by Leanne Davis
Now that she was that same age, Angie didn’t know if she was able to do what Scott had done for her. Scott, at the expense of his own freedom, his own life, had raised her.
And now, after everything Scott had ever done for her, she’d let Scott down, yet again. The first time she’d come to Scott nearly six months pregnant, it had been a dark, low time in her life. A time she always associated with Seaclusion. She was ostracized in high school, avoided, whispered about, her already low self-esteem completely beaten to hell. Her pregnancy had left her alone, lonely, different. She never felt like she fit in again. And though the weight shed, her skin cleared up, and she became deemed pretty enough, she never, ever forgot what it felt like to be the object of everyone’s scorn and embarrassment.
And now, she’d done it again, she was about to disappoint Scott, and become once again the object of everyone’s gossip and scorn.
Angie sat down on a sand dune, her gaze toward the waves. The day was mild, gray, no rain, no sun. And once again, she was hiding a pregnancy from the world. Why hadn’t she learned anything in eight years? How could she have done this again?
But this time, she wouldn’t let this child become someone else’s daughter. Soon everyone would know what she’d done. Everyone would judge her. And Vanessa would be right about her. She’d need help. She’d need Scott and Sarah. She knew in her heart that they would help her. But it would mean she’d have to move back to Seaclusion.
There went her dreams, her life path, her goals, her ambitions. There went getting a doctoral degree. For as long as she could remember she believed getting her doctorate would make her someone of value, someone people could look up to, admire, and respect. Someone who had a specialty, and something they were an expert about. There went her young, childish dreams of not being her mother.
And isn’t that just what Vanessa had always tried to teach her and she had so rebelled against? Wasn’t this exactly what she was meant to become? Somehow Vanessa had always known that Angie would become exactly what she tried so hard not to be, a failure.
Angie glanced up the beach. Sean was walking toward her. She shifted her gaze away, wanting to do anything but talk to him. He resembled every boy she should stay away from walking toward her in his faded, ripped at the thigh jeans and t-shirt. His hair blew around his face, long and scraggly. Why didn’t he cut it? Why didn’t he wear clothes that were more his age and less sixteen hoodlum?
He walked toward her; no games, no avoidances, he for some reason had followed her to the beach. She scrambled to her feet, dusting at the sand on her butt.
“Why are you following me?”
His eyes ran over her. “I wasn’t following you. I decided to quit playing games with you. I know why you’re here.”
She froze. He knew? How? Because she’d carried his baby once, could he somehow tell? “You know what?”
“I was in the diner. I was in a booth near you and Vanessa. I wasn’t trying to hear your conversation, but I did.”
Angie shut her eyes and turned away. Sean Langston knew. Her humiliation was instant and complete. It rippled through her. The one person she tried to hide everything from now held part of the secret that drove her here.
“You could have told me you were there.”
“I didn’t exactly think the conversation would go where it went. I thought I’d lie low, avoid you. Not get an earful on your life.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing. I just...in all fairness wanted to be honest with you. I know what a bitch Vanessa is to you. I’m sorry. She didn’t have to react like that.”
“What? You would be nicer? Not tell me I got what I had coming to me? That my stuck up ways are karma after me? Come on, it’s what you think, isn’t it?”
He looked into her eyes, his gaze intense. She took a step back. He’d been like that in high school. He seemed to notice and observe everything. That’s what had so drawn her to him. He wasn’t like the other hormone filled jocks or trouble makers.
Later years, Sean had suddenly decided he wasn’t shy anymore. He came out as one of the wildest boys of his class. He had spent years causing trouble. And on the rare occasions they had accidentally made eye contact, he’d smirked at her as if the thing between them, Amy, was a big joke that they both shared.
But now, those brown/gold eyes looked at her, pinned her as if he knew, knew what she hadn’t said to Vanessa.
“You’ve never known what I’m thinking. Never. Not even in ninth grade did you know. You’d have to ask first, and when have you ever gotten past yourself long enough to ask? To notice? Look, you want to screw some asshole old enough to be your father, that’s your decision. I don’t care. If you can’t see why you’re doing that, then who am I to enlighten you?”
“What do you know about me?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and cocked an eyebrow at her. “I know you. Probably better than you know yourself. The older man you’re screwing is the father who left you. He’s supposed to fill up the hole in your life left by Scott marrying and having kids with my sister. I don’t have to go to school for six years to figure that out.”
Angie’s jaw dropped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do know what I’m talking about, but I won’t tell Sarah.”
“Leave me alone, you don’t know anything.”
“Neither do you. You’ve never known what you want or where you belong. You think doing everything the opposite of Vanessa makes you different than her. What you miss is that it includes having real feelings and relationships to be different than Vanessa.”
“God, please! What do you know? Huh? Nothing. You’re a twenty-four-year old nothing. You live in a trailer with your sister. Who are you to give me life advice?”
His mouth tightened. His eyes narrowed. “Seems you’ve got the bitch gene down from Vanessa like a pro.” He turned on his heel and left her alone on the beach.
She glared after him. How dare he? How dare he think he knew anything about her? How dare he judge her?
The morning brought Angie to Sarah’s table, still unable to get the words past her throat to tell Sarah the trouble she’d landed in. She dreaded what Sean would tell them. For she was sure he would. She didn’t trust his swaggering, arrogant, asshole-self for even one moment.
Angie watched the intricate dance of the girls getting fed, dressed, and out the door. Scott would be leaving soon to take them to daycare for half the day; Sarah would bring them home mid-day. Sarah was finishing cleaning up the kitchen. Angie had offered to babysit, Sarah had waved her off, saying the girls were in a good routine, and Angie needed time to concentrate on her thesis. Angie felt the guilt creep in. Little did Sarah know; she hadn’t even written her name across the first page of her thesis.
The back door banged opened into the big, airy kitchen. The table sat in middle of the kitchen, which had gleaming appliances and acres of counter top in a neat square around it. Sean came in. He scowled when he noticed her sitting there munching on a granola bar.
“You ready, Sarah?”
Sarah turned with a smile to her brother. “Give me five minutes. I need to start a load of laundry before I go.”
“All right,” Sean said, stepping into the kitchen. He leaned his butt against the counter; arms crossed over his chest as he idly looked past Angie as if she wasn’t there. Angie pretended to focus on the newspaper before her. Scott came through to get coffee. He didn’t seem to notice the weird tension in the kitchen as he asked Sean how they were going to start restoring the 1959 Ford truck that had just been hauled into their shop.
“I’m ready,” Sarah called, coming back through the kitchen. She stopped, kissed each girl, and then Scott. He gave her back a pat. His hand lingered on Sarah in something more than a casual goodbye. What was it? Angie glanced around, but Sarah merely smiled smoothly as she walked out the door. She always acted as if all was fine, it didn’t mean everything was fine.
“
Is something going on? Where are they going?” Scott nodded. “Hospital. Their dad is sick. Congenital heart failure. I doubt he’s going to make the week.”
Angie’s mouth opened in shock. “I had no idea. She didn’t say anything.”
“You know Sarah, pretend all is fine, keep going. She’s got a lot on her plate. She won’t let herself forget that, even if she should.”
“Their dad is really dying?”
“Yeah. Sarah isn’t close to him, but he’s still her father.”
Angie could clearly remember Sarah’s father Denny Langston. He had been cold and rude to her about her pregnancy. He had dragged Sean over to her house and basically proclaimed the baby would be given up for adoption and they; he, his wife and Sean, wanted nothing to do with it. There was no apology, no sorrow for her. Simply, take care of it, and let Sean get on with his life. Angie remembered the humiliation of that meeting. Sean didn’t meet her gaze once during the meeting when everyone sat around discussing the pregnancy that had resulted from Sean and her having sex.
Sean had acted as if he had never even shaken her hand. The way he ignored her had crushed her. She’d been so young, and so pregnant, and his dismissal devastated her. While Sean, late to the scene of her pregnancy, hadn’t had to suffer any repercussions from it.
The asshole hadn’t even been able to look her in the eye.
“Is Sean close to Denny?”
“No. But he’s taken Sarah to the hospital every day. I take her in the evenings.”
Angie absorbed this. “What do you know about Sean and his dad?”
“I know that Sean is Sarah’s half-brother. But Sean won’t acknowledge that to himself or Sarah. He keeps his feelings bottled so tight at some point they are going to shatter him. It would help Sarah if Sean would at least talk to her about their dad. But he won’t talk to anyone.”
“Most men aren’t like you. You love her. You tell her. You love your kids, you tell them. You love me, you’ve always told me. You make it easy.”
Scott smiled. “At least you remember that much. Sometimes I think you stay so far away from Seaclusion because you don’t remember anything good from here, including me.”
“Uncle Scott, you are the good of Seaclusion, of my childhood. I love you. I’d be nothing without you and Sarah. It’s Vanessa I avoid.”
“No, it’s Seaclusion and all it represents for you. I know how you feel. I was twenty-four once, stuck in a job I hated, but I had bills to pay and you and your mother needed me. I get wanting more.”
“How did you not hate me for holding you back?”
“I loved you. I knew what it felt like to be you. Vanessa and my father weren’t all that different. I wouldn’t have left you, and Vanessa wouldn’t leave here. But I met Sarah. And I realized it wasn’t this place, but my place here that I hated. Once I changed my job, my girlfriend, and decided what I wanted to do with my life, then strangely, I wasn’t trapped. I looked around and realized it was pretty here, good people, quaint town, nice beaches, clean air, and a quiet, neighborly way of life. Not all that different than most of the towns in America. I settled here, when I decided
I wanted to.”
“I won’t, Uncle Scott. I won’t settle here.”
He smiled. “Well, I’d like to think you’ll visit us, kiddo.”
“You know our age gap is almost closed with me grown up.”
He shook his head. “Sorry, it isn’t. It won’t ever be. That’s all there is to it.”
She rolled her eyes, somehow appreciating he wanted to keep her his girl, but she also knew he genuinely wanted what was best for her.
“And this will always be your home. No matter what. No matter where you go or what you do and especially no matter what your mother says.”
“How did you know my mother said something?”
“You forget the years I spent trying to undo most everything she ever said to you. You have that look in your eye, the one that used to break my heart and make me want to kick Vanessa out. What is it, Angie? What did she do now?”
Tears stung Angie’s eyelids. He always saw through her. “It wasn’t her this time. I’m having some trouble. I’m not ready to talk about it yet. Besides, I didn’t realize Sarah’s dad was sick. Why wouldn’t she tell me that? I can’t believe I came here expecting her to comfort me, when she needs it.”
“She’s just glad you’re here. You forget that; you don’t have to do or be anything with us. We love you, and like having you here, no matter what.”
Scott got up and kissed Angie’s head, gathered the kids and left her alone. When she graduated college, no father could have been prouder of her than Scott. He told everyone she was getting her master’s, and that she was well on her way to her doctorate.
She put her head on the table in defeat; just wait until Scott realized how well she wasn’t doing.
Sean watched his sister as she sat near their father’s head, clutching his hand and talking to him. Denny was in intensive care, hooked up to monitors that beeped and winked constantly. Little alarms frequently went off; he had quit reacting to them as he realized how many false alarms there were.
However, this time, it wasn’t looking like a false alarm. Sarah sat in a chair, pulled close to their father’s bed. She held his wrinkled hand in hers. She was crying softly, her forehead against the bed. Denny had slipped into a coma. He was dying. They were told yesterday. They had been at the hospital since.
Sean stood back watching. Scott was behind Sarah, his hand on her back in silent support. Support Sean couldn’t give. He glanced around the room, and out the window. His mind kept leaving the depressing room and the man dying in it.
Fuck. This was no way to go. He hoped he died flinging himself out of an airplane or racing one of the cars he loved at a hundred miles an hour. He hoped he didn’t end up slowly, quietly, leaving life, as easily as one would go to sleep, in a room as bland and depressing as a Department of Motor Vehicle office.
He shoved himself off the wall he leaned against, he rushed out the door, and down the hall. There were few people around. Night filled the sky, lights twinkled into the distance. He stopped, and glared out of the giant, faceless hospital window. He shoved a fist into the glass. It merely thudded in a dull sound, which made his hand ring.
“Won’t help.”
Sean turned toward Scott who stood back several feet, hands in his pocket.
“You should be with Sarah.”
“So should you. It won’t be long.” Sean shrugged.
Scott studied him. “I know it works with everyone else, even Sarah, your I don’t care slouch, and your I don’t care expression. But I’ve worked with you every day for four years. I’ve known you since you were fifteen, I know you care.”
“What the hell? You don’t need to go all fatherly on me like you do Angie. I’m not Angie to you.”
“It shouldn’t be that way, should it? But you know what? It is. You should have had your own father to go to when you knocked up a sixteen-year-old girl at fifteen. You should have had a father to tell when you got a DUI at twenty-one. You should have had a father, but you never really did, did you? All you had were whispers: whispers of where you might have come from, and who you might actually be. You always knew that Denny Langston was not your father. So yes, I am your fatherly figure, as much as Sarah is more your mother than your own mother is.”
Sean turned away, and fisted his hand. “Whatever. I don’t want to sit in a room that stinks of putrid and dying. Let it go.”
“You’re so angry you could punch me right now, and the sad part is you don’t even know why. Like every Langston I know, you’ve tried so long to be perfect, cold, and emotionless, that you don’t know what to do with the feelings you have. The same thing Sarah does.”
“I don’t want Denny to die, but it won’t rip my guts out. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. We were strangers. We lived in the same house for twenty years and didn’t manage to know two things about each othe
r. Even after he found out about his heart, we never had any kind of moment, where we put our lives to rest, or told each other how we felt. He wasn’t that kind of man, and especially not to me.”
“You need to do a paternity test.”
Sean stopped dead and turned around at Scott’s quiet statement. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the albatross you carry around your neck that eats your gut. You’ve wondered for twenty-four years if Denny Langston is your father. They never wanted to know. Sarah wants to pretend you don’t want to know. But I think you need to know. You need to know to put it to rest. To put some of your anger to rest.”
“I’m not angry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. And before your father is dead and buried and the chance to know what you need to know is gone forever, you need to do a paternity test. Find out. Let your worst fears be answered for good. Then you can at least deal with whatever there is to deal with.”
Sean sat down, his gaze pinned to the floor, his hands resting on his knees. He didn’t answer. Scott finally sighed. He came closer and put a hand on Sean’s shoulder. He had to re-frame from reacting to Scott. He lifted his gaze watching Scott leave. He spotted Angie, standing around the corner. She blushed, ducked her head and rushed down the hallway after Scott.
Chapter 5
Sean’s dad died the following morning. His heart simply quit beating. There was no final words, no final goodbyes, no real grandstanding of a life ending. He simply died. Sarah took it harder than Sean did. She cried as he hugged her against him when the machines flat lined.
Their mother should be there. That is all that Sean could focus on. It wasn’t right. Denny and Tina Langston had been married for thirty-seven years, and she couldn’t come to the hospital. Even the death of her husband couldn’t bring her out of the house. As long as he could remember his mother had been agoraphobic. She had raised him from the confines of their small rambler house. She had missed everything; every school function, every sporting event, every aspect of his life. And now she’d let her husband die without her. The anger choked Sean. It sat on his heart. It clenched in his fists.