After All

by McLaughlin, Heidi

  “That wasn’t my intent.”

  “What was? To hide her the entire time you’re here? To make sure none of his friends know her?” Bowie began to stand but gripped the side of the counter to steady himself. She tried not to pay attention to him, but his presence made her think about how life had turned out in Cape Harbor for Carly and made her feel even worse because she had left. Bowie opened his mouth to say something but closed it again and quickly retook his seat. He was angry; that much she could see by his expression. For as long as she could remember, Bowie had worn his heart on his sleeve. He’d always been there when she needed a shoulder to cry on, offering advice and comfort. She somewhat understood why he was upset, but honestly, it wasn’t like she was going to broadcast that she’d gotten knocked up. It was her issue to deal with, not anyone else’s. Besides, she hadn’t wanted to feel guilted into staying in Cape Harbor.

  She stared at him, unwilling to answer. He was making something out of nothing. If he and the rest of Austin’s friends hadn’t visited Carly on their own, would they really have come around if they’d known Austin’s daughter was here? “I think you’re looking for a fight, Bowie, and I’m not going to play into it.”

  He shook his head before tapping his fist on the countertop. “What happened to you?”

  Brooklyn put the knife down on the countertop and took a step back. “I think you should go back to work.”

  “No, I think we should talk.”

  “We have nothing to talk about.”

  “We have everything to talk about. You walked out on me, on us.”

  “It wasn’t like that, and you know it.”

  “No, I don’t. In fact, I don’t know anything.” Bowie stood between the wall and counter, cutting off an easy escape route. In this moment, she hated this kitchen and wished it were open concept so she could escape and run to her room.

  “You used to tell me everything, confide in me, and now you can’t even stomach being in the same room with me.”

  “I think you know why,” she said quietly.

  “Talk to me, Brooklyn.”

  She shook her head and looked him square in the eyes. “I don’t have anything to say.”

  “You may not have anything to say, but I do. You may have chosen to shut everyone out and disappear, but we didn’t deserve it. We took you in when you were new. We made you one of us, and you bailed when shit got tough.”

  “There was nothing left for me here. He told me that he didn’t love me and then went and died. How do you think that made me feel, especially after we . . .” Brooklyn stopped speaking. She closed her eyes and pulled the brim of her hat down farther. “Just go.”

  “Just tell me why you left. You at least owe me that.”

  She shook her head. “I did—there was nothing left for me here. Austin was dead. My parents were back in Seattle. There was nothing.”

  Bowie stood and came toward her until she backed up against the counter. They were face to face; rather, she stared at his chest. Her head rose slowly, until their eyes met. She looked at him, really took him in. With age, fine lines showed in his creased forehead. His eyes glistened, but also his nostrils flared. Was he sad or angry? Did he feel like she did? Hurt, upset, tormented, and confused?

  She swallowed hard, and his name fell quietly from her lips: “Bowie.”

  “I was here,” Bowie said. He let his words linger in the air before he turned and left. The last thing she heard was him calling for his dog and the front door slamming shut. She jumped, and without her consent, tears started flowing.

  THIRTEEN

  Bowie pulled into his parents’ driveway and turned his key to shut off his truck. He opened the door and waited for Luke to jump out. Together, they trotted up the walkway. He knocked once before opening the door and saying, “Hello.”

  “Kitchen,” his mom said back.

  The Holmes house wasn’t much bigger than where he lived. The three-bedroom ranch-style house sat on a corner lot, not far from where Brooklyn and her parents used to live. As he walked through the living room, toward the kitchen, he gave a slight chuckle at the decor. Knowing what he knew about Brooklyn now, she’d have a field day in his parents’ house. He had never really considered it before, but the home’s interior was outdated and in need of a face-lift.

  He found his mom at the counter, cutting up vegetables. When he came in, she paused and pushed her cheek forward, expecting a kiss. He obliged, like he always did.

  “Here for dinner?”

  “Wasn’t my plan, but if you’re offering.” Linda Holmes always had a hot meal for her son.

  “What brings you by?”

  “Dad around?”

  “He’s out back.” She stopped cutting, picked up the dish towel that rested on the counter, and wiped her hands. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s something I need to tell the both of you,” he said.

  Linda went to the sliding glass door, opened it, and yelled for her husband to come into the house. Her voice carried a hint of worry. Bowie wasn’t trying to alarm her but could easily see why she would be. It wasn’t every day he showed up needing to talk to both his parents.

  Gary Holmes walked in, covered in grass clippings. “Where’s the fire?”

  “No fire—Bowie needs to speak with us.” Even his father gave him an odd look. The three of them sat down at the table, his parents sitting across from him. His mother looked worried, and the reassuring smile he tried to give her wasn’t doing its job.

  He cleared his throat. “First thing I want to say is that Rachel and I have signed our divorce papers. As soon as I file them, we’ll be officially divorced after ninety days.” Carly asking for his services and Brooklyn’s return had completely derailed his stop at the courthouse. After he left his parents, he planned to stop by his office and leave them for Marcia to file in the morning.

  Bowie adjusted in his seat and glanced at his parents. “Second thing I need to tell you is that the Driftwood Inn is going to reopen.”

  His mother’s mouth dropped open, and a tiny gasp escaped. “Did Carly sell it?”

  He shook his head slowly. “She’s reopening it and asked me to do the construction, which brings me to my third and fourth points of our impromptu family meeting. Brooklyn Hewett is back as well. She’s some big-time renovator now.” His eyes cut to his father. In a way, he blamed him for giving her odd jobs when she worked for him. “And she brought along her fourteen-year-old daughter.” He sat back and let those final words sink in. He could see that his mother was going to hit him with a bombardment of questions, some of which he wouldn’t be able to answer.

  “Congratulations on the job.” His father reached and shook his hand. The emotional stuff, Gary wasn’t the best at, but his father meant well.

  “I’m not sure what to say—I mean . . . a divorce. We knew that was coming, but Carly, the inn, and Brooklyn. She has a daughter?”

  “Brystol. Luke’s pretty infatuated with her.”

  “How? I mean, I know how, but . . .”

  Bowie put his mother out of her misery and told her what he knew or at least what he could piece together. He, himself, still had a ton of questions but felt Brooklyn wasn’t going to sit down and give him a dossier on her life anytime soon.

  “And Brystol’s been here before?”

  He nodded. “From what I gathered, every year.”

  Linda shook her head. “I just don’t understand how we didn’t know.”

  Bowie shrugged. “No one knew, except Simone, and you and I both know she would never betray Carly’s confidence.”

  His mother seemed to mull this over a bit before sighing. “Maybe I’ll take some muffins over to Carly. I have a lot of groveling to do.” She stood and went right back into the kitchen and started rummaging through the cupboards.

  “I don’t think you need to grovel, Mom. But I’m sure the muffins will be a big hit.”

  Bowie followed his father outside, where Gary showed his son his large almost
-ripened tomatoes. Since retirement, Gary had developed a green thumb and grew most of their vegetables in the garden.

  After dinner, Bowie went home, showered, and found himself too antsy to sit still. The walk on the beach he and Luke took did nothing to quell the energy stirring within. The walls of his house were closing in on him, and he needed to get away. Although the last place Bowie expected to find himself in again was the Whale Spout, nursing a beer. His hangover from the night before still lingered, but it was the silence of his empty house that made things worse for him. Even the normal solace he found in his dog wasn’t enough to keep the demons from his mind. He hurt, and it wasn’t the sort of ache he had after a long day’s work. He felt stabbing pain in his heart, his head pounded, and he felt that at any moment he was going to cry. He wanted to slide down the wall and bury his head in his hands and sob. After Austin died, his mother told him crying was therapeutic. Back then, the tears came when he would least expect them: He’d be on the couch, and a fishing show would come on, or he’d drive by the place they’d meet for dinner. Mostly, though, he’d break down when he was alone on a jobsite because his partner, coworker, and the woman who had become his best friend had disappeared as well.

  And now she was back and had brought the unimaginable with her . . . a child. Austin’s daughter. A teenager who was a perfect likeness of her mother. When Bowie had seen the girl, he had been taken back to the day he saw Brooklyn, the first day of their junior year, with her long dark hair swaying back and forth as she walked down the hall. From the first time he met her, he was smitten. It was the way her eyes crinkled when she would laugh, how her hair would fall over her shoulder when she was deep in thought, and how she would look at him in class and blush because she caught him staring.

  Bowie jerked the pint glass so hard that beer sloshed to the side and spilled onto his hand. Thinking about Brooklyn was not how he wanted to spend the evening. He downed the beer and signaled to the bartender that he wanted a refill.

  “Rough night, cowboy?”

  Bowie scoffed at the question and reached for the beer. The bartender laughed and wiped the spilled beer off the countertop.

  “Where’s Graham?”

  “Night off.”

  “You’re new,” he said.

  “Here, yes, but not to Cape Harbor. We went to school together. I’m Krista Rich. I was a couple of years behind you.”

  “Oh,” Bowie said, feeling a bit ashamed for not recognizing her. He studied her for a few seconds before deciding to give up trying to remember. He couldn’t focus on anyone or anything other than Brooklyn right now. He was letting her return consume his thoughts and emotions and couldn’t see that ending anytime soon now that he knew Austin had a daughter. That’s what hurt him more—not that Brooklyn had disappeared for fifteen years but that she had kept Austin’s daughter away from everyone. His friends were never given a chance to be a part of her life, and to him that was unacceptable. When he saw her again, he was going to tell her, give her a piece of his mind.

  Bowie picked up and downed his beer, determined to muddle his thoughts. There wasn’t anything he could do about the selfish person Brooklyn had become, and even if there was, he wouldn’t know where to start. He held his empty pint high in the air, waving it around a bit before slamming it down.

  “Easy there,” Krista said as she walked by him to tend to someone else. He knew, deep down, he was being unreasonable, but he was angry for so many reasons, and she and this bar were in his warpath. What made matters worse was each time Graham’s newest employee walked by, she was laughing, and he could only assume it was at him.

  When she finally set another beer down in front of him, he held it tightly, almost as if it were going to slip away and leave him like Brooklyn had all those years ago . . . like he wanted her to do now. His life would be easier if she wasn’t here. His thoughts were starting to become muddled with the memories they had shared. These were moments he refused to remember, and to do that he needed alcohol to numb his thoughts.

  From behind him the door swung open, and a familiar voice rang out. Bowie’s spine tingled. He turned around slowly until he was faced with a blast from the past. Rennie Wallace stood in the Whale Spout with her arms held high in the air, as if she owned the place. Just like with Brooklyn, he hadn’t seen Rennie since Austin’s funeral. Another friend who had disappeared out of his life, not that she would’ve stayed. Their only connection was Brooklyn. She had introduced Rennie to everyone during Christmas break their junior year of high school. She fit in instantly and became a constant part of their group during vacations. Bowie always liked her because she was different from Brooklyn. Where she was quiet and shy, Rennie was loud and wild. She brought a different side of Brooklyn out, one that made Bowie fall more in love with her.

  Graham had a thing for Rennie from the first time she came to visit. They were at his house for a holiday party, and he suggested they play spin the bottle. Bowie had protested, mostly because the temptation to kiss Brooklyn would be too great, and the last thing he wanted was to put her in an awkward situation, even though he suspected Austin wouldn’t have cared. Still, everyone wanted to play, and as they sat in a circle on the floor with an empty Pepsi bottle in the center, he prayed each time Brooklyn spun that it wouldn’t land on him. The last thing he wanted was to spend seven minutes in the closet talking with the girl he loved. Graham, on the other hand, found a way to make sure the bottle landed on Rennie, and there was no mistaking her swollen lips or Graham’s cool demeanor and devilish smile when they came out of the closet.

  At each visit, Graham and Rennie would sneak off, disappearing for hours at a time. It hadn’t mattered where they were—in the woods, at the lake, down on the beach, or at a party—they had always found a way to be with each other. It only made sense that Graham would take Rennie to their prom, both junior and senior year. After graduation, the two headed off to California. Graham to San Jose State to study computer science while Rennie went to Santa Clara to study law. She was the debater of the group, the one with an opinion about everything, even if she hadn’t always believed her own arguments. She’d argue the opposite just to piss off whomever challenged her, and she was damn good at it. Bowie had never thought to ask Graham if he kept in touch with Rennie because he was consumed with his own thoughts about Brooklyn, but now that he was staring at her, he wanted to know why his friend had never ended up with Rennie.

  His jaw tightened when Brooklyn appeared behind Rennie. She had a smile on her face, something Bowie thought shouldn’t be there after their encounter earlier. He felt like she owed him an explanation, an apology for what she had done . . . and not only to him, but all Austin’s friends and the community. Yes, telling the town that you were sorry for hiding Austin’s child was stretching things, considering it wasn’t really anyone else’s business. But the town pined for Austin—they felt his death over and over, year after year—and having his daughter here would’ve given them some closure. As he had those thoughts, he knew he was full of shit.

  Seeing Rennie and Brooklyn together brought back a flood of happy memories, and he found himself smiling, despite the anger boiling within. Days when they were all together were simpler times. As teens, they worried about homework, curfews, and whose party to attend on the weekends. After high school, their biggest issue was adulthood. The things they loved never changed as they grew older. The bonfires, the weekends at the lake, and taking his family’s boat out first thing in the morning so they had a coveted spot on the sandbar. He missed everything about the way their lives had been and had tried to do these things with Rachel, but they had never felt right. His actions had been forced, and he had run on autopilot.

  He tried to look away before Rennie caught him staring. She grinned and took a few steps toward him. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Bowie Holmes.” Brooklyn set her hand on Rennie’s shoulder and whispered something into her ear before beelining it toward a table.

  Great, he thought. He was either g
oing to have to leave or stay and torture himself. He knew he would stay because being in the same room as Brooklyn was far better than knowing she was in the bar and he wasn’t.

  “Renee Wallace, long time no see.” Only he wasn’t looking at Rennie when he spoke to her; he was watching Brooklyn. When he finally turned his attention toward Rennie, he gave her a cursory glance. Slim, blonde hair mixed with browns and other shades of blonde. Eye makeup—which he hadn’t seen Brooklyn wear yet—highlighted her brown eyes, and she was wearing a suit. If he had to guess, Renee was working for corporate America. He should know what her career choice was, but for the life of him couldn’t remember.

  Rennie sat on the stool beside him, leaving him no choice but to pay attention to her. Never in his life had he wished for eyes in the back of his head until now. He wanted to know what Brooklyn was doing, who she was speaking with, and whether she had her eyes pinned on his back, because he could swear daggers were piercing his skin. Against his better judgment, he peered over his shoulder to get one last look at Brooklyn. She was on her phone, typing away. Jealousy soared through him. It wasn’t that he wanted to know who she was chatting with; he wanted to share the bench she sat on. He wanted to be next to her. To have her on the other side of him now so they could accidently brush their arms against each other. When he had cornered her in the kitchen earlier, he hadn’t expected a flood of emotions to come back. Anger was what he wanted to feel, not longing. He was tempted to go to her, to grab her hand and pull her outside, where they could talk. Where he could say the things that were on his mind. Where he could kiss . . . no, he wasn’t going there.

  “She’s single, ya know.”

  “Who?” He knew who Rennie was referring to but acted dumb anyway.