The Near & Far Series

by Serena Clarke

  Then she took in Shelby’s shell-shocked expression.

  “You can’t talk to him,” she said, her face pale. “He’s dead.”

  Forty-Three

  Summer was waning, and it was much cooler in England than in California. In the little attic room at Aunt Netta’s house in Broadstairs, Cady tugged on skinny jeans and a t-shirt, a bit crumpled from her suitcase. For a moment she looked at herself in the mirror, the black tee making her think of Reid’s endless wardrobe of black band t-shirts, printed with The Ramones, or Social Distortion, or The Black Keys. He was seriously hot in them. Seriously hot for someone else to appreciate now, unfortunately. Yet again, she closed her eyes and relived the bee road kiss, that short-lived moment of bliss when what she’d craved was hers.

  The trip back had been a long, torturous blur. After the phone call with news of their father’s heart attack, Holt had told them not to worry about a thing, just do what they had to do. So they’d said hurried farewells to everyone, and left the fun behind. They went back to the house and booked flights, leaving for New York at six the next morning, then on to England. Shelby insisted on going immediately and waiting at the airport, so Reid drove them down to San Francisco. He kissed her goodbye, but she was so knocked sideways by her dad’s death, coming on top of the day’s Kyle drama, that their connection seemed broken, and he’d said nothing about seeing each other again. Well, why would they?

  As the plane took off, leaving American soil behind, the irresistible g-force that pushed her back in her seat also pushed the last reserves of strength out of her. Finally, inconsolably, she cried for everything—for the loss of her mother and father, the confusion of figuring out her ‘new’ family, Shelby’s diagnosis and the illness lurking in her own future, delayed shock from the violent showdown with Kyle, and goodbye to the man she desperately wanted as part of her new start. When they’d gone back to the bus for her ‘Home’ flash mob idea, she’d cautioned herself against falling hard enough for someone that goodbye would be a painful wrench…but it had happened anyway.

  She would’ve been grateful for his steady company at the funeral yesterday. It had been unreal to go through it all over again so soon—the same people saying the same kind things, but this time about their father instead of their mother. And in every respect, just as much as ever to Cady, he was their father. He always would be.

  It had been strange not going back to the Peckham Rye house after the funeral. Instead, she and Shelby had taken a late train back to Broadstairs with Aunt Netta, grabbing a dinner of coffee and slightly aged-looking paninis at Victoria Station. On their first night back, after a long, uncomfortable plane trip made longer with delays, they’d been too exhausted to talk properly, instead falling into bed and mercifully dreamless sleeps. So last night, after the funeral—sitting up late with a jug of Pimm’s and lemonade for old times’ sake, a small dog nestled on Aunt Netta’s lap—they’d caught up, telling her about everything that had happened in the States over the last few weeks. When they’d talked about it on the plane, Shelby had asked Cady not to mention her test results yet—having only just admitted the truth to herself, she was still getting used to it—so they left that part out for now. Then Aunt Netta told them what she knew about Anne’s time in London.

  “I was very surprised to see the detective,” she said, “but I knew it was time. If she’d already told you part of the story, Cady, she must have known you’d ferret out all the details eventually. I think she wanted you to, really. It weighed on her terribly, from the day you were born.”

  The facts Aunt Netta had weren’t any more than they already knew from the private investigator—but somehow hearing that their mother had struggled with guilt made Cady feel better. She’d struggled with it herself, keeping the secret first from Shelby, and then from their dad. And along with her grief, she was wrestling with the guilt of not being there for her dad’s last weeks.

  “I was so busy chasing around after Lawson Holt, I missed my last days with him.” She felt sick with the regret.

  “You couldn’t have known that,” Aunt Netta said gently. “And you know, he wanted you to have an adventure.”

  “I know. But it’s such a slap in the face for him that I was secretly running around with my other father.”

  She dropped a slice of orange into another Pimm’s and lemonade, and handed it to Cady. “Really? Running around?”

  “Well, you know…” The sentence petered out. “He was just always there for me. And in his last few weeks, I wasn’t there for him.”

  “You were always there for him. You were his everything, both you girls. His best thing.”

  At this, Shelby burst into tears, the burden of the last days, weeks and years too much all over again. Cady took her hand. That was exactly what Reid had said about Lily—his best thing. Not having her own best thing was maybe something she’d just have to get used to. She squeezed Shelby’s hand. They might be chalk and cheese, but for all their differences, they’d been through so much together. They knew. And they’d be okay, whatever happened, as long as they stuck together.

  Aunt Netta got up then, tipping the dog off her lap, and took an envelope from the oversized French dresser in the corner of the room.

  “Last week, your dad asked me to go and see him at Ingleside. I think he must have known that he wasn’t well. He gave me this—he wanted to be sure I was the one to give it to you.”

  As Cady took the envelope, she remembered how tired he’d sounded on the phone. “We should have been here.”

  Aunt Netta held out an old-fashioned letter opener. “Just open it.”

  She carefully slit open the top of the envelope, took out the letter, and started reading…and could hardly believe the words on the page. As she absorbed what her dad had written, she was overtaken with a wave of emotion—disbelief, amazement, gratitude, and wonder. She handed it to Shelby, who read it with eyes wide.

  “He knew,” Cady told Aunt Netta. “He knew all this time, and he never said anything.”

  Aunt Netta nodded. “I did have my suspicions.”

  Cady put her hand to her forehead. “I can’t even…he let her think she’d kept the secret, that whole time.”

  “He really loved her,” Aunt Netta said. “And you.”

  “Wow.” For once, Shelby was lost for words.

  Cady took the letter back and quoted from the last paragraph, the slightly formal language doing nothing to lessen the feeling in what he’d written. “However we define ‘fatherhood’, I want you to know that I will always love you, and I always have. Of course we’ve had ups and downs, just like any fathers and daughters do. No matter what, you are my girls, and nothing could have changed that. And now you are free to discover who you really are.”

  On the last sentence, her voice broke, and she shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”

  “I wonder if he guessed that we knew,” Shelby said. “And how did he find out himself?”

  Aunt Netta held up her hands. “I never said a word, I promise you.”

  They talked and talked, trying to figure out how he could have known. Cady wondered if blood types might have been a clue—they both had the more unusual B blood type. But however he found out, they were stunned by the way their mother’s secret had somehow turned back on itself, and become not secret after all. They tried to imagine what he must have gone through as he processed the knowledge, and came to the decision not to say anything. Amongst all the secret keeping, they never would have guessed there was one more—their dad keeping his own secret, of knowing their mother’s.

  “It says a lot about the kind of man he was,” Aunt Netta commented, and they had to agree.

  Later, all talked out and sleepy with Pimm’s, they lay in the attic beds like they had as children. After the huge beds in spacious rooms at Santa Almendra, Cady felt like they were sleeping in a dollhouse. With the sash window pushed up slightly she could smell salt on the air, the sea-tang of happy childhood memories. It was comforti
ng. In the quiet, her mind wandered back across the Atlantic, and she wondered what was happening now in San Francisco.

  “Do you miss him?” she asked quietly.

  She heard Shelby turn over. “Dad?”

  “No, I know you miss him. I do too. And I’m still completely blown away by everything. But I meant Kyle.”

  Shelby hesitated. “Yes. I shouldn’t, but I do.” She sighed. “Or really, I miss the person I thought he was.”

  “I’m sorry I shot him.”

  “Oh God, I’m sorry too. But let’s face it, he deserved it.” She laughed. “Bet you never thought you’d be saying those words to me.”

  “No, never.” She had to laugh too. “I suppose it helped get us back on better terms with Holt, anyway.”

  “True.”

  For the price of Kyle’s ruined kneecap, they’d left the States on steadier ground with Holt. Shared disaster had a way of bringing people together. Maybe they’d never be really close, in distance or emotions, but they were family. He and Aunt Netta were pretty much it now.

  “What about you?” Shelby asked. “Are you missing Reid?”

  She looked toward the narrow window, where the moonlight shone in. It would be hours before he got into his big bed in the cottage. When he looked out his own bedroom window, would he think of her too? Or would he sensibly move on, instead of wasting time thinking about someone a continent and an ocean away? Probably.

  “I am missing him,” she admitted. “Quite a lot.”

  He’d believed in her, and wanted her to have credit for her ideas. And he made her realize that she should give herself credit too. She knew now that even though life has countless contradictions and complications, and people are compelled to layer all kinds of different adornments and disguises and secrets on top, the truth of anyone lies beneath all that. The real person. And having been around the world, organized two big events, lost a father and a mother, discovered a new family, shot a man (heaven help her), and survived it all, now she agreed with Reid: she was a person worth giving credit to. What started out as ‘fake it ’til you make it’ had become her reality.

  So now it was the day after the funeral, the day after her dad’s belated bombshell, and she was new Cady, in old Cady’s territory. She looked at herself in the mirror again, smoothing her t-shirt over her waist. Reid would probably be in bed now, not wearing a black t-shirt. She smiled at the thought. Then she pulled the tee over her head and threw it back in her suitcase. Instead, she put on a dusky pink top, then slid her feet into gold flats. She had to move on, even though she wanted so badly to be in that bed with him, getting up to no good in the cottage under the hill. Snuggling on the couch in the cozy living room, making pancakes in the big kitchen, bouncing with Lily and Violet on the trampoline…

  Well, she’d hold on to the good stuff, take it with her, and use it as fuel. After all, her new start didn’t end when they took off from San Francisco. Whatever this phase of her life held, she was strong enough to face it. Medical tests, a job that wasn’t at the bank, a parentless life with unknown challenges ahead—fear and doubt could kiss her aaass. Learning her father’s secret-inside-a-secret had set her free a little more too—the guilt of not telling him was gone, and it was a huge relief. She shook out her hair, put on some of Shelby’s lip gloss, and went downstairs.

  “Sorry I slept in,” she said to Aunt Netta, who was washing her little dog in the kitchen sink. “Jet lag and Pimm’s. Where’s Shelby?”

  “Ergo! Keep still.” She wiped dog shampoo from her nose with the back of her hand. “Sorry, my dear. She went out earlier, for a walk.”

  “Oh, okay.” A walk? Shelby wasn’t the walking kind….but maybe she was taking some time to think about everything herself. She helped herself to tea from the pot, and dropped two slices of bread into the toaster. Aunt Netta turned her attention back to the wet and scraggly dog, and Cady turned hers to breakfast. Well, brunch really, seeing as it was just hitting eleven o’clock.

  Just as she was finishing her toast and tea, a text came from Shelby.

  Down at Viking Bay being a kid again. Feel like Mum and Dad are here somehow. Come and meet me?

  Oh, nice idea. Sweet Viking Bay, lying like a postcard beach below Broadstairs town, was the scene of her favorite childhood reminiscences. She texted back yes, put her mug and plate in the dishwasher, and said goodbye to Aunt Netta, who was busy attempting to dry the squirming dog with a hairdryer.

  It was only a short walk down to the coast. She crossed the promenade at the top of the cliff and went down the steps to the sand, breathing deeply, letting the sea air flood her lungs and fill her spirits. At the bottom, she slipped off her shoes and dug her toes into the sand, looking around for Shelby. It was quieter than their childhood visits in the height of summer, but there were kids playing, and people walking dogs, and a few swimmers braving the cold sea. The curve of the bay, the row of huts, the stripy beach shelters, all overlooked by the town sitting high above, were just the same as they’d always been. No garish beach developments marred the quaint British scene, and she was glad that it wasn’t being ruined. It was the perfect place to remember her parents, letting echoes of their happy family wash over her like waves. And it was happy, despite the underlying untruth. No one could take that away from them.

  Then, further along the beach, something caught her eye. Someone had built a creation in the sand. A classic castle, but way bigger than the usual bucket and spade variety, with turrets and a moat and charming shell-and-feather decoration. Her heart squinched in her chest, and she sighed. That was just the kind of thing Reid would build, probably. Damn. There was half a world between them, but she had the feeling she was going to keep being reminded of him for a long time to come.

  Shelby came up beside her, making her jump. “Cute, isn’t it? A castle fit for a princess. Or a Lady.”

  There was an emphasis on the last word that made Cady look at her more closely. She laughed and said, “My work is done here—Lady Cady.” Then she pointed to where a man was sitting higher up the beach, on the soft sand.

  Cady held up her hand to shade her eyes from the sun as she looked. No…

  “Go, for God’s sake,” Shelby said. “Jeez, he came all this way.”

  “Shut up,” Cady told her, but the rush of adrenaline at seeing him made it impossible to copy her sister’s faux-tetchy tone.

  “You shut up,” Shelby replied, smiling too. “Shut up and get over there, you lucky cow.” She gave Cady a rib-crunching hug, then turned to make her way back up to the town, leaving them to it.

  Forty-Four

  Cady started toward him, her chest full to bursting, and he stood up, brushing the sand off his jeans. He had short hair, not spiky but kind of rumpled upwards, and he was clean-shaven. His t-shirt was blue, not black, without a logo, but it fit his body snugly, showing familiar broad shoulders and tanned, muscular arms. As she reached him he took off his sunglasses, and the warmth in his golden-brown eyes just about undid her. She swallowed, gathering her composure. It had been an emotional time lately.

  “Hi,” she said, cautiously, hopefully.

  “Hi.” There was that old tease in his voice, the tone that got her every time…including this time.

  For a moment they stood, smiling at each other as though they’d lost the power of speech. It was strange seeing him here, so changed, and completely out of context.

  “You look so different,” she said, stating the glaringly obvious.

  He ran his hand through his hair, mussing it even more. Was he nervous? “Yeah…it’s the same old me though.”

  She had to know. If he couldn’t tell her now, he might as well get right back on the plane. “Who is the same old you, anyway? Come on, surely you can tell me now.”

  He nodded, and she held her breath. What was she going to find out, finally?

  “Okay…you waited long enough, that’s for sure. I’m Reid, but I’m Daniel Reid. I work for the San Francisco Police Department. I was underco
ver with Flashpoint, using Kyle’s involvement with the drug ring to gather info for a bust.”

  She stared at him. So many things made sense now. “So that’s why you had cred with the weasels. I thought it was just a sign of extremely poor taste in mates.”

  “No. I think I have pretty good taste.” He looked meaningfully at her, and she felt herself blush. “Gavin aside,” he added, making her laugh.

  “So that Crusty Demons meeting with Gavin wasn’t a coincidence then. You weren’t really friends.”

  “No, and yes. I couldn’t help liking that doofus in the end.” He grinned.

  “I figured.” You couldn’t not like Gavin—for all his flaws, he was a really decent guy. She thought back to the flash mob riot, remembering how he’d urged them to get out of trouble’s way. It reminded her of the shocking moment when she saw Reid heave the kid through the store window. “And the kid at the flash mob? In the window?”

  “Yeah, not really a kid. He was in a rival operation, and just felt like taking on anyone associated with your weasels. Tensions run high in that world. Gavin happened to be in the firing line, so I stepped in. I didn’t actually mean for it to be quite so dramatic, but…” He shrugged.

  She thought about the implications of what he’d told her. “You must have been putting all your undercover work at risk to get Shelby out, when they took her and Kyle. Why did you do that?”

  “Because, Lady Cady, you totally cloud my good judgment. You might have noticed that I can’t help myself when you’re around. And because there are a lot of things I’d do for you, and getting your sister back was one of them.”

  “Oh…” After all the days of wishing, it was hard to believe he was actually saying these things, about her. She thought back to all the teasing and flirting, the almost and not-quite moments, the interrupted kisses that had driven her mad. “Yes, you were absolutely disgraceful. But…thank you.”