He wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. “You’re serious?”
She slid her hand up the back of his neck, into his hair, and he lowered his face to hers, pressing his forehead to hers, pressing a kiss to her lips.
“Absolutely, one hundred percent,” she said.
He shut his eyes for a second, feeling something he’d never expected. “Then let’s get home before you change your mind,” he said, and she laughed as she climbed into the car.
He watched Marcus, Charlotte, and Eva make their way across the street, and Owen and Tessa were already driving away. Harold and Suzanne, too, appeared to have figured things out.
He realized then that even though he was Jack Curtis, he was also one of the O’Connells.
Chapter Twenty
There was something about seeing him again. Her sons really had grown into his image, and she had to remind herself that he wasn’t who she believed him to be.
He was older, but he still looked the same.
“Where have you been?” Iris said. There were so many things she could have asked, like how could he, and why, and who was he, really, considering Raymond O’Connell didn’t exist? Those were the last words he’d ever said to her—that he didn’t exist and that he was sorry.
Raymond just nodded, taking her in, before sitting down on one of the patio chairs out back. “You look good,” he said.
So he wasn’t really answering, just like in those last few months when he’d stopped going to work and strange men had started dropping by, and suddenly, the man she’d built a life with, whom she loved deeply, who was the father of her children, had become distant and pushed her away.
No, maybe, if she was honest with herself, she just hadn’t seen the signs that had been there throughout their married life.
He glanced away. He seemed comfortable with the silence, and she realized Marcus did the same thing, and Ryan too, at times. Those eyes, the O’Connell blue, were his eyes, the eyes all her children had. Then there was the strength that had always oozed from him, even when he was walking away.
“Should I say the same about you?” she said. “Should we let this bullshit continue, with you not getting to the point and not answering my questions? I’m not the same woman you married. I had to figure out how to do it alone, but I did, Raymond—or whatever your name is. What should I call you?”
An odd smile touched the edges of his lips. “Just call me Ray. I see you still have that fight in you. It’s what drew me to you, Iris. I’ve never met anyone like you since.”
She wasn’t sure how to take that, so she said nothing, wondering why he’d suddenly just shown up here, and why now.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone what happened?” he said, questioning her with his eyes. “After all these years, Iris, you said nothing.”
She considered what to say. “You know, having a daughter who’s a lawyer, I’ve listened to everything she said, everything about how spouses can’t be compelled to share secrets about one another. It did give me some peace to know that the more I said nothing, I wasn’t just digging myself into a grave. I wondered something else, though, too, and I never got an answer from Karen, because how do you ask your own daughter how the law applies when you don’t believe your marriage is real? I mean, you picked a name, Raymond O’Connell. Isn’t that what you said? It was the name I took, the name on the birth certificates of our children, but it’s not who you really are. Isn’t that what you said before you left, when you told me what would’ve happened to my children?”
He only nodded and looked away. “Why did you keep the letter?”
She had to pull her gaze from him, joining him on the other patio chair in the backyard. Luke was still over at Ryan’s, and she was glad for that, as she just couldn’t make herself be around her children. She needed a moment to breathe, to shake off the shame she knew she shouldn’t carry, the shame of being fingerprinted and photographed like a common criminal and staring at bars in a crowded cell all night, wondering if that would be her life.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Guess I couldn’t make myself throw it out, after what happened. I needed to read the words, the warning, the explanation of why you’d left. I needed to be told that the fairytale I thought I was living was a fantasy. Maybe it was the only sane thing I could hold on to after putting a knife into a man. I did it because I knew it was what they had planned for you. You know I still see his eyes, the way he looked at me, reached out to me, grabbed me as he went down? I heard the life leave his body. I mean, how does anyone ever come to terms with killing someone? How can you sleep peacefully at night, knowing you stole someone’s life?”
He moved the chair closer and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. She could feel him. She wished he wouldn’t, because he’d stolen her dream from her, their life, and the man she’d wanted him to be.
“You want to hear that it gets easier?” He shook his head, then pulled in a breath. “The first one stays with you. But I never understood why you killed him.”
She remembered what the men had called him: David. So that was his name. He didn’t look like a David.
“Really? He threatened you. I heard what he said, that your time was up. There was just something about him. I had a feeling I’d never had about someone before, as if he were pure evil, as if he would’ve killed you without a thought—and the kids upstairs, too. But I didn’t know it until I read it in the letter you left. I was acting on a mother’s instinct only. All I could think was that you’d done something, that I didn’t know you, that they’d found you and were going to take you back to answer for whatever you’d done. Remember what he said, that one night the kids would go to sleep and not wake up? I had no choice. It was fear that drove me. Strangers had shown up and were destroying my family. Did I have a choice?”
She just shook her head. “I guess I never really understood which government they were from. Israel, is that what you said? You were, what, a spy who had somehow found himself working as a mechanic in small-town America? A big chunk of what happened that night was gone when I woke up on the floor. The knife was in my hand, and there was just blood, and the man I had stabbed was gone, and the other one, too. My head hurt so bad, and for a moment I had no idea what happened. It’s a black hole, but you were there. I remember your face, looking at me. It was like a dream. That was all I could think…” She gestured toward him.
She wasn’t sure why, but she expected him to say something that would explain that night, the night that had begun the rest of her life, taking away her dream of growing old with him. Why, as he sat there now, couldn’t she find it in herself to hate him?
“Too many secrets, I see,” she finally said. “You know that Owen came downstairs. It was the creak of the stairs and his voice, I think, that woke me on the floor. I don’t know what happened, but all of a sudden, I heard his footsteps. The knife was still there, so I grabbed your handkerchief and wrapped it up. Seeing so much blood, I wasn’t thinking straight. When I turned, he was right there, staring at your office, which was a disaster. That man was going to kill you, and then what would he have done to our children? His blood was on the floor, and I didn’t think. I just knew I had to get Owen out of there.
“I will never forget the look on his face. I gave Owen the knife, wrapped up, and told him to get rid of it. I expected him to throw it in the garbage, but he buried it in the woods. I never asked him what he’d done with it. I just assumed. Can you believe I did that? What kind of mother does that to her teenage son? I said I needed his help to keep us together, and I sat the kids down the next morning and told them you were gone and never coming back. It was just us. I don’t know how I found the words. I robbed Owen of his carefree teenage years. That’s all I’ve been able to think ever since I learned about what he did. Instead of hiding everything, I created a problem for all my children.”
She lifted her hands, because with everything that had happened that night, which was now a big black hole, she had more q
uestions than answers. Now, the man responsible was sitting right there, and she knew she couldn’t tell anyone.
Raymond was leaning forward, his hands clasped, and she knew there was anger simmering there. For her? Maybe. He said nothing. So many damn secrets.
“What happened that I ended up on the floor?” she said. “I just remember waking up.”
He lifted his gaze, and she took in the hardness that filled his expression. “You were knocked out. I thought the other guy had killed you, and maybe he planned to, but I grabbed our tarp—remember, the new one I’d just bought to cover the wood out back for the fireplace I was planning on putting in?”
She hadn’t thought of that in years.
“We moved the body out, buried it at the edge of Lionel Shepard’s property in the park. Driving in there was easy because Lionel was drinking again, even though no one knew. The DNA wasn’t in the system, and the body couldn’t be identified if the teeth weren’t there, so I made sure of that. I couldn’t have anything bringing attention here, to you, to the kids. My time was up. When I made it home and found you still on the floor, I was furious the other guy had hit you so hard, but you were breathing. I wrote you that letter and tried to explain what I could. I packed nothing. I waited until I heard you stirring and knew you would wake up, and I heard one of the kids on the stairs. I never meant to leave the blood for you to clean up, but I don’t understand why you kept the letter. You touched it with your bloody hands, the blood that matched that body buried out there. When I saw the news, it didn’t take long for me to put the pieces together.”
“And yet here you are, back here in Livingston. Where have you been? I already asked you. Did you come back just for me, for this mess, to clear it up?” she said. Again he glanced away, and she really looked at him. “Ray, or whatever your name is, I think I have a right to know where you went, why you’re here now, and who you really are, don’t you think?”
“Raymond O’Connell didn’t exist before 1983. Then he suddenly did. He met a woman, a smart, gorgeous, feisty woman who’d make the perfect cover. I never expected to fall head over heels in love with you. I worked for Mossad. You know countries have their own people, spies planted everywhere, in every society, to keep an eye on what other governments are doing. I was to fit in, having the perfect, normal all-American family. I had a great cover working as a mechanic, taking nonexistent contracts for the railroad. You didn’t know that, did you?”
The way he said it, the hurt she’d thought had long since disappeared came back, but thankfully not with the same intensity.
“Those overnight shifts I had to work, being away from home for days at a time, on the railroad…”
“You were a spy for another country,” she said. “I was your cover. So what does that make our children?”
He said nothing for a second. “You did an amazing job, alone. Walking away was the hardest thing I ever did, but the choice to stay would’ve put a target on you. I was called home. I had made a mistake, and it would’ve cost me my cover…”
For a moment, she wasn’t sure what he was saying. Then she knew.
“You cheated on me,” she said.
He shut his eyes for a second and glanced away. This was the one thing she’d never expected, and she felt enormous rage sweep over her, through her. She stood up and slapped him across the face, and the sound echoed in the quiet night.
He stood, too, right in front of her, so damn close. She’d forgotten how tall he was, standing before him. She hated the fact that she still loved him. She went to slap him again, but he grabbed her wrist so fast and held it.
“My son’s name is Brady,” he said. “We moved here a few months ago. I knew I was playing with fire when he met your granddaughter—my granddaughter, Alison. She was with Eva, little Eva, the girl Marcus adopted. I knew then that it was only a matter of time before we’d have to leave.”
She pulled her hand away, realizing what he was saying. “The nice boy that Alison is infatuated with romantically is your son?” It was horrifying, and she knew the knowledge would gut Alison after everything she’d been through.
He didn’t nod. “We’ll be leaving in the morning.”
“You said you’re here with your son, not his mother?” She didn’t know why she was punishing herself by asking, but maybe she didn’t want any more of the lies she’d lived with. Whoever had said that the truth would set you free had no idea of the pain it could bring.
“No, just the two of us,” he said. “Brady’s mother died when he was young.”
She nodded. “Should I ask how she died?” she said. Did she really want to know? She wanted to step back as she took in his odd smile. He looked down on her with the same charisma he’d had so long ago, and it had her wanting to do anything for him, but she wasn’t that same stupid young woman who believed in happily ever after.
“Nothing like what you’re imagining,” he said. “It was a car accident when Brady was two.”
She only nodded, wondering if he had loved her, as well. That, she didn’t want to know.
“So, Ray, are you still a hunted man? Is there still a target on my children?”
He glanced away. “You know Luke has been looking for me for a long time. I was kind of amused at first when I learned who he’d become, working in the special forces, doing things for his country that he’s not allowed to talk about. I learned that Marcus was the local sheriff, and Ryan was the law of the parks. Kind of fitting, I thought. I learned that Suzanne, sweet little Suzanne, the colicky one, had gotten screwed over by the fire department, who’d never have accepted her anyway. Owen is a plumber, and he seems to finally be happy. And then there was Karen. Even though I loved all my kids, and a parent is never supposed to admit to having a favorite, Karen was mine, because she was a mini you in every way. The fight, the passion, the personality. She was the spitting image of you, the older she got. The worst day of my life was the November day that I walked away—and I had to walk away. But I found a way to keep an eye out from a distance. As the years passed, I expected you to find someone else, but you never did.”
He lifted his hand to touch her cheek, and she should have pulled back, but then he did so before he could touch her. He dropped his hand.
She heard a vehicle and knew it was Luke in his old pickup. She could see the headlights from the side of the house. “Luke’s home,” she said.
Raymond nodded, stepped back, and then reached over and ran his hand over her arm before pulling away. “Goodbye, Iris,” was all he said, and then the man she loved was gone, walking away into the darkness.
Just then, the sliding glass door opened from the house, and Luke stepped out and said, “There you are.”
She forced a smile to her face even though that one touch from Raymond had completely unsettled her. “Just getting some air and thinking,” she replied.
“Well, everyone missed you tonight. Was thinking, if you’re okay with it, about having a barbecue here tomorrow, and…”
Luke had walked back into the house, and she had stopped listening. She knew he was trying to bring some sense of normalcy back into her life, but she couldn’t help herself as she hesitated in the doorway and glanced out into the darkness, toward the back gate, where Raymond had come from. She wondered if she’d ever see him again.
Then she made herself pull in a breath and step into the house, hearing Luke still talking about plans and family. She took a second to remind herself that despite the hatred she had for Raymond over what he’d done, she also should’ve thanked him for the six amazing children who had made her into the person she was today. They had filled her with a love she wouldn’t have traded and a life she wouldn’t give up.
“You know what, Luke?” she said. “Yeah, a family barbecue tomorrow would be perfect.”
What’s coming next in The O’Connells? The Fallen O’Connell now available at all retailers!
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What’s coming next in The O’Connells
The Fallen O’Connell
Thirty-five years ago, Raymond O’Connell didn’t exist, at least not until the moment Iris walked into his life. His very existence had been a secret, a carefully cultivated lie, except for the fact that he loved Iris and the six children he’d never planned on having. He’d become careless, living a life that belonged to someone else.
* * *
Becoming Raymond O’Connell had made him forget who he really was, and when he fell in love with a fantasy he knew he couldn’t have, he put his family in danger. Ultimately, he found himself covering up a murder to protect the woman he loved, and that act forced him to walk away and return to the shadows of a secret life that he couldn’t find his way out of.
* * *
When he returns to Livingston with a son in tow, what he doesn’t expect is to be dragged from the shadows to protect a family that suddenly has a target on their backs. Soon, Raymond finds himself becoming part of a bigger, deadlier plot—one that could leave someone in his family, someone he’s sworn to stay away from, dead.
* * *
The choice he’ll have to make to protect the O’Connells could come at a heartbreaking cost. Can Raymond choose between the son he has now and the family he walked away from?
Available August 31, Click here to order your copy of The Fallen O’Connell!
The Fallen O’Connell, Chapter 1
#7-9--The O’Connells Page 29