Found Underneath: Finding Me Duet #2

by K. L. Kreig

  “I want you to return the money in my account to Shaw Mercer.”

  I haven’t touched a penny of the two hundred fifty thousand dollars Shaw has paid me. As we backed out of Preston and Adelle’s driveway on the first night I met them, I already knew I’d return it at the end of this even though I desperately needed it. It didn’t feel right keeping it when I was no longer playing a part but falling in love.

  She throws a glance over her shoulder, halting her task. “You come into some inheritance I’m not aware of?”

  I look away and shake my head. I hear her inhale and blow it back out. The water shuts off.

  “Nothing happened to your mom, did it?”

  “No,” I mumble before I remember I’ve never talked to her about my momma. We’ve never discussed anything personal, actually. My gaze zips back to hers. She’s leaning against the counter, wiping her hands with a black towel, watching me. “What do you know about my mother?”

  She ignores me. “I’m not your go-between, Willow. You’re a grown woman. I personally think you’re making a mistake but if you want to return the money, then you can do it yourself.”

  She looks cool and collected while that fire that Shaw has unearthed in me burns wild and erupts. “I have never asked you for a thing,” I bite. “You owe me this.”

  She cocks a perfectly coifed brow. In any situation, that one little muscle movement would have me shrinking in my seat, but not today.

  “You asked me for a job,” she says coolly.

  “I didn’t ask you for anything. You offered.”

  “Semantics.” She drops the hand towel and crosses her arms. “You needed help. I gave it, no strings attached.”

  She’s right. Damn her.

  “I—” My heart pounds. I can’t do it, I want to say. I’ll crumble like a fall leaf the second my eyes land on his. I’ll let his very presence convince me we’ll be okay and if that’s even remotely possible, which I don’t see how it is, I have to reach that conclusion on my own. “Please, Randi,” I plead quietly. “I can’t keep it. I can’t send a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the mail, and I can’t see him. I just can’t.”

  Her lips thin. A few moments tick off. “I know what happened,” she announces evenly.

  Right. Of course she does. She’s like the all-seeing Oz behind the curtain.

  I fight to swallow past the ball of conflict in my throat. “Then you know why I’m begging.”

  Her gaze falls to the floor and a weird sort of look comes over her face. She pushes off the table and when our eyes connect again, I see a totally different person than the aloof, unfeeling one I’ve always encountered. The thick, intimidating lines on her forehead are gone and the edges of her mouth have softened considerably.

  “Follow me,” she orders as she walks by. Once again I’m on her heels like a puppy. This time we end up in her office. She waves for me to sit. I do, expecting her to pull out paperwork I’ll have to sign, authorizing the transaction. She tosses a plain manila folder on the desk instead.

  And when she opens it, I stop breathing.

  I volley between the upside-down photographs and her, the blood in my veins icing over.

  “Why do you have pictures of my sister?” I snap. A swarm of bees has invaded my ears. “What? Do you have a whole dossier on my life in there?”

  How dare she.

  Sick to my stomach, I snatch the folder, spin it around, and begin sifting through dozens of old four-by-six snapshots. I expect to see creepy candids of me taken from afar by telephoto lens mixed in but as I flip through picture after picture, I realize they are all of Violet.

  Some are of Violet alone or with other people, but most feature my sister with an arm thrown around a petite stringy-haired brunette with sunken cheekbones and protruding ribs. At first glance, she’s unfamiliar but the longer I stare, the more I see it: big brown eyes that look troubled instead of confident and sure. Everything about this girl in the picture is different from the one I know.

  I lift my eyes to ones that are now older and wiser. They are much the same yet so incredibly different years later. The ones in the photos mirrored Violet’s in those last few months before her overdose. Red, glassy, strung out. The ones I’m looking into now are experienced and wise. They’re brimming with remorse.

  My mouth tastes of fury and utter disbelief when I ask, “You knew who I was all along, didn’t you?” There’s some massive stinging happening behind my eyelids. I try to blink it away. It’s not working.

  Randi runs her tongue along her lower lip and sucks it into her mouth as she shifts in her wing-back chair. She looks uneasy, her tough-as-shit exterior cracking from the ground up.

  The air suddenly thins. It’s hard to take in.

  “You knew my sister?” She moves her head in what could be considered a nod, I suppose, but it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough for the crap she just laid at my feet.

  Randi Devereaux knew my dead sister.

  Un-fucking-believable.

  “She was my best friend,” Randi confesses, her tone hushed and wistful, her eyes teary. I’m having a hard time feeling sorry for her when anger crowds everything else out.

  My head is spinning. I came here to give my resignation and to twist Randi’s arm into returning money I need but can’t take when suddenly the doors were ripped off the past, and I’m staring straight into the mouth of hallowed space. Afraid to fall into it. Unable to turn away.

  I reach for a picture half-hidden under another. In it Violet and Randi are floating on a lake in inner tubes, in skimpy bikinis, holding hands and squinting against the sun. They’re laughing at water being splashed on them from someone who’s not captured.

  I remember the bright yellow bathing suit Violet is wearing. My mother helped her pick it out before we went to Cannon Beach the summer before she died. The first time she wore it my dad nearly blew his lid. He told her it was too revealing. She told him he didn’t like the fact she was growing up and it was the only suit she’d brought. He grumbled and told Momma to get her something else. She didn’t. He let it go.

  I run a fingernail over Violet’s smile, over the space between her front teeth that most people would hate but she said gave her character. She once told me the French believed those blessed with a gap are said to have good luck follow them through life. I used to wish we were French after she died.

  She looks young and healthy. Like she’s having the time of her life.

  “We met at the pier the summer I moved here.” She nods to the ghost in my hand. “I didn’t know many people. Violet was friendly and fun and her bubbly personality was infectious.” It was. How I envied that about her. “We clicked immediately.”

  I clamp my lips together and stuff the sob that wants to escape back down my throat. Violet’s face turns blurry. I don’t want her to say another word but I’ll choke the life from her if she doesn’t.

  “Then we met Brock. He seemed like a nice guy at first. Fun, wild, a little hippieish. But he turned out to be a piece of shit with a quick temper and a fondness for hard drugs.” She stops, a wry grin on her face. “We both were lured into the illusion that we could escape anytime we wanted, and after a while Violet wanted to walk away, but I…I fucking went and fell in love with the asshole and she wouldn’t leave until I did.”

  I’m lost for words. My face feels hot.

  “I feel responsible for her death, yet her death was the only thing that saved my life.”

  I break from my sister’s soulful face and look into glassy chocolate hues. I see so much lurking in them. Self-reproach. Suffering, still, after all this time. The agony of loss that never goes away.

  I was twelve years old when Violet overdosed on cocaine.

  I hadn’t started my period yet. I hadn’t been kissed by a boy. I still liked Saturday morning cartoons and was a book nerd. I have no rational reason to feel guilty about her death, yet I do. I didn’t know the signs of drug use. What normal twelve-year-old would? I
n retrospect, it’s clear, but at the time all I knew was she had changed. Her light had been cast in shadows. She was anxious instead of carefree. She locked her bedroom door. She fought with my parents. There were secrets between us that were never there before.

  It would be easy to sit here and blame Randi for it. In reality, I’d always wanted someone else to blame besides Violet herself. Because it’s easier to think someone else did it to her than holding her accountable.

  But that’s not reality. Randi is no more to blame for Violet choosing drugs than I am. She’s no more to blame for Violet overdosing than I am. It’s a black hole called martyrdom we’ll both stay trapped in if we let ourselves.

  And I’ve been there long enough.

  “I’m sorry,” she offers. It’s genuine and heartfelt and completely unnecessary.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I introduced them. Got us caught up with that crap in the first place.”

  “No,” I disagree. The change in Vi started well before they met. It was a storm that had been brewing for months. I think back to the “cigarettes” I found in her drawer once. Now I know that for the lie it was. No. Randi isn’t to blame. “Violet was pulling away from us before that, Randi. My mother pushed her hard. She pushed back.”

  She shakes her head. “We were best friends. I was supposed to look out for her.”

  “I was her sister. Don’t you think I feel the same?”

  “You’re not the one who left her at the party. I am,” she says in a faraway voice that breaks. “She told me she’d be right behind me and when she didn’t show up at our friend’s house, I got worried and came back, but by the time I got there she was already unconscious and everyone else was too coked up to notice. I performed CPR the best I could while someone drove us to the ER, but…”

  But it was too late.

  “It’s not your fault, Randi,” I repeat. “It was an unfortunate accident.” It’s true, and for the first time, I honestly believe what I’m saying.

  Eyes that had lost focus now sharpen, zeroing in on me.

  “I know firsthand what it’s like to be weighed down by the burden of someone else’s death, Willow. To hate your reflection, your very existence. It’s a daily descent into the pits of hell you can’t possibly fathom.” She pauses and smiles sadly, adding, “Well, I imagine you think you can but you’re wrong.”

  I know what she’s getting at and I don’t know how to respond, so I blurt, “I’m pretty fucking pissed at you. Why not just tell me this?”

  She doesn’t acknowledge me and I honestly don’t think she cares if I’m mad or not.

  “And this whole situation is not on Shaw. He was put in an impossible spot, you understand this, right?”

  My head hangs in shame. My heart understands this doesn’t belong on Shaw’s shoulders but tell that to my brain. One second I want to run to him and beg forgiveness for being selfish and shortsighted, but then I know I’ll have to see Annabelle and I can’t make myself do it. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for that.

  And one doesn’t come without the other. I would never ask that of him.

  “If you don’t love him, that’s one thing, but I don’t think that’s the case. Is it?”

  I manage to swallow and whisper, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  There’s a long gap where the only sound in the room is the second hand from an artsy clock hanging over Randi’s head.

  “I don’t know Annabelle Mercer. I’ve never met her and I have no vested interest in her but what I do know is that when your father came upon her that night, he would have seen an opportunity to spare another father, mother, or sister that same hell he was living in without his daughter.”

  She stands and comes to sit in the chair beside me. She sets one warm hand over mine, squeezing. I’m not breathing. I’m crumbling away.

  “You’re processing all this, I get it, but once you do that you have a new reality to face.”

  Numb, I can only nod in agreement.

  “And regardless of whether that new reality includes Shaw Mercer, you need to forgive Annabelle. Your father would have wanted that, Willow. Your father was an intelligent man who would have weighed the dangers. He knew what he was doing when he climbed up on that ledge. He knew the risks and he did it anyway.”

  I know that.

  “He saved her life, and while he lost his in the process, you should be proud of him.”

  I am. I’m so incredibly proud of him. Not everyone would do what he did. It knocks my breath away that Shaw could be the one grieving his sister’s death the way I have my father’s. I couldn’t bear it.

  My teeth find my lip. The sting biting my eyes starts up again but I force them back.

  “She needs your forgiveness to deal with what’s happened, Willow. Even though it was an accident, she’ll take this on herself. She won’t be able to heal without you. Trust me on that. I couldn’t move forward until I knocked on your door at two o’clock one morning nearly a year after Violet died and begged your father for his absolution.”

  My lungs seize. She met my father, too?

  “He said I didn’t need it but he didn’t hesitate a single second to give it to me anyway.” She reaches up to wipe a single tear away, her hand shaky. “In fact, he sat and held me for an hour while we cried and grieved together.”

  That’s the final straw that breaks me down completely.

  Every shard of agony I’ve tried to bury comes violently storming to the surface. It feels like 10,000 needles scraping the inside of my skin.

  My body shakes.

  My spirit bleeds pure anguish.

  Without even thinking, I throw my arms around my former boss, my sister’s best friend, and grieve the people I miss.

  My sister.

  My father.

  The mother I used to know.

  …and Shaw.

  I miss them all so much, but the harsh reality is—it’s the man I’m denying myself who I miss the most.

  Chapter 29

  Gravel crunches under the tires of my car.

  I’ve gone over this same patch hundreds of times throughout the years. I have the same anxiety when I make the turn. The same nettle in each breath. The familiar, ever-present ache that no amount of time we have with those we love will ever be enough.

  Only this time it feels different from all the other times before it.

  My lungs feel slightly less constricted. My heart a little less heavy. I feel, I don’t know, lighter, I suppose.

  I ended up staying at Randi’s until early morning, talking mostly about Violet. It was cathartic for both of us. And eye-opening. Randi knew a whole different side to my sister, and it was nice to reminisce with someone who misses her as much as I do.

  I haven’t talked about Violet—truly talked about Violet—since she died. It was a taboo subject under my mother’s roof. It wasn’t a much better one with my father because it caused him pain, too, and while I know Sierra would have listened, it’s not a burden you want to saddle your friends with either.

  With each story Randi and I traded, the fog of grief that’s kept me trapped since I was twelve was driven further and further away. By the time I dropped into bed at five o’clock this morning, exhausted, an entire lifetime seemed to have been lifted from my shoulders.

  And with all that weight gone I found something within myself only I ever had the ability to find: peace.

  I thought I’d spent all these years searching for me, but what I’ve actually been desperate to find is the hush that comes with accepting we’re just along for the ride.

  The truth is we control very little in this life. And accepting that, finding peace within after we’ve mourned and closed ourselves off for a while so we can heal is the only control we do have.

  We all love and lose. It’s a sad fact of life. But we can choose to hold on to the loss itself or to the love that came before it. All this time I’ve chosen wrong.

  I realized somethi
ng about myself yesterday at Randi’s. My entire family would be disappointed with how I’ve lived my life up to this point. Or not lived it as the case may be. And I want them to be proud.

  As I arrive at the eternal place my sister and father rest, I notice a black Jeep parked in my usual spot. Not giving it a second thought, I slow to a stop and push the gearshift into park before exiting the car, careful to leave enough space between our vehicles.

  I scoop fresh flowers from the passenger seat and step out into the chilly November day. Tugging the edges of my coat against my chin with my free hand, I’m almost to the willow tree when I see her.

  My feet freeze, along with my breath.

  She’s kneeling, her back to me. Long raven hair, streaked turquoise in spots, blows in the cold breeze as she traces my father’s name carved in gray limestone. She draws a finger down the last “l” before she starts over again.

  My eyes instantly water.

  I don’t know how Annabelle found my father’s grave and it doesn’t matter, I guess. Watching the reverent way she goes over his name for the third time since I walked up breaks something loose.

  I knew I needed to talk to Annabelle, only I didn’t know how, or when, or what I was going to say. What does one do in a situation like this?

  But her being here today, at the same time I am, is not simply divine intervention. My father brought me here at this very moment for this very reason. I’m convinced of it.

  If this had happened yesterday morning, before I talked to Randi, I would have turned and left, hoping she didn’t see me. But you don’t look divinity in the face and walk away from it.

  Nervously, I command my feet to move, each step deliberately quiet. When I come closer, I realize she’s talking. A word or two caught by the breeze floats my way, and although my sheer presence is an intrusion into an incredibly private moment, I continue forward until I’m within a few feet.

  As if she feels me, she snaps her arm to her side like the rock suddenly shocked her. Her shoulders square and her back stiffens, though she doesn’t turn.

  “I can go.”