I was always ready. Always watching, wary, on edge. If my father stood too close or stepped toward me too quickly, I would jump away, ready to run.
I put the knife back in the case, turning the latch. Then I steered Olive over to the chair next to the roaring fire and rubbed her arms briskly through the blanket to warm her. “Warming up?” I asked.
“A little.”
Buddy barked, alerted by a noise outside, and then there was a knock on the front door and Madison stepped inside. Her hair and pink suit were wet through. She had swapped her heels for a pair of sandals, though they were equally impractical in this forest. Her mascara was completely smudged, giving her racoon eyes, and her lipstick was smeared across her upper lip. She looked deranged.
“Olive,” she said, holding out her arms. “Oh, thank god.”
Olive ran to her, letting the blanket fall as she wrapped her arms around her stepmother.
“I was so scared,” Madison said. “We checked the cabin first—”
“I knew the cabin would be the first place Kira looked,” Olive said. “When I heard someone coming, I ran.”
Madison smoothed her hair. “We called and called, but with the wind howling—we couldn’t find you.”
“Then you know how I feel,” I said. “You told me to go to the playground. But Evie wasn’t there. We searched for her—”
Madison looked perplexed. “But I told you I’d leave Evie with your friend Teresa, and that she would meet you at the playground for the fireworks.”
“You took Evie?” Olive asked Madison. As she stepped back, I slipped the blanket around her shoulders.
“But Evie is okay, right?” Madison asked me. She appeared genuinely concerned.
“We found her, but I had no idea where she was at first. We searched the water for her. I was terrified.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, with such emotion that I almost believed she meant it. “But you weren’t listening to me, and I had to find a way to get to Olive. I had to.”
“Even if that meant taking Evie.”
“It did get your attention.”
“I could charge you with kidnapping, child endangerment.”
“Evie was never in danger, not from me. I found her alone in a parked vehicle on the side of the road. I took her to safety, to your friend’s place. You’re the one who left Evie alone in the truck. You’re the one who left Olive alone in this forest. You should be charged with child endangerment.”
“Okay, okay, settle down,” Nathan said. “Both of you. The main thing is, Buddy found Olive and everyone’s safe now.”
Madison glanced from Nathan to his dog.
“Nathan is an old friend,” I explained.
“Thank you,” Madison said to him, grabbing his hand and shaking it in both of hers. “Thank you for finding my daughter.”
Nathan shifted uncomfortably as he withdrew his hand, looking everywhere but at her. She lifted her chin. “I see Kira has told you about me,” she said sadly, and then she turned to me. “I imagine you must think I’m crazy.”
“The thought has crossed my mind,” I said. “You did break into our house, follow us up here and take Evie out of my truck.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Madison shook her head in wonder and laughed a little, at herself, apparently. “God, I can’t believe Aaron drove me to do all that.”
Wow. Her capacity for self-delusion was astounding. Aaron? She was the one who had orchestrated this hell.
“I would have never done anything like this before . . .” She looked up at the cobwebs in the corner.
She was passing the blame again, onto me this time. I finished her sentence for her. “Before I arrived on the scene.”
Her eyes found my face. “No,” she said, like I was being self-indulgent, thinking I was that important. “Before I became a mother.”
She ran a hand through her hair. Wet and heavy with hairspray, it stayed pushed up on one side of her head, ridiculously so. I hiccupped a giggle: she looked so at odds with the Real Housewives image she usually projected. I giggled.
“What?” she said, patting her hair.
“You look like shit.”
“So do you,” she said, and then she giggled. That fucking woman and I giggled in my father’s haunted cabin. Nerves. The unlikeliness of us finding ourselves here together. And yet here we were. Madison, still smiling, took a compact and tissues from her purse and began wiping away the mascara that was running down her face. I rubbed the nervous laughter from my eyes, no doubt smudging my own mascara further.
“Are you two okay?” Olive asked.
Madison waved a hand. “Look, Kira, I just need a little time with Olive, in private. We have some important things to discuss, things she needs to know.”
I bet, I thought. More bullshit about Aaron. “And what do you suggest?” I asked. “That Nathan and I wait outside in this storm?” Nathan shuffled backward to the front door as if he wanted to do just that. At his feet, Buddy sniffed the air and scratched the door, asking to be let out.
Madison glanced out the window at the rain hammering down. “Maybe Olive and I could have a little time together at your cottage?”
I shook my head. “Once the storm lets up, Olive is having a hot shower and going straight to bed. And as soon as Aaron gets here in the morning, we’re turning around and going right back home.”
“Aaron is on his way here?” Nathan asked. He looked thunderstruck, but I couldn’t talk about that now, not with Madison and Olive in the room with us.
Madison smoothed Olive’s wet hair for a moment, then let out a sigh. “Then I guess this is my opportunity.”
“There is nothing you have to say that Olive needs to hear,” I said. “I won’t let you poison her with more lies.”
“Lies, huh?”
“You’re not going to talk to her.”
Madison nodded slowly. “And just how are you going to stop me?”
Nathan and I exchanged a glance as Madison pushed past him to open the front door, revealing a wet figure sheltering on the porch. The smell of rain and wet earth blew in with the wind. “Sarah?” she said gently. “Sarah, it’s time.”
Nathan pulled the beagle back by the collar as Sarah stepped over the threshold cautiously, like a bristling cat that had just been chased, alert for dangers. Her outfit looked pieced together from a thrift store: gray joggers and an oversized hoodie soaked with rain, men’s runners. She pulled back the hood to reveal a wild bush of curly blond hair that she had clearly dyed herself.
“You,” I said. “Who the hell are you?”
“This is Sarah,” Madison said, closing the door behind her. “You met earlier.”
At Nathan’s feet, Buddy lifted his head, sniffing the air.
“Yes,” I said. “But who are you? Why were you following me this morning?”
Sarah’s eyes grew round and shifted to Olive. Seeing them together like this, I suddenly knew what Madison was about to say, what she had been trying to tell us all along. But how could it be true?
“Olive,” Madison said, ignoring me and taking her stepdaughter’s hand, “we don’t have much time, so I’m just going to say it. I’ve been trying to arrange for you to meet Sarah for some time now. So here goes. Sarah, this is Olive. And Olive, this is Sarah.” She hesitated. “Sweetheart, Sarah is your mom.”
25
Olive shook her head and stepped back. Her eyes darted from Madison to Sarah and back again. “No,” she said. “Maddy, you’re my mom.”
Madison tucked a loose curl behind Olive’s ear. “Of course, I am, sweetheart. That isn’t going to change. But Sarah gave birth to you. She lived with you and took care of you until—”
“My mom’s name was Victoria.”
“Vicki,” Sarah said. “I took my middle name, Sarah, when I left your father. Given what happened, I felt I had to start over, leave the person I had been behind.”
“But I’ve seen pictures of my mother,” Olive said. “She had red hair,
like me. And she didn’t look—” She waved a hand, pointing out Sarah’s ragged appearance. There were dark circles under the woman’s eyes that seemed sunken, as if she hadn’t drunk enough water, and her pale, freckled complexion was almost see-through, revealing the blue veins just below the skin. She didn’t just look tired, she appeared consumed, like the victims of wildfires who had seen not only their homes, but their communities reduced to ashes in the flames.
“I’ve been ill,” Sarah said. She tugged on a curl. “And I dyed my hair. But it was naturally red—auburn, actually—like yours. I couldn’t stand to look at it every day in the mirror. It reminded me too much of . . .” Her gaze drifted to Olive’s head of red curls.
Olive turned to Madison. “But when you and Sarah picked me up at the bridge—”
“I said she was a friend of mine. I know. This kind of news isn’t something I wanted to just blurt out—at least, not under normal circumstances.” She glanced at me. “Especially when someone was chasing us down the highway. I was waiting for a moment when we could all sit down together. And apparently this is it.” She held out a hand to me. “That’s all I was after, Kira. A few minutes to talk to my daughter, to introduce her to Sarah, to explain things to her.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me that?”
“When did you give me the chance? It’s not like I could toss this at you in a text. You wouldn’t have believed me, for a start.”
Fair enough.
Buddy, excited by our raised voices, started to bark again, and Nathan, holding him back with his leash, petted the dog’s head to calm him.
Madison settled into one of the chairs and took a mirror from her handbag to inspect her ruined makeup. “In any case, we didn’t want Aaron to know Sarah was back in Olive’s life. We’re not sure what he’d do—”
“But Dad . . .” Olive said, blinking rapidly. “Dad told me my mother died of—”
“Breast cancer,” Madison said. She looked up at me. “When we met, he made himself out to be the grieving widower, to gain my sympathy, and I bought it.”
Sarah held her stomach like an insecure teen, the sleeves of her oversized gray hoodie hiding most of her hands. “I did have a breast cancer scare during our marriage,” she said. “But I had a biopsy and it turned out I was fine.”
“It’s what Aaron does,” Madison said, looking into the mirror. “He takes bits of truth and twists them into lies.”
“No!” Olive said. “He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t lie about my mom.”
Madison waved a hand at Sarah. “Honey, he lied to us all. I only found out Sarah was alive when I tried to file for that emergency custody order. Then it took some time to track her down, which wasn’t easy—” She looked up at Sarah, unsure, apparently, if she should continue.
“It’s okay,” Sarah told her. “Olive needs to know why . . . why I haven’t been in her life.” She turned to the girl, picking nervously at her own sleeve as if there were burrs there. “I’ve been living out of my van for years,” she said. “I didn’t have a home or home address. I was embarrassed, scared—”
“You’ve been living on the streets?” Olive said it with something like awe, as if she suddenly had more respect for Sarah.
“I fell apart after . . .” Sarah pushed her sleeve back and forth, looked up as she attempted to rein in her emotions. When she saw me glancing at the track marks that were now exposed on her arm, she pulled her sleeve over them and held her wrist.
Olive’s eyes stayed on Sarah’s sleeve; she too had seen the injection scars on the woman’s arm. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. Dad wouldn’t lie to me about something big like this. You’re not my mom. My mom is dead.”
Sarah made a little chirping chipmunk sound as she gulped in air, and Madison put a hand on her back. “Just give it time,” she whispered to Sarah. “It’s a shock to her, that’s all. We knew it would be.”
“This is so hard,” Sarah said, tears welling in her eyes. Madison shushed her, rubbed her back.
I glanced at Nathan. He shifted his weight as he eyed the cobwebs on the ceiling, the window to the black storm raging outside, the two empty coffee mugs on the floor, looking anywhere but at the women. I shouldn’t have brought him into all this. “Maybe it’s best if you wait out on the porch,” I said to him quietly.
“Yeah,” he said, turning to the door. He sounded both relieved and angry. Buddy followed him onto the front porch. A shard of glass popped out of the frame and fell to the floor as Nathan closed the door a little too hard.
Olive continued to shake her head. “This is some kind of trick.” She looked up at Madison. “Dad said you would try to trick me, that you’d lie about stuff. I told him no way, but—”
Madison took her hand. “Olive, honey, Sarah really is your mom. All you have to do is look at her to know it’s true. You’re the spitting image of each other.”
They did look alike. Similar heart-shaped faces and small indents on their chins. They had the same slight build, though Olive was taller, like her father. I had seen it clearly for myself, a moment before Madison told us who Sarah was.
“I can prove it,” Sarah said, wiping her face with her sleeve. She pulled out her phone and scrolled through it. “I have pictures of us when you were little, taken at our old house in Kingston. Here’s a photo of all of us together before . . .” She held out her phone to Olive.
I peered over Olive’s shoulder to get a look. Aaron and Sarah were cheek to cheek, holding a girl with curly red hair, a toddler, on the deck beside their pool. The girl was unquestionably Olive. Aaron had shown me other pictures of her at about that age. She held one eyebrow up quizzically, as she so often did now, as if to say, Say what? Sarah’s hair was her natural auburn in the photo, a darker shade of red than Olive’s, and her face was much fuller, though she still carried the haunted expression of someone enduring grief or mental illness.
“That’s me!” Olive said, pointing, and her face lit up in wonder, an expression that was quickly replaced with confusion, then anger.
Shit. Aaron had lied to Olive, to me, to all of us, about his first wife. Sarah was very much alive.
Madison squeezed Sarah’s shoulder, keeping her hand there as she took over where Sarah had left off. “Olive, honey, Sarah—your mom—her marriage to your dad was very difficult. It made her very unhappy.”
“Depressed, you mean,” Olive said, as if to say, Don’t talk to me like I’m a baby.
“I was messed up,” Sarah said. “Lost. I thought I was a bad mom. I knew I was a bad mom. I thought it was better if I didn’t try to be your mom at all. I think maybe that’s still the case.”
Olive put her hands on her hips in a way Aaron so often did. “So, then what? You just left me?”
“No, I—” Sarah was shivering with anxiety. “I thought . . . I honestly thought I was a hazard to you, that I would endanger you.”
She looked to Madison for reassurance, and Madison nodded, encouraging her to go on. When she didn’t, Madison said, “Sarah had an addiction problem.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“But I’ve been working to get clean,” Sarah said, plucking at her sleeve again. “I’ve been working really hard. But back then . . . I wasn’t myself. And one day, there was an accident. I knew it was my fault, and I couldn’t live with myself. I didn’t think you should live with me either. So I left, and Aaron agreed that he should take care of you. It seemed to be the best thing for everybody. I’m so sorry, Olive.”
“But didn’t you love me?” Olive asked. Didn’t Sarah love her enough to stay?
“Oh, sweetheart, of course I loved you.” Sarah reached out and took Olive’s hand. “I still love you, so much it hurts.”
Olive yanked her hand away. “You didn’t bother to phone or message me. You didn’t even let me know you were alive.”
“Your father convinced her that she shouldn’t,” Madison said.
“I can’t blame Aaron for everything,” Sarah said. “
This is on me. I just . . . at the time I thought leaving was the best thing I could do for you. It was my way of protecting you. And then, later, when I heard Aaron had remarried, I was ashamed. I—oh god—I thought letting you believe I was dead was the best thing for you. Madison was your mother. What would I be to you then?”
“And now?” I asked. “I mean, why are you coming to Olive with all this now?” I looked accusingly at Madison.
Sarah held up both hands. “Like I said, I’ve been working to get clean. And when Madison found me and told me what was going on, I couldn’t let the same thing happen to Olive all over again. I couldn’t let her lose Maddy too. Now that I understood what her father was doing, I had to help her understand it too.”
“And what, exactly, is he doing?” I asked, crossing my arms.
Madison held my gaze for a moment, raising her eyebrows as if I should know, but let the question go unanswered. She clasped her hands and leaned on her knees as she looked up at Olive. “Honey, despite what your father may have told you, if you make it clear to the social worker that you want to live with me, that it’s safe to live with me, you very likely can.”
“You’re only Olive’s stepmother,” I reminded her. “Aaron is Olive’s father.”
Madison breathed out a sigh, pressed her lips together as she stared at me, then articulated her words carefully and slowly, as if I were a child with a processing disorder. “I have been Olive’s mother for as long as she can remember,” she said. “In every way that counts, I am Olive’s mother.”
Sarah put her head in her hands and started crying in earnest then, and Madison rubbed her back again, whispering, “I’m so sorry, Sarah.”
“But what about Dad?” Olive asked. “He wants me to live with him.”
“I worry—” Madison glanced at Sarah. “I worry that his home isn’t the best place for you.” Madison squeezed and let go of Sarah’s hand, urging her to take over.
The Almost Wife Page 14