Josh’s sharp intake of breath revealed his instant understanding. This is why she could only say these things to him. Why he could only talk to her.
“How long?” Josh asked.
“A year. They moved me the summer before I went to middle school. I was so shocked. And angry.”
And betrayed. The howling pain and humiliation had been too much for her at age nine. That’s when she’d shut down. That’s when she’d stopped letting people get close. That’s when she’d stopped believing anyone. Josh put an arm around her and she turned to him, burying her face against his shoulder. But there were no tears. The pain was too big for tears. She hung on to Josh.
“Poor baby,” Josh crooned in her ear. “You had your trust destroyed.” She nodded against his shoulder. “But you’ve rebuilt it pretty well, don’t you think?”
She pushed back. “No! God, no. I don’t trust anyone. I think everyone is lying to me.”
“Do you think I’m lying to you?”
“No!”
“Lena? Molly? Lito? Was Lito lying to you?”
“No, but that’s different.”
“It’s not.” She started to get up but Josh grabbed her hand.
“It’s you you don’t trust.” She went still. “You don’t trust your ability to know when a person is worth your trust. Or your love. And given what you just told me, that’s understandable.”
“But it’s ruining my life.”
“How? You have great friends, a family you’ve gathered around you, a successful career. Doesn’t seem so ruined to me.” He reached out and caught her chin in his hand, turning her to face him. “Wyatt Anderson.” She tried to turn her face away but he held on tight. “You fell in love with him, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
Josh laughed and let her pull away. “We’re a couple of messes. You know that, right?”
“Speak for yourself,” she said, stung. “And why haven’t you ever tried it?”
“What? Falling in love? You know that’s something I can’t risk.” He pushed off the table and pulled his helmet back on. “Let’s get back before it starts getting dark.”
Sadie climbed down and took his hand. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not mad, Sadie. Are you okay for real now? Did any of this help?”
“I think so. I think it’s going to take a while to work through it all, but I know everything I need to know. I’m not keeping secrets from myself anymore.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SHE COULDN’T CONCENTRATE. Every time she tried, she would drift away to the single thought that had been circling her mind since the motorcycle ride with Josh. Why didn’t she feel any better? In fact, she felt worse.
A little before noon, she pushed the remaining paperwork—mostly business permits and related governmental nonsense for the Columbia expansion—into a pile. She picked up her purse and walked to the reception area. “I’m going out.”
Molly spun around in her chair and pushed her reading glasses into her hair. “Are you available or not?”
Sadie hesitated. She wasn’t sure where she was going. She needed to go. The idea of getting in her car and driving until she didn’t feel like driving anymore was appealing. She rubbed at her forehead. Being a responsible adult sucked sometimes. “Not. Well, unless it’s a real emergency. You know.”
“I know, honey. Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you know if you have a real emergency, we’re here for you? Like you’d be for us?”
She pressed her lips together and blinked against the tears stinging at her eyes. A warm feeling spread through her. She nodded. “Yes. Thank you.”
The day was a little too warm to be termed perfect, but the sun was shining and the sky was blue and that was good enough for her. She put the windows down and enjoyed the warm breeze as she navigated up Highway 17. She turned at 171 and made her way to the Earth Fare parking lot. Because if you ate a healthy, organic, hormone-and antibiotic-free lunch, the jelly-bean binges were canceled out. Certainly, this was a proven fact in some universe.
She took her pasta salad and bottled water back to the car. A strange combination of restlessness and exhaustion battled within her, making her unsure what to do with herself. While she ate, she considered Molly’s words. Usually she bristled when someone offered her help or indicated she might need it. She took care of herself, thank you very much. But she hadn’t been defensive. Not at all. She’d been grateful. Maybe she was losing her mind.
She laughed out loud in the empty car. After the past few weeks? Grant showing up. Meeting her mother. The entire Wyatt fiasco. And, starting it off, losing Abuelito. Her throat contracted painfully. She wished he was still here. What would he have said about her meeting with her mother? Packing away the remains of her lunch, she remembered what he’d told her the day she visited. Don’t let her failure be your legacy.
How? How do I do that? She took a sip of water and her gaze went out to the road, to the traffic on Folly Road. She put the bottle down and cranked up the engine.
Less than ten minutes later, she had left the Explorer parked near the entrance and was slowly walking along the shady paths of Holy Cross Cemetery.
She walked directly to the spot. She stood for a while at the edge of the grave. On the bright white marble headstone, his name and dates had been added to those of his late wife, a woman Sadie had never met. The grass was green but had a yellow tint to it as if it hadn’t quite recovered from being removed and replaced. Sadie sat down at the edge of the grass. She picked out a few leaves and brushed the grass with her hand.
“Hey, Lito,” she said. It seemed silly saying it out loud, but at the same time her voice broke. She pressed her hands against her eyes. Selfish. That’s what she was being with her tears. He was free of pain. Happily reunited with the love of his life. Her wanting him back because she needed him was selfish.
“I don’t know much about how this heaven stuff works so I don’t know if you can hear me or not. But I think I’ll pretend you can.”
She looked up into the arms of the oak tree and listened to a mockingbird sing his song for her.
“I met with my mother. Maybe you know that. Or maybe it’s only God who can see everything. But you were right. I knew you were, but I guess as a kid, I’d always felt like it was my fault and the feeling was stronger than the knowing.”
She stopped and closed her eyes. She could see him. Not the sick, frail Lito, but the smiling, healthy man who had made her sit with him on the ground in the backyard as he lured wild kittens to the edge of the blanket they sat on. They never talked much but she got used to sitting in his presence. She smiled. He’d used the very same techniques on her that he had used on the feral cats. Feed them. Gain their trust by being with them. Teach them through words and touch that humans aren’t so bad. She saw him in her mind’s eye, simply nodding at her revelation.
“She admitted it. Everything. How she didn’t try because she was using drugs. How she gave me up for adoption because she was afraid I’d mess up her new life. She left me behind for her own selfish reasons.”
Her fingers played with the grass as she told him everything. About meeting her mother and the things they had said. A hitching sigh slipped out and she covered her eyes.
“It didn’t help,” she whispered. “I thought it would make it better. But it didn’t. It didn’t change a thing.”
When at last the tears had washed away most of the pain, but none of the disappointment, she wiped at her face with the hem of her shirt.
You have to forgive her.
The words sounded in her ear as surely as if Lito himself had been there sitting beside her. Her body flinched away from them. Forgive? No. Forgive her? Tell her it was okay? No. That wasn’t going to happen. Never. She should feel
guilty about it every second of her life.
Sadie lifted a hand to her chest and took stock. The anger was back. Her jaw was clenched, her heart beating fast, her gut twisting and tight. What are you angry about? What Dawn did or the idea of forgiving her? She wished for a couple of shots of cinnamon whiskey so she could demand the truth from herself.
“Truth time,” she whispered.
Why don’t you want to forgive her? Because it lets her off the hook for what she did? Is that what forgiveness is? Or is it understanding that humans are fallible? Spectacularly fallible at times. She remembered herself at fifteen. Angry. Lonely. Scared. Starved for love. She’d done her share of acting out. Drinking. Smoking pot. Lost her virginity to a boy she didn’t even like because she craved the warmth of his arms around her. What if she’d gotten pregnant? What if the drugs had taken over?
She found she could understand and forgive the stupid teenager her mother had been. It was her conscious decision to abandon her child so she could keep a better life for herself that Sadie was having trouble with. She couldn’t forgive that part. The anger crept back in. She stood and brushed the bits of dirt and grass from her hands.
You don’t forgive her for her sake, but for yours.
She froze, staring down at the gravestone. In spite of the warmth of the day, she shivered as a breeze brushed by her. A tiny trickle of fear flowed through her as the knowledge became clear in her mind. Her anger wouldn’t go away until she let go of it. And she had to somehow forgive her mother to let go. Because it was no longer her mother’s abandonment impacting her life, it was her anger about it. Her shame about it.
The idea rocked her to her core and she sat down with an ungainly thud at the foot of the grave. Let it go. She messed up. She was stupid and scared and made poor decision after poor decision. That’s her shame to bear, Sadie, not yours. A strange, light feeling washed through her and she drew in what seemed like the first unhampered breath of her life.
“Oh, Lito,” she whispered. “Is that all? That’s all I ever needed to do?”
Her thoughts turned from her mother to herself. If she could forgive Dawn, let go of the anger, could she forgive herself? Forgive a desperate, scared little girl who misunderstood a grown-up? Who wanted so badly to have a home and a family that she leaped to a comforting conclusion? Because it wasn’t really that social worker’s fault, nor the family’s. She’d never said anything out loud. She had convinced herself that it was true. Like a child. Julietta’s face rose in her mind’s eye. She was the same age. Would she judge Jules if she’d thought something like that? As her naive way of trying to find normalcy after such a loss? She wouldn’t. Her heart would break for the little girl.
So she let her heart break for the little girl she’d been. All she had wanted was a home. A family. Maybe a kitten.
After the tears faded away, she felt a sense of lightness. She didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize this new feeling. She knew someday she would have to forgive her mother in person but today was not that day.
She was free.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Walking back to her car, her thoughts turned to Wyatt Anderson. As with her mother, she held two sins against him. She could forgive him the fact that he had been hired to investigate her and the crew; it was his job and he couldn’t have known coming in they would be attracted to each other. But that he’d slept with her without telling her the truth—she didn’t know how to get around that one. She couldn’t quite be angry because, if she were honest, she had known some part of him hadn’t wanted things to go that far, but the part of him she had had in her hand sure did. So they’d both made a mistake that night. They’d both given in to their desire for each other before either of them should have.
She climbed into the car and sat for a moment, letting the air conditioner chase out the hot air. He’d snuck into her heart without her noticing. He and Jules both. Nothing to be done about it. She’d messed it up. Maybe the next guy who dared to try to love her would have better luck.
Except she didn’t want another guy. She wanted him. Them.
“Enough, Sadie,” she said out loud. She put the car in gear and drove out of the parking lot. “One life crisis solved is enough for today.”
* * *
SADIE LOBBED THE tennis ball high and hard and watched as Jack took off after it. His impressive leap into the air made her smile. He ran back to her, and she took a moment to ruffle his fur. “You getting tired yet, Jackie Boy?”
“I don’t think he ever gets tired.”
Sadie looked over her shoulder at a pair of denim-clad knees. She tilted her head. Wyatt. A dart of nervous hope stabbed her, and she couldn’t deny she’d come to the park hoping this very thing would happen. She looked around. “Where’s Jules?”
“Having a spa day with her friend.”
“Oh.”
She didn’t know what to say. So many thoughts were colliding in her head. Why was he here? What did he want? Did she even dare hope?
“Can I sit down?”
“Sure.” She busied herself with pouring some water for Jack while he sat beside her. “I’m glad to run into you. I wanted to apologize.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“To get an apology?”
“No, to make one myself.” He reached out and touched her hand. “I shouldn’t have slept with you before I told you the truth. I didn’t plan on it ending up like that.”
“I know. I remember you pulling away. I remember you trying to put the brakes on things...”
He let out a breath and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “No. I could have stepped back. I’m the one in the wrong here, not you. I should have told you the truth right then and there or walked away. I was more than deceitful. I was dishonorable.”
His eyes were on hers, dark and troubled. She shook her head. “Not dishonorable, Wyatt. You wouldn’t be here if you were. You wouldn’t feel bad about it.”
“But deceitful.”
She pet Jack and let the word hang there between them. “Maybe a little. Are there degrees of deceit? Because I know you weren’t just trying to get into my bed.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better about it.”
“I accept your apology. I’m not holding anything against you about it, if that helps. And I do want to apologize for my outburst. The way I reacted was unforgivable. Immature and stupid.”
“You had every right to be angry.”
“But not to scream and throw things.”
“Accepted.”
Sadie could feel the distance growing between them. She bowed her head. Don’t cry. Try to keep some dignity. “Okay. Well. Then I guess that’s that.” He smiled. Not enough to pop those dimples, but it was a smile, so she took it. “So, we’re good?”
“We’re good.”
She looked into his eyes, trying to find the courage to say the words. Can we start over? Try this for real? Do you still have any feelings for me? Because I’m in love with you. You and your funny, funky little niece both. The words wouldn’t come. His eyes, while warm, held a bit of polite distance and his smile seemed strained.
She looked away. and took a sip of her bottle of water. What did you expect? That he’d ask you out? Just because you’ve reached an epiphany in your life doesn’t erase the hot mess of a woman you’ve shown him. Get back to basics. Suck it up and deal.
“Sadie, I wish things could be different. But I’ve got Jules to consider.”
She looked away, screwing the cap back on her water bottle. “I understand. You certainly didn’t see me at my best.”
“I understand. Losing your grandfather. My lies.”
“I met with my mother.”
“Your mother? Had you never known her?”
“Sort of.
I remember a few visitations when I was little. But she gave up her parental rights when I was eight. Doomed me to foster care for the rest of my childhood.”
“Jesus, Sadie. Are you okay?”
“Mostly. It was some pretty ugly truth facing, but I feel better.”
He took her hand. She wanted to pull away. Didn’t want the reminder of the warmth and comfort of his touch. She couldn’t, though. If this was the last time he touched her, she wanted to remember it. She let her fingers intertwine with his.
“I know I push people away,” she said in a rushed whisper. She hadn’t planned on saying anything, but her heart had other ideas. “I know I’m prickly and difficult. I know I have a hard time trusting people. I don’t want to do that anymore. That’s why I met her. To face the past. To try to let it go and move on with my life.”
“I’m glad. You’re a good person, Sadie. Good things should happen to you. I wish...”
She squeezed his hand. “What do you wish?”
His gaze met hers. The sad longing she saw there hurt her heart. She couldn’t let the words out. She wouldn’t beg him to love her.
“I wish I knew what to do.”
“What do you want to do?”
His hand came up and gently cupped her cheek. A thumb gently caressed her bottom lip. She couldn’t hold back a sigh.
“What I want doesn’t matter anymore. That’s what I’ve realized. Everything I do impacts Jules. She’s still at a delicate stage.”
“I know. I understand.” She took his hand, pressing her lips to the back of it before clasping it between both her hands. “When the social worker told me my mother had signed me over for adoption, I misunderstood her. I thought the family I was with had adopted me. For the first time in my whole life, I felt safe. I felt like I had a home. I stopped worrying. I started breathing. Called the fosters Mom and Dad.”
She let go of his hand and crossed her arms. “Then I was moved to another home. I know exactly how Jules feels. Like her entire world has collapsed. But she has you. That alone is going to save her.”
Spying on the Boss Page 24