The Wallace Girl: The Feud Series

by Scott, Eliot

  Absentmindedly, I sip my coffee and bend the part of the sticker that’s curling away back in place. It holds for a moment, and I read the faded words that were hidden from my view: Sinclair Aquifer, Deeds and Contracts, just as the sticker pops off and curls up again.

  My stomach drops—I know that this box contains information about Alex’s lake, because nothing else I’ve sorted through has mentioned it.

  Alex’s voice—the one that used to be in love with me—creeps into my mind: Our lake, Jojo. It’s…our lake…our lake…

  A lake that’s never, ever been mine. Never was.

  I glare at the box. Damn that lake and how much I loved it, and damn the clear water I swam in when Alex first kissed me, and damn the sunset we watched together when I admitted to myself that I loved Alex out loud for the first time. And damn him one hundred times that said he loved me right back! He shouldn’t have said that to me.

  The sound of my own voice coming from the past hits me next.

  Why, Alex?

  The tears threaten to return to my eyes faster than the words and the memories have, as I think of the very last day Alex trashed me with his words—the day he made love to me finally.

  Damn the memory of his too-tender kisses and his hands on my skin. It was the night we made Emily. I wouldn’t know for weeks. It was the night he said all the words I’ve told myself year after year were not his words, but his father’s. Grady’s. May’s. But not Alex’s. Years of resolve, but now I’m starting to slip—maybe they were his after all.

  He never looked in my eyes again after we had sex—not once. I didn’t see into those golden eyes of his until I saw him at the funeral. Not at graduation, and not even when I caught him red-handed snooping around my burned down house. By then I was so hurt, so broken, that I didn’t even try. I couldn’t even cry anymore. He’d already turned down the pathway to the lake—his lake—when I spotted him. It was easier to just drive away.

  Damn my inability to let him go.

  I came to the funeral—to look for what?

  I’ve read countless documents searching for—what?

  I’ve scanned page after page of Tacoma-based documents that all mean nothing to me, because yet again, and as always, maybe I’m too stupid to understand all of the big words my eyes can hardly read anyhow.

  I have to admit to myself I’ve wasted more than five years of my life on this burning feeling of vengeance I swore I’d come back here for. Only, now that I’ve seen Mr. Sinclair’s coffin with dirt on it, I know I’m never going to wreak havoc out on anyone or anything. I’ve also now wasted days here in a place that doesn’t want me—with people who hate me.

  Not counting my aunt, of course, and Walt.

  At least I saw what’s left here, and I’ve faced some demons. It wasn’t for nothing.

  My eyes flick to the last box again.

  Sinclair aquifer. My heart is full of scorn and bitterness about what was written on the label. It’s so very Sinclair of them to inflate what that lake was—to call it what it’s not—an aquifer. Please. It’s just a lake…it’s just the lake.

  I let my mind wander around the images that will forever be with me. I think of the rock we lounged on while planning to take on the world, the shining gold and pink and yellow rainbow trout we’d scare out of pools as we swam. The pebbles I’d let slip through my fingers while he and I were studying or making out. The fishing—the kissing—the way he used to make me crazy, and the way I used to unzip his jeans and he’d flash his brows up high.

  How many times we lay under the stars there or swam—our hands always unable to get enough of each other’s skin, our lips always unable to stop trying new things. We would kiss until raw, then touch until our bodies were exhausted from every new sensation.

  The memories. Our happiness, and my devastation. Plus all of my love for a boy who threw me away, yet who gave me everything, who made me the person that I am today.

  A mother.

  I think of Emily missing me, of how she calls me mommy and how her warm brown eyes look just like Alex’s, and my head starts spinning.

  The pressure to answer all of my stupid questions suddenly seems like a ridiculous, petty and horrible reason to be away from my sweet adorable daughter. Alex doesn’t want me; he’s made that clear. And maybe he shouldn’t know about Emily, because if he did, perhaps he would he try to take her from me.

  My heart races with fear. Maybe I need to just step away, as advised all along really.

  When I found out I was pregnant, my courage grew leaps and bounds, but it was equaled by my fear. I knew there was nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my baby from these horrible people she shares blood with.

  I also knew that if they found out about her, they would stop at nothing to corrupt her and make her their own…or worse. I don’t let myself finish the thought of worse often, but I know it’s death. The Sinclairs don’t have much care for life unless it’s their very own.

  Aunt Shelly forbade me to contact any of them. When Emily was born, after hours of exhausting labor in an Ohio county hospital where I pushed and screamed and cried all alone, nobody but a nurse I’d just met that day there to coach me through the most joyous and terrifying moment of my life, something deep inside me shifted. Fear turned to resolve, and eventually strength. I began formulating my plans then, really. Everything was just going to take time—time I spent with the most beautiful little girl heaven had ever created.

  Parenthood was harder than any hard work I’d ever done on the farm. There were days, raising Emily alone, that made me question my sanity, and days that made me happier than I’d ever felt. There were moments where I smiled and cried at the same time because I was so in love with Emily and so afraid all at once. So…tired.

  We were always searching out the next apartment, and for a while I was stuck in a crap motel until I finally met my roommate Jeff. My hero. My friend. The kindest soul in the world who took us in—a random girl who called when she found his name on a community board posting. He made Emily and me feel welcome, and every day he says we fill his heart and his life. Jeff’s happy-with-life attitude kept my despair at bay. And after what Jeff had been through in his life—kicked out of his house when he told his parents he was gay at just seventeen—he gave me a mirror of strength to look at when I didn’t think I had it in me to carry on. He reminded me that giving Emily up wasn’t an option, and most of all he gave us what I crave: a sort of family when mine was so very lost.

  But Jeff, he’s moving on—he has to. We aren’t his, and he’s not ours. He got a job in another state, and though he will always be close to us, he’s not someone I can lean on anymore.

  Nobody will ever keep my little girl as safe as I can.

  At least…nobody besides, I hope, her real father Alex.

  Safety—and family—that’s who Alex is deep inside, at least to me. He’s a protector, my protector. And he’s going to be good for Emily no matter how he feels about me. I just know he’s going to lose his heart when he sees her. He has to…he has to, or all will be lost.

  I swallow down some fear, hoping and praying that he is still inside of himself—that he is still him behind the huge mask he’s been flashing at me. Hoping, of course, that everything will change.

  It has to for Emily.

  Emily deserves her father. A real dad.

  And Alex…well, he deserves Emily.

  15

  Jojo, Two Years Ago. Ohio.

  Emily called Jeff Daddy today.

  I made eye contact with him the second those words escaped her lips.

  She’s three, so he did the best he could with his answer: “Your daddy lives far away, but I’m your best friend. And I love that I get to be in your life,” Jeff had said.

  Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if Jeff could be her dad.

  Only, I know I’m not his type. My gender is the first turn-off for him. And the second. And the third…

  I feel bad because I know Jeff would love to
meet someone and have a relationship. One that involves more than just the few dates he goes on with guys that he never brings home because he doesn’t want to risk having Emily form attachments to someone who won’t be around long. He doesn’t want to mess up the love and the consistency he and I have found here—as friends—and with Emily’s love shining on both of us, making each day worthwhile.

  Jeff’s as damaged as I am, and was hurt even worse by his ex-boyfriend Jacob. I hide out, waiting for a relationship that will never happen, and Jeff hides with me, both of us wondering if our broken hearts will ever heal.

  Jeff, for years, has been content to play house with me while he searches for his next fling. And me? I don’t even bother with dating apps or flings. I know what I want, what I miss and what I long to get back. Jeff says I’m a sadder character than he is because I spend extra time in the bathroom, or playing with some toys I’ve put by my bedside, but always for the sole purpose of remembering how Alex used to touch me, how he used to move me—make me feel.

  I can make myself come with a dozen different battery-filled things, and it’s never the same. Why would it be? There’s no warmth to fall into, just my cold and lonely sheets.

  It’s fine. Jeff is my rock, and I am his. We’ve built a new definition of family for now. It’s a careful ecosystem of kindness and non-judgment. Jeff’s generosity turned into an unconditional love between us. His schedule lets me take a few college classes while I work pieced-together jobs in retail and at restaurants. I make sure he’s always got food in the fridge and zero excuses to feel lost and alone. Together, we’ve been able to keep Emily at home—safe. Jeff is happy to be both father and mother to me and Emily, two states of being that is simply his essence. And he lets me fill up all the holes Alex punched in me when he sent me away by letting me be mother, and sister, and new best friend to him.

  Jeff took Emily to the park an hour ago so I could study. Those two are such great friends—such parkaholics—that sometimes I wonder who likes the swings more.

  I haven’t moved beyond the first page of my humanities book, though. My mind just keeps getting drawn back to everything that led me here, to this moment…right now.

  I did more than leave Tacoma after the way things ended with Alex—I ran away, and I said I hated him, when of course I never could.

  When I found out I was pregnant, I made what felt like a million decisions all at once. I dropped out of the scholarship program Alex had set up for me. I realized by then that Alex’s help on the free ride to NYU was simply a way for him to keep me as far away as possible from Tacoma, and also probably a way for all of the Sinclairs to keep tabs on where I was. I would have been fine with that if the only person I needed to protect was myself. But once the baby was growing inside me, I knew, without a doubt, that I would need to run. To hide her.

  Not from Alex. Never from him. But from Mr. Sinclair. From May. From the people who hurt my parents—who had an obsession with anything running around with Wallace blood.

  I also realized very quickly that I couldn’t let Alex know. It would make him lose his mind, for the one simple fact that he wouldn’t be able to help keep me safe if he didn’t know where I was living. And Alex would want to keep Emily safe. But he would still be under his father’s terrible rule. There would never be a way out.

  So I bolted. I told no one about my plans, or my baby, and I left as planned for college Back East, only I never made it that far. I didn’t even tell Aunt Shelly where I was for the longest time. I left no way for the Sinclairs to find me. To them, I was simply…gone.

  I stumbled into Ohio with less than a gallon left in a gas tank, in a car that was already on its last bits of tire tread when Aunt Shelly gave it to me in high school. I’d sold it off for fifty bucks and no title to some dude who I’m sure was high, who told me he was heading toward California, mostly because I just needed the car to disappear as fast as I did, and because the guy had cash.

  I didn’t even consider another job option when I saw the HELP WANTED sign in the corner diner just outside of Toledo, I just told my future boss, Ellie, and her husband that I’d work hard. Harder if she could recommend a good weekly rent hotel.

  That first month she rented me the small closet-like back room of her cafe. I worked there two months before she suspected I was pregnant. Thankfully, she loved me, and wasn’t pissed off to discover that I was heading into my second trimester. She was a kind woman, whose kids had never given her grandchildren. She even let me keep Emily in the back when she was an infant. She helped me with her in that rough beginning and let me keep the job.

  I didn’t trust Emily in anyone’s care—which is good, because a good daycare runs easily a thousand dollars a month. But babies grow fast, and soon Emily was crawling around too much and getting into trouble in her portable crib. She was developing a temper that matched Alex’s, and a short patience that matched mine. Those two things weren’t going to work in the back of a restaurant once she’d started to walk.

  I was reaching a new state of desperate before fate brought Jeff’s posting into my view. I was visiting the community center looking for possible daycare options when I read his short but sweet note: I’m clean and neat, and very quiet. I need a roommate because I love my house but can’t afford it on my own. Please help me stay here. It has real-wood floors! His number followed, and I was dialing it without moving from where I stood.

  He was desperate for a roommate; and I was desperate for a moment to breathe. My boss, kindly, laid me off so I could get unemployment for a while, and I moved in with Jeff that weekend. Emily has been under our watch every second of her life since, and Jeff found out he loved being a stand in parent. I plan my schedule around Jeff’s job, and the classes he’s taking for his doctorate, and he plans every holiday and weekend around hanging around with us. My small jobs here and there supplement our rent. It’s exhausting but it works.

  It works because it has to, and so far, no one from the Sinclair family has made an appearance staking any sort of claim to my daughter. Now that she’s almost three, I’ve done the paperwork to make sure they don’t. They’re called absentee relatives. I don’t stake a claim to them, and now legally, after these years of not providing for her, they don’t have a claim to her. When she was born, I thought about not putting Alex’s name on her birth certificate—mostly because I didn’t want to write the word Sinclair next to the name that represented my family. My father—and my mother.

  Dirty next to clean. Honor next to lies. Darkness next to light.

  But I operate on the truth, and one day Emily will know that her father was different. That he is like us. Clean, honorable, and light…though he used all the tricks in the book to make us think he’s not. He is good. He always was, and I get that, especially now that I’m raising his daughter.

  I will see Alex again when his father passes away. He knows I keep my promises. In the meantime, I will keep Emily hidden here—hidden out of sight and hopefully out of their minds, for as long as it takes, until the moment Michael Sinclair takes his last breath. But the day that man dies and that family’s grip on Alex loosens, I will get what’s mine.

  I will get the man who gave Emily those honey-brown eyes—who gave her the world’s biggest and most protective heart. She will melt any ice that he’s formed in his chest, and she will be the bridge that gets us back together. And if not…at least I will have tried. At least I will have kept my promises—been who my father would want me to be.

  “Mommy, look. Look!” The door slams closed in the main room, so I walk out of the bedroom I share with Emily just in time to catch her body before she slips over the pillow fort she left in the middle of the floor.

  “This is why we clean up,” I say, not really mad. I could never get mad at this creature.

  Ignoring my mom-lecture, she barrels closer. “I need to find my bug cage. Look! Look!” Emily holds her cupped hands up, slowly opening them until I can see the moving green inside. “It’s going to be my pet.�
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  “I refused to touch it. She keeps trying to make me hold it.” Jeff shoves his hands in his jean pockets and shirks back a step, squeamish. My girl is so much like me, and it makes me giggle.

  “It’s just a little hornworm caterpillar,” I say, chuckling, the sight of the green squishy insect making me miss Tacoma and my parents more than I have missed them in a long while. “We used to have them on our farm. My father hated them because they ate the tomatoes, but I thought they were cool.”

  “It’s just a little disgusting is what it is,” Jeff says, moving one more step away until his back is against the front door.

  I let some of my laughter spill through.

  “Jeff isn’t as tough as we are.” Emily’s eyes lift to meet mine as I wrap my hands around hers. I’m hit with every piece of my past in one breath. Those are her daddy’s eyes for certain.

  She smiles, sloppily, her lips revealing the holes where teeth still need to come in, and I take the crawler from her hands and carry it to the kitchen.

  “Your bug cage is in the laundry room,” I say, walking over to get it for her.

  “We’re keeping that thing? No…I just…no. My foot is down. How about we get her a real pet. A kitten?”

  “Yay!” Emily shouts out. “Or how about we get both.”

  “Not happening. And we will only keep the worm for a couple of days, because he will die if we don’t let him out eventually.” I shoot Jeff a look and he raises both hands in one last protest before finally waving them at me and going to his room.

  “What should we name him?” I ask, distracting Emily from the kitten idea more. One day, when we’re more stable, we’ll have a real pet, but right now I don’t feel stable enough to care for anyone or anything beyond my daughter.

  Emily slides the bug cage on the counter, peering into the screen mesh at the little worm as she considers the right name. I move to the fridge to pull out a few spinach leaves for him as well as one cherry tomato.