by Marni Mann
“No,” he said. “Just that.”
I didn’t have to open it to know it was her journal. I could feel my mom’s words flowing through the thin covering; I could sense her written emotions. I had a feeling I was holding answers to all the things I didn’t know.
I carried it down the stairs, gripping it as though it were a treasure—and in all the ways that mattered, it was. I didn’t stop until I reached the counter where Gianna and I had been eating. I placed it on top where it couldn’t fall.
“What the hell are you waiting for?” she asked. “You need to open that thing right now.”
“I don’t know.” My chest was seizing and tingling. The sensation traveled down my legs. “I don’t know if I can.”
“But this is what you’ve been waiting for.”
“I know.” Once it was opened, I would know everything. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that, even with all the wondering I had done since I’d first learned about the Coswells. What if I didn’t like the answers? There was nothing I could do. I would have to live with this knowledge forever.
I was terrified.
“I need air.” I left the counter and moved out to the back lawn. I took the same spot that I’d been planted on for the last twenty-six days and stared out into the water. By the time I sat, Gianna had joined me, the notebook in her hands.
“Should I read you one of the passages?” she asked, sitting down in front of me. She had also brought a blanket that she wrapped over us. Her voice was calm and quiet. “The entries are dated. I’ll start somewhere significant. Okay?”
She didn’t wait for an answer.
***
Kyle isn’t like any guy I’ve ever met. The boys in my class only want to talk about themselves, like how many goals they scored at the soccer game or how many beers they’re able to drink before they pass out. With Kyle, there’s lots of silence but it’s not awkward…he doesn’t try to fill it by grabbing at my boobs or marking my neck with hickeys. He’s more mature than that. Maybe that’s because he’s older…I don’t know.
One time, my neighbor, Dennis, took Shirley and me to the cove that his parents own. I think he had a crush on Shirley and wanted to show off (she wasn’t interested in him, and neither was I). That’s where I’ve been taking Kyle, it’s quiet and no one can find us there, unlike the beaches around town. It’s become our favorite spot. He usually spreads out a blanket so we don’t get all sandy and I sit between his legs with the back of my head resting on his chest. He puts his arms around me, and it feels really nice.
My parents must see how happy I am when I get home after spending time with him. But if they do, they don’t accept it.
I don’t care that Kyle is four years older than me. I don’t think twenty is that old.
But my father does.
I don’t care that Kyle skipped college and went straight to work out of high school.
But my father does.
I don’t care that Kyle cuts my parents lawn and prunes their flowerbeds.
But my father does.
Kyle works hard, and he’s good at being a gardener. He loves the outdoors and nature and making things beautiful. He even sends part of his paycheck home to help his parents out.
My father doesn’t even want to listen when I try to tell him all the good things about Kyle, and how he’s so different from the other boys in my school. All Dad cares about is that he’s twenty years old and our “gardener.” It’s okay that Shirley is dating a contractor’s son. It’s okay because it’s Shirley, and she can do no wrong, and the contractor is successful and he’s the one who built our house.
But I don’t care what my father says.
I’m not Shirley, thank God. And I won’t let him control me—not what I do, not my feelings, none of it.
I love Kyle, and my father can’t change that.
***
Gianna looked up from the notebook. Our eyes met, and we both shivered from the breeze that dragged our hair into our faces…and from the voice we could both hear in our heads. She knew my mom’s voice almost as well as I did.
Her hand found mine on top of the grass and she wrapped her fingers around it. “She really loved your dad.”
I nodded as the tears ran down my quivering lips. There had always been a deep intimacy between my parents. It wasn’t an act for my sake. But it was so comforting to hear it written in her own words, in her own thoughts.
I felt like I had slid open their closed door and I was silently peeking in on their past.
“The guy she referred to as her neighbor, Dennis, that’s Saint’s dad,” I said.
I had wondered how Dennis had been intertwined with my mom, how he knew her name and her appearance well enough to mistake me for her. Now I understood.
We both glanced toward Saint’s boat. I hadn’t spoken to him since our fight. He’d called a few times, but he hadn’t left any voicemails and I hadn’t called him back. I wasn’t ready to talk to him yet.
“Should I keep reading?” Gianna asked.
I nodded. “I think so.”
She slowly flipped the pages between her fingers. “Didn’t Shane tell you that your mom left Maine a few weeks before he and Shirley graduated?”
“Yeah, that’s what he said.”
“So that probably would have been sometime in late April or early May.” She stopped turning the pages. The color slowly drained from her face. Gradually she glanced up at me. “Oh, Roo…”
Everything inside my body began to tighten.
***
My hands won’t stop shaking. I haven’t been able to eat a thing. The back of my throat is still burning from all the times I threw up this morning. And this afternoon. I’m more than just sick.
I’m broken.
I’m ruined.
It’s been two months since I last wrote in here. Until today, I wasn’t ready to say or write what I feared to be true because there was still a chance that it wouldn’t be.
That chance is gone.
It happened a few days after my last entry. There was a party at the clearing in the woods. Shirley didn’t want me to go. She doesn’t like it when I go to the same parties as her. She says I embarrass her. I guess she doesn’t like how the boys in her grade give me so much attention. Since I’m only sixteen, she thinks it’s inappropriate. She’s such a loser. I think she’s just jealous. I don’t know why she cares, anyway. She’s taken and has been since she was my age. But I’m her little sister and for some reason it just bothers her when I’m around.
I went to the party anyway and, since Kyle flew home to visit his family, I took my girlfriends. We drank. We danced. We drank even more.
We flirted with boys.
Shooter had been checking me out for a while. Years, actually. Whenever we passed each other in the hallway or in the cafeteria or in the parking lot where Kyle picked me up after school, he would look me up and down. It was obvious he wanted me. And he made it even more obvious at the party.
I was drinking whiskey. I hated the taste and wished it was beer, but a friend’s brother got it for us. Because none of my girlfriends have fake ID’s and there wasn’t anyone else to buy for us, we had to drink what we were given.
I’m not using the whiskey as an excuse.
I know what happened…
And I knew Shooter was following me into the woods when I left the party to go to the bathroom. I saw him from the corner of my eye—our eyes had been finding each other for most of the night. I heard him behind me. And before I reached the thicker part of the woods, I felt him. What we did was wrong…I really wanted Kyle. But when Shooter started kissing me, I didn’t stop him. When he backed me up against a tree and lifted my legs around his waist, I didn’t push him away. I didn’t say no. Not to any of it.
I said yes to everything.
I was numb afterward. I still am. And I don’t know why I did it.
But I did.
A few months have passed and I can still feel him on top of me, the grass pressing into my
back and the leaves brushing against my face. I wish I had listened to Shirley and not gone to the party. I wish I could take that whole night back. I wish I hadn’t had sex with Shooter.
But I did.
And because of that one mistake, I’m going to have to live with my poor decision for the rest of my life. I know that now, because the pregnancy test came back positive. I know the baby is Shooter’s. Until that night in the woods, I had been a virgin.
Kyle and I still haven’t had sex.
***
Gianna set the notebook down on her lap. Her mouth hung open. My chest rested against my knees; my heels tapped the grass. I couldn’t look at the book, at the white pages that had slightly yellowed from age or the young handwriting that covered them.
I couldn’t look at the fucking truth.
“I feel like I should say something,” she said. “I’m just not sure what it would be…or what it would do.”
“Gianna…” It felt as if something had crawled down my throat and was pushing its way out of my chest. Everything hurt. So much. “How could she do this to me?” I whispered. “How am I supposed to feel? How am I even supposed to process that Kyle wasn’t really my dad?” My voice was rising. “What the fuck does that even mean? That I have a dad out there who’s alive…who wasn’t murdered.”
She nodded. “Someone named Shooter.”
“Shooter,” I repeated.
She picked up the book again and found the place where she’d left off. “I think we both need to know how this ends.”
I didn’t answer her. I didn’t stand or walk away. I kept my eyes on hers, waiting for the ending.
The ending that became my beginning.
***
I told my parents I was pregnant. It went exactly the way I thought it would: Dad screamed, his fists pounded on the kitchen table at the end of every sentence. Mom stayed silent, weeping into a tissue that she held under her nose. Dad yelled directly in my face…
You’re not going to be a fucking embarrassment to this family.
You’re a slut.
You couldn’t keep your goddamn legs closed until you graduated.
I’m going to fucking kill that boy of yours.
You’ve disgraced us for the last time.
That went on for hours. And hours. I didn’t tell them Kyle was the father. I didn’t tell them he wasn’t the father either.
Dad gave me an ultimatum. I wasn’t surprised by it. I actually expected one. His temper and his outbursts and the way he wanted to be viewed and respected around town were all-the-time things. It wasn’t new. And I had disgraced him now, so I could either get rid of the problem or I could leave. Those were my choices. My parents probably thought I left the kitchen table so I could make my decision.
But before I went downstairs to talk to them, I’d already made up my mind.
The baby was my responsibility, not Shooter’s. I wasn’t even going to tell him about it. But I had to tell Kyle. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I love him, and he was so devastated by the news. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he told me he never wanted to see me again, if he’d called me all the names my father had and more.
But he didn’t.
We cried together, and he said how much he wished the child was his. I told him there’s no reason why it can’t be. I have money saved from working in my dad’s print shop, and Kyle has been working all this time. We have enough to get us out of Maine and set us up somewhere until we both find jobs. It’s money I was going to use for college, but now it will be money we use to start our lives together and raise our child. I told him all of this. I didn’t expect him to say yes. But he did.
He wanted to speak to my parents first, to try to change their minds and earn their respect by taking responsibility for the baby. So he came over last night. My father barely let him speak before he started screaming…
You ruined my fucking daughter.
She’s only sixteen years old… you rapist.
You couldn’t keep your goddamn dick in your pants, could you?
Get the fuck out of my house before I call the police, and get the hell out of this state before I have you arrested.
So Kyle and I are leaving Bar Harbor in a few hours. All I’m taking is a backpack. Other than clothes, there isn’t anything in my room that I’ll need. The most important things are my memories of Maine, and those will always stay with me.
I know my father will tell everyone I left because I didn’t want to follow his rules, that I was a rebellious child, that his hopes for me were greater than my own. I don’t care. Unlike my father, I don’t give a shit what the townies think about me. I know the mistakes I made. They’re mine.
And I’m not going to abort this baby because of those mistakes.
What my father won’t tell everyone is that he’s the one who gave the ultimatum. He’s the one who threatened Kyle for trying to do the responsible thing. That’s something he’ll have to live with—not me. He’ll die with the guilt of pushing his daughter and grandchild away, of never seeing either of them again.
He made his choice.
I made mine.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I COULDN’T SIT STILL. I needed movement, and to get as far away from that notebook as I could.
So I started walking.
My arms swung with each step. Freshness seeped in and drifted out. Gianna and Bella followed, though I didn’t know where I was leading them. Soon enough, there was no grass under my feet. There was gravel, lined by moss, twigs, and leaves. We were bordering the woods. I didn’t know what woods and I really didn’t care. The way my feet pounded against the pavement almost masked the quivering in the rest of my body. My collar was soaked from drying everything that fell from my eyes.
Gianna held my hand. I didn’t know how long she had been clinging to me, or when exactly we’d stopped walking and had fallen to the ground. Our legs were pressed into the earth, our bodies bound around each other like we’d been packed inside a box.
She didn’t ask me any questions. She didn’t talk at all. She knew me well enough to know I needed to get this out, this incredible tension wracking my body, slicing each of my seams until everything felt like it would spill out all at once. This wasn’t the kind of pain I’d felt when I lost my parents. This was a blinding betrayal. This was years of lies, and questioning everything I believed to be true.
This was a completely new reality.
I felt a burning, a gnawing inside that burrowed for a few seconds before it clawed at me again.
Kyle would always be Dad to me, no matter what.
But I deserved to know who my father was.
“Why the fuck did this happen?” I asked.
“Breathe,” Gianna reminded me. That was all I was doing. I was on the verge of hyperventilating. “Take big, slow breaths. Slow your heart.” Her hand pushed a little harder against my back, rubbing my shoulders and spine as she whispered. “There you go, just like that.”
I’d calmed down enough to not be gasping for air. When I could finally speak, I said, “I hate her.”
“No you don’t. You’re angry and you have every right to be. But you don’t hate your mom.”
I pulled myself out of her arms and sat back on my heels. “Why would she do this?”
“I know this isn’t going to make you feel any better, but it sounds like she had one stupid night with a guy at a party, and you happened because of it.” She took my hand. “But she chose the right guy to be your dad. Kyle was amazing, and that has nothing to do with who made you. You wouldn’t change that….you know you wouldn’t.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter how everything turned out. She lied to me—for my entire life. They both did.” I paused to breathe again. It seemed like something I actually had to remind myself to do. “This is fucked up and you know it.”
“It is—it’s completely fucked up. But Roo, you can’t change what happened or the choices they made.”
They.<
br />
My dad had always been my hero and I loved him dearly, but I idolized my mom. I felt like the betrayal was hers more than his.
“But I have to live with the consequences of their choices. They don’t have to face me or own up to their deception. They’re dead, Gianna…they’re dead. And I’m not.” I didn’t think I’d ever said it so bluntly before. The sound of it falling out of my mouth pulled tears to my eyes again. Bella sat next to me, her nose pressed against my cheek, her tongue lapping the drops as they fell.
“No,” Gianna said softly. “You’re not.”
“So what am I supposed to do now?”
“You find out who Shooter is. If you feel comfortable enough, you’ll show him the journal and have him confirm it.”
She made it sound so simple. It was anything but.
My heart was beating so hard I didn’t think it would ever return to a normal rhythm. I rested my palm against it, trying to keep it from bursting through my chest. “I…”
“We don’t have to do it now. But when you’re ready, we’ll start asking around. There are like eighty people in this damn town; someone knows who Shooter is.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be ready.” Or if I ever would be.
She rubbed my shoulder. “I told my boss I wouldn’t be back for a while, so I’m here as long as you need me. We’ll go at your pace.”
Something in my chest loosened. It was a tiny shift, but I felt it. The short surge of relief was short-lived; Gianna started swatting her hands over her head and screaming. She stood and stomped her feet, dancing in a circle. “Shit…shit, shit, shit!”
I was dumbstruck. “What are you doing?”
“Something huge just fucking bit me!” she screamed.
A giggle burst through my lips.
It was the dancing.
I couldn’t help but laugh at her. “It was probably a mosquito.”
“They get that big here? That thing felt like a goddamned needle!”
I got to my feet and calmed her down, examining the spot where she had been bitten. It was starting to swell. “Definitely a mosquito bite.”
She squeezed my cheeks and stared into my eyes. “You need to get me away from these trees and these stinging pterodactyls and take me to a place that serves wine. Right now.”