Benny’s in our quarantine enclosure when I toss a few mudminnows to the rock. He swims to the rock, hops up, and eats the fish.
“Hey, Benny. How ya feeling, big boy?”
He waits for another fish, up on his back two wide, webbed feet. I watch him as he stands and then dives back into the water, twisting and turning up toward the surface and then back toward the bottom. Benny pops back up out of the water, still waiting for another fish. I toss a handful of small fish and some carrots. Though he’d rather have fish, carrots are a close second.
The medical staff at SeaWorld didn’t think Benny would survive. He had severe lacerations to his webbed feet and hind legs. In fact, when he had been found, they’d thought he’d already expired. But, with modern science and technology, Benny made a comeback they hadn’t expected.
Benny nibbles on the carrots, one by one.
“Got to keep you healthy, buddy.”
My phone begins to ring. It’s Alex.
I answer the phone with the hand that doesn’t have fish guts on it. “Hey.”
“Hey, Mer.”
“Hang on. I need to wash my hands. Just did a feeding.”
Behind the stairs of the enclosure is a hand-washing station. I wash my hands and grab the phone from where I put it down on the makeshift shelf above the sink.
“Sorry.” I wipe my hands on my pants as I hold the phone between my shoulder and cheek.
“No need to be sorry. You are doing your job. Sorry to bother you at work.”
“No bother. What’s up?” And then I panic. Why is Alex calling me in the late morning on a Tuesday? “Everything okay?” Panic festers deep in my stomach.
“Everything’s fine. You’ve just been on my mind lately, and I wanted to call you.”
His name pops from my mouth without control. “Is Ryan all right?”
There’s a long pause.
A long pause can mean several things with Alex. It could be that she’s simply choosing her words wisely, sensitively. Two, she’s got news, but she’s not sure how to deliver it. It isn’t bad news either—all the time. Three, she’s embarrassed to talk about it.
“He’s fine,” she finally says.
I can breathe.
The fear in the pit of my stomach disappears.
“He’s been really different since you left. But that’s not what I called you about.”
“Oh?” From the other side of the glass, I watch Benny slide agilely through the water. As if he’s posing for a picture or being playful. I put my hand to the glass.
“So, your brother and I were talking about wills—”
“What?”
Alex sighs. “Mer, if something happens to us, we have to have a plan for Emily.”
Right. That’s the responsible thing to do. Have a plan.
“Oh, right.”
She’s hiding behind words. I can tell.
“Come out with it, Alex.”
She sighs. I know she’s picking at her nail right now, probably chewing on her thumb. “If something happens to Eli and me, we want you and Ryan to have custody of Emily.”
“Ryan and me? As in … together?”
“Well, yeah. You’re family.”
“But we’re not together, together.”
“It doesn’t mean you have to be. Co-parenting. And, Mer, it’s just in case. It’s a just-in-case plan.”
“Of course,” I whisper into the phone. My mind still attempting to catch up to speed.
“I’ll send you some documents via snail mail that you need to sign. Nothing big, just some documents that explains what will transpire if something happens to us. Money. Etcetera.”
There’s a long silence on my end.
Did our parents have a plan when Mom died? Of course, we’d live with our dad, but was there a plan if he died?
For whatever reason, the grief pops up again. Masked behind the current situation with Alex. Funny how grief does that. Hides. Stays hidden for days on end. Then, someone brings something up, and there’s grief again, smiling from across the room, waving, as if an old friend. One you’ve dreaded. One you own a past with. One you seem to shake but can’t get rid of.
“Merit?” I hear Alex’s voice.
“I’m here.” Really only half-listening.
“I’ll put the documents in the mail today. Call me when you receive them, and we can go over them. Ryan’s already signed them.”
Did you hear that, Merit?
He’s already signed the paperwork. Meaning he’s okay with this. He’s already committed to this decision. Or maybe it’s just Emily. Maybe it’s me, too. Because, if we have to co-parent, he’s up for it.
When Alex says his name again, something in my body shudders. It’s hidden beneath the hurt, and it comes to life. Maybe it’s my heart, allowing me to feel again. Feel like a woman that God intended me to be. A woman who doesn’t need a man, but a woman who wants a man.
“Send me the paperwork, and I’ll sign it.”
“Thank you, Mer. Oh, shit, Emily’s up from her nap. I’ve gotta run.”
“Yeah, run,” I say.
There’s silence on her end.
“Mer?”
“Yeah?”
“Funny how life keeps putting you two back together.”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “And, Alex? Thank you for asking. It’s an honor I don’t take lightly.”
I hang up and rest my back against the cement wall.
Ryan infiltrates my mind with his hands. His scent. His bare chest against mine. How his lips feel against me. On my body. On my lips. In unspeakable places. There’s something that’s in his touch, in his way, that commands my need for him. It’s not something I’ve admitted to needing in a long time.
I’ve always told myself, I can do things on my own. Handle my own business since we lost Destiny. I’ve never relied on anyone else to pick up the pieces. But maybe, with this piece of vulnerability I see in front of me, it’s not a need but a want.
When we made love a few weeks ago, it was for my heart. Ryan did it for me, knowing I’d leave. Knowing I had to leave. But also knowing it was what we both needed. The connection, although seventeen years had passed, was there. More intense. More present than it’d ever been. We made love in our own wake of memories—if not for our past, then for our future, which was uncertain. We stayed in the moment, drunk on feelings and passion. We pushed.
It’s just past five thirty, and I’m meeting with Dana.
“Maybe you ought to do a trust retreat? It’s something where you rely on a team. There are several in our area,” Dana suggests.
I laugh. “Like what? I close my eyes, fall back, and trust someone will catch me?”
Dana shakes her head. “Something more. Like a retreat. I have some in mind. I’ll send you a few links.”
“Do you think I have trust issues?”
“Do you think you have trust issues?” Dana is seated in her chair. The chair she always sits in. The red chair made of velvet.
Her think chair is what I call it.
I toy with my fingers, more able to look at myself, my actions, and my past that has brought me here to Dana’s office for reoccurring visits.
“I feel like, if I protect myself, my heart, from hurt by keeping them at a distance, becoming too vested in them, then I won’t be too hurt when they leave or let me down.”
Dana takes down a few notes. I’d love to see that notebook. What she writes about her clients. Or maybe it’s an ongoing grocery list, a to-do list. Or maybe technical terms in the field of psychology for diagnoses.
“I feel, if I keep walls of separation up, then I won’t get hurt again.”
“So, it’s fear-based?” Dana suggests. “From my experience, anger, jealousy, and sometimes sadness are fear-based, right? You were angry with Ryan for what he’d said to you.”
Smirking, I say, “Well, yeah. Wouldn’t you be? He asked me to have an abortion, Dana. I think that I have a right to be angry to some extent.”
I jerk my head back. My face grows warm as I feel her words crawl up my throat. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what I said. You’re justifying your anger. That’s what’s helped you cope. Justified anger.” She stops and holds up her hand. “Hear me out. You’re angry because why?”
“He hurt me.” My words are clear.
“And, when it hurt, when he spoke those words, said those things about the abortion, about another girl, what emotion did it all come down to?”
“I don’t know.” My voice is louder.
My head is swarming with past feelings and present thoughts. As if I’m trying to climb my way out of a dark hole without a flashlight.
Help, I want to scream.
But I can’t. Because the only way out of this one is through the dark, by myself.
“Fear. You were scared. Terrified of losing him. Terrified of the infant that was growing inside you. Did you ever stop to think there might be a strong connection to your mother’s death and what happened that day with Ryan? Perhaps you were fearful that you couldn’t be the mother Rebecca had once been. Or worse, that Destiny would lose you in a way you lost your mother.”
Tears start to fall.
My past meets my future in a collision. An explosion of truth and sadness. For the first time in my life, it’s clear.
And the truth falls from my eyes and splatters against my work shirt. The truth I didn’t know existed. Until now. My vision is blurry as I try to stare at the glass vase on Dana’s coffee table that separates us.
My perception of reality has been thrown off. What I knew about myself this morning when I woke up is the opposite of who I see sitting here with Dana in her office right now. A person I don’t know. A person who has been in her own body for thirty-five years has no idea of who she is.
I grab a tissue from the box next to me and wipe my eyes.
“Why did he hurt you?” she asks in a softer tone.
I shake my head and whisper, “I don’t know.”
“Maybe he had a reason. Maybe there was a purpose for it. Perhaps. I could be wrong. But, from what you’ve told me, it certainly doesn’t seem like his MO with your past together.”
My hands fall to my thighs. Weightless and without feeling, I stare at the woman across from me. She, too, is a different person than the one I met just a few weeks ago. My mind is spinning in all different directions, unable to focus on a single thought—or the spinning thoughts are too quick to grab.
“You asked me to help, Merit, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to help you get down to the causes and conditions of why you sought me out. That’s my job.”
But I didn’t know it would hurt like this, I want to say.
Thirty-Two
Ryan
Granite Harbor, Maine
Present Day
“You think Dubbs is really dead?” Eli asks and then takes a swig of his beer.
I’m caught off guard by Dubbs’s actions. Why would he have gone to the police and told them about the hit on me? He’s my father, yes. But being blood never stopped him from putting a cigarette to my skin. Kicking me in the ribs when I was too loud during the Red Sox game. Punching me in the back when I didn’t get my chores done. It was clear he was incapable of love.
What doesn’t surprise me is that he didn’t come to me first with this information, that Ronan put a hit out on me. We never had the best communication unless it involved a closed fist or other appendages used as weapons.
“No,” I finally answer. “Something about all this seems wrong. There’s no body. I won’t believe it until I see a body. And why the fuck would Ronan have a hit out on me?” I set my beer down at Eli’s kitchen table. Eli’s across the table, Alex sitting next to him. “I don’t know Ronan Fields. Think I’d remember his name if I arrested him.”
Pauly wouldn’t answer that question when asked. Killing a cop is a federal offense. Even a hit out on a cop is punishable with prison time. But proving it would be almost impossible without evidence. But Ronan, or one of his minions, was careless with information because Dubbs heard this somehow.
“But why would they keep him alive? What could he give to Ronan and his clan?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. But something tells me he isn’t dead.” I look at Alex, concern on her face. “I’m sorry, Alex, for bringing Eli into this.”
“Don’t know why you’re sorry. It was his choice to go, and I understand why. I’d probably do the same if it were Bryce.”
Bryce is Alex’s best friend from California.
I stand and take my bottle to the sink. “Give Em a kiss for me?”
“Drive safe, Ryan,” Alex says.
“Yeah, watch out for bears, asshole.” Eli laughs.
Smiling, I call Hero, who’s curled up by the fire, clearly comfortable but eager to go home, too. He does his puppy hop over to me, and I pick him up and take him under my arm.
My phone chimes with a text message as I say my good-byes, and my heartbeat rises.
Please, let it be Merit, I think to myself as I leave.
I need her voice. The voice that held steady through our formative years. The voice that never wavered.
People will do just about anything for money, but I’d do anything for Merit.
I slide it out from my pocket. My heart jumps out of its rhythm as I read the words across the screen.
Sadie: Home alone again. Come by if you can. I’m lonely and in need of you.
I feel it in my dick. And not because it’s Sadie, but because I picture they’re Merit’s words. Remembering what she felt like. Her tears as they fell down her face when I connected with her in ways I’d never been able to connect with anyone.
I want to feel relief. Relief from all this shit with Dubbs, with Merit. I just need a break. Sex helps with that. Sex without strings attached was a drug I relied upon for years. Used it. Took it when I could. At lunch. In the morning. In the restroom at Angler’s. I see the pattern now. I knew Merit wasn’t coming back those years ago, that I’d fucked everything up. I’d used sex to take away the loneliness. The sadness. It wasn’t my childhood that I tried to escape. That was survivable. I used sex to forget Merit. Tried for years to find someone else. Sex was my solution for a long time. Until the day it didn’t work anymore.
Until my fucking heart said, Enough already.
Sex would feel real good right now, my ego says.
But, when it’s over, you’ll be in the same place you started, my gut says.
You deserve this, Ryan. Merit said she wasn’t coming back anyway, my ego chimes in.
You save lives, ego says. Help recover bodies so loved ones can have closure.
Progress can be slow, but it’s worth the wait. You keep doing what you’re doing, and you’ll keep getting what you’re getting, my gut yells.
Merit makes me happy.
Hero makes me happy.
Being part of an entity I believe in, the Maine Warden Service, makes me happy.
I text Sadie back.
Me: No more. I’m done. I can’t do that anymore.
I can’t keep running.
Sadie texts back.
Sadie: Fuck you.
I laugh as I throw my phone in the pocket just below my dashboard. I flip on my headlights and drive the hour home to Hallowell.
I need to move back to Granite Harbor. I make a mental note.
Granite Harbor has always been home. Even if I had a shitty upbringing, the Young family always made up for it.
Maine Warden Service Headquarters
Augusta, Maine
“Chief Markel, thanks for taking the time to see me.” I slide into the mahogany chair on the other side of his desk.
His glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose, he scans through some documents.
“Sergeant Taylor, what brings you in this morning?” He doesn’t look up from his work.
Usually, our daily w
ork doesn’t involve the chief, and the only time we ever have to meet with him is for serious reasons that can only be handled by the chief. That has been never in my case. But, if we want something done, we need to go straight to the source.
“Superior job on the Lago case. I read through your scene reenactment. Top-notch.”
“Thank you, sir. But I’m here this morning to ask about Ronan Fields.’”
The chief stops. Looks up and meets my eyes. “Oh?”
“It’s been disclosed to me that there was a hit taken out on me.”
He’s quiet.
“That true?”
The chief removes his glasses from the bridge of his nose and stares. “Where did you hear this?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I cannot reveal my source.”
The chief sits back in his large leather chair.
I clasp my hands together. “It either is, or it isn’t, Chief. It’s that simple.”
“Sergeant Taylor, if there was a threat put on your life, I sure as hell don’t know about it. I haven’t heard a word on this.”
I shrug. “Rumor is, Dubbs came to law enforcement and snitched out a man named Ronan Fields and that Fields killed Dubbs.”
It isn’t a secret that Dubbs is my father. The Maine Warden Service is aware that my father isn’t on the good side of the law.
“I’ll make some calls and be in touch with you by the afternoon.”
“Thank you, sir.” I stand and shake his hand.
I trust the chief, but I’ve also got to stay diligent in protecting myself, and finding Dubbs has become my mission.
I’m walking through the main floor of headquarters when a hand jerks my arm from behind and pulls me into a dark closet. The door shuts behind me, and my back hits the wall.
Lips meet mine. Soft lips. Hands meet my dick through my pants.
This would be an easy out. Allow my mind to escape just for a few minutes because that’s all it would take.
Violet Ugly: A Contemporary Romance Novel (The Granite Harbor Series Book 2) Page 21