“And my girlfriend. He killed her, too. They’ll prove it one day, you’ll see.”
I shake my head and cross my arms.
“You don’t believe me?” Owen asks.
He looks wounded, like I had just shot him in the heart.
“I don’t know, Owen,” I give in a little.
He’s too drunk to have a normal conversation, but there’s no way that I would ever bring this up when he’s sober.
“This is just the beginning of finding out the truth about him, Olive. He’s charming and cool but he’s a terrible person. I know that you’ll come around someday.”
I hate his certainty, and I hate my uncertainty.
I wish I could just believe him and not believe everything that they are saying about him.
But I don’t.
I don’t have any good reason or evidence, just my heart.
That’s enough, right?
For now, it has to be.
6
Olive
When I meet a stranger…
I have always been cold for as long as I can remember.
My hands and feet are particularly susceptible, especially in the mornings.
I just happened to mention it to a woman who lives a few doors down. It turns out that she has a PhD in Natural Medicine and it was she who mentioned that I should look into having my thyroid checked.
If I didn’t want to go to the doctor then I could take a thermometer and record my temperature every morning for three days in a row, soon after sleep and before going to the bathroom or making any movements at all. Then I had to add up the number and divide by three. If my body temperature was below ninety-eight degrees then I had a poorly-functioning thyroid.
When I got home and did a lot more research about this online, I discovered that I actually checked a number of different boxes regarding this issue.
I am always cold.
I am often tired for no reason whatsoever.
My hair seems to be thinning.
My skin is dry.
I have trouble losing weight even though I had been following a pretty strict Keto diet (in addition, substituting fish for meat and avoiding dairy).
My neighbor also mentioned that even though normally nuts are a good thing to have, they are quite fattening, especially walnuts, and if I had too many of them, they would slow down my thyroid function even more.
Furthermore, a few months ago, I cut out all salt thinking that my problem was that I was retaining too much water. Well, it turns out salt is essential for people with underperforming thyroids and that seemed to slow mine down even more.
All of this seemed to explain why my weight hasn’t budged even though I’ve put in a lot of effort to lose a few pounds over the last couple weeks.
Today is the third day of me taking thyroid supplements along with iron and iodine drops. I am still cold in the mornings but not as much as I used to be. And I’ve noticed that I have a lot more energy throughout the day.
In addition to supplements, I’ve also changed my diet to more plant-based and have been making myself green juice every morning. I was never a big fan of vegetables but suddenly I have developed a taste for them.
I put on my running shoes and head to the kitchen to make my juice. I cut up two stalks of celery, a cucumber, add dill and parsley along with two scoops of organic pea protein from Trader Joe’s. After adding a cup of water, half a lemon, and salt, I tighten the lid and start the blender.
“Hey!” someone yells over the cacophony of sound.
The voice startles me and I jump away from the counter with my heart in my throat.
“Oh my God, I didn’t mean to scare you,” the woman says with a concerned look on her face.
“No, I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head and trying to get my breathing under control.
She’s about my age with long dark hair and olive skin.
Owen’s Metallica t-shirt looks like a dress on her.
Her legs are bare as are her feet.
She introduces herself as Shelly, shaking my hand and adjusting her shirt as she talks.
“I’m a waitress at the Fire Lounge,” Shelly says, rubbing the front of her foot with the heel of another.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say. “Do you want some coffee?”
“No, thanks, but I’d love some of that juice.”
“Yes, of course,” I say, pouring half of it in a cup for her.
“Are you sure? I only want this if you have more.”
“I’ve got plenty of veggies in the fridge. It’s really not a problem.”
“I just love having this kind of thing in the morning but I’m always too lazy to make it myself. So, I end up going to Jamba Juice.”
“Yeah, it’s a bit of a pain, at first, but you get used to it,” I say.
We take a few sips listening to the silence. I like her being here.
Sometimes having a lot of one-on-one time with Owen gets a bit exhausting. I hope she will stay for the rest of the day.
“Can I ask you something?” Shelly asks, wiping the green mustache off her lips.
I nod.
“Does your brother do this kind of thing…a lot?”
“What do you mean?”
“Bring someone home from the bar?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head.
“That’s what he told me but you know how it is, they all say that,” Shelly says, shrugging. “I’ve said it myself about a thousand times.”
We both laugh.
“You like him, huh?” I ask.
She nods and looks down at the floor as if she had just admitted something embarrassing.
“No, he doesn’t do this often,” I say. “Actually, we’ve been living here for a few months now and he has never brought a girl home before.”
“Really?” Her eyes light up in disbelief.
I give her a shrug and a wink.
We both hang our hopes on Owen.
Shelly wants him to like her as much as she likes him and I do, too. I have a feeling that a girlfriend is exactly what would make Owen a little bit less intense with me.
It will divert his attention away from me, and maybe having someone he enjoys spending time with will make him drink a little less, too.
Owen comes out of his room, wearing only shorts. He gives Shelly a little peck on the cheek and then wraps his arm around her shoulder.
“Hey, girls,” he says. “Whatcha talking about?”
“Your ears burning?” I ask.
Shelly smiles and looks down at the floor.
He brushes hair out of her face and gives her another kiss, this time on the mouth.
A wave of relief washes over me.
He likes her. He really likes her!
“You two have any plans for today?” I nudge them.
“I don’t know, maybe we’ll grab some brunch. My day is pretty open,” Owen says, turning to Shelly.
“I don’t have to be at work until nine so we can do…whatever.” Her eyes twinkle at the thought of spending it with him.
“You want to come?” Owen offers.
“No, I’m good, you two have fun.”
When I head out on my walk, I can’t help but smile.
This is it.
He met a nice girl and she’s going to take him out of that dark place he has been in ever since we got here.
Closing the door behind me, I glance back.
Owen still has his arm around Shelly but his eyes glare at mine.
7
Olive
When I look through the file…
I spend the following morning lounging around in bed way past the time when I should get up.
It feels nice not to stick to the schedule that I had set out for myself and to just take a little break. After finishing another book, my thoughts wander back to the folder that Nicholas gave me.
He said he was waiting for the right time to give it to me but it never presented itself. Why the hell not?
I have a lot of things to be angry with him for and this is the one that probably pisses me off the most.
Why did he wait?
Why didn’t he just tell me?
I open the folder and read through the contents for what feels like the millionth time.
I know her name.
I know some about her family history.
I know that she came from a wealthy family.
Most importantly, I know where she lives. Right here, in Palm Springs, California.
When it was time to decide where we should start our new lives, Owen had many suggestions, but I only had one.
My real mother lives in Palm Springs and that’s the only place I wanted to go.
He has no idea that that’s why I insisted on coming here. I played up the sunshine and the palm trees and the eternal summer but I downplayed one important reason.
Why did I do that?
I’m not sure if Owen would’ve come with me here otherwise.
It’s not that he isn’t interested in finding my mother, I just have a feeling that he would’ve objected.
And how does that saying go again?
It’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission?
I didn’t want to have yet another thing to fight with him about.
I didn’t want him to say no, so I never asked.
What Owen does know is her name and basic things about her.
I would’ve happily kept the folder to myself but I was too distraught to hide it when he came back into my room. I was also too angry and disappointed.
So, he has seen some of the pages but not the one at the end.
Not the one with her address on it. Otherwise, he’d know that she lives exactly 3.4 miles away from us.
I get sick of lounging and decide to finally get some fresh air and go on a hike.
I’m getting bored running up and down the same streets all the time so last night I downloaded the All Trails app that shows all of the hikes around me.
Much to my surprise, there are over five hundred hikes in the Coachella Valley. There are at least five that are within five miles of the house.
I grab my water bottle, a small Ziploc bag of walnuts and sunflower seeds, and my phone. Less than ten minutes later, I’m going on my first hike.
The trail starts off at the visitors’ center where they show me a map of where I’m headed. The desert floor is cloaked with creosote bushes. Some are short but others can be as tall as nine feet in height. When I bend down to look at one’s dark leaves, I notice it smells a bit like rain.
The trail takes me further away from civilization, down the valley below, and higher into the folds of the mountains.
Once I make it around the bend, large boulders that are taller than I am line the trail as if they are the welcoming gate inviting me in.
The trail loops higher and higher and before the city below disappears entirely. I turn around and take a look at it one last time.
Up here, the mountains are tan and red, but looking down at the city all I see is a wall of green.
There are so many palm trees lining the streets that the entire valley looks as if it is a tropical rainforest.
When the trail gets even steeper and I have to scramble over some rocks, my phone vibrates. I’m listening to an audiobook and plan on just ignoring the call but then I see who it’s from, Sydney.
We haven’t talked for a while and I miss her.
“Hey!” I say, huffing and trying to catch my breath.
She immediately presses the FaceTime button and even though now I’m totally regretting my decision to answer her call, I have no choice.
“Oh my God, where are you?” she asks in her bubbly voice.
I flip the phone around and show her the mountains that wrap around me.
“That place is insane,” Sydney says.
“I know, right?”
“So, what are you doing?”
I turn the phone back to me and try not to focus on my red, sweaty face in the upper right hand corner.
“I’m taking a hike. This canyon is only ten minutes away and I thought I would check it out.”
“I wish I was there,” she says.
“Me, too!”
“So, I guess you’re a super healthy California girl now, huh?” she jokes.
I nod.
“It’s disgusting.” I nod. “You should see me. I’m having green smoothies made from vegetables multiple times a day and I’m running, and swimming, and, apparently, hiking now!”
“You make me sick!” She laughs.
“You need to come visit and rescue me from becoming the super me.”
“I will!”
Sydney doesn’t know exactly where I am, but she does know that I’m in California.
Perhaps I should be more careful and not FaceTime with her just in case but I know that she’ll never tell anyone a thing.
I ask her about how she has been but she only briefly glosses over it before getting to the real reason she has called.
“I saw Nicholas on TV,” she says.
“Yeah, me, too,” I say with a huff just as a stitch in my side starts to act up.
Getting tired, I drop my hand down away from my face.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I stop trying to walk and talk into the camera at the same time. “I saw him, too.”
“What does this mean?”
“I don’t know. I guess that the FBI is after him.”
“They are saying he killed his partner,” she whispers.
“He didn’t,” I say.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, he did not do that, Syd.”
As much as I want to tell her the details of what we did at that house together, she doesn’t know much about that and the less she knows the better.
She doesn’t know that Nicholas was working as an informer for the FBI and she doesn’t know that he was giving them information on Owen.
She does know that a few bad people are after Owen for what he said in prison and they want him dead.
And she does know that Nicholas and I broke up.
We talk about it for a while as I scramble higher and higher and then suddenly the reception starts to go out. We are forced to cut our conversation short and I promise to call her back as soon as I get home.
An hour later, I walk into my room, drenched in sweat and find Owen sitting on the edge of my bed reading the file about my mother.
8
Olive
When he discovers my secret…
“What are you doing here?” I ask, holding onto the door handle for support.
“What is this?” he asks, turning his body toward me.
“What are you doing in my room? Why are you going through my stuff?” I demand to know.
He shrugs innocently and licks his lips.
Buying time, perhaps?
Or just trying to figure out what to say?
“I was just trying to find out a little bit more about your mom. You were so…secretive with this thing.”
“I wasn’t secretive—” I start to say defensively.
“Then why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
Owen narrows his eyes.
I can’t tell how many beers he has had today but I’m certain that he isn’t completely sober.
“About what?” I ask.
“About this!” He rises to his feet, shoving the folder in the air.
I finally unclasp my hand away from the doorknob, take a few steps closer to him, and grab the folder out of his hand.
“I want you to leave,” I say quietly but with certainty.
“I’m not going to leave until we talk about this.” He sits back down, crossing his arms. “I’m not going to leave until you tell me why you wan
ted to come here.”
“You already know,” I whisper.
“I want to hear it from your lips.”
“What? What do you want to know?”
“The truth!” he roars.
I wait until silence falls between us again before saying another word.
“Fine,” I give in.
He already knows so why fight him on this?
“I wanted to come to Palm Springs because this is where my real mother lives,” I say quietly.
He doesn’t reply.
“You happy now?” I challenge him.
“Why didn’t you tell me? You didn’t think I would understand?”
“No, that’s not it.”
“So, why?”
“I wasn’t sure how you were going to react and I didn’t want to get into it. I didn’t want you to write this place off because I want to meet her.”
“So, you didn’t meet her yet?”
“No,” I say.
“Why not?”
I don’t say anything.
Instead, I slouch and look down at my shoes.
A bead of sweat rolls off my forehead and lands on the floor.
“Because I’m afraid,” I say after a moment.
He stares at me in disbelief.
“We have been here this whole time and you haven’t even tried to go and see her?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I will, I just need more time. More courage. I don’t know. More of something.”
His anger toward me seems to dissipate but I can’t say the same thing about mine.
These last two months have been more than just a little challenging and Owen hasn’t been doing anything to make it any better.
He’s drinking.
He’s telling me what to do, no, he’s bullying me around.
I walk on pins and needles around him, afraid to say something offensive out of fear of his rage.
He has never raised his hand to me but his words hurt like hell.
And this?
Finding him here in my room going through my personal things?
What gives him the right to do that?
Oh, yes, of course, me.
Tell me to Fight Page 3