Sarah composed herself and then, with watery eyes and a red nose, looked up at Olive. “Another reason I came back now is that Madison made me realize I still had something to offer you. I know Maddy is your mom, but, Olive, so am I. I won’t force anything on you, but sweetheart, if you want to reconnect, I would love that, more than anything.”
“It would be good for you,” Madison said, standing to put an arm around Olive. “It would be good for you both.”
Olive stepped back, appraising Sarah as I was doing, but didn’t answer. I imagined she was having as much trouble wrapping her mind around this as I was—perhaps more so. This disheveled woman had been Aaron’s wife? My god, had Aaron once sent Sarah a dozen I love you texts? Or Yves Piaget roses after every argument? Had he sent roses to Sarah’s hospital room when Olive was born, as he had for me when I gave birth to Evie? He had. I knew he had. Aaron was a man who kept to his habits and small rituals, the routines that worked for him. When had things changed? And had Aaron really had a hand in what had happened to Sarah, as Madison had implied? Sarah looked faded, so much older than she was. Would that be me, I wondered, a decade down the road?
I looked away from her, at a can of Raid that had rolled, long forgotten, under the metal gun cabinet. “But why would Aaron lie about all this?” I asked, dully.
“If Olive knew, if you knew Sarah was alive, you’d start asking questions,” Madison said. “I sure as hell did. Kira, Aaron wanted Sarah out of Olive’s life, just like he wants me out of her life now. He used Sarah’s addictions to gain sole custody and limit her access. And then he used Sarah’s guilt to push her away from Olive altogether.”
“No, that’s not Aaron.”
“When Aaron is done with a woman, he’s done.” Madison waved a hand as if batting away a fly. “He just wants us out of the picture and out of Olive’s life completely. He keeps us around only so long as we’re useful. When he decided he was going to start a new family with you, and wanted Olive living with him, I stopped being useful to him. So now he doesn’t want me in the picture. The thing is, Kira, Aaron has been using you too. He convinced you that I was a danger to Olive and used you to keep me away from her.”
“Your recent behavior didn’t help.”
“Fair enough. But you did support Aaron while he cut me out of Olive’s life.”
Like my mother had cut my father out of mine. All at once, I felt an awful deflating sensation, as if I were a tire with a puncture and was going flat. I sank down to my old cot. This can’t be happening, I thought, and I felt that old anger welling up, the feeling I had when someone—my father, a teacher, Teresa—criticized my mother and I rushed to defend her. It was my job to defend her.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. And then, more firmly, pointing a finger at Madison, “No. You’re the one who tried to turn Olive against her father.”
“Kira, I only told her the truth about some of the things he’d done to me. Needless to say, it came as a shock, and she pulled away from him.”
“What things?” I asked, looking first at Olive and then back at Madison. “What things?”
Madison exchanged a glance with Sarah, then nodded. Sarah answered for her, but spoke directly to Olive. They had clearly planned to have Sarah talk to Olive about this, likely to back up Madison’s story. “He started by pushing me,” she said, “during an argument, hard enough that I fell.”
“It was the same for me,” Madison said. “And then a slap. But never a fist,” she added. “That would leave a bruise. And never in front of Olive, because she might say something to a friend, or a teacher.”
Sarah put a hand to her neck. “Then, when I started talking about leaving him, he squeezed my neck so hard I couldn’t breathe.”
“He strangled you?” I asked.
“He always claimed to be sorry after,” Madison said. “He’d cry and talk about how his old man had hit him, and how he had never wanted that kind of violence in his home. But then, at the same time, he’d blame me for it, say he wouldn’t do it at all if I didn’t make him angry, if I would just listen to him, do what he wanted.”
“So why not phone the cops?” I asked.
“It’s hard to explain,” Sarah said. “You get to this point where you believe you’re not good enough, that no one else would want you, that you can’t make it on your own.”
I felt a pang in my gut. That had been my mother’s tactic with me.
“He tells you that,” Madison said. “He convinces you of that.”
“And, of course, I had a young child,” Sarah continued, “and I had started using. Aaron knew that, threatened me with it. He said he would tell the social workers from Children’s Aid if I left. I was afraid I would lose Olive. And then I did.”
“I hid the abuse out of embarrassment at first,” Madison said. “I was a preschool teacher. I was supposed to have it together. And here my husband was, hitting me, strangling me. I would convince myself that he only lashed out like that when I threatened to leave, which was mostly true. Later I stayed because I knew that if I left, at best I would only have joint custody. Olive would be living with him, alone, most of the time. I wasn’t sure what he would do to her. His own father beat him. So I stayed, to protect her. Then you came along and, weirdly, it was a godsend. Aaron seemed content to leave Olive with me while you two had your extended honeymoon in that monstrous house. I figured I could use that time, and the fact that he’d left Olive with me, to fight for full custody. But then I made the mistake of telling Olive about Aaron’s abuse, thinking it would help protect her during her weekend visits if she was alert to signs that he might turn violent. She was shocked and pulled away from him, and, well, you know the rest.”
“He thought you were alienating Olive. We both thought that.”
“Yes. And so he stormed into our house and took Olive and refused to allow me to see her, and then, of course, attempted to turn her against me. I had tried for emergency custody, but got nowhere. He hadn’t hurt her and had made no threat to take her out of the country or anything like that, so the judge saw no reason to grant the order. But it was in the process of filing for custody that I found out Sarah was still alive and tracked her down. I’m still trying for at least joint custody, but of course Aaron has already painted me as a crazy bitch.”
Yeah, about that. I threw up both hands. “How do you expect me to believe any of this after what you just put me through?”
“Look, Kira, I’m sorry about the grief I caused you. But Olive needed to know the truth about Sarah, to meet her and to hear from her what Aaron’s capable of. He told Olive her mother was dead, and stuck to that lie for years. At this point, the only way I can get her out of this situation with Aaron is if she wants to move in with me, and away from her father. She’s old enough now that a judge will likely allow her to live where she chooses.”
“Are you saying she won’t even spend weekends with us if she doesn’t want to?”
“For her own safety, yes, that’s what I’m saying.”
I rubbed both eyes with the heels of my hands. Fuuuck. Then I shook my head. “She’s always been perfectly safe in our house. No, no. If anyone is abusive, it’s you. You’re the one who broke into my house and took Evie from my truck. You’re the one who has been trying to drive a wedge between Olive and her father. That’s abuse.”
Madison hesitated, as if thinking through her response. “Aaron has painted me as a monster. He has lied in an attempt to get both you and Olive onside, to believe I’m unfit as a mother, and he will keep lying until he gains full custody and I lose all access to my daughter. He did the same thing to Sarah. And, Kira, down the road, he’ll do the same thing to you.”
26
I studied Madison’s face. Without her makeup, she didn’t look deranged, or like the ridiculously polished woman who had been stalking us. Despite the fact that she had a good decade on me, she was freckled, girlish. I couldn’t reconcile the woman in front of me with the one Aaron had made her out to be. Bu
t then, she had broken into my house and chased me all the way to Manitoulin. Maybe she was a little unbalanced. Then there was Sarah, sitting right there, very much alive. Aaron had lied to me about her, at least. And he knew something of my history with my mother. Had he used that to make me believe Madison was like her so I’d help him take Olive away from her? I glanced at Olive and she quickly looked down at her feet, distraught. My god, if he had, how could I ever forgive him? But if I believed that of him, I stood to lose everything, the life I’d so carefully built. My heart pounded at the thought. I felt jittery, restless.
“I need—I need to talk to Aaron about this,” I said, twisting my engagement ring. I wanted him to make it okay. He had to make this okay.
“He’ll lie, Kira,” Madison said. “He’ll manipulate you into believing him again, at least for now. Eventually, of course, the veneer wears thin and he can’t hide his true self anymore.” She glanced at Sarah, who nodded sadly in agreement.
I took out my phone, suddenly feeling pissed, and snapped a photo of Sarah and Olive together, both of them looking a little stunned. “Well, he’ll have to explain this,” I said, holding up the image.
Madison held out a hand. “Kira, you need to be very careful about how you confront him, what you say. When he feels threatened—”
“You won’t know him,” Sarah said.
Madison put a hand on Olive’s shoulder. “And Olive can’t be there when you talk to him. I won’t let you put her in danger.”
Olive hugged herself as she scanned the dilapidated cabin. “Well, I’m not staying here.”
“And you’re not taking her anywhere,” I told Madison. “Not until I’ve sorted all this out.”
“You should have someone with you, then,” Sarah said. “Your friend Nathan, perhaps.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary—”
“Seriously, Kira,” Madison said. “Olive isn’t safe, you’re not safe, if you go this alone.”
“If someone else is there—” Sarah started.
Madison finished for her. “He’ll hide his true nature. But, Kira, as soon as you’re alone again—”
Jesus. Just as I had been when I’d hugged my father in this cabin, I was torn by conflicting emotions. I was terrified that Aaron wasn’t who I thought he was, but at the same time, I clung desperately to the hope that everything Madison and Sarah had told me about him was a lie. I was both exhausted and overcome with a desire to run, to move, to release all the weirdness of the day from my system and lose myself for a while. But I was trapped here, in this cabin, by the storm. I couldn’t escape Madison’s revelations, the fact that Aaron had lied to me about Sarah. I felt the panic surge again, tightening around my throat, pressing on my chest, making it hard to breathe.
“I need some air,” I said, and banged out the door. Once on the porch, I pulled out my phone, tapped on my Favorites album and swiped past photos of Evie until I found one of Aaron and me, one I’d taken of us together at home in Toronto. Aaron took up most of the shot, his handsome face smiling winningly, posed, and I grinned awkwardly, my chin on his shoulder. A silly girl in a ponytail next to a sophisticated older man. The Aaron I knew was an astute businessman, a thoughtful, involved father and an attentive lover. He had it together. It seemed now that I might have been living with someone else entirely.
“I imagine all that was hard to swallow,” Nathan said from the bench on the porch.
“You heard?”
“Enough.”
Through the broken pane on the door, I could hear Sarah and Madison talking with Olive, though they were speaking quietly enough now that I couldn’t make out most of what they were saying. A few words carried to the window. So sorry . . . custody . . . social worker . . . Home.
I closed my photos and pocketed my phone as I sat on the bench a foot or so away from Nathan. Buddy, lying over Nathan’s feet, thumped his tail but didn’t lift his head.
“Madison is right,” Nathan said. “It’s a good idea to have someone there when you talk to Aaron about all this. I’ll stay the night at the summer house—”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“You heard what they said.”
“Women accuse their ex-husbands of abuse all the time, to keep their kids with them. My own mother did that.”
“And maybe that experience is blinding you to what’s going on here.”
“I just need to talk to Aaron and Olive without—” I was going to say interference, but Nathan interrupted me.
“And if he does get violent? He’s clearly dangerous.”
“He’s never hurt me.”
“Kira, I will be there. I’ll sleep on the couch, if you want, but I’m not going to let you face that guy alone.”
The lantern light filtering through the window above us softened Nathan’s features, made him look younger, the boy I had fallen in love with so many years before. Maybe it was time to expose the truth, allow my two men to meet each other, even knowing what that would mean.
Strangely, I felt a sense of calm, of relief, wash over me at the thought, the prospect that I could end my double life.
Nathan and I sat in silence for a time as the rain intensified again, thundering on the roof, cascading off the eaves. Trees whipped back and forth until I thought they might break.
“Listen, Nathan, about what I said earlier, in the truck—”
He shook his head. “I should have told you about Ashley. I shouldn’t have lied about her. I mean, I didn’t like it, but at least you were honest with me about Aaron.”
Oh god. Honest? I thought again about the lab results that were likely waiting for me at the summer house. I hadn’t told Nathan I’d gone ahead with the paternity test. There were so many things I had withheld from him. I smoothed a hand over the bench, the distance between us. I wasn’t sure what to say now, how to fix things. “I miss you,” I said finally. “I always miss you when I’m gone.”
He didn’t respond for so long that I thought he wouldn’t. Then he said, “I miss you too.”
“You asked me if we were over.”
He stiffened a little.
“I don’t want it to be over,” I said.
“I don’t think you know what you want.”
That stung. “What do you mean?”
He paused. “I think you’re scared.” He left the rest unsaid: I was scared of being alone, of being a single mom, struggling to make ends meet. He thought I was clinging to him because I feared I was about to lose my life with Aaron. And he was right. I honestly didn’t believe I could make it on my own. How the hell had I gotten here?
I was always here, I thought. I had never felt capable enough, good enough, to go it alone. My mother had made sure of that. It was how she kept me close.
I hugged myself and shivered. “God, I’m so cold. I don’t remember ever feeling this cold.” Even running the Ottawa Winterman. But then I was always properly geared up, and moving.
“Come here,” Nathan said. He pulled me to his chest and rested his chin on my head.
“They’ll see us,” I said, glancing up at the cabin window above us.
“Does it really matter now?”
I supposed it didn’t. If Aaron had used me to take Olive away from Madison, I wasn’t sure how we’d come back from that. But then, hadn’t I also wanted Madison out of the picture? I wanted my family to be just that, mine, just Aaron and me and the girls.
“Are you ready to talk about it?” Nathan asked quietly.
“What?”
“Your father. What happened out here.”
I chewed my thumbnail and shook my head against his chest.
Nathan held me closer and we sat for a time in silence, looking out into the night. The rain lessened somewhat, but the wind shook the wet leaves of a nearby trembling aspen, making it shimmer and rattle like a rain stick. Buddy shifted to lie on both our feet. I felt myself drifting.
“We could be together,” Nathan said.
“Hmm?”
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br /> “I could move to Toronto. I’ll sell my bungalow and you’ll sell the summer house, and we’ll use that as a down payment on a place of our own. We can stay in Mom’s guest room when we come for visits.”
I looked up at him. “You’d move away, for me?”
“I always would have. You know that.”
I ran my fingers across his chest as I considered that one. Had he made this offer to me before, to move? He must have. He had known, then, that I wouldn’t settle for living on the island year-round, as much as I loved my time here. But I couldn’t imagine Nathan leaving Manitoulin. I had a hard time picturing him off the island. He was Manitoulin for me; he was my experience of the place, as much as the beach, the village. What would we be together if we lived elsewhere?
And yet. And yet.
“It wouldn’t be Toronto,” I said. I had landed there only because that was where Aaron lived. “The sale of our two places wouldn’t amount to a down payment there in any case.”
“Wherever,” Nathan said sleepily. “Wherever you want to go.”
Where did I want to go? I had no idea. I just felt so very tired, worn to the bone, like I had been running for years. I settled back into Nathan’s chest and closed my eyes, the weight of my exhaustion pressing down on me. He was so warm. He was always warm. He smelled of sweat, but pleasantly so. Sandalwood and sawdust. It felt so comfortable, so ordinary, to be with him. Nathan had been my first, and though a few others besides Aaron had followed, he was the one I always returned to. I knew every mole on his back, the history behind the white scar on his shin (he’d walked into a log as we helped my father pile firewood at this cabin). I loved his casual physicality, his ease with his own body. I preferred his laid-back shuffle under the covers to Aaron’s theatrical and acrobatic lovemaking, which he too often initiated on the cold marble counter in the bathroom or up against the wall of our bedroom. I got the feeling that, even in our most intimate moments, Aaron was putting on a performance—for me, I appreciated, but really, it was a lot of work. Looking back with the new perspective I’d gained tonight, it seemed like Aaron was always playing a part, never himself. Who the hell was he really?
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