by Wendy Silk
I turned to look at her, knowing what was coming.
“Cici, does Tim really not know that you have Maggie?” Kelly was trying to keep judgment out of her face as she asked me, I could see that. But the question, and the scenario it outlined was so absurd that I couldn’t help but judge myself.
“Kelly, I can’t explain it. It just started as a thing I was going to wait to tell him. Then it went on too long.” I was floundering.
“Well, you don’t need to take my advice, of course, but I think you should go ahead and tell him,” Kelly said with the wise demeanor of somebody who had never had a problem like this one. “If he’s the kind of guy who would get hung up on that, then it’s better to know sooner, rather than later. I mean, if he thinks you’ve never been with anybody else before, or if he isn’t willing to accept another man’s kiddo, then he’s a loser. And you’d want to know that about him, right?”
“Um, yeah…” I was having a hard time participating rationally in this conversation. Kelly thought I was keeping from Tim the fact that I had a child.
Not that I had his child.
Into the swirling mess that was my thought process, Kelly cheerfully called out her goodbyes. She sent Maggie across the kitchen to hug and kiss me, then the two of them headed out to spend a few hours of quality time together. I was grateful to have a friend like her, who genuinely loved my little girl. And if I’d learned anything in the time I’d been a mother, it was that I myself needed a little quality time with my baby’s father.
Only a few minutes later, Tim knocked on my front door. He’d never been inside my house before, of course. The first day we spoke to each other in Blue Shore, he’d sat with me in my father’s flower garden out front, but that was as close as he’d gotten to the haven that my home represented to me.
When I opened the door, I could see that he was nervous too. His face was full of pride as he told me about having come from Donna’s house and having finished the work. But I could see that his hands were fidgeting with his belt loops, not quite knowing where to settle. He stepped out of his work boots and followed me into the living room, padding across the hardwood floor in his clean socks.
“Look at this place,” he murmured, craning his neck to check out the mouldings along the ceiling. “I love it. So you inherited the house from a relative?”
I felt my face relax as I watched him react to the home that I loved so dearly. “Tim, have I really not told you this yet? It’s my house, the place where I grew up.”
He did a double take, looking more closely at me. “I didn’t know that. All you said was that you had inherited it. I didn’t want to pry. Sure, I knew it was your house now, but do you mean to tell me that you grew up here, in this beautiful place?”
“I did. The garden out front is my father’s. I lived here with him and my sister. Did you think that it was just chance that I was here, at Blue Shore? This is the town where I grew up, so of course I wanted to come back here with…”
“With Kelly, when you started your own business. That makes sense.”
I busied myself making us drinks. He was still watching me, as if he could sense that something didn’t quite add up. I was losing my nerve. “Yes,” I said. “I wanted to come back here with Kelly when I was ready to find a place to settle down. It was lucky that she said she wanted to try living up here in the Northwest, so we made the move.”
“But I still don’t understand why you waited so long to come back here to live, if you had it waiting for you. Not to be rude about money matters, I mean, but why would you stay in a place like your apartment in Texas, when you had this waiting for you? Why not accept your inheritance?”
As I winced at having to try to explain this to him, he motioned an apology. I drew a long breath, though. I was going to have to do this sometime.
“Tim, let me tell you about it.” I pulled out a kitchen chair and we sat across from each other at the table. “It’s a story about my family and the Bedloe family.”
“Grant and Toby? Yes, go on.” He nodded encouragingly. I could tell he had no idea what was coming. Didn’t this man ever listen to town gossip? It seemed impossible that he could have lived here for even a week and not heard the story.
I couldn’t help myself. “Tim, hasn’t anybody in town ever tried to talk to you about me? They know we’re seeing each other. Not Mr. Kemble? Not anybody at the tavern?”
He twinkled his eyes at me. “Well, of course they have. Pretty much every damn day, if you want to know the truth. It’s a small town, and although I like it, it’s a plain fact that there’s not that much going on here. You must be an interesting lady.”
“And?” My question came out more strangled than I had intended.
“And I don’t have time for that kind of crap. I like my Cici the way she is, right in front of me, being herself. It didn’t take that many times of me telling everybody in town that I couldn’t care less what they wanted to tell me. Eventually it stopped.”’ He shook his head at me, chuckling. “Seriously, though, are you some kind of axe murderer? If I had a twenty dollar bill for every time somebody told me that they wanted to ask if I knew a thing about you, we’d be in the Bahamas right now.”
“A thing, huh?” His laughter was contagious, and it had already taken some of the sting out of the conversation for me.
“Yep. So tell me, Miss Cecilia, what’s your thing? You got a thing to tell me?” He waggled his eyebrows at me. I knew I’d never be able to thank him enough for how easy he was trying to make this for me.
Nevertheless, my mood sobered again as I mustered the story I was going to tell him. “Well, it’s not ‘Cecilia,’ for starters. My name is Cecily Summers.”
He nodded, watching my face for clues. “Yeah, I know your last name. It seems crazy that I didn’t know what ‘Cici’ was short for until now, but ok. What does that mean?”
I leaned my face into my hand, so that my fingers partially hid my mouth. “Well, my name was in all the newspapers, that’s all. It was twelve years ago, when Grant and Toby’s parents died.”
His eyes were serious now. “Yes, go on.”
“So everybody said that what happened was my sister’s fault, but it was really mine. That’s the honest truth.”
Tim was slowly shaking his head, but I went on.
“Margaret was so special. I always wanted to be her, the whole time I was growing up. She was beautiful, and she made everybody smile. My father doted on her. I know she would have had an amazing life. But then when our family got so poor, she made some bad choices. She had always had Grant on a string, that was true. Then she reeled him in and got him to marry her by lying about a pregnancy.”
“Oh, Cici,” Tim sighed. I could see on his face the all too familiar expression that told me he didn’t think that Margaret was as wonderful as I did. Nobody ever did.
“I know,” I acknowledged. “She was awful to him. He was just like is now, honorable and straight-up. Although he had a lighter heart then. She cheated on him, she used drugs. It was a mess. Then there was that night, when he was going to tell her it was over. She offered to drive his parents and Toby home and there was an accident. An icy road and a tree.” I ducked my head, still having a hard time saying the words after all these years. “Well, you know.”
“Yes, I know.” Tim put his hands forward across the table to reach mine. “I know their parents died, and I know Toby was injured. You lost Margaret that night, too?”
“And then my father. The news caused his second heart attack. So it was like I’d killed them all.”
“Wait, wait.” Tim was leaning toward me, as if he wanted to pick me up and set me on his lap. “No, you can’t think it was your fault. It had nothing to do with you. You were just a high schooler, right? That was all too complicated for you to understand, just a kid like that.”
“No,” I said flatly. “I’ll bet you went through a lot when you were in high school, too.” I saw from the way his shoulders stiffened that I was right.
“Well I don’t see how you could have had anything to do with a car accident. It was just an awful tragedy, nobody’s fault.”
“But that’s what I have to tell you,” I said to Tim, as he sat as still as he could in my sunlit kitchen. “I was always the one that caused the problems between them. If it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t even have married him. And he would have had a much happier life.”
“No, that can’t be true. There’s no way that those things were even a little bit your fault.” Tim answered me quietly.
“No, they were,” I said miserably. I was gritting my teeth to try to make myself see it through, but I could feel it. I was going to chicken out on telling him the whole story. I tried one more time. “I was just a silly, vain teenager. I idolized Margaret, and I thought that Grant was unfair to her. I was the one who told her for years that she should be a model. She was so beautiful. She was always trying to get money from Grant for her modeling career, but he didn’t support it. I just...I just know that if I’d been different with her, she wouldn’t have tried to hurt him.”
“Do you mean the car accident was deliberate?” Tim spoke as if he didn’t want to put the thought into words.
I knew for a fact that it had been no accident. But all I could do was nod at him, with tears running down my cheeks.
Finally, Tim was silent. There was nothing he could say that would make my story any less awful.
I blundered on, desperate to finish. “I told Grant right afterwards, in the hospital, how much I regretted egging her on and causing so much conflict between them. I told him I was so sorry, that I hadn’t meant anything to happen. But he never spoke to me again. Everybody in the place heard about it.”
Tim furrowed his brows. “I don’t really see how anybody could call the accident your fault.” He hurried to add, “I can see that it has tortured you; I can see that’s real. But now you work up at the hotel?”
“I know, that part seems inexplicable to me, too. I would never have gone there looking for work in a million years, but Kelly made me. When Grant recognized me, his face closed up like a vault. But maybe he’s giving me a second chance. I don’t know.”
“Cici, maybe it’s that he knows it wasn’t really your fault. He’s had years to grow to understand that.”
Now that I’d spilled even a small part of the tale that had been haunting me for twelve years, I couldn’t help myself. I slipped from my chair and moved around the table to settle in Tim’s lap. He held me tight and gently wiped the tears from my face.
“Honey, it wasn’t your fault. You had no way of knowing that would happen. It’s ok. It’s ok.”
In the quiet space between us, I found the comfort that I had been needing for more than a decade. Tim held me against him and smoothed my hair while I cried until I calmed. It was as if a weight had lifted from my shoulders. I’d finally spoken some of the story that I’d carried around for so many years. The guilt of it had led me to leave town, then to make so many poor choices that my mistakes rivaled my sister’s. Finally, those choices had led me to a dingy apartment off the highway, where my new life had started.
Only when I knew I had Maggie coming, only then did I understand that I was meant to come back home. Raising Maggie in my own house had been the most important thing to me. That dream had made it possible for me to finally pick up the phone and call the attorney that had been taking care of my inheritance for years. I’d come back.
And now here I was, feeling lighter, having shared my worst story with the man I loved. Not all of the story, but I’d get there in time. Then, as he held me in his arms, I realized something.
I had told him only one of my two heartrendingly big secrets.
The last part, the bit about Maggie, was still hidden in my heart. That tiny piece of information, that she was not only the savior of my entire life, but the daughter of his body, yeah that was the part that I’d so far completely left out.
I straightened in his lap, pulling my hair behind my ears and out of my eyes. I could tell him right now. Then, for the thousandth time, I found myself unable to do it.
“Tim, do want to take a swim? You haven’t seen the back of the house yet. Let’s go out there and get in the pool.”
Chapter 17: Tim
We spent the afternoon in the sun, swimming in the gorgeous Italian-style swimming pool behind Cici’s house. I couldn’t stop myself from looking around, thinking that the place was so beautiful that I couldn’t imagine how she had stayed away for so many years. The back of the lot was big enough that there were fruit trees set out in lines, as well as a wide, green lawn and still more garden beds. The house itself was just as picturesque from the back as from the front. New buildings always had at least one side that wasn’t meant to be looked at. In Dallas, the newer houses all had fake brickwork and oversized windows in the front, but blank walls of cheap siding on the back.
Cici was like her house. She didn’t have any side that was meant to be hidden. Her inner self was as special as the image she showed to others. More so, actually. I could tell that she took her story about the car accident seriously, and I felt incredible sorrow for the fact that she’d carried that burden around for so many years. But at the same time, I knew it was in her head. She hadn’t caused the accident. It was just the guilt that kids feel when something sad happens around them. I knew she wasn’t at fault.
As we dried off in the sun, after the easy atmosphere of playing together in the pool, I tried to tell her yet again. “Cici, I’ll stop saying this if you want me to, but you know it wasn’t your fault, right?” I reached my hand between our chairs to stroke the back of her arm.
She had her eyes closed in the warm light of the summer day. “Tim, you’ve said that about a million times.” She turned to smile at me, though. “You know what? It’s still helping. Keep saying it to me, ok?”
I moved lazily from my own chair and came to sit on the edge of hers, facing her. I pulled her so she was sprawled across my lap. I’d come to hug her, to reassure her, but the feel of her skin against my boxer shorts was utterly distracting to me. Cici had changed into an adorable blue bikini, but I’d jumped into the pool in my underwear. It had seemed like a good choice at the time. We’d needed the refreshing distraction of the water and the whooping volleyball game that we began when we got into the pool.
Now, though, I was acutely aware that there was only a thin layer of cotton fabric separating my cock from Cici’s spandex-clad ass as she sat on my lap. She wriggled against me, and when she turned to smile at me, I saw the devilish glint in her eyes. She was aware of it, too.
“Cici, I want you so much,” I murmured into her damp hair. “I can’t tell you how much you mean to me.”
I ran my hands along her graceful back and reached around to caress her sweet breasts. Her nipples hardened immediately. It almost felt like her bikini top grew a little wetter, despite the fact that we were almost dry now from the sun.
“Cici, I was meaning to ask you…”
She swiveled in my lap just then, so that her legs were straddling me. Her blue bikini bottom was definitely wet against me.
“Tim, being with you makes me so happy. I love you.” She looked down into my eyes, not breaking our connection even as she reached below and shifted her bikini bottom. Then she opened my shorts, letting my cock out to where I so urgently needed it to be. I held her hips as she moved them over me, and then as she lowered herself onto me, taking my dick inside her.
“Cici,” was all I could gasp as I leaned my head back in ecstasy. Then, as we found our rhythm, with my thick cock plunging deep into her wetness, I was able to open my eyes and try to seek her gaze again. “Cecily, I love you so much.”
She was looking at me, not taking her eyes from mine. As she moved on top of me, our hands became intertwined, holding on to each other for dear life. I would never let her go. I know that as surely as I knew my own name.
And now I knew hers. She’d told me something about herse
lf that had been difficult. She trusted me. That thought warmed me as we fucked. I had found what I’d been looking for my whole life. Here she was, in my arms, and willing to give herself to me without reservation, without any barriers.
She was beautiful, sexy, and smart. She was riding my cock like an animal, while her sweet, trusting eyes looked right into mine. She threw her head back, exposing her soft neck, and she began to whimper as she climaxed. I couldn’t hold back any more. Holding firmly to her hips, I thrust upwards with all my might, and I came inside her. For the second time now, with no regard for such things as safe sex or condoms, we had done it this way. My sticky cum was filling her, shooting deep inside her, and it felt like the best thing I’d ever done with my body.
“Living dangerously,” I muttered, with a giant smile on my face.
“What are you talking about?” Cici had collapsed onto me, and she asked the question into the side of my neck. Her shoulders were shaking with giggles as she tried to figure out what I meant.
I tilted her chin up with my hand and looked at her. “I’m sorry, Cici. I know it sounded like I was joking, but I’m sorry. We just did it again without a condom. I want you to know that I do take that seriously. I don’t know how we’ve been so irresponsible two times now. It’s all my fault.”
Her eyes darted away for the tiniest of moments. “Tim, really, it’s ok. You know, sometimes these things happen. And I feel ok about it.” She gave a little grind of her hips on mine. “Actually, I feel wonderful about it. I know, we should be super responsible right now, but there’s this temptation to just throw all caution to the winds and listen to our hearts, isn’t there? I think we’re already connected to each other for life.”