Don't Run From Me

by Lorhainne Eckhart

  9

  Vic had flown into Madison, had rented a car, and would be at his house by noon. That was what he had said the previous night, and he had texted a second ago that he was an hour away, yet Aaron was still at Mary’s motel.

  He took her in: slender, dark hair, attractive. She was a walking secret. There was so much about her that was disturbing and so much she wasn’t coming clean about. So she’d known Brittany, spent hours and days with her and others, trying to survive, yet only now had it seemed like a good time to track him down and rip his heart out of his chest?

  “I don’t understand why you waited all these years. Where are you from?” He had never really asked her about herself.

  “Lake Arrowhead,” she said before adding, “California.”

  He had to look away for a second. “You were just out this way, stopped in and found me, just like that?”

  She stared at him, unblinking. Yeah, she was hiding something. She took a breath. “I came to see you. That’s the truth. I, uh…should have reached out to you years ago. My family would freak if they knew I was here.” She was fidgeting and stood, then started moving around the cramped room. She was in cutoffs and a simple T-shirt, with not an ounce of fat on her. She was attractive, and her eyes were a hint of hazel tinged with a lot of pain. It was a weight she carried.

  “Why? You could have called, emailed, but you had to show up in person to tell me, what, just enough to create some mystery and jerk me around? What the fuck? This was a girl I loved, who was ripped away from me in a muddy slew of hell. I searched everywhere I could, combed through the dead and found nothing, but you knew, and this bullshit—”

  “It wasn’t that easy for me,” Mary said. “I didn’t know who I was. In the pictures taken, my face was a mess, bandaged. It was two years before I remembered everything: her, you, my family. I was at Krabi. The bodies in the lobby, hallways, on the floor… Those memories still haunt me. I remember hearing something about a head injury, a leg injury, but others were crammed around me. Everything was labelled so simply, efficiently. Then I was shipped off to Bangkok. My family had been looking for me, but the damage to my face, the scars, made me unrecognizable. I had no jewelry, no distinguishing marks. It was only when I remembered, still overseas, that I was able to reach out to them. They brought me home, and I’ve been there ever since. My sister hovers.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he watched her, dialing back some of the anger that had spilled out of him. “It sounds like you had a rough go.”

  She nodded, and again he found himself watching her, studying her face, looking for some physical scar or reminder of what had happened.

  “Your face.” He gestured, and her eyes gave all of herself to him. He wondered what the doctors had done for her. “You looked different before?”

  “Plastic surgery. It was after I was out of Thailand. A miracle, I’ve been told. I saw a good surgeon. He used skin grafts. The only scar left is hidden in my hairline, but yes, I look different. Not sure anyone could be the same after that. I’m sorry about what you lost,” she said, and her voice was soft as she lowered herself to the bed. The tension that had ratcheted up in the room moments before had eased.

  His phone dinged again. He pulled it out and saw it was from Vic, a simple message: ?? That was so Vic. Aaron hadn’t responded to his first text.

  He texted back, See you at my place, and then pocketed his phone. “I’m sorry to have barged in like I did. I guess I don’t understand why you waited so long, so many years, and why this way?”

  She was staring at him long and hard. Then she glanced away, her expression guarded. “My family worried that you were an obsession for me. After I got back, I remembered and found an article in the sports section about an up and coming fighter—you. I followed you. They wanted me to put the entire incident behind me. As my sister stated, and my father too, it was best to forget. They wouldn’t understand. They encouraged me to focus on other things. I suppose I could have emailed, called, but it didn’t seem right. I did see a few fights but knew I’d never be able to speak with you. With the crowds, the security, I’d never get past. I…” She gestured aimlessly and looked up to him. “I decided it was best in person, and when I realized I couldn’t let it go, would never have peace until I saw you, talked with you, I decided it was time to come. I have now. She loved you, but she thought you had died, one of many. The dead outnumbered the survivors.”

  “How long are you here for?” he asked, wanting to have more time to talk, to understand those last moments, that missing piece of time that had been taken from him and given to someone else.

  “I fly home in three days,” she said.

  10

  With his slow way of life in the small town of Greensboro, this was the most traffic, visitors, and excitement Aaron McCabe had ever had. No one dropped in, no one visited. This place of his was in fact a place where he hid out alone with no one around to disturb him. Now, in the course of two days, he’d found out he had a sister whom he was supposed to have dinner with tonight, a brother who never visited was on his way, and a mysterious woman named Mary had dropped in out of the blue to tell him she had survived the tsunami with Brittany and had been present for the last hours of the girl he loved.

  He pulled into his driveway with a fancy dark SUV on his tail. When he stepped out, his brother Vic followed, and it appeared he was alone. “No Fiona or John?” Aaron asked.

  Vic just shook his head. “No, they’re at home. It’s a quick trip, here and back,” he added, taking in the barn, the land, his fishing pond, and then the house. It was quick, but Vic was a shrewd man who could take in more than the average person with just a look.

  “Just got back here. Was visiting a…” He almost said “friend,” but Mary wasn’t a friend, and he didn’t know how to describe her, so he didn’t. He started walking to the house, gesturing toward it.

  “It’s hot,” Vic said, still with his shades on.

  “That’s what it is here. Time of year. Will get hotter yet.”

  Vic’s footsteps were behind him on the stairs and followed him inside as Aaron tossed his keys on a side table.

  “So, business here?” Aaron added as he went to the fridge, opened it, and grabbed the juice. He pulled a glass from one of the bare cabinets and held it up, but Vic just shrugged it off, tucking his shades in his shirtfront, so Aaron poured just one for himself.

  “Yeah, later. Wanted to stop here first.” Vic gestured to Aaron’s face.

  “It’s fine,” he replied.

  Vic didn’t seem alarmed, but he didn’t smile. “I’m sure it is. The other guy must be worse. Heard you won,” he added, leaning against the counter.

  Aaron swallowed half his glass of juice. “Of course,” he said, moving away from the counter, adding some cockiness to the mix and strutting into the living room. He said nothing else as he took in Vic standing there, looking around. He was probably thinking a lot of things, and Aaron didn’t have a clue what.

  “Chase mentioned something about Brittany,” Vic said. “I told him he was worrying about nothing, but I wonder.”

  What did that mean? Aaron took a seat in the easy chair and placed his hands on the arms. He could see Vic looking at the bare walls of this place he’d owned for a few years but had yet to turn into a home.

  “Had a visitor yesterday, took me by surprise,” Aaron said.

  His brother was watching him, giving all of himself, which was what Vic did. “Oh.”

  Aaron wondered whether anyone knew how difficult a man Vic was to have a conversation with. Aaron did, but he never tried, as he understood so much of what Vic was saying without the need for words. “A lady showed up here, said she was my sister. Lives not far from here. Has a husband, kids.”

  Vic was frowning, and Aaron realized he’d never shared that he had searched his mother out after coming back from the nightmare he’d lived through in Thailand. His soul had been ripped apart, and he’d been trying to put himself together, n
eeding answers to his past.

  “She found out about me from her mother,” Aaron said. “My mother. Apparently I was the product of an affair and had to go before her husband returned from overseas.”

  Vic was still frowning. Of course it didn’t make sense.

  “Her husband was in the military, gone for a long time. I was a secret she kept.”

  Vic nodded, maybe in sympathy, or maybe he didn’t give a shit. “Motherfucking whore,” he said, and the ferocity in his tone startled Aaron.

  “She was scared,” he said. He couldn’t believe he was defending her. “Had two kids already and didn’t want her marriage to end.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Vic snapped.

  “She died, so dial it back a bit,” Aaron said, but he had to smile at his brother, realizing Vic was cutting through the bullshit. That was what he did.

  “And your sister decided to search you out why?”

  “She found out before our mother died—her mother, my birth mother. Apparently she told her the story. Madison was furious. She found articles and photos of me in her mother’s things as she cleaned everything out. Apparently she thought enough of me to keep track of me all these years, my career. Madison found a scrapbook in her things, yet when I showed up on her doorstep…”

  Vic really looked at him, his gaze sharp. Aaron wanted to say “Never mind” but knew it was too late. “You went looking for her?” Vic said.

  “I did, but she promptly sent me away. I thought a whole lot of things. Just didn’t realize she was scared of the secret she’d kept from her husband. She took it to her grave, other than telling Madison. I’m supposed to go for dinner there tonight. Not sure if that’s a great idea or not.” He’d just as soon sit there alone and maybe call Mary. He was pulled in so many directions by so many people, so many secrets, so many old wounds being torn open inside him after he had patched them up for so long. He wanted to fight.

  “You should go,” Vic said, running his hand over the arm of the chair. He took it in and watched Aaron from across the room. “You should get to know her if she reached out. I know how you struggled more than the rest of us. You came to us with baggage. Are you sure you’re related and it’s not some scam?”

  He hadn’t expected that, and for a minute, as he thought of Madison, the awkwardness… No, there was no way. He shook his head. “No, she knew details about the time I showed up at her mother’s door—her mother, my mother.”

  Vic was just being Vic, he had to remind himself. He knew him better than most. After all, he’d seen his brother at his most vulnerable, his lowest. He knew how he ticked, at times, too.

  “Then it’s not something you can really ignore,” Vic said. “Go, see her, meet her family, but don’t forget that you already have one.”

  That surprised him. That was something Chase would say, not Vic. Maybe his surprise was in the expression on his face.

  “Fiona’s pregnant,” Vic said. “That’s another reason she’s home. Morning sickness has hit her hard. Family is important,” he added, “but you kind of evaded my question about Brittany. Tossing me off. I noticed. You’re good, just not that good.” He gestured toward him.

  Aaron glanced away. What could he say to Vic, of all people, who would understand? “You were there,” he said. “You came.”

  “Two weeks later, after your call, hearing how broken you were. I didn’t know you were there. We didn’t know exactly where you were, geographically, just somewhere in that part of the world. I’ve never seen you…”

  Dirty, bloody, a mess, starving? Aaron wasn’t sure he remembered the details, just the expression on Vic’s face when he’d found him in what was left of one of the resorts, camping out in the same bathing suit he’d been in when the water had hit. A producer from somewhere in the Midwest, an organizer who’d been staying in the resort, had handed his cell phone to Aaron and told him to call someone.

  “You scared the hell out of me then. We’ve never really talked about what happened, what you lost, what you survived. Chase seems to think what’s going on now is because of that.”

  He’d heard enough of this and was getting tired of Chase sticking his head in where it didn’t belong. He slid his forgotten glass of juice onto the table and leaned forward, rubbing his hands together between his legs. His shirt was damp, and the house was heating up. The windows were open, but there was no breeze.

  “I think so, too,” Vic said. “You can hold things in better than most, and I understand because I’ve done the same. You know you’re the one who patched me up when I hit rock bottom, before I pulled my shit together, but I carried all the blame for something that wasn’t all because of me, and I’m wondering if you’re not doing the same. You can only bury things for so long.”

  He looked up to Vic, wondering when he’d turned into a shrink. This was Chase’s job. Vic’s was to tell everybody to fuck off! He glanced to the side again. “Yesterday seemed to be the day for a lot of revelations.”

  Vic ran his hand over the back of his head as he leaned on his knees. “Oh?”

  Aaron didn’t look over to Vic again but knew his brother was watching and waiting. “Someone else showed up yesterday, someone who knew Brittany.”

  His brother didn’t say anything.

  “She was one of the survivors, and she was with Brittany. There were others, too. She was the last one to see her alive.”

  11

  His brother had demanded details about the girl who had shown up at his door. Vic had gotten in his face, and even though he was a big guy who couldn’t be pushed around, he had to know Aaron was the one man who could take him down. It wouldn’t be easy, though, as Aaron knew Vic could fight dirty. Regardless, Vic was furious, and Aaron knew just the mention of Mary had set his brother on a war path on his behalf.

  He’d been tempted to cancel dinner with Madison, yet there he was with Vic in the rental car, on his way to dinner, his brother having insisted on joining them. Aaron was even riding in the passenger seat, something he didn’t often do.

  “You need to let it go, Vic, about Mary,” he said. “She’s a scarred woman who survived, and she doesn’t even know what happened to Brittany.”

  “You may not remember the condition you were in,” Vic said. “When I got there, you were unrecognizable. Once I got past the mud, the untreated cuts, the stench, I was left with the realization that you were one step from the edge. I got you out of there and cleaned you up at a hotel in Singapore, got a doctor to check you out and put you on antibiotics for all the infections that had set in. You searched for Brittany everywhere. I too called the Red Cross and every organization involved in the search and the cleanup over there. You know about the casualties, the lives lost, hundreds of thousands buried with no ID. What is this woman doing, coming back here now after all these years?”

  Vic was still upset, of course. Aaron could hear it in his voice. This was a side of his brother he’d never seen. He didn’t remember coming back, only that he’d stayed with Vic. Chase and Luc had been there, too, hovering. Then he’d found his way into fighting and discovered he had a taste for it, maybe because of all the anger he carried.

  “What can I say, Vic? Mary needed to tell me. She wanted to tell me after she remembered. What does it matter?” He could see something in his brother he wasn’t sure he liked. It was the look of a man who was driven, focused, and took care of things his way. “Just leave her be,” he added as they passed through Greensboro, past a rundown auto repair shop he hadn’t noticed before, Hill’s Garage. He wondered whether that was the shop that belonged to Madison’s husband.

  He pulled out his phone, glancing at the address and directions on the screen. “Make the next right,” he said and gestured, and Vic sped up and headed down a side road heavy with trees, bushes, and dirt. They followed it half a mile until Aaron noticed a big white mailbox. “Here,” he said, and Vic pulled in and parked behind an older-model black car, one Aaron recognized from his place. There was a one-ton flatbed a
nd a tow-truck parked there, too.

  Madison stepped outside and down the stairs, carrying a tray with glasses and a jug of something. A picnic table had been set up in front of the house. She waved as Aaron stepped out of the SUV and realized he’d forgotten to give Madison a heads-up about Vic.

  “My brother flew in,” he said. “Madison, this is Vic McCabe. I should have called.” He should have done a lot of things.

  Vic walked around the car, and Aaron could see his brother trying to get a sense of Madison and this place, a small southern home, one story, older, with a porch. It was neat and tidy. A shop was off to the right, and the large doors were wide open. He could see machinery inside.

  “Totally fine,” she said. “Always have more than enough. Beau, company’s here!” she called out across the yard, and a man of average height, his brown hair receding in front, stepped out of that shop in coveralls, covered in grease. He was holding a towel, wiping his hands.

  Vic walked over to Madison and shook her hand as her husband approached. He was smiling, round cheeks. He held up his hand as if realizing how dirty it was and that he shouldn’t touch anyone.

  “Aaron, this is my husband, Beau,” Madison said. “Aaron also brought his brother Vic with him.” She seemed nervous and was fidgeting with the wedding band on her finger.

  “Aaron, Vic, great to meet you,” Beau said. “Glad you could come. Aaron, you have no idea how excited and nervous Madison has been to meet her brother once she made her mind up yesterday to just go and see you and lay it out there.”

  He hadn’t thought she would have told anyone. He thought for sure he was a secret that would remain a secret. Maybe his face told that story. “I thought you didn’t want anyone to know,” he said. “You said your brother…”

  “Tom didn’t know, but when he called today, I told him. You are as much my brother as he is, and Mom’s gone now. It’s time it came out.”