by Katy Regnery
Deep down—deep in my heart, where I am becoming a woman—I understand them I know exactly what they mean.
I know because Julian looked at me that way before and after our kiss. He looked—how did Tig put it?—at me, into me, and through me. And like Tig, I felt it everywhere.
So . . . Anders had feelings for my mother? Romantic feelings? Did she return them?
I remember back to finding Anders in my mother’s bedroom the day after her funeral. I can picture him clearly, sitting on the edge of her bed, his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking with soft sobs.
She loved you.
His words, muttered so angrily, so fiercely, in the car ride back to school, resonate in my head, and . . . oh, my God . . .
Tig and Anders?
My mother and her eighteen-year-old stepson?
I gasp softly and place the diary back on my bedside table, then I cross my arms over my chest and hold on tightly, letting this new information—and all the questions it raises—sink in.
Tig and Anders. Anders and Tig.
I never saw it. I never even suspected.
I stand up and take a clean bra and underwear from the top drawer.
My God, she was old enough to be his . . . his . . . well, no, actually, she wasn’t, I think.
Neither Tig nor I got our first period until we were fourteen, so technically I guess she wasn’t old enough to be his mother. But she was still thirteen years older and married to his father.
My mother and my stepbrother.
Were they just friends? Lovers?
Mosier would have killed them if he’d ever found out. He beat the boys for swimming with me. He barely let them look at us. If he’d known about this, he would have—
“Ashley? Did you fall back to sleep?”
“N-no!” I yell. “I’m . . . I’m coming!”
I pull my hair back in a ponytail and head downstairs barefoot, trying to calm the chaos in my head before breakfast.
***
Julian
I think Ashley was hiding from me yesterday.
She came downstairs only once, to give Noelle a hug good-bye in the late afternoon. Well, and at some point, she popped into the kitchen to make a plate of leftovers, but her clean plate was in the drying rack when I came back from my walk with Bruno. Which means, yep, she was hiding from me.
I must have stared at that plate for ten minutes, feeling disappointed and wondering why she was purposely avoiding me. Because we’re developing feelings for each other? Because we kissed? Because we’re alone now?
By late afternoon, it was bothering me so much, I thought about calling upstairs to ask if she wanted to walk over to the pond again, or watch a movie, or go into town for ice cream, but I also wanted to respect her privacy, so I left her alone, falling asleep to thoughts of kissing her and waking up hard.
But this morning, my patience is gone. I want to see her.
Making breakfast and laying it out as pretty as possible is a bribe to get her to come downstairs. Aside from the fact that I am mistrustful of women in general and really need a temperature check, I also want to know what she’s hiding from and if I can help her. Today, more than anything else, my mission is Ashley.
“Good morning,” she says, stepping into the kitchen wearing her usual uniform: gray T-shirt, jeans, and bare feet. Her blonde hair is up in a ponytail, her blue eyes are shining, and fuck my life, she is the prettiest fucking thing I have ever seen.
“Hey,” I say, gesturing to the breakfast I’ve laid out on the island. “Hungry?”
I feel her pleasure in my gut when her eyes widen and her lips part. She looks up at me and offers a small, surprised smile. “Oh, wow! Yes. Thank you.”
“Tea?”
“Yes, please,” she says, her feet soundless as she walks over to the island and pulls out a stool.
I keep my back to her from where I’m standing in front of the Keurig. “Hey . . . were you avoiding me yesterday?”
“Maybe just feeling a little shy after . . . ”
I wait until the tea is made, then turn back to find her sitting at one of the two set places, blue eyes wide.
“Kissing?” I ask.
A blush blooms in her cheeks as she nods, a sweet little smile pulling at her lips.
And maybe it makes me stupid, but this is all the temperature check I need to move forward with her. While I stand there, smiling back at her like a dummy, I almost feel like I’ve known her forever, like the connection we have is more real and more intense than anything else I’ve ever known. There is even a part of me—the most cautious part, which feels less and less cynical as the seconds tick by—that desperately hopes she won’t let me down.
I place the mug in front of her, pointing to the various offerings between our plates. “Cream and sugar there. Scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese here. Bacon. Home fries.”
She doesn’t say anything. She just smiles. But it’s . . . dazzling.
I know she’s eighteen and I’m twenty-four, so by default I should be more confident than she, but suddenly I’m nervous as hell, and I don’t know how dudes like Tom Brady and Tony Romo marry models and keep it together on a daily basis. How do they get used to waking up to a girl who looks like this every day? Or do they not get used to it? Maybe they’re blown away every time they look at their wives. Maybe they wake up tongue-tied every morning for the rest of their lives. That sort of makes sense to me right now.
One of my college fraternity brothers had a thing for Tig—she was on his screen saver, and he had a big poster of her over his bed wearing a white string bikini. And I can see Tig in her little sister, physically speaking. Blonde hair, check. Blue eyes, check. But Tig looked hard to me. Pissed. Fierce. Angry as all hell, like fucking her would be a combat sport at best, and she’d deck you hard if you called it “making love.”
But Ashley?
She’s soft. And sweet. Surprised by everything. Taking nothing for granted. Jesus, I wish I could just sink into her and stay there for days. For months. For-fucking-ever.
“What?” she asks.
“Huh?”
“You’re staring at me.”
“You’re nice to stare at,” I answer, feeling smooth.
Unsmiling, she shakes her head and looks away, reaching for the serving spoon sitting on top of the eggs.
Hmm. Her expression makes me feel a little less smooth. “Should I not say that?”
She shrugs as she places some eggs on her plate. When she replaces the spoon, she snags a piece of bacon and bites it, looking up at me.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she says, crunching on the fried deliciousness, “but I’ve heard that a lot.”
“That you’re nice to stare at?”
She nods. “Mm-hm. Beautiful. Pretty. Gorgeous. Stunning. Hot. I’ve heard it all.”
What’s amazing about what she’s saying is how she’s saying it: without a hint of conceit. She’s calling out the world on its banality without pressuring herself to agree or disagree. She genuinely doesn’t like being boiled down to “pretty,” and I realize that I like and admire this about her.
What I don’t like is the way she’s looking at me, like she’s disappointed.
“Are you calling me unoriginal?”
She pops the rest of the bacon into her mouth, raising an eyebrow.
If the shoe fits . . .
“Okay. How about this?” I say. “You look unexpectedly good for a woman who woke up five minutes ago. You’re unshowered. You probably smell pretty ripe. But you still look . . .” I shrug for effect. “. . . okay.”
She giggles softly, digging into her eggs. “Better.”
“Ashley doesn’t like being called pretty. Check.”
“Triple check,” she says. “You actually got points for not recognizing me last week.”
This surprises the hell out of me. “I did?”
She nods, chewing thoughtfully. “Mmm! These are good. What’s in them again?”
&nbs
p; “Eggs, cheddar, salt, pepper. How come I got points?”
“You’re leaving something out,” she says, licking her lips. “Lavender? Thyme?”
She’s scrambling my head with her little pink tongue. “Uh. Yeah. Maybe. The cheddar. It comes from a dairy where they free-feed the cows. It’s called Lovely Lavender Farm.”
“That’s it!” she says. “The cows are fed on lavender, and it’s in the cheese. Oh, my God, it’s so good!”
“Ashley! Why did I get points?”
“Hmm? Oh.” She reaches for her tea and takes a sip. “I don’t like being recognized.”
“Why not? Your sister was one of the most beautiful women in the world.”
“Yeah,” she deadpans. “And that role came with zero pressure and produced a super-well-adjusted human.”
Good point. “You don’t want people to know you’re related to Tig?”
“I don’t want them to judge me based on the fact that I am. People expect something of me once they find out. They even expect something from me because I’m pretty. It’s a lot to live up to.” She places her mug on the counter and snags another slice of bacon. “I just . . . I just want to be me.”
I get this. I truly do. I get it because my sister wants me to lean on my father’s old Simon Pearce contacts to open my own glass shop, and I refuse to. Either I can make it on my own or I can’t, but I don’t want to make bank on my father’s legacy. I just want to be me, which makes me wonder: what else does Ashley want?
“I’m guessing you don’t want to be a model?”
“I have zero interest in that life.”
“So what does interest you?” I ask, finally scooping some eggs and potatoes onto my own plate.
She grins at me over the rim of her cup. “Cooking, I guess. Baking. I used to like fashion when we lived in LA, but the glamorous uniforms at school didn’t give much inspiration, and I’m out of touch with the latest trends. Honestly? I don’t know what comes next. Technically, I haven’t even graduated from high school yet.”
“But you’re eighteen.”
She nods. “And all of my requirements are done, but graduation isn’t for two more weeks.”
“Why’d you leave school early? Because of Tig? Because she passed away? Or something else?”
She opens her mouth to speak, then drops my eyes and sips her tea instead. When she puts her mug back on the counter, she looks up at me, her expression unreadable.
“Thank you for breakfast.”
Oh, shit. I know this routine. I asked too many questions, and she’s about to run for the hills. As she braces her hands on the counter to stand up, I reach out and grab her wrist, holding it gently until she looks up at me.
“Ashley. Don’t go.”
She stares back at me, but I note that she doesn’t try to pull away, which I take as unspoken permission to hang on to her.
“Can I be frank?” I ask, my voice low and urgent.
She nods once, but her smile is long gone, and her eyes are wary.
“I think you’re in trouble,” I say softly. “I think you’re in trouble, and I want to help you. I mean that. I’m sorry I was such an ass last week.”
She doesn’t say anything, just watches me, her wrist resting loosely in my grasp.
“You can trust me,” I add. “I promise, I just want to help.” She still doesn’t answer, so I press on. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you seem really alone to me. Your sister is gone, your par—”
“My mother,” she blurts out, the words audible, but just barely.
“What?”
“Tig wasn’t . . . my sister.”
“What?”
“She was my mother,” she says.
She barks out a garish, high-pitched laugh, and a weird chortle follows, her eyes widening as she pulls her wrist away from me and slides off the stool slowly, as though dumbstruck.
I keep my voice as soft and gentle as possible. “Okay. Um, I didn’t realize—”
“Fuck,” she whispers, staring at the counter like she can’t believe what she just said. She crosses her arms over her breasts, hugging herself, her eyes blinking wildly, her breath coming out in little pants, like she’s about to have a panic attack. “Forget I said that. Please just . . .”
She shakes her head and starts for the door, but I rush around the counter, fighting against my instinct to reach for her shoulders and pull her back to me. “Wait! Ashley! It’s okay. It’s fine! Don’t run.”
She stops just inside the living room but doesn’t turn around.
“It’s okay,” I say to her back. “Seriously. It’s okay. I want to help. You can tell me anything. You can trust me. I don’t . . . I don’t want to hurt you or make things worse for you.” Her shoulders are bunched up so tightly, they graze her ears. “So . . . Tig was . . . your mother?”
She turns around slowly, her face white when she faces me. “Yes.”
Whoa. Okay. But her body language tells me that she is completely uncomfortable, which I need to fix or she’s not going to want to keep talking. Because I can’t help her unless she invites me in.
I have an idea and hold out my hand to her. “Hey. Come with me.”
This was an important tactic I learned during my months of training: people with big secrets are often more inclined to share them if it doesn’t feel interrogative when they’re speaking. Sitting across from her at a table or facing each other in a classic standoff position, like we are right now, aren’t scenarios likely to lessen the tension. Side by side is sometimes best, so that you don’t have to meet someone’s eyes as you converse.
She flicks a glance at my hand. “Where are we going?”
“The pond?” I suggest.
“The . . . pond?”
“Yeah. Remember from Saturday? Where we took Bruno for a walk? We could, you know, walk there. Talk. Chill. Whatever.”
“Oh,” she says, her face relaxing just a touch. “Okay.”
Without taking my hand, she walks around me and heads to the back door, sliding into her little white tennis shoes and stepping onto the porch.
I think about whistling for Bruno, who’s asleep in the barn, but decide against it. I want to focus all of my attention on her. I follow her, copying her rhythm, falling into step beside her. But I don’t say anything until we round the barn.
“Tig was your mother,” I say softly. “You just lost your mother.”
Glancing to my left, I watch her nod, the single movement jerky. “Y-yes.”
“That’s tough. God, that’s . . . terrible.”
She nods again, this time more easily, and I can feel her body loosening up beside me as we walk through the tall grass.
“Thank you for sharing, you know, the truth . . . with me,” I say.
“Nobody really knows,” she says. “My grandparents, of course, but they’ve just returned to Wales. Gus and Jock. Father Joseph. That’s it.” She pauses. “Well, now . . . you, too.”
“Father Joseph?”
“The priest at my school.” Without looking at me, she adds, “The Blessed Virgin Academy in New Paltz, New York.”
“Why was it a secret?”
“My school or my mother?”
“Both,” I say, “but I was asking about your mother. Why did your family keep it a secret? That you were her daughter?”
She stops at a cluster of Queen Anne’s lace, fingering the delicate white flowers. “I never knew my father. I don’t even know if Tig knew who my father was. And my grandparents are . . . Catholic. Very Catholic.”
“Is that why they left you here? After Tig died?”
“I am,” she pauses, and when I glance at her, I see her jaw tighten like she’s clenching it hard, “their great shame.” She gathers a bunch of the flowers together before leaning down to smell them. “They wanted Tig to give me up for adoption.”
I wince at this news, at the way she states it so matter-of-factly, so offhandedly.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sometimes I wish she had. Maybe I could have had a normal life.”
“And sometimes you’re glad she didn’t?”
“What kid wants to be abandoned by their mother?” she asks me, and I know the answer only too well.
I try to look on the bright side because it feels like the right thing to do in conversations like these. “She kept you, despite their disapproval. She must have loved you.”
She caresses the blooms before releasing them. “People keep saying that.”
She’s right. They do. After my mother left, many people in my own life, including my father, made the same claim. She loved you. She loved you and your sister. It wasn’t your fault she left.
Except, she did, in fact, leave us. No pretty words offered out of kindness could change that damning fact.
We walk in silence for several more minutes, until we’re standing side by side at the pond, which is dotted with bright green lily pads. Our quiet presence disturbs a frog, who croaks indignantly at us, making a small splash as it jumps into the water.
I feel the back of her hand brush against mine. Without saying anything, I turn my hand so that our palms touch. When she doesn’t pull away, I lace my fingers through hers, feeling like she’s given me a gift when she bends her fingers and clasps my hand against hers.
“I’m so sorry,” I say softly, “that you lost your mother.”
***
Ashley
I don’t know why I suddenly blurted out that Tig was my mother.
I don’t know why I told him that my grandparents pressured her to put me up for adoption.
I don’t know why I’m holding his hand.
But I guess I’m sick of carrying other people’s secrets, and the truth is that I am so fucking tired in general—of being alone, of being unwanted, of being frightened—I feel like I can’t lose much more by letting Julian in.
And holding his hand is even less complicated.
I want to hold his hand.
In every way imaginable, it feels nice. It feels right.
After this weekend—seeing him with his sister and, perhaps more importantly, knowing of Jock’s confidence in Julian—I am willing to trust him. He’s right. I’m in trouble. I need all the help I can get.
“My stepfather,” I say, “is a very, very bad man.”