I’m going to be sick.
I get off the barstool and head for the bathroom, Reed following behind. But I shut and lock the door, sitting on the side of the bathtub next to the toilet.
“Caroline, are you okay?”
“Go away!”
I want to cry, but I won’t give him the satisfaction.
I sit on the side of the tub, trying to sort through the mess in my head. “Is she your girlfriend?” I call out.
“Who?” Reed answers from the other side of the door.
“Amelia.”
“Oh, Caroline.” I hear the defeat in his voice, and my heart plummets.
“So she is?” My voice breaks.
“Can we please have this conversation without a door between us?”
My nausea has passed so I get up and open the door.
Reed stands on the other side, looking like he’s about to cry.
I run my hand over my head. “So many questions are racing through my head, I don’t even know where to start.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“Was this a game? Fool Caroline? Are there points involved? Do you score more for screwing me in the storeroom the first time?”
“Stop right now!” He shouts. “Don’t take what we have and—”
“And what? What we have? What do we have? I understand that you didn’t tell me at first because you thought I was a gold-digger. But you said you knew better.” My voice breaks, tears streaming down my face. “You said you loved me. But how can you love me and not tell me who you really are? Doesn’t it make it all a lie?”
He reaches for me, but I back away. “I wanted to, Caroline. I did. But it’s more complicated than it seems. It’s not my secret to tell.”
I take a deep breath. “Is it Lexi’s? Because funny, she told me this afternoon that it was up to you to tell.”
His eyes are wild. “When Lexi gets home, we’ll both tell you everything. I promise. Please, just wait.”
I release a bitter laugh. “Then you’ll be waiting a long time. Lexi won’t be home until late.”
His face changes. “What are you talking about? Where is she?”
“She’s on a date.”
His face contorts into rage. “On a date? Who the hell is she on a date with?”
“Brandon McKenzie, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“She’s eighteen years old, Reed. She should be dating.”
Reed goes to his computer and enters an Internet address. After he enters more information, he releases a heavy breath. “Thank God, she has her cell phone on. It looks like they’re at Belvedere’s, the club we….”
I let his reference go, latching onto a bigger issue. “Did you really just track her cell phone?”
He grabs his coat. “Yes. Now I have to go get her.”
“You are not going to go get her!”
His face reddens with fury. “If anything happens to her, I’m holding you personally responsible.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “She’s on a date!”
He points his finger at me. “This isn’t any of your business, Caroline! I told you to stay out of Lexi’s life!”
“I suppose I’m not good enough to be friends with your sister?”
“God damn it, Caroline, that’s not what I said!” His voice vibrates the walls. “We’ll finish this discussion when I get back with Lexi.” He’s out the door and slamming it closed before I can answer.
With Reed gone, my anger remains, but it lowers to a simmer. How can I think I’ve found everything I’m looking for only to find it’s all a lie?
My phone rings and I consider not answering it. I don’t want to argue with Reed right now. But when I look at the number, I see it’s not Reed.
“Hello?” I answer, scared of what’s on the other line.
“Carol Ann,” my father’s voice whispers in my ear. “It’s your mother.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
No, please don’t let it be too late.
“She’s in the hospital. In the ICU. The doctors say she doesn’t have much longer. Maybe a day. Maybe less.”
I try to catch my breath.
“She’s asking for ya, girly.”
I start crying when my father uses my nickname.
“Will you come see her?”
“Yes,” I sniff and try to get myself together. “I’ll be there in a few hours.”
“Carol Ann.” My father’s voice breaks. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” I hang up, crying.
How am I going to get there?
My car’s in the parking lot, but Reed still has my keys, I move into the kitchen, pulling out drawers and doors. When I don’t find them, I go back to his room, remembering sleeping with him the night before.
Before I found out it was all a lie.
I don’t have time to think about Reed. I can only handle one life crisis at a time.
I pull open his dresser drawers, cringing at the invasion of privacy, even more so since I know he was hiding so much from me. The keys are in his sock drawer. I grab them and my jacket and bag, racing down the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator.
My car isn’t parked where I left it, and sure enough, when I stop at the edge of the parking lot, I can tell the brakes are new. Part of me is furious he replaced them after I told him not to. The other part of me is grateful it’s one less thing I have to worry about.
I grab my phone out of my purse and call Scarlett.
“Ready for your big day tomorrow?” she asks, her voice bright with excitement.
“Scarlett, I’m not going to the fashion show.”
“What are you talking about? You’ve worked your ass off for over a month. Why wouldn’t you go?”
“My dad called. Mom’s in the hospital. They don’t think she’ll make it another day.”
“Oh, Caroline, I’m so sorry.”
I take several hiccupped breaths, trying to hold back my tears. “I’m on my way now.”
“Is Reed with you?”
“No. We had a fight.”
“I thought you two made up.”
“We did.” I hiccup again. “But it was all a lie.”
“What are you talking about? What was a lie?” I hear the alarm in her voice.
“His name isn’t Reed Pendergraft. He’s not who he says he is.”
“Who the hell is he?”
As weird as it seems, Reed wants to keep his and Lexi’s identity a secret, and I won’t be the one to betray them. “He’s just not....” I swallow the lump in my throat as new tears stream down my face. “I think it’s over.” I cry for several seconds.
“Oh, Caroline, I’m so sorry.”
“I can’t worry about Reed right now. I have to get to my mom.”
“Let me go with you.”
“I’m already headed out of town.”
“I don’t want you driving by yourself. At least take my car. Your brakes are bad.”
“Not anymore. Reed fixed them.”
“Why would he fix your brakes if everything between you two was a lie?”
“I don’t know, Scarlett.” My chest heaves with several sobs. “But I’m not over-exaggerating. His name isn’t Reed Pendergraft. He’s not who he said he was. He lied to me.”
“Okay, Caroline, you’re too upset to drive. Come back and let me take you.”
“No.” I take a deep breath, trying to get control. “I need you to help me.”
“Anything.”
“If I’m not there at the show, those ten kids won’t get to be in the show. They’re looking forward to it and I can’t let them down. Can you—”
“Anything but that.”
“Scarlett, listen to me. The hard work is already done. Just make sure they get the right outfits. Their names are on them. There’ll be some hair and makeup people there. Tell them I just want a natural look. Except for Brittany. Tell them to make her
more dramatic.”
“I can’t do this, Caroline. I don’t know anything about fashion shows. I’m going to screw it up.”
“No you won’t. You’ll be fine. Besides, even if you screw something up, it’s better than not doing it at all. I promised those kids. I can’t let them down. I just can’t.”
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.” My tears break loose again. “Listen, my phone is going to die sometime in the next hour or two. I haven’t charged it all day, and I don’t have my charger. So if you don’t hear from me for a while, you know why.”
“Be careful. You’re driving those back roads at night. You know some of those curves—”
“I’ll be careful. I love you, Scarlett.”
“I love you too.”
I hang up and cry soul-wrenching sobs for several minutes, but when I think I’m cried out, more tears find their way to the surface.
How could my world fall apart so entirely in one night?
Thirty minutes after I leave, my phone rings. Reed’s name comes up on the caller ID, but I press ignore. I can’t deal with him right now.
But Reed’s a persistent guy, calling at least ten times over the course of an hour. I’m almost grateful when my phone finally dies, at least I would be, if I weren’t traveling over one hundred miles on two-lane highways in the backwoods of Tennessee in the middle of the night.
I arrive at the hospital well after midnight. The main entrance is closed, so I go through the emergency entrance and ask directions to the ICU.
My stomach is a mess—a combination of butterflies at seeing my parents after so long and nausea over the reason I’m here.
When I approach the waiting room, I spot my father sitting hunched over in a chair. His hands are clasped, and his foot taps at a rapid staccato.
He’s nervous.
“Dad?”
He looks up, and I restrain a gasp. I’ve been gone only three years, but he looks at least ten years older. His once brown hair has turned mostly gray, and his face is covered in wrinkles. Dad was never a strong man, but now he looks completely broken.
I thought I was cried out, but seeing him so distraught starts another round.
“Carol Ann.” He reaches for me, pulling me into a hug and burying his face into my shoulder. “You came.” He sobs chest-heaving cries that drench my shirt.
We stand holding each other for several minutes. I remember Dad holding me when I was devastated after my brother cut my doll’s hair off. Dad cradled me on his lap in his recliner, his arms holding me in a loving embrace. My mother told him I was nine years old, too old to be sitting in my daddy’s lap. Daddy usually caved to my mother’s demands, but that one day he held me firm. “My girly’s never too big for her daddy to hug her.”
Dad takes a step back and wipes the back of his sleeve across his face. “Thanks for coming.”
“Yeah.” I feel like a bitch that my dad has to thank me for coming to my mother’s deathbed. But then, we’ve never been normal. “Is Stevie here?”
Dad clears his throat. “Uh, no. He couldn’t get back from L.A. He said something about not being able to get out of some recording studio time.”
I nod. We both know it’s a lie.
“The nurse said when you got here to have you go to the desk. If they’re not doing a procedure, they’re going to let you go back.”
“Okay.” Icy dread washes through me. I know I’m here to see her, but I’m not sure what to expect, both from her and what’s going on around her.
I shuffle to the desk. “Hi, I’m Caroline Hunter. My mother, Kathy Hunter, is here.”
The nurse’s aide smiles up at me. “We’ve been expecting you. Let me get her nurse to take you back.”
I look over my shoulder. “Are you coming, Dad?”
He sniffs. “No, she wants to talk to you alone.”
I’m swamped with lightheadedness, and I realize I’ve hardly eaten in the last twelve to eighteen hours. But I’m also freaking out about what my mother has to say to me, that she wants to say to me alone.
The double doors open, and a woman pokes her head through the opening. “Ms. Hunter? You can come on back.”
I cast a glance back to Dad before I go through the double doors.
The nurse is a head shorter than me, and she talks softly so I have to lean toward her to hear her.
“Now, your mother is hooked up to a lot of machines, so it might be overwhelming, and a little intense for you if you’re afraid of hospitals.”
I nod. I am.
“She has IVs and monitors. And she’s wearing an oxygen mask. Your mother is having a difficult time breathing, which makes it hard for her to talk.” The nurse stops and turns to me. “She’s quite adamant that she speaks to you. She’s been agitated for hours. So she might get overly excited trying to talk, so just help her calm down and have her take her time.”
“Okay.”
I’m scared. I’ve never been more scared in my life, and I’m second-guessing my decision to not have Scarlett come with me. I miss Reed and can’t help thinking how supportive my Reed would be, the Reed I know. But Reed isn’t here, and I realize I need to do this on my own.
It’s time to face the demons of my past.
The nurse opens the glass door to my mother’s room and looks up at me. “Your mother is quite proud of you, you know.”
My eyes widen.
“She’s talked about you to everyone who will listen. Her beautiful daughter who could be a model herself, but instead designs clothes for them. She says you’re the first on either side of the family to get a college education. She thinks the world of you.”
I blink at the tears flooding my eyes, the blood rushing from my head in shock. Why could she never tell me these things herself?
I swallow the bitterness lodged in my throat as I walk in. A hospital bed sits in the center of the room, surrounded by machines and multiple lines leading to the huddle in the middle of the bed.
My mother.
If Dad looked older and broken, my mother looks ancient and shattered. While she wasn’t obese when I was a kid, she always packed more weight than was healthy on her frame. But now she’s thin, her skin sinking into her cheeks and the bones of her arms.
When did my parents get so old?
Her eyes are closed, but her chest rises and falls in an exaggerated movement. The mask on her face releases a hiss from the steady stream of oxygen.
I take two steps toward her, and her eyes flutter open. She blinks and tries to focus.
“Carol Ann?”
I realize I’m holding my breath, and I let it out in a whoosh. “Hey, Mom.”
“You came.” Tears fill her eyes, and her chin trembles.
A lump clogs my throat. In the twenty-one years I’ve been on this earth, I’ve never seen my mother cry. Not even when her own mother died ten years ago. “I came.”
Her shaky hand lifts off the bed and extends toward me, and I take another step toward her. She grabs my wrist, and more tears stream down her face.
I’m frozen with fear, not of the apparatus around her now, but the fact I have no idea what to say.
Her hand still circles my wrist, so I move closer until my legs are touching the side of the bed. I place my other hand over hers.
“Carol Ann….” She breaks into a coughing spell and it takes her several minutes to recover.
I pull up a chair and sit next to her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I hold her hand, careful of her IV, and try to remember the last physical contact I had with her. I come up with nothing.
When she stops coughing, she pulls her mask off her face. “I have a lot I want to tell you but not much time.”
“Mom, don’t say that.”
Her face screws up in disgust. This is the first time since I walked in the room that I recognize the woman who raised me. “I haven’t sugarcoated nothin’ in my life, and I’m not about to start now. It don’t take a genius to realize I’
m dying, and I ain’t got much time.”
I try to hide my smile.
She replaces the mask and takes several deep breaths before she takes it off again. “That’s what I want to see. Your smile. Not your pity.”
I look up, embarrassed. “I didn’t—”
“I’m dying, Carol Ann. It’s a fact none of us can change. Ignoring the Grim Reaper in the corner won’t make him go away.”
I bite my lower lip to stop it from trembling. “I’m sorry.”
She looks up at the ceiling and exhales, producing a wet cough that makes me nauseated. “No need to be sorry. I’ve lived a good life. My time is done.”
Does she really think she’s lived a good life?
As though reading my mind, she turns her head to face me, breathing in deep from the oxygen mask before removing it. “I know what you’re thinking. Just because my life doesn’t meet your standards, don’t mean it wasn’t good for me.”
I close my eyes. “Mom, I never meant leaving for college to be a criticism of you or your life.”
“Bullshit,” she barks out and starts coughing. She replaces the mask for a minute before she removes it. “You judged our life. And by many people’s standards, we didn’t have it good. But it was good enough for me.” Her eyes narrow. “Don’t you judge me for that.”
I shake my head as tears flow down my face. “I’m sorry.”
“Nah,” she chuckles and I wonder if her mood swings are from narcotics. “I was hard on you, girl. You were soft. You cried a lot. You cared what other people thought of you, and it made you miserable.” She replaces her mask and takes several breaths. “I wanted you to accept who you were and not worry about what others thought of you.” She shakes her head. “I just did a piss poor job of it.”
My mouth hangs open. “Mom, I had no idea.”
Her eyes squint. “I told you I did a piss poor job of it.”
I laugh despite my tears.
“You’re a beautiful girl, Carol Ann. Maybe too pretty for your own good. Too pretty for the likes of your father and me. We could never give you what you wanted so I didn’t even try.” She shrugs. “I suppose I should have made more of an effort.”
I watch her, in shock. I never thought she gave my feelings or what I wanted any thought. Sure, she made little effort, but it’s nice to hear her acknowledged it.
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