The Secret That Intervened

by Lisa Marie Stum

  The Secret that Intervened

  By Lisa M. Stum

  ****

  Copyright © 2014 by Lisa M. Stum

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the above author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 - Hailey

  Chapter 2 - Cody

  Chapter 3 - Cody

  Chapter 4 - Hailey

  Chapter 5 - Hailey

  Chapter 6 - Hailey

  Chapter 7 - Cody

  Chapter 8 - Hailey

  Chapter 9 - Cody

  Chapter 10 - Hailey

  Chapter 11 - Hailey

  Chapter 12 - Hailey

  Chapter 13 - Erin

  Chapter 14 - Cody

  Chapter 15 - Erin

  Chapter 16 - Hailey

  Chapter 17 - Cody

  Chapter 18 - Erin

  Chapter 19 - Cody

  Chapter 20 - Hailey

  Chapter 21 - Hailey

  Chapter 22 - Hailey

  Chapter 23 - Hailey

  Chapter 24 - Hailey

  Chapter 25 - Cody

  Chapter 26 - Cody

  Chapter 27 - Hailey

  Chapter 28 - Cody

  Chapter 29 - Hailey

  Chapter 30 - Cody

  Chapter 31 - Hailey

  Chapter 32 - Cody

  Chapter 33 - Cody

  Chapter 34 - Cody

  Chapter 35 - Hailey

  Chapter 36 - Erin

  Chapter 1 - Hailey

  Some people my age were lucky, I supposed. They hit the jackpot in life, scored awesome parents and had futures ahead of them that involved easy decisions. I often wondered what that would have been like, what that would have felt like. Choices about things were simple ones, I thought. It was the decisions that involved matters of the heart that were complex.

  “Can we talk outside for a few minutes?” Cody Altwater’s voice met me with my first step into his mom’s house. I stood in the doorway with the front door still ajar in my hand as he rested his guitar against the couch.

  I froze, with my lips slightly parted. “You want to talk,” I said, fidgeting with the doorknob.

  He nodded at me with his lips pressed together, forming a straight line.

  “Of course. Where’s Chloe?” I asked. A quick scan around the room told me she wasn’t in it. I was curious about what he would say, since he had been reticent earlier that day.

  “My mom is upstairs getting her up from her nap.”

  I propped the door fully open as he walked toward me. He took it from me and insisted I go through it first.

  I had hoped on the drive over that Cody wouldn’t be there, and the conversation we’d had while moving my belongings into storage earlier that day would be our last about my move to New York with my boyfriend and the father of my daughter, Jason Peters.

  It wasn’t much of a conversation though. He kept doing that thing he always does when he overanalyzes something: “But” followed by “never mind” came out of his mouth a total of six times. I counted.

  Looking back, I could have handled the situation differently, especially since I had known for two weeks that I was leaving town. Despite having plenty of opportunities, I’d only told Cody I was moving the day before. We usually told each other everything, but I didn’t want anyone to persuade me not to move, and if there was one person that could have made me doubt my decisions, it was Cody Altwater.

  So there I was, standing on Mama Mary’s porch for probably the five thousandth time in my life since Cody and I had met at the age of five. Cody’s mom was watching my daughter while I tied up loose ends around town. She always took care of Chloe for me when I needed her to, and never charged me a dime. One time I offered to pay her, but accidentally offended her instead. I didn’t want to feel like I was taking advantage, and she wasn’t the type of person that could conceive of such a thing – me taking advantage.

  I walked toward the white banister and rested my hip against it. “I really appreciate your help today. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  “Don’t mention it; not a big deal,” he said as he shut the door behind him. His voice was flat and his face was still expressionless. I knew he was in his own head, trying to sort things out.

  I flashed him a smile, but he didn’t reciprocate. Instead a serious expression crossed his face, and I wanted that look to disappear. Badly. It wasn’t like him, and it made me uneasy. He was always joking around, always lighthearted, and rarely, if ever, had this kind of weighty energy about him.

  The heat of the sun made it feel like it was August, although the official start of summer was still over two weeks away. I slid my fingers over the banister. It was almost too hot to touch, but it gave me something to focus my attention on.

  I was hoping that this was just a goodbye, a simple send-off to wish me good luck, but my intuition told me it wouldn’t be that easy. That little voice inside my head was almost always right, but I had a bad habit of dismissing it.

  Cody was next to me, and I could feel his eyes on me. The humidity in the air contributed to the awkwardness of the moment, encouraging beads of sweat to form on my temples. My heart rate started to soar, and the floorboards creaked beneath my feet as I shifted the weight of my body to my other foot.

  Minutes passed and neither of us had spoken a word. Every second felt like a minute, and the minutes seemed like they were stretching into hours. Cody wasn’t a particularly chatty person, but he was never this quiet either. We rarely had awkward silence wrangling its way between us. I hated it, because nothing about it felt natural.

  The smell of freshly cut grass and the chlorine from the pool next door spilled into the air as a gust of wind swept over us. My hair blew into my face as it whipped its way past, matting strands of brown hair to the side of my cheek. I looked up at Cody as I tucked my hair behind my ear. He locked eyes with me and relaxed his jaw from the tautness he had once held it in.

  “Don’t go, Hailey,” he said, with sadness in his crystal blue eyes that I only saw on rare occasions. He ran his hand through his dark brown hair, finally resting it on the back of his neck. It felt like his eyes were piercing straight through me as he waited for me to respond.

  The expression on his face was still serious. My throat tightened, and my stomach began to sour. I knew this would be one of the most difficult conversations we’d ever had. Queasiness replaced any curiosity I’d once had.

  I pulled my glance back to the grass and stared absently at a dandelion as I tried to figure out how to respond. He wasn’t himself that day, so nothing that came to mind felt quite right. The appropriate words just wouldn’t pop into my head as I struggled to think straight.

  Earlier that day at the storage facility I had told him my reasons for leaving. He didn’t have much to say in response, but I could tell he wanted to say something. I knew he didn’t agree with my reasoning because of his silence.

  Usually he was a straight shooter and didn’t second-guess himself. He was always certain, always self-assured, always confident.


  “Don’t do this, Cody,” I cautiously warned when I looked his way. My shoulders were tense, and they grew heavier with each passing second, forcing my body into a slight hunched position.

  An audible sigh slipped from his lungs and then he bit his lower lip. He did that when he was holding back words. When his lip finally escaped his teeth and he cleared his throat, I knew it was coming. Cody was about to put words to something we had both felt, but left unspoken.

  My heart felt like it would beat its way out of my chest. If he said it, my departure would only become harder for the both of us. And anything that made my decision to move more difficult was not something I could handle.

  I tucked my hair behind my ear again as I stood there looking at him. My hair wasn’t even in my face this time. Nervous response, I suppose.

  Cody turned his head to the street, probably to avoid eye contact. “I’ve been in love with you since I was fifteen years old.” He looked at me for a fraction of a second and then looked down.

  A sudden awareness of my breath took hold. I felt like I was in an alternate universe, experiencing things my heart knew were true, but never imagining they would actually occur.

  “I can’t watch you go. I can’t picture the two of you not in my life,” he continued, lifting his eyes back up to mine.

  My intuition was right. Of course it was, it was always right. Although, I hadn’t known he was fifteen when it happened for him, and I hadn’t trusted it enough to think he’d ever confess his feelings to me.

  I knew it took everything in him to admit that to me. It was painful to watch his normally confident disposition fade while he spoke.

  There wasn’t an alternative to hurting him and making him feel rejected. I wished there was another option, but there wasn’t. If the situation had been different, I might have run into his arms in that second. But that just wasn’t a choice I could make.

  He would have said that twisted fate had kept us from being together. But it wasn’t like we ever spoke of such things. I would have said it was a series of choices we had each made. His choices consisted of the flock of girls that he had dated in high school. My choice consisted of the new guy that came into town the summer before senior year, who eagerly made me his girlfriend. Jason was my first and only boyfriend, and I was pretty sure that one day he would be my husband.

  When I took in a deep breath, a prickly sensation flooded across my chest and down my arms. My head pounded, and a pressure began to build between my eyes. I knew the decision my heart wanted to make for myself. But, I also knew the decision my heart wanted to make for Chloe. My heart ached and I understood the saying “my heart is breaking in two,” because it was exactly how I felt in that moment.

  Everything about Cody felt safe. I could let him into my internal world without any regret. He knew all my secrets and even my lies. Whenever anything went wrong he was the first person I turned to.

  He put his hand on my arm. I looked up at him in response, begging him with my eyes to stop speaking. I already couldn’t fathom how I would get along without him. We hadn’t been apart for more than three days in the seventeen years we had known each other.

  “Please don’t go, Hailey. Please don’t do this,” Cody pleaded with me, and all the sadness in his voice was immediately inserted into my soul. I wanted to burst into tears in that very moment and tell him all about my uncertainties.

  “I have to. I have to try with Jason. He hasn’t had much time to really bond with Chloe.” I glanced down at his hand; his fingers were still wrapped around my arm. Every few seconds, he would massage it with a tender grip.

  “We could be a family, Hailey. We could try. I love Chloe like a daughter,” he said.

  We didn’t say things like that to each other. We had never been anything other than platonic. I always felt guilty when I thought about him in a way I shouldn’t have, and constantly condemned myself for it.

  The lump in my throat pounded hard as his voice cracked while he spoke. I cared about Cody a lot. In that moment, my heart was in the middle of a possible destruction for the both of us.

  I had been with Jason for the past five years, and I did love him too. Maybe it wasn’t the sort of love that you see on TV or read about in books. But I thought that kind of love didn’t really exist. It was all a fairytale, and my life was anything but a fairytale.

  I wiped the tears that had fallen down my cheeks.

  Leaving my hometown of Milbourny wouldn’t be easy. There were few people that mattered to me and that I mattered to. Cody was definitely one of them. Moving to New York might be the most difficult choices I would ever make, but I was full of hope that it was the right one.

  Cody pulled me toward him and wrapped his arms around me and whispered into my ear, “A week in the summer and a week during the winter isn’t a relationship, Hailey.” A chill ran up my spine when his lips accidentally brushed against my ear, and then irritation replaced it when I realized what he was implying with his words.

  I knew that my relationship with Jason wasn’t ideal and I also knew that I would’ve broken up with him had I not gotten pregnant. But we were older now, and he had just finished college. I thought that had to count for something, because he always told me he was doing it for us.

  For a moment, I considered what Cody had said. Then I turned my head and caught a glimpse of Chloe through the window. Any thought I’d given to changing my mind was immediately dismissed.

  Sure, Cody was certainly better with Chloe, and I’d always wished that Jason had the same bond. But, Cody was around her nearly every day and Jason rarely saw her. I thought in time Jason would develop a similar relationship with her. At least I hoped he would.

  After easing away from Cody I rested my lower back against the banister. I folded my arms across my chest, and cast my eyes down at the floorboards. Attempting to absorb the words he had spoken had become difficult as I tried to digest the situation, his confession, and my wavering certainty that I had made the right decision.

  “A weekly phone call is not a relationship either,” Cody said as he stepped closer to me and rested his hand on the banister beside me. He focused on me. He was reading me and testing my resolve, which had weakened. The confidence in his tone had become disturbing, especially because he was challenging my relationship with Jason.

  “But we’re going to live together,” I said, attempting a convincing tone and a stern face.

  “He could have called more often. Visited more often. Christ, Hail, he was only two hours away.” He gave me a look that insinuated I was a naïve child, and that irritated me further.

  “He was busy focusing on school,” I said, and then pulled my lips into my mouth.

  “He was busy being a sleazeball,” Cody said, shaking his head in obvious disapproval. “Goddamn it, Hailey. When are you going to wake up?”

  “That’s just rumors, Cody, and you’re really in no position to judge anyone.” I turned my head to the side. He grasped me by the arm again, this time firmly, but not in a way that scared me.

  “I’m nothing like him,” he said, angry with the comparison.

  “Stop it,” I begged.

  “Look at me,” he demanded, staring me directly in the eyes when I turned my head to him. “You’re making a mistake. He doesn’t love you.”

  I yanked my arm out of his grasp. His words cut deeply. All I wanted was for Chloe to have her father. How could he not understand that? Cody knew that growing up I had felt tossed aside, and I never wanted Chloe to feel that way. I never wanted her to feel like her father didn’t want her.

  Being with Cody would have been a selfish decision on my part. It would have killed any chance of Chloe having both her parents. Besides, I did have a love for Jason, and I was certain I could make it work. I hated that Cody was making me feel bad about it. He was adding to the uncertainty, forcing my thoughts to contradict one another, making me question my decision.

  “Cody, I think we probably shouldn’t talk for a while. This i
s coming out of nowhere, and it’s confusing me.” I wished my life wasn’t so complicated and that Cody hadn’t been so cruel to me by saying that Jason didn’t love me.

  He shot me a glance of defeat mixed with sadness, and somewhere in it resided an ounce of judgment blended with truth. I wished he hadn’t laid it out there the way he did. The last thing I wanted to do was to hurt him more, or for him to hurt me with his words. I should have left for New York without saying anything, and sent a note, or made a call instead. My heart felt like it was sitting in my stomach, and I needed an escape from everything.

  “I better get going,” I said. “I’m going to get Chloe and say goodbye to Mama Mary.”

  I pushed myself off the banister and walked inside, leaving Cody on the porch by himself.

  Chapter 2 - Cody

  “That wasn’t easy for you,” my mom said as she placed her hand on my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. We stood on the top of the steps, quiet for the most part.

  “Sure wasn’t. Easily in the top three bad moments of my life.” I shook my head while I considered what I had said. “Nope, it’s second only to Dad dying.”

  Silence remained between us for a few minutes. I stared at the road out front, the one that Hailey had driven down just five minutes ago. A cloud of exhaust had chased behind her crappy Honda Civic, and I hoped that it would not break down on her way to New York.

  I thought about watching her say goodbye to my mom and how she always called her Mama Mary. Mom thought the term was endearing; she liked that they thought of her that way. Hailey had started calling her that when she was eleven years old. Mom thought that Hailey had made the nickname up as a way to establish some sort of mother figure in her life again. But the truth is, Hailey had slipped one day and called her “Mom” and then made up for it in her own way.