Found Underneath: Finding Me Duet #2

by K. L. Kreig

  She starts to rise but I set my palm on her shoulder. “No. Stay.” I notice she’s shivering. She must have been here awhile.

  She hovers in indecision but eventually sinks back to where she was. We stay like this, her kneeling, me standing behind her until she breaks the awkward silence.

  “I remember events about that night I’m desperate to forget but I’m desperate to remember the ones I can’t. Why is that?” Her voice is small, childlike, and horribly torn.

  Three shuffles and I’m next to her. I bend down over my sister’s tomb, the cold from the ground sucking the warmth from my shins. Noticing a fresh bouquet of flowers in the holder that she must have brought, I set my own bundle beside me.

  I wish I had something philosophical and insightful to say that would ease her personal hell. But to some degree, she’s got to come to terms with this on her own, as I have. Instead, I try to channel my father’s wisdom and what he would want me to say.

  “I think the mind works in mysterious ways.”

  She bows her head until her chin burrows inside her jacket. “I need to remember. I need to.” Her voice cracks. A single drop of water drips down her cheek.

  That’s the last thing she needs, but I don’t say it. Remembering that night would be the worst form of torture. Truthfully, I’m glad she doesn’t remember because I would beg her to recount it second by second and those are details I don’t want stuck in my head either.

  “When I was little I used to have nightmares. Bad ones. Nightly for a while. I’d wake up in a cold sweat, screaming and shaking and Daddy would hold me until I calmed down. But every time he asked me what they were about, I couldn’t remember. The only thing left was the feeling of panic and being powerless.”

  “Sounds familiar,” she murmurs.

  I stop to bite my lip and steady my voice.

  “One night after a particularly bad nightmare, I asked him why I couldn’t remember.”

  I see her head turn, sense her staring at me but I’m staring ahead, lost in the feel of my father’s strong, comforting arms. I swear they’re wrapped around me now.

  “He said because bad memories take up too much space and you need that space for good memories.”

  Why didn’t I remember that until now? He was trying to placate his scared little girl but what he said was so profound. And so true. Bad always overshadows the good if we let it. And I’ve let it.

  “I need more space,” she says on a hush.

  “Me too,” I reply the same way.

  The soothing rustle of leaves is the only sound for a while. I watch Annabelle, wondering what kinds of horrors could possibly be buried in her young psyche already.

  She bends her knees, drawing them up to her chin. Her usually bright eyes are dull and lidded. Her porcelain skin carries an unhealthy hue. She reminds me of me when my sister died, crawling into herself for protection. She looks as if she could splinter into the earth below her and be fine with it.

  Guilt eats me up. If she ends up like Violet, I’ll never forgive myself. But I don’t know how to help her either.

  “Your sister was a Metallica fan, huh?”

  My gaze falls to the musical notes on Violet’s headstone. I brush off a couple of dried leaves sitting on top. “My sister was a music fan, period. Metallica, Blink 182, Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor.” I chuckle to myself, recalling the inside joke I shared with my father. “You name it, she loved it.” I turn to her now. “Like you, I imagine.”

  Her eyes dart to Vi’s memorial and back to me. “She died young.”

  “Yes, she did,” I agree. It doesn’t hurt quite as much this time when I say it.

  “That’s…I’m sorry.”

  I swallow and nod.

  “How?”

  A bold question but I’d expect nothing less from Annabelle.

  “She overdosed on cocaine.”

  Her head jerks in shock as her mouth flies open as if either the idea is preposterous or it hits a little too close to home.

  For days I’ve questioned my ability to put this entire tragedy into some sort of perspective that makes sense, but something my father said once pushes its way to the front of my mind, almost as if he’s whispering it in my ear now.

  “Our lives unfold a certain way for reasons that aren’t always apparent to us until the time is right.”

  Quite frankly at the time, I thought it was bullshit he made up to make me feel better about my sister dying but now that I understand it, I realize the burden I’ve carried about Violet’s death, or his death for that matter, weren’t actually burdens at all. The gifts of empathy and compassion simply can’t be understood through anything other than life experience.

  I was set straight on a path to love Shaw Mercer for more than one reason and she’s currently staring at me as if I’m possibly the only one in the world who can throw her a lifeline.

  “It’s uncanny how like you she was. In every way.”

  She presses her plum lips together, drawing in air through her nose. “You mean the drugs?”

  “I mean everything,” I reply, straightforward, taking Sierra’s approach for once. While Annabelle looks precious and breakable, through her shadows I see grit and tenacity and a belligerent spirit she’ll need now more than ever. “How are you handling all”—I wave around—“this?”

  She slides her heels to the ground, angling her legs to the side. She turns her attention back to my sister’s grave, fingers absently plucking the dead grass beneath us.

  “I want to numb myself against it all, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “It’s what I’m asking. Have you?”

  She half laughs, half huffs, throwing the blades in her hand to the wind. “I’m under house arrest. Not a lot of drug deliveries to the gated mansions on Yarrow Bay.”

  So she’s still staying with Shaw. I want to ask her about him. How he is. If he got the new fancy treadmill he was researching for his home gym or if he’s been up in the middle of the night eating Eleanor specials like he does when he’s stressed.

  Instead, “That’s probably a good thing.”

  A noncommittal humming noise leaves her throat. I shift to push my legs out in front of me when my knees start to ache.

  “So how are you here, unguarded?”

  The smile she gives me is droll and mocking. She quickly looks behind us as if she’s confirming she wasn’t followed, but we’re all alone. Suddenly I’m checking her more closely. Are her eyes glassy? Is she extra fidgety? Do I even know what I’m looking for? I decide she seems perfectly fine. Sad, lost, but physically okay.

  “You escaped yet you came here instead of a drug dealer. That’s a good step.”

  She starts twisting the ends of her hair around her finger.

  “Don’t let them win, Annabelle,” I say. “The drugs. The monsters inside. Fight them with everything in you. Don’t let them win.”

  “I don’t want to,” she replies softly, her eyes filling to the brim with water. “But I don’t know how I’m supposed to live with what I’ve done.”

  Knife straight through the heart.

  I reach out and smooth stray hairs stuck to her cheek back behind her ears and tell her the same thing I told Randi, meaning it. “It’s not your fault, Annabelle. It was an accident.”

  Her gaze, which had fallen to my lap, slices to mine. “Accident? How can you say that?” She shoves herself to her feet. I follow, worried she’ll bolt. “I killed your father, Willow. I killed him. If I hadn’t been a fucked-up mess that night, he would still be alive. You would still be with my brother. I wouldn’t be shaking with the need to do a line like my next breath right now so I could drown out the guilt that feels suffocating. Even if for a little while.”

  I don’t tell her I’d never have been with Shaw if my father hadn’t died and she lived. I’d be married to Reid. “No. My father saved your life. You didn’t kill him.”

  “Same thing.”

  I take a step toward her. She takes a half
step back. I lower my voice and will her to hear what I’m saying.

  “It’s not the same thing at all, Annabelle. I know what happened earlier that night. You were distraught.” Her face blanches. Another dance. Me forward, her backward.

  “You don’t know anything.” Her voice is quiet torment on a wisp of air.

  A bad feeling swarms me. Call it woman’s intuition. Could more have happened that night than she told Shaw?

  “Then tell me.”

  More shuffling. Her head moves left to right. She’s not ready. She may never be ready.

  “I know you have your family, but if you want to talk, I have a good ear. And I don’t judge.”

  She nods once, kicking her right foot back and forth over the top of the grass.

  “I don’t blame you, Annabelle. For anything,” I tell her sincerely.

  “You should.”

  “I don’t. In fact, I think we’re standing here together for a reason.”

  “And what would that be?” She’s brusque but I don’t let it get to me.

  “I don’t know yet,” I tell her truthfully. “But I know there is one.” I reach out and take her hand. “If you don’t hear anything else I’m saying, please hear this: I don’t feel I have anything to forgive you for, but if you need it know that I do. I forgive you.”

  Her head bobs up and down. She swallows hard.

  “Then why aren’t you with Shaw?”

  “I needed time. This is…” I blow out a long stream of air until my lungs are completely empty. “Hard. For all of us.”

  Her gaze doesn’t waver. “You told me you would love him no matter what.”

  It’s not that easy, I want to say. I’m fucked up. This is what I do. But there’s a part of me that knows that’s an out-and-out lie. A cop-out. My usual, tired MO. I want to be with Shaw more than anything. Be part of his life and their crazy, imperfect family. I want to help his sister heal. Really heal, from the inside out because, with the little I’ve been exposed to Annabelle, I already know she’s taking my well-treaded path to keep to herself.

  “I do love him, Annabelle. That hasn’t changed. That will never change.”

  “Then why did you run off at my father’s party? Why have you been M-I-A for the last two weeks? Why is he behaving like a fucking asshole, running around biting off the dicks of every man, woman, and child he comes into contact with?”

  I can’t help it. It’s so inappropriate in this situation but the picture she’s conjured is too realistic. And damn funny since I can see Shaw doing exactly that.

  I try to bite it back but I lose.

  I smile.

  She’s confused at first, then the corners of her mouth begin to curl, too.

  A giggle escapes my closed lips. One escapes hers.

  And pretty soon, we’re both full-on laughing with tears of joy and sorrow streaming down our faces.

  “Biting off dicks, huh?” I squeal through hiccups.

  “Yeah,” she agrees, her tone shrill.

  We laugh until we’re all laughed out, but our tears don’t stop. They don’t stop when my arms come around her shoulders or when hers wind tentatively around my waist. They don’t stop when she buries her head in my overcoat or when we hear a car roll by.

  In fact, they don’t stop for a long, long while.

  Together we grieve a man who was honorable and selfless.

  Together we thank the man who gave her another chance at life.

  Together we begin a healing process that wouldn’t have been possible without the other.

  And sometime later, when she walks away after we’re talked and cried out, I call after her, “Annabelle.” She turns around and I tell her what my father would say. “Don’t squander the gift Charles Blackwell gave you. Make my father proud.”

  Face red and eyes swollen, she lifts her trembling lips and whispers, “I’m trying.”

  It’s not until I head back to the gravesite to say my private good-bye that I notice them.

  Thin, red-hued branches sprinkled throughout the pure white arrangement.

  They’re willows.

  Red catkin willows.

  My heart gets so big I think it’s going to bust clean through my ribs.

  There’s no way Annabelle brought these flowers.

  Shaw did.

  Chapter 30

  The sun has already set before I turn down Court Way toward home.

  I’m utterly exhausted. Even my bones are tired.

  After I left the cemetery, I needed to pick up Momma’s medication for the month, stop by the post office for a week’s worth of mail, and buy a few groceries for Momma and myself.

  It’s now past eight in the evening and I contemplate calling Shaw, desperately wanting to hear his voice, but I know he’ll insist on seeing me in person and I need one more day to process my jumbled thoughts. After only a few hours of restless sleep last night, I’m looking forward to a bath, a glass of wine, and my bed.

  That plan goes out the window, though, when I see a car halfway down the street idling at the curb right outside my house.

  I slow and contemplate my options. He’s facing this direction. If I turn around and speed away, he’ll likely give chase. Just as well, I decide.

  It’s time.

  In truth, it’s time to face everything head-on.

  I’m ready to live, even if it hurts.

  Our eyes meet as I take a left and creep to a stop in my driveway, making sure to stay to the left so Sierra has a place to park when she gets off work. I swoop up the bundle of mail held together with a thick rubber band and throw my purse over my shoulder. When I push the door open he’s already outside, waiting, a mixture of determination and awkwardness radiating from him.

  “Grab the groceries from the back,” I tell him, heading toward the house. I unlock the side door. He follows behind five seconds later. I throw everything down on the kitchen table. Snagging a glass from the cupboard, I fill it with lukewarm water and down the entire contents before refilling it. I keep my back to him a few more ticks before spinning around.

  He’s not even a foot away…on the edge of my comfort zone.

  He knows it.

  “What do you want, Reid?”

  I set my left hand on top of my right bicep, pulling the glass across my chest, using it as a barrier. His eyes drop to my movement then back to my face. He presses his lips together and swallows as he shoves his hands in his front pockets, dragging his faded jeans low on his hips.

  “I wanted to see if you were okay.” His mouth twists up but his eyes never avert from mine.

  He’s nervous. The vengeful part of me is glad.

  I reach around and set the cup on the counter behind me, skirting around him. “Well, you’ve seen.”

  That doesn’t mean I’m not still peeved with him, though, and I don’t plan on making this a cakewalk. I have a lot of questions he’s going to answer, first being how he found out about my father, second, why he was using it as a bargaining chip instead of telling me like he should have. No matter his motive, it was wrong.

  Shaw was equally wrong by not telling me, but now I understand it was out of love and concern. His intense devotion to his family is one of his most attractive and endearing qualities, and as I’ve worked through a gamut of emotions the past few weeks, I’ve come to realize he deserves to be forgiven. He said he was being selfish, only I think it was the complete opposite.

  If he still wants a future with me, I want to see where this could go.

  For most of my life, I’ve wondered if it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. After I lost my father, I was firmly in the never to have loved at all camp, but after meeting Shaw, I see the flaw in that logic.

  I pick up the mail and tear off the binding, cursing when the rubber band breaks and snaps my fingers, stinging. I begin sorting the junk from the bills, anxious when the bills pile grows higher than the junk one. My attention zeros in on my monthly bank statement. I’m afraid to o
pen it. I toss it to the side, pulling a Scarlett O’Hara.

  After all, tomorrow is another day.

  Reid comes up close enough behind me that I feel his body heat. I almost forgot he was here. “You don’t seem okay.”

  I whirl on him, snapping. “Really? What would make you think that, Reid? The black circles under my eyes your first clue?”

  He takes a step back. “Willow…”

  “Don’t Willow me. You’re going to tell me everything you know, and then you’re going to leave and never come back.”

  He looks crestfallen. There’s no other description for it. His eyes droop, his mouth falls, his shoulders slump. I want to feel sorry for him but I don’t because now I have confirmation he was hoping to slip into Shaw’s vacant slot. Only it’s not vacant. It never was.

  “There is no good reason you kept this from me, Reid. Not one.” I lean my butt against the table behind me.

  “And he has one?” he sneers as he crosses his arms and spreads his stance. Such a male thing to do. It must be ingrained in every stupid chromosome.

  “We aren’t talking about Shaw. We’re talking about you.”

  And yes, he has one, I don’t add.

  After a five-second stare-off, he huffs and shoves his hands through his hair. He turns from me and paces to the counter where I left my glass. He faces me once more, gripping the edges with both hands, his elbows bending backward. It’s as if he’s holding himself away from me. Maybe he is.

  “Several months ago, there was a threat against Preston that would expose all of this to the media. That’s why I was brought in to begin with.”

  “What?” My knees suddenly feel like overcooked noodles and I grab for a chair, lowering myself. I think back to our conversation a few weeks ago about the governor of Minnesota’s mistress and how Reid dug up information he used to bury her before the story came to light.

  “Preston knew about this?”

  “No,” he says quickly. “I mean, at first it was a vague demand, but enough to be concerning given Annabelle’s history. The campaign manager Preston originally hired was young and inexperienced. It was his first big campaign and he had the foresight to know he was in too deep, but he’d heard of me and my…skills.”