“Can’t you just give me a cheat sheet?” He was only half joking.
“Not if you want this to really work,” Mack said somberly.
“Just keep reading,” Malcolm said. “Your journey starts now.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The drive from the hospital to the Vanderpool house took only twenty minutes, but Alexis felt every second of the drive like a nervous first-timer on a roller coaster. Every mile brought her closer and closer to the drop-off. And when she finally pulled into the driveway, her stomach plummeted in a free fall of fear, gravity, and the inevitable tug of what have I done?
Why hadn’t she brought Noah for this? The thought of meeting these people, her father, alone seemed wise before, but now she wished he was next to her. Telling her she could do this. That everything would be okay.
The two-story Federal-style house sat an acre back from the road on a manicured lawn of lush green grass under a canopy of soaring oak trees. Meticulously maintained window boxes of geraniums in vibrant shades of red, pink, and orange popped against white shutters, and an American flag lifted and waved in the soft breeze from its anchor on a porch column. The only thing missing was a white picket fence, and it could have been a spread in a magazine.
All of the other things she was feeling—fear, regret, longing—were replaced with something that was becoming as familiar as it was unwelcome. Resentment. This house was straight out of her mother’s dreams. Quiet. Statuesque. Safe. But she’d had to work two jobs just to save enough for the down payment on their tiny house in Nashville.
This was the kind of home that required money and job security and a support network. The things her mother never had.
This was a family home, the kind that boasted stability, prosperity, security. This was the kind of house where a mom never had to worry about how to feed her child, where you could get a puppy because you could afford it, where medications were never rationed, where birthday parties had clowns and big cakes and bouquets of balloons.
Alexis parked behind a shiny BMW sedan and a Range Rover SUV. A black Mercedes was parked in the garage alongside a bright red Lexus.
She quickly texted Candi that she was here. Candi responded to wait on the porch. Which was an odd request, but maybe because Elliott was sick they were trying to be quiet or something.
Didn’t matter. Alexis just wanted to get this over with and go home. It wasn’t until she climbed the porch steps that the sense of stomach-plummeting fear gripped her again. She was about to meet her father.
Her father.
The front door opened, and Candi stepped out, pulling the door behind her. She swallowed nervously. “Hey.”
“Hi.” Alexis looked beyond Candi’s shoulder to the door. “Is something wrong?”
Candi did the nervous swallow again. “No. I just, I wanted to greet you by myself before we go in.”
“Oh.”
“Everyone is here. Mom and Dad; my brother, Cayden; and his wife and their kids.” Candi bit her lip. “Our brother, I mean. I keep messing that up.”
“It’s okay.” She gestured toward the front door. “Should we . . . ?”
Candi opened the door and waited for Alexis to walk in. The sound of muted laughter from somewhere in the back of the house greeted them as Alexis did a slow turn in an entryway that was bigger than her kitchen. The foyer stretched at least fourteen feet to the ceiling and boasted a massive crystal chandelier.
Candi pointed down a long hallway that ended in a kitchen. “They’re in the sunroom.”
Alexis followed Candi down the wide hallway lined with built-in bookshelves and bracketed on each end with elaborately molded archways. It led into a chef’s kitchen with an eight-foot island down the middle and a view of a sloping backyard and in-ground pool.
Off to the side, partitioned from the kitchen by a wall of windows, was the sunroom.
Alexis stopped short, her hip colliding painfully with the edge of the island.
There were six of them. An elegantly dressed woman sat on one end of a couch gazing lovingly down at an infant and a toddler playing on the floor. A youngish man sat next to her. He had hair like Candi’s and a big smile. On the floor, a woman fussed with the baby’s clothes. And watching them all from a leather recliner, a proud glint in his eye, was Elliott.
His hair was grayer than not, and his skin had a dull, weathered look. Alexis would’ve thought it was from too much time in the sun, but she knew that particular look. It was the look of illness. But his smile was the same one from the wedding announcement—broad and full of life. He looked like a man who laughed a lot.
Alexis spun around, her chest tight. “I don’t think I can do this.”
But before she could escape, which was entirely her plan, the older woman called out from sunroom.
“Who was at the door, Candi?”
Alexis met Candi’s eyes. A guilty shadow in hers brought a red filter of anger to Alexis’s. “What is she talking about?”
Candi didn’t answer. Not directly anyway. She smiled at something or someone over Alexis’s shoulder. “I brought a friend to meet you, Mom.”
“A friend?” Alexis whispered.
“Well, bring her on in,” the woman said.
The snap of the recliner sent the air out of Alexis’s lungs in a single, panicked exhale. How the hell was she going to get out of this now? She squeezed her eyes shut against the next sound—footsteps.
“Welcome,” the man said in a gentle voice.
There was no way out of this. Alexis turned around—and found herself once again staring into eyes exactly like hers. He wore a gray sweater that was probably once a perfect fit, but illness had made the shoulders droop and the hem hang long. He extended his hand. “I’m Elliott.”
Alexis looked disbelievingly at Candi. “Are you kidding me?” she hissed. “You didn’t tell them I was coming?”
Elliott lowered his hand, confusion tugging his eyebrows together.
Candi finally found her voice. “Dad, this is . . . this is Alexis.”
Elliott offered his hand again. “Nice to meet you, Alexis. Candi so rarely brings anyone over anymore now that she has moved—”
Alexis cut him off. “Alexis Carlisle. That’s my name.”
Elliott blinked several times, staring at her with a sudden intensity that made her squirm and want to laugh at the same time. Then his Adam’s apple bobbed with a nervous swallow, and she decided to go all in.
“I believe you knew my mother, Sherry.”
Elliott pulled his hand away and turned a hard eye toward Candi. “What did you do?” he asked in a fierce whisper.
“I had to, Dad.” Candi’s voice cracked.
The tension from the kitchen must have drifted into the sunroom, because the older woman stood up. “Is everything okay?”
Elliott turned around. “Everything’s fine.”
No one bought his reassurance. One by one, Lauren, Cayden, and his wife—whatever her name was—all turned their attention to Alexis and stared.
Candi started to answer in shaky word fragments. “She could be a match, Dad. For a kidney.”
Lauren gasped and surged forward. “What? Oh my gosh. Candi, this is your friend? Why do you think she could be a match?” Her ballet flats made delicate tap-tap sounds on the hardwood floor as she walked into the kitchen.
Cayden and his wife picked up on the excitement. Each came rushing forward with a child on their arm and matching expressions of hope on their faces. Alexis groaned and looked at Candi, whose skin had gone unnaturally pale.
“I know you didn’t want me to contact her, Dad, but—”
“Why wouldn’t you want Candi to contact her?” Lauren asked, her joy from just moments ago now replaced with confusion. “What is going on?”
Tears formed in Candi’s eyes. Oh, brother. Alexis held up her ha
nds. “Okay, listen. Maybe we should save this for another time.”
Elliott schooled his features into something reasonable, something deceptive, as he faced his wife. “Probably a good idea. We don’t want to get too excited. I doubt some random friend of Candi’s is a match.”
Some random friend? His words ricocheted through Alexis like an errant pinball, bouncing off vital organs and shredding what was left of the wall around her heart. The crack became a chasm, and it quickly filled in with a feeling she thought she’d buried through therapy and time. A feeling she’d never hoped to feel again after she exposed Royce. It was a desire to hurt someone the way they’d hurt her.
“Oh, I don’t know, Elliott,” she breathed, regretting the words she hadn’t even yet spoken but unable to do anything to hold them back. “From what I’ve heard, your children are often the best match.”
“Excuse me?” Cayden said, his gaze darting back and forth between Alexis and his father.
“What is she talking about, Elliott?” Lauren asked.
“Dad, please, let me explain.” That was Candi.
Cayden exploded this time. “What the hell is going on here?”
Alexis looked to Candi for help, but she was staring at Elliott, who was too busy looking guilty as fuck to be of any use.
“Seriously?” Alexis finally blurted at Candi. “You’re going to make me do this?”
“I—” Candi could barely get a word out.
Oh, for God’s sake. Alexis tossed her hands in the air. “Congratulations, it’s a girl.”
The sarcasm missed its mark. They stared in silence, except for Elliott, who was boring a hole in the floor with his averted eyes.
Alexis sighed and groaned at the same time. “I’m his daughter,” she said. “Surprise.”
She could have tossed a grenade in the middle of the room, and it wouldn’t have done as much damage as her words. There were shouts and hands covering mouths and some swearing, and oops, some tears from Elliott’s wife.
“What is she talking about?” Lauren screeched. “Your daughter?”
Cayden handed the crying baby to his wife but kept his glare firmly on Alexis. “This is bullshit. I don’t know who you think you are—”
“She’s our sister,” Candi said. “I have the DNA to prove it.”
Cayden turned his anger on Elliott. “Is this true? She’s your daughter?”
Lauren let out another sob and whipped around, hands pressed to her mouth.
Elliott finally found his balls and stood up straight. “I didn’t want you all to find out this way.”
“Oh my God,” Cayden breathed. “It’s true?”
Another loud sob from Lauren sent Elliott racing to his wife’s side. He circled to face her. “Honey, please. Let me explain. It was a long time ago.”
“Thirty-one years, to be exact,” Alexis quipped.
Lauren’s eyes widened as her brain did the inevitable math. “We were together then, Elliott.”
“No!” Elliott grabbed his wife’s hands. She yanked them back. “We were . . . It was that summer when we broke up. Lauren, please. Listen to me.”
“It was that woman, wasn’t it?” Lauren moaned.
The words were a slap across Alexis’s face. “That woman was my mother, and her name was Sherry Carlisle, and if you don’t believe I’m his daughter, just look at my eyes.”
Lauren paid no attention to Alexis, her weepy eyes locked on her husband. “She’s the one who called you when you came back from San Francisco.”
Wait. What? Her mother had called him? Alexis stormed forward. “Did—Did she tell you she was pregnant? Did you fucking know about me?”
Apparently the f-word was too much for Cayden’s wife, because she hightailed it from the room with the children.
Cayden brought his rage back to Alexis. “I think you’d better leave.”
“No!” Candi cried. “She’s a match, Dad. I know she is. She got the blood test today, and—”
“Stop this, Candi,” Elliott growled. “It’s not a guarantee. And you never should have brought her here without talking to me first.”
Lauren covered her whole face with her hands and began to wail.
Elliott faced Alexis. “Cayden’s right. I think you need to leave.” He leveled his angry stare at Candi. “I’ll deal with you later.”
Alexis shook her head. “Look, if I’m not wanted here, I have no problem leaving.”
She spun on her heel and retraced her steps on shaky legs to the door. Candi raced after her. “Wait. Please stay.”
Alexis yanked open the front door and pounded down the porch steps. Candi jogged after her and grabbed her arm.
Alexis whipped around. “What the hell was that, Candi? Your mother didn’t even know? How could you do that to me? How could you do that to them?”
“I—I was only thinking about—”
“My kidney. Yeah, I get it.”
“No. I was only thinking about saving my father’s life. Excuse me if I don’t know the proper protocol for all this.”
Alexis clenched her fists and stomped to her car, digging her keys from her pocket.
“Please don’t go,” Candi pleaded.
“He obviously doesn’t want me . . .” Alexis stopped short in horror as emotion clogged her throat at the slip of the tongue. “He doesn’t want my kidney.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s thinking right now. He was just surprised.”
Alexis snorted, pulling open her car door.
“Just wait here, okay? Let me go talk to them some more.”
Alexis slid into the front seat, and just before she yanked the door shut, she said, “Don’t call me again.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She drove in a fog. Until anger and resentment and the sting of rejection settled into a blessed numbness. Until oncoming cars on the freeway merged into a single blur. Until the nearly constant buzz of her phone on the floor of the passenger seat became a backdrop to the sound of recriminations in her head.
She should have known better.
She should have listened to Noah.
She pictured him in his house, standing in his kitchen with a bowl of whatever he’d heated up for dinner in his hand, shoveling it in as quickly as he could so he could get back to work. Or maybe he was reclined on his couch, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles as he watched a documentary on TV. Or maybe he was at his computer, glasses on his face and his hair standing at wild angles because he’d dragged his hands through the strands too many times.
She’d seen him do all those things. His mannerisms were as familiar to her as her own.
And suddenly all she wanted was him.
It was six o’clock by the time she got off the freeway at the exit that would take her to his house, a two-story Craftsman that looked modest on the outside but was completely remodeled and modernized on the inside. Noah had installed solar panels along the roof, all new electricity and energy-efficiency stuff, and a bunch of other things he’d tried to explain to her once but she didn’t and would never understand.
Floodlights illuminated the shadowed driveway when she pulled in. She’d barely turned the car off before the front door opened. Noah came out barefoot in a pair of jeans and a faded MIT sweatshirt. Every emotion she’d been smothering for the two-hour drive returned in a flood as she slid out of her car.
“Hey,” he said, jogging down his porch steps. “I’ve been trying to reach you. Is your phone dead? What happened?”
Alexis shut her door, met him halfway on the sidewalk, and threw her arms around his waist. He immediately wrapped her tightly in his arms and held her against his chest. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
Alexis pressed her cheek to his warm breastbone, the sound of his heartbeat a reassuring cadence.
“Talk to me,” he sa
id against her hair.
“He . . . He threw me out.”
Noah’s arms stiffened. “He what?”
Alexis pulled away from him and looked up. “He told me to leave. He doesn’t want me or my kidney.”
Noah’s face hardened into something that should have been intimidating but was instead thrilling in its protectiveness. “I should have been with you.”
“I’m glad you weren’t. It was too humiliating.”
Noah took her hand and pulled her up the sidewalk. “Come inside.”
“What were you doing?” she asked, following him back up the porch steps. “Am I interrupting anything?”
“Just my panicked pacing because you weren’t texting me back. I thought you’d gotten in a car accident.”
She laughed quietly, but he turned around at the front door.
“I’m not kidding. I was about ten minutes away from calling hospitals along the freeway.”
“I’m sorry. I . . . I was—”
“It’s okay. I’m just glad you’re here.”
He held open the door for her to walk in first. His house was warm and smelled like pizza. Her stomach growled instinctively.
“When was the last time you ate something?”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded toward the kitchen as he shut the door. “There’s some left. I didn’t order any meat in case you wanted some.”
The gesture brought a flurry of butterflies to her stomach and made her heart do the thud-thud thing again. “Thank you.”
“What did I tell you about thanking me too much?”
“Would you rather I take you for granted?”
“I’d rather you get it through your head that I’m here for you, no matter what.”
Alexis toed off her flats and left them by the front door. His house was a standard layout for a Craftsman style. The entryway opened into a long hallway with rooms on either side and a staircase off to the right. There were three bedrooms upstairs, one of which he used as a home office.
The hallway ended in the kitchen, which led to a small dining area where she’d shared countless dinners with him over the past year. The brown place mats she’d crocheted for him during a brief attempt at the craft were piled in the center of the table, unused and mostly unusable. But he’d kept them anyway.
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