely talked about it.
Paul went on, “I put blinders on for everything and everyone else. I guess even her. This leg…put an end to my career and I won’t lie—I haven’t quite found the detour yet to where I’m heading next. There are days I think I never will. Some days, I know there’s no other choice but to keep looking. You, on the other hand, and correct me if I’m wrong, you never lost sight of where you were going. Why you were doing what you were doing. It was always her. Am I right?”
He turned a look on Paul in the dark. “My detours have sometimes made me wonder about the cartographer who laid out this freaking map. But yeah. You’re right. It’s always been her. I’ve always…loved her. Not sure she’d say the same about me.”
“Maybe she’s just a little lost. Like me. Maybe she just needs…I don’t know…someone who already knows the road to hang in there. Wait for her to…catch up. Cause, you know, the only easy day was yesterday.”
Nio exhaled a smile. It was a saying he’d heard often during the men’s recovery, a slogan SEALs had tattooed on their hearts. It was every bit as true now as it had been then. He reached for Paul’s hand, then pulled him into a hug. “Don’t be a stranger, man. I want to see that new leg when you get up and walking on it. You hear?”
Paul gave him a two-fingered salute. “Hooyah.”
*
At sunrise the next morning, after a long, sleepless night curled up with Milo and contemplating her resistance to happiness, Becca had given up and driven to the grocery down on Pacific Coast Highway to shop for her mother. Elaine avoided grocery stores at all costs, where she was sure to run into old acquaintances. If anyone noticed the unnecessary force with which Becca tossed items in her shopping cart, no one said a word.
A half hour later, she knocked on her mother’s door, her arms full of groceries.
Elaine answered the door with a big smile, looking perfect, as usual. “Rebecca—you’re early. I wasn’t expecting you until later today. How was the wedding?”
“Great. Just…terrific. Sleep, on the other hand, is in short supply. So, I spent all night thinking instead.” She moved into the apartment with Milo and set the things down on her mother’s kitchen counter.
“Oh?” Elaine murmured warily.
“You know…sorting out Milo’s philosophy on life, you know? Right, Milo? Something like…letting go of the things that don’t belong to you?”
“I see.” Elaine fed the dog a cookie, for which he was eternally grateful.
“Maybe you should get a dog, Mom,” Becca said, putt
ing the cold things in the fridge.
Elaine petted Milo with consideration. “I have a part-time dog. Right here.”
“A dog of your own, I mean. An unconditional dog, like this one. I could pick one out for you from the shelter. Dogs are great. They’ll believe anything you tell them. Like… ‘you’re a good boy.’ Or… ‘I’ll be right back.’ Or… ‘I never knew anything about why the love of your life left without a word of goodbye.’”
Elaine tilted a stricken look at Becca, reminding her of a German shepherd she knew.
“That’s what you always claimed, right?” Becca said. “That you had no idea?”
“I—” She stammered and turned away from her to get another cookie for Milo. “D-Did something happen with Nio?”
“Oh, something happened. It was a swing and a miss. Strike three! And the crowd goes wild…”
“Oh, Becca…”
“Chalk it up on the Howard scoreboard, right? All of us striking out. Because that’s what happens when the truth gets told.”
Elaine’s face lost color. “What…what did he say to you?”
“Let’s see. He said that Daddy blackmailed him to get him out of town and away from me. Something about Trey and prison and threatening Juan Luis. At first I thought, that has to be a lie. I knew Daddy got caught up in things with strangers’ cases. But that was different. I was so sure he would never, ever do such a thing to me. Hurt me that way. Change the direction of my life. Or Juan Luis’s, who was practically part of our family for fifteen years.”
She shook her head and leaned on the counter with both hands. “I actually accused Nio of lying to me because I didn’t want it to be true. I couldn’t wrap my head around the two of you doing something like that to me. Years ago, I even asked Daddy if he’d had anything to do with Nio leaving and he denied it to my face. And I believed him. But you know, ten years. I’d pretty much gone through every other scenario. And none of them…none of them made any sense.”
Standing frozen a few feet away, Elaine bit her lip. Her eyes filled.
“And then I realized that this was the only thing that made sense.”
A long, terrible pause stretched between them. Finally, her mother looked down. “I was sure one day you would figure it out. I’ve dreaded this day.” She turned to pour herself a cup of coffee, but Becca grabbed her arm.
“And…? That’s all you’re going to say?”
Elaine’s hand shook as she gave up on the coffee. “No. Darling. Nio is telling the truth. Your father forced him to leave. To leave you without saying goodbye. And to never come back. He blackmailed him using Trey and Juan Luis. It was just one of many unconscionable things he did, but the most heartbreaking.”
Becca shook her head. “And you knew? All along and you let me think—?”
“He made that decision on his own, but eventually, I knew. He admitted it and he forbade me to tell you. Telling you was all tangled up with the law and his love for you.”
“His love for me?” She pressed her backside against the counter and stared at her mother. “You’re serious right now. How is what he did love? Trying to ruin Nio’s life? Mine? Juan Luis’s? I can’t even…”
“But he did love you. Of course he did. He thought he was protecting you.”
“From what? Nio, the gardener’s son? Who was fine to weed his flowers, but not to date his daughter?”
“He had dreams for you—”
“Expectations, you mean.”
Elaine wiped her eyes with a knuckle. Becca hadn’t seen her cry in a long time. Not since her father’s death. “Yes. Yes. Expectations. He thought you’d get over it. This crush you had on Nio—You’d go on, finish school, law school…”
“I hated the law. And it was no crush, Mom. You knew that I loved him. I’ve never stopped loving him. Even when I hated him.”
“I know. Nothing that isn’t true can break your heart for so long. And watching you suffer, I wanted to tell you. Many times I started to tell you. But I was afraid if I did, you’d hate us. Hate me. I couldn’t bear that. It was selfish of me. I don’t deserve the daughter you’ve been to me through all this.”
Tears ran down Becca’s cheeks. It all became clear then. The silences between them. The strain on their once close relationship. All the words between them were fraught with the unspoken ones. Acknowledging the anger and hurt that had bubbled to the surface last night—as she’d thought about her father’s betrayal and ultimate cowardice—was long overdue.
“Of course, it all came out anyway.” Elaine took a deep breath. “What your father did that day was the beginning of a very slippery slope for him. First it was Trey’s case. Then apparently, another. And another. And then someone caught him, blackmailed him, forced him to fix other cases. I didn’t know about the others until it was too late. It became a vicious, horrible cycle he couldn’t escape.”
“So…all of it? His downfall, his suicide? It was because of me?”
“No, darling. No.” Elaine reached for her hand, but Becca snatched it away. “For heaven’s sake, no. It was all him. He made those choices. He was at the apex of his career then. He felt untouchable. But he was deeply flawed, just like all of us. It wasn’t your fault at all. You simply fell in love. And we…” She looked out the window at the apartment next door. “We stole that away from you. And I’m so…so sorry. Nio sacrificed himself and his love for you for his family. What he did was…heroic. He protected his brother and father. He kept his word and, while your father was alive, he never came back.”
Nio had sworn to never return to her. But once her father was convicted, there was nothing he could do anymore to hurt his family. “What about the letter Nio said he wrote?”
“Letter?” Elaine frowned. “What letter?”
“You’re saying I never got a letter from Nio at our old house?”
“If you did, I never saw it.”
Her heart sank another inch. “So Daddy must have intercepted it. But by then, it was too late for him to follow through on his threats to Nio. He was already under investigation.” Becca turned to her. “You know, he’s rich now. Poor Antonio, the gardener’s son? That boy who was never going to be good enough for me? He made good, Mom. He’s rich and we’re ruined. How’s that for karmic justice?”
Elaine sat down at her little kitchen table. “I know. I’ve followed his progress, his career. I even donated anonymously to his company in the early days, long before we lost everything.”
She could not have surprised her more. “You what?”
She nodded. “Your father never knew. It was my money. It was the least I could do for Nio, considering what we’d cost him.” Elaine dropped her gaze to the lace-edged placemat on the table. “Looking back, I would have done everything differently. Everything but that. But all of my regrets don’t matter now. What matters now is what are you going to do?”
Finally, Becca lowered herself down into the chair opposite her mother and just stared at her for a minute. “At the wedding…when he told me, I didn’t believe him. Which is perfect, really.” She dropped her head into her hands. “Maybe we were just never meant to be.”
“The only things meant to be, my darling, are what you decide will be. And now that you know, you must push away all those things that don’t matter and focus on the things that do. As you said, let go of the things that don’t belong to you.”
Becca turned to look out the small apartment window at the sliver of ocean visible from here. “I think I’m too late.”
“Only if you let it be too late.”
Maybe, she thought…maybe her mother was right—for once. Maybe the only thing holding her back was her. Hadn’t Nio done everything to convince her? Come back to Laguna for her? Sung karaoke for her, bought a yacht, for God’s sake? She had been the one not to trust, not to imagine that they could put the past behind them and start again. Maybe the person she’d really lost faith in was herself. Becca stared out the window for a long, long time, thinking about the things p
eople hide and the toll that secrecy takes. And how tired she was of all that.
And then a crazy, absolutely desperate-sounding idea came to her.
Behind her, she heard her mother shift in her chair and sniffle.
Becca took a deep breath and went to kneel in front of her to take her hands in hers. “Mom, don’t cry. We have each other. No matter what. I forgive you,” she said. “But don’t ever do that again.”
Elaine abruptly lost her usual elegant façade and crumbled into tears, pulling her close. “Oh, Becca…”
Becca nodded against her shoulder. “We both need to step out of all that ancient history and start over. Whatever happens now with Nio. We need to put all these old secrets behind us.”
Elaine nodded, too, hugging her tightly. “Oh…yes.” Every inch of her hug felt like relief. “Thank you.”
“You know, I’ve really missed this. Right?”
Her mother nodded against her shoulder. “Me, too.”
“I’m going to try with him, Mom. Do I have your blessing?”
“Always.”
Becca released her and stood. Milo, always at the ready, sat up, too, with a ‘where are we going?’ woof. “So right now, I need to get something out of your storage closet.”
Elaine sniffed. “My…closet?”
She hurried to the overstuffed storage closet under her stairs and began unloading things, piece by piece, until she found the thing she was looking for and hauled it out. Maybe, just maybe, if she was very lucky, Nio would forgive her, too.
Chapter Ten
Nio and Trey had gone to drive his father up to the new place early, under the guise of checking out the landscaping for some friends, something his father loved wholeheartedly. Naturally, Juan Luis’s squat black and white shelter dog, Luna, was at his side. They were rarely apart, those two and the dog jumped out when they stopped in front of the bungalow with an excited bark and set to sniffing up the property. Stepping out into the driveway, the old man whistled, his gnarled, work-hardened hands flat on the hood of his truck.
Unsung Hero Page 12