I raise my eyebrow up at him. “You really didn’t plan these?”
“No. I didn’t, but they are pretty perfect.”
I kiss his cheek and place my head under his neck. “On a scale of one to ten, how nervous was Coop tonight?”
“Um, a thirty?” Bodhi jokes. “He was breathing into one of the paper bags on the drive to your house.”
“Coop? Seriously?”
Bodhi nods. “I’m telling you. This is different.”
“Do I make you nervous? Have I ever made you nervous like that?”
Bodhi smiles and turns his head to look at me. “You make my heart race out of my chest, Eva. Every single time I see you.”
I run my fingers along his face and kiss his jawline. “Thanks for bringing me dinner.”
“Anytime. Have you heard from Porter anymore?”
“Nope. Just last night.”
Bodhi puts his forehead on mine. “Just because he tells you he’s on our side, doesn’t mean I trust him, okay?” he says, holding up my wrists. The bruises are fading but are definitely still there.
“I know.”
He kisses me and mutters into my mouth, “I just want this to be over with.” He then looks right in my eyes and asks, “Can we just run away together? Eva, we would never have to worry about anything. Ever.”
I search his face for any sign that he’s joking. “You’re being serious, aren’t you?”
He nods his head. “I am, babe.”
I lean in and give his lips a kiss. “Think of everyone we’d miss if we disappeared. Think of everyone who’d miss us.”
“We’ll take them all with us.”
I laugh. “What’s the point of running away if we bring everyone we love with us?”
He sighs and looks defeated. “You want to get out of here for a bit? Go walk the beach or something?”
I shake my head. “Do you?”
“I’ll do whatever you want to do.”
I lean in and press my lips against his again. “Follow me, I want to show you something.” I take his hand in mine and stand up, leading him upstairs to my room. I close the door behind us and lean up against it as Bodhi stands in front of me. “I went through the box of pictures from your mom,” I tell him.
“Oh, yeah?”
“There were so many of you and me. Like every picture she ever took of us. Hundreds. And a stack of pictures that were mine that I never got around to printing, most from that day, the sea turtles … and a framed one, of her and me.” I point to it on my dresser.
Bodhi walks over and picks it up. He stares at it for a few moments before saying, “I took this picture.”
“You did,” I agree.
“God, I miss her,” he says, putting it back on the dresser. He stays there staring at it.
“I miss her too.”
He looks over at me. “Do you think there’s a reason she kept everything from me?”
“I do. More than what we might know right now.”
Bodhi walks back to where I am, wrapping his arms around my waist. “I wish she wouldn’t have kept all these secrets.”
“I know, Bodhi.”
He leans in and kisses me, softly at first, his emotions clear in the way his mouth is gently gliding over mine. But then he backs me up against my door and pushes his mouth harder. His hand wanders to the back of my dress and to the zipper, tugging on it a little. I move us over to my bed and give him a little shove. Bodhi falls back and pulls me down with him.
“You trying to seduce me again, Eva?”
I flip my hair away from my face and kiss his neck. “Maybe?”
“Definitely working.” His mouth goes back to mine, and his hands back to the zipper on my dress. He pulls it down further, but then reaches behind him, yanking the sea turtle out from under his head. “Damn turtle,” he laughs, tossing it over me.
I hear it hit my dresser and then hear something fall and shatter on my wood floor. I sit up and see the picture of Lenora and I, broken on the ground.
“Shit,” Bodhi says. “I’m so sorry, babe.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him. I climb off my bed and walk over to pick up the pieces off the ground. “I can get a new frame.” I carefully pick the glass up, placing it on my dresser, and peel the picture out of the rest of the broken frame. “Wait a second …” I say. There’s a folded-up piece of paper still sitting in the frame, behind where the picture had been. I turn and hold it out for Bodhi to see. “This was in the frame,” I tell him, my heart pounding in my chest.
“What is it?” he asks, walking over to me.
I unfold it in my hands and hold it out so we can both see at the same time. The first thing that pops out at me is the printed name, Phoebe Rialson.
“Oh, my god!” I cry out as I realize what I’m holding in my hand. “This is a copy of a birth certificate! Your mom’s! Your mom’s birth certificate with her real name!”
He takes it from my hand. “Kenneth Rialson and Annie Edwards. Shit, Eva. You were right all along … Nassau? My mom was born in the Bahamas? Why in the hell would she put this behind your picture?”
“I don’t know? Maybe so that it would get found? So that no one else would find it? So that it was safe?”
“By any chance are there any letters folded up in that frame? Explaining all the shit she kept from me?” he seriously asks.
“No. I wish …”
But then it hits me.
I know where the letters are.
I know where she put them.
The realization causes my room to spin in front of me, and I grab onto Bodhi before I fall to my knees.
“Eva!” Bodhi exclaims, holding onto my arms. “What’s wrong?”
“I know where they are,” I say, looking up at him. “I know where the letters are! The proof. Everything …”
“Where? Where, Eva?”
“Your house,” I whisper. “Her studio. Our pictures. She hid them, Bodhi. She hid them behind our pictures.”
chapter thirty-six
Bodhi
W hat are we going to do if we find them?” I ask Eva. We’re sitting in her Volvo, parked in front of my house. We’ve sat here for a full five minutes already. I can’t get myself to move.
She looks over at me. “What do you want to do with them?”
“Get rid of them, burn them, throw them in the ocean, shred them. I don’t want the money. I don’t need the money. I just want this to be over with.”
“I’m worried what your dad might do, if he finds out we had them.”
“Fuck my dad and what he thinks.”
“Bodhi,” she whispers. “He’s not going to stop.”
She’s scared. I don’t want her to be scared.
“We take them to Calvin, and your mom. We tell them what we know, everything, and we let them take over?”
She nods her head and opens the Volvo door.
We head right up to the studio and immediately go to the first picture on the wall. I take it off and start prying back the metal tabs until the board becomes loose enough to remove.
“Here goes nothing.”
The board easily comes off and the very first thing we see is a piece of paper lying on top of the back of the picture. It’s weathered, a little yellow in color, and is filled with light cursive writing. I carefully pick it up and unfold it, flipping it to the front where we see a date scribbled on the top.
June 1970.
Eva has already started reading to herself and brings her hand up to her mouth. “It’s Annie’s. I think it’s a page from her diary,” she guesses, looking up at all the pictures on the walls in front of us.
“Let’s get to work,” I say.
It takes us over an hour to get through every picture. Our fingers are bleeding by the time we’re done, but we have a collection. A collection of diary pages, of old pictures, of birth certificates and death certificates, copies of wills and bank statements, and handwritten letters that went through the mail. Once we have every
thing spread out on the floor in front of us, we both sit up against the wall and stare at it all. We haven’t read every little detail, but we can come to our own conclusions on what happened all those years ago. Even then, there are still so many unanswered questions.
My arm goes around Eva’s shoulders. She leans in and rests her head on mine, our fingers interlock. I kiss her cheek. She lets out an enormous sigh before speaking.
“Annie’s mom and dad, were drug dealers, right?”
I nod my head.
“And Kenneth’s dad laundered their drug money?”
I nod again. “Eva, I think Calvin knew all about this.”
“What?” she gasps.
“This morning,” I continue, “he told me he knew them. That he knew them really well. That the name Phoebe Rialson meant something to him. Think about it … what he told us at dinner a couple nights ago. Five of them. Five of them that grew up together—”
“Calvin, Rose, Annie, Kenneth and—”
“Owen,” I finish. “He said they all needed to get out of Flagler for a bit after high school, remember?”
“Why wouldn’t he tell us about this?”
I shake my head. “He said it wasn’t his story to tell.”
“This is bullshit,” Eva declares, and then she lets out a little gasp and looks up at me. “If your mom and your dad were both born in the Bahamas, do you think … were they all there together?”
I give her forehead a small kiss. “Would make sense, right? At least for a couple years?”
“Do you think your mom and dad met when they were babies?” she asks me.
I let out a sigh. “I don’t know what to think anymore.”
She snuggles up under my chin and continues with what we found. “Annie and Kenneth figured out what their parents were doing, and they told Rebecca, and probably their friends too. Kenneth’s dad then has a heart attack and dies, and millions upon millions of dollars of drug money goes missing?” she questions. “So much money.”
“I’m sure when you launder that much money on a monthly basis, you have secret spots you keep it?” I assume.
Eva’s voice responds in a whisper. “All those businesses the Rialson family owned. The houses they rented out, the car dealerships …”
“But before he could invest whatever he received last, he died,” I say.
Eva nods her head into my shoulder. “Annie and Kenneth find this money, take it, and also withdraw the savings account that Kenneth’s name was on, escaping with it all to the Bahamas. Rebecca stays behind but knows where they are. It seems like this was their plan? To take all the money and run away from their crazy life here in Flagler, but for Rebecca to stay behind and not blow their cover?”
“That’s what it seems,” I agree. “Rebecca was already out of the house and living on her own when this all happened.”
“They keep in touch though, all the letters they sent to each other,” she points to them. “Rebecca visits them too … the pictures,” she points again. “When Kenneth’s mom dies, Rebecca inherits what’s left of the Rialson money. She’s now married to Chip Channing and they have Paul. Kenneth and Annie have Phoebe, your mom, and have stayed in the Bahamas all this time. Paul and your mom, they’re not too far apart in age it seems? Maybe he’s a few years older? Doesn’t it look that way in the pictures?”
“It does.”
“And the pictures of them all together,” she points to them on the ground once more. “Chip knew about Kenneth and Annie. He knew who they were, and he kept their secret. So did Paul.”
“Secrets never stay secret though,” I say. “I can only imagine how many people knew something about this, or know something about this. Even if it was a tiny fraction of the giant story, someone knows something.”
“Promise me we won’t keep secrets from each other,” she begs of me. “All these secrets, they’ve destroyed people. Please. We can’t be like this, like them.”
“We won’t. We won’t be like them.”
I can feel her nodding her head into my shoulder.
I pick up a picture of my grandparents and continue. “Kenneth and Annie, they die in a car crash when my mom is eighteen, exactly like she told me they did. I guess it’s nice she told me the truth about something.” Eva kisses my cheek. “My mom inherited a ton of money then, after they died. All that money they ran away with and more,” I declare, pointing to bank statements. “Where did all the money come from?”
“The restaurant?” She points to a stack of pictures. “I think they owned a restaurant there, in the Bahamas, a couple it seems? Maybe after they died, they were sold? I don’t know …”
“Something, there’s something we’re missing. Rebecca, why did Rebecca bring my mom back to Flagler after they died? She was eighteen, right? Why did my mom come here and change her name to Lenora Bishop when she could have just stayed there? And this house. This house that used to be Annie’s house when she was a kid? She moved into her dead mom’s old house.”
Eva wraps both her arms around my waist and squeezes me, picking up where I left off. “She did, and Phoebe became Lenora. She starts a life here in Flagler, but curiosity gets the best of her and almost fifteen years later she heads back to the Bahamas where she meets your dad. And she uses her real name while she’s there.”
“Why would she do that? She shouldn’t have done that. If she left the Bahamas for a reason, why the hell would she go back?”
“I don’t know,” Eva whispers. “But then she comes back here and has you. Chip dies of cancer, few years later Rebecca dies of a heart attack just like her father, and then Paul, only in his mid-forties, apparently had been sick for years, dies of a stroke. And all that money, the Rialson money, goes to the only living relative that’s known, Henry Channing. They changed the will, Bodhi. Did you that notice that?” she points.
“I did. My mom’s name was on the original, but it was taken off and Henry’s was added to the final one.”
“Why?” Eva questions.
“I don’t know. Did she not want it?” I ask out loud. “My mom? It’s so much money, and the proof, it’s all right here. It was supposed to be hers. Paul Channing wanted to leave all the Rialson money to my mom. It doesn’t make any sense. Why didn’t she want it? Why did she let Henry Channing have it all?”
“She already had so much,” Eva responds. “The money she got when her parents died … and maybe she didn’t want it known that she was Phoebe? Here in Flagler? She changed her name when she came here. And your grandparents, Bodhi … they stole a lot of money, drug money, from here, and they disappeared with it. That secret died with them, and your mom. Taking the inheritance from Paul Channing, would force her to admit she was Phoebe Rialson. Maybe she was worried someone would find out?”
That all makes sense. A little. “What about the trust fund money? Why did she never tell me about it?”
Eva reaches for my hand. “She didn’t want you asking questions, Bodhi. How would she explain all that money to you? Do you think she wanted to tell you that your grandparents took drug money? That her grandparents were drug dealers? This all happened here, where you live. Would you want that shadow over your head constantly?” she asks me. “I think she must have used some of it to live comfortably for all those years until she got sick. Then she put it all in a fund for you when she realized she wasn’t going to get better. Did you guys ever struggle with money, Bodhi?”
“No, we didn’t,” I answer. “Never, and I never questioned it. The house that was ours without a mortgage, the jeep she paid cash for, surfboards and gear, photography equipment, all the trips she took to further her photography career … and she never said no when I needed something. I should have asked more questions.”
“No,” Eva shakes her head. “She was your mom and you trusted her. I think she kept it all from you to protect you from all the secrets of her parents, and from your dad if he would find out. Think about it, Bodhi,” she looks up at me. “Her parents ran away from a life
of drug dealers and money launderers, only for her to meet your dad, a drug addict. Maybe she didn’t realize it at first, maybe she didn’t know much about your dad until she brought you to the Bahamas. But she did everything she could to keep you away from that once she realized what type of guy Luke was. And obviously she didn’t want your dad finding out how wealthy she was—”
“But he did find out,” I interrupt her. “And does he honestly think that after a decade, all of this is going to make Henry Channing give me what’s left of the money from Paul Channing, and I’m just going to hand it over to him? My dad doesn’t deserve any of this money.”
“He doesn’t, but he thinks that,” she reminds me. “He says it’s owed to him, which makes me wonder if there’s more we haven’t figured out yet.”
I squeeze her hand. “My family … these people. Drug dealers, money launderers, stealing millions, disappearing, new identities, a drug addicted father … how can you even look at me right now?” I turn to her, locking my eyes on hers.
She shakes her head. “My father is not innocent. Our parents, or grandparents, and what they’ve done, have nothing to do with you and me. They never will, and if you asked me right this very second to run away with you and leave all of this mess behind us, I absolutely would.”
“I want to run away with you, Eva,” I say. “Right this second and leave all of this mess behind us. I told you that earlier … but that is exactly what my grandparents did, and I refuse to let our love story follow the same path as theirs.”
Eva’s lips find mine. Her hand moves to the back of my head and I hear her sigh after a moment as she pulls her lips away. Her green eyes are glowing as she leans forward.
“We’re going to take this all, every bit, and give it to my mom and Calvin like you said we should, and we will not do another goddamn thing but stay with each other until everything’s over, okay? I’ll stay with you at Calvin’s, you can stay with me at my house. I will not leave your side until your dad is gone. We’ll get lost in our own little world for a while, exactly where I want to be.”
I nod my head in agreement and kiss her back. “I love our little world.”
Confession Page 40