I shook my head in disbelief at his response.
He just continued to smile. “I missed you,” he said suddenly, sighing.
I pursed my lips. “Did you?”
“Of course.”
“I missed you too. They don’t have guys like Carter Anderson in Virginia.”
He stood up taller and said, “You mean guys that are suave, and exceptionally good-looking.”
I shook my head, frowning. “Yeah, right.”
“Did you mean guys who give you creative nicknames like Snot Ball, Snotty, and Little Snot?”
I rolled my eyes. I had always hated those nicknames. He used them all the time, most often calling me Little Snot. I already hated my last name more than anything, but being called a nickname based off of it was horrible. When he first found out my last name, he had been the only one brave enough to refer to me by it, calling me Snotty. He was the reason why I had started calling my friends by their last names.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You’re the worst. I don’t know why I missed you.”
“I know why I missed you.”
“Oh yeah?” I tossed my hair over one shoulder and struck a pose. “Was it because of how suave and exceptionally good looking I am?” I questioned jokingly, using his words from a few moments ago.
To my surprise, he actually nodded. “Of course. What other reason would there have been?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but someone from the distance called Carter’s name. I was actually annoyed at whoever it was for interrupting our little reunion. That was surprising considering how I had been adamant on avoiding him all summer.
Carter turned and his friend beckoned him to come back. Turning back to face me, he frowned. “I should be getting back.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of his friends.
I nodded.
“Can we meet up again before you leave?” His eyes were pleading. He must have assumed that I was going to say no, because he didn’t even give me a chance to answer. Instead he smiled, and then suddenly he pulled me in for a hug. His arms flexed as they wrapped around me. It took me a second for it to register that he was hugging me. I didn’t even react soon enough to hug him back, because he pulled away quickly. “Great, you still have the same number, right? I’ll call you!” With that, he turned and ran off, leaving me standing there, staring after him and replaying our conversation over again in my head.
Chapter 13
“You girls are unbelievable,” Grandpa scolded, shaking a thick index finger at us from his position standing near the counter.
Grandma was sitting in the chair across from us at the table, just stirring her tea and shaking her head every now and then as Grandpa spoke. Normally they would tag team us and discipline us together, but today was different. Grandpa was doing all of the disciplining, while Grandma just sat there looking disappointed. I wondered if this was some sort of bad cop, good cop act, or if she was seriously just too upset to talk to us. Either way, both of them were frustrated with us for snooping through our mother’s personal items. We had been scolded for the past half hour on how our behavior was intolerable, inappropriate, and disrespectful.
Grandpa cleared his throat. “Lena Anne Snotty, are you even listening to me?”
I looked up quickly from my hands that were knotted together in front of me, and nodded. “Yea—I mean, yes sir,” I spoke, correcting myself. He hated when we said yeah instead of yes, and I didn’t want to give him another reason to think I was being disrespectful.
He was quiet for a second, shaking his head slowly. Grandma’s spoon made a clattering noise as it hit against her mug when she stirred. I was pretty sure the sugar she had poured into her tea a half hour ago was dissolved by now, and that her once hot tea was now lukewarm, but I didn’t say anything. She was probably just busying herself by keeping her hands moving.
“Seriously, what were you girls thinking?” When we didn’t answer, thinking that his question had been rhetorical, he said, “Huh?”
I shrugged, simultaneously as Ella answered with, “I don’t know.”
Finally Grandma made a sound as she scoffed.
“You don’t know?” Grandpa repeated. “So you two just make a habit of going through other people’s things now? Is that something you picked up on the East side?” He crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow.
“No,” I began. “We’ve just been left in the dark for so long now about what happened to the twins, and what happened with our parents’ marriage, that it was time we took action and found the answers to our questions on our own.”
Ella sat up straighter in her chair next to me. “Yeah, we asked everyone and no one cared enough to even entertain the idea of answering us. Yes, we understand that we shouldn’t have gone through Mom’s journal, and we apologize for that, but I don’t regret looking through it. We found the answers we were looking for, and without snooping we would still be in the same place we were when we came to you guys asking questions.” When she finished, she huffed and crossed her arms over her chest, staring Grandpa down.
Finally, Grandma removed her spoon from her tea, tapped it on the side of the mug, and then placed it down on the table. Her hands gripped the glass so tightly that her knuckles were white. Then, she raised her eyes from her mug and looked between Ella and me. “I am so disappointed in you girls.” That was the first thing she’d said since we’d sat down.
Ella and I shared a look that basically said that we had really done it now. For some reason I always felt worse when I was in trouble and someone said that they were disappointed in me. That really hurt.
“We came to you two first,” Ella pointed out again. It seemed like she was trying to turn the blame from us to them. “You could’ve helped us.”
I stuck my hand into my pocket and pulled out the picture of Mom, John, and the twin blanket bundles and unfolded it before placing it on the table. I had been carrying it around with me since I found it. For some reason I thought there was going to be a moment when I was walking around town that I’d see a familiar face, then pull the picture out and realize that it was John. Things like that only happen in movies though.
Grandpa walked over and picked the picture up, looking down at it with a frown. “I understand that you girls wanted information, but there are ways to go about getting what you want without going through someone’s personal property.” He sighed deeply, then pulled out the chair next to Grandma and took a seat. “I know that it’s hard for you girls not to know even the basic stuff about what happened last year, and to know that you have siblings in the world that you’ve never met, but it’s hard for your mother to be separated from them too. Everyone is struggling.” He placed his arm on the back of Grandma’s chair, and looked at the side of her face as he said, “It’s hard for us never being able to meet them either.”
Grandma looked back down at her tea and nodded. Then she finally raised the glass and sipped at it. If it was cold, she didn’t show it.
“Your mother is very fragile right now. We don’t want to have her fall back to that place she was in not long ago. She doesn’t need any more stressors in her life right now. Because of what you two did she’s been torn up all day. She hasn’t even left her room except to use the bathroom,” Grandpa stated.
“I know,” I responded, feeling the weight of my actions on my shoulders.
He moved his arm from behind Grandma and reached both hands out across the table. He took my hand in one, and Ella’s in the other. “Don’t you think that that John Symmes fellow deserves to be left alone? Your mom chose her wrecked marriage over sharing a life with him, you girls, and the babies. And even now that she’s ended things with your father she still hasn’t contacted him.” He squeezed our hands in his to emphasize his point, but my mind had traveled elsewhere.
John Symmes.
Grandpa had just given us John’s last name without even realizing it. Maybe he thought we already knew it, or maybe he just accidentall
y let it slip. Whatever the reason was, I didn’t care. I was too busy trying to keep the excited grin off of my face, and from the looks of it, so was Ella.
Grandpa continued to berate us with the errors of our ways for another half an hour or so before he gave us one more disappointed look and excused us from the table. I hung my head in shame as I stood from my spot and exited the room. Ella followed me up the stairs, and once we were in the hallway I glanced over my shoulder and grinned widely. She was smiling hard too. I didn’t want to risk being overheard by our mom, so I took her by her wrist and pulled her into her room, shutting the door behind us.
As soon as the door was closed, Ella whispered, “John Symmes.”
“I know!” I whisper yelled. “Everything is falling into place.”
Chapter 14
I pulled the car to a stop in front of an average sized two-story home and cut the engine off. Grandpa had allowed us to use his car to get out of the house for a while after our conversation. He thought we were headed to meet some friends at the diner we used to hang out at, but instead we were parked outside of John Symmes’ house, not knowing what to do next. We hadn’t really planned what to do once we had gotten here. The idea of us just walking up to the front door, ringing the bell and demanding to see the twins just didn’t seem appropriate.
Earlier, after our conversation with our grandparents, we had rushed upstairs to search the yellow pages using his last name. Thankfully, since he had a pretty unique last name, we had only found one person in the area with a match. Not wanting to wait any longer, we had scribbled the address down and been on our way. Now we sat staring at the house.
“Why do I feel like this is such a bad idea?” Ella asked, staring out the passenger window with wide eyes.
I unclicked my seat belt. It felt restricting now that we were parked. “Normally when something feels like a bad idea, it is.”
Ella leaned back until her back was pressed against her seat and let out a deep sigh. “Yeah, well, we can’t turn back now. This is exactly what we wanted. Our little brothers, or little sisters, or brother and sister are behind the walls of that house, and we need to meet them.”
I glanced over the house again. It was crazy to think that this is where the twins had been growing up since they were born. This was their home, and it wasn’t more than a few miles from the house that Ella and I had grown up in until we had moved across the country. We were so far, and yet so close.
“What if they aren’t even home?” I wondered aloud. There was a silver truck parked in the driveway under a wooden car park that had the same roofing as the house did, but just because there was a car didn’t mean that they were home. For all we know they could have two cars.
“Then we’d come back later, but we won’t know the answer to that question until we knock on the door.”
“Yeah,” I responded, “but what do we even say?”
Ella shrugged. “How about, ‘We’re Christine Snotty’s children, and we want to meet the twins. When he knew Mom she was still Christine Snotty, so that would work. It’s short and to the point.”
“No. He could just say no and turn us away.”
She scrunched up her face a little, wrinkling her nose and furrowing her eyebrows. “Can’t he just say no and turn us away anyway?”
Well, she had me there. He had the right to tell us no. It wasn’t for sure that we would see the twins anyway. “If he says no then he’s a tool.”
Ella laughed. “He’s a tool anyway for seducing Mom and being a home-wrecker, but that’s beside the point. We aren’t here for him; we’re here for the twins,” she pointed out. “What if we said we were contractors with the city’s water company or something, and we were going to each house on the street to check the water meters.”
I looked down at her floral romper, and my short shorts and halter-top. “Yeah, because he would totally believe that.”
Ella chuckled lightly, saying, “It was worth a shot.” She cracked a smile and stared at me as I looked down and opened the middle compartment of the car. Grandpa always kept gum in there, and I used to have a chain-chewing problem. I hadn’t bought a pack of gum in a while though, but right now I needed some. Chewing on gum was a good distraction. It keeps my jaw busy, and makes it harder to talk. Therefore if we did go and knock on the door, brandishing the picture that was folded in half in my pocket and revealing our true identities, then Ella would have to do most of the talking. My gum would act as an excuse for me to be quieter than usual.
Finally, after digging under a stack of napkins, pens, and ketchup packets, I found a pack of Big Red gum with a few pieces left in it. Big Red was my favorite kind. I hurriedly pulled out a piece, unwrapped it, and tossed it into my mouth just as the sound of loud knocking on the passenger window began. Ella jumped and screamed, while I nearly swallowed my stick of gum whole and hit my head on the roof of the car.
One startled look at the passenger side window caused my heart to drop from my chest into my stomach. Standing outside of the car was the man from the picture. He was the father of our twin siblings, and also the man who we had come to see: John Symmes.
He was now standing outside of the car with his hands on his hips and a slight scowl lining his face. I started the car in preparation to speed off if I needed to, but before I did anything hasty I rolled the passenger window down slightly, just enough for us to talk through it.
John Symmes looked more annoyed than angry as he leaned down to look in through the window. “Can I help you ladies?” he asked, his eyes squinted at us.
Shit, we’re busted.
When we didn’t respond, John ran a hand through his thick brown hair. I instantly wondered how old he was. He looked significantly younger than Dad. He was probably in his early forties like Mom was, while Dad was a year away from being fifty. “Explain why you’ve been sitting outside of my house and watching it for the past half hour or I’m going to call the cops and you can explain it to them instead.”
I cracked a smile at that. Let him call the cops. We would be gone before he even had time to pull out his phone.
Unlike me, Ella was scared by his empty threat and said, “No, don’t call the police.” She waved a hand between her chest and mine as she added, “We’re Christine Snotty’s children.”
John widened his eyes at the mention of our mom. He glanced between the two of us, his thin lips pressing together in a tight line. It was obvious that he was noticing all of the resemblances between us and our mom from the way he searched our faces with his eyes before they widened in recognition. “Lena and Gabriella?” he asked, frowning slightly. His eyebrows were deeply furrowed and he looked like he was choosing his next words carefully. “Your mom used to talk about you two a lot,” he added, as if we had asked how he knew our names. His expression slowly became friendlier as he said, “How is Christine?” For him, our mom was probably the one who got away.
“She’s doing great,” I answered, not wanting to air Mom’s dirty laundry. Telling the truth would only make her look bad, despite how far she had come since last year.
He smiled, and I saw what Mom saw in him. He was handsome. Despite how annoyed that fact made me, it was true. He was fair skinned, with pale blue eyes that practically lit up when he smiled. From the way he smiled at the mention of my mom, I knew that he truly cared about her, even after what she had done. “I’m happy to hear that,” he responded, glancing down at the ground. When he looked up, he smiled softly. Then he asked, “So, what brings you girls here?”
Ella and I shared a look. John noticed, but didn’t say anything. Instead he just glanced between us with a curious look on his face.
“We came to see if you would allow us to meet the twins,” I answered, feeling like I had just sewed my heart on my sleeve. He could deny us, and send us on our way. I would be angry, but I would understand if he wanted to raise his children without any connection to us. Our mom had turned them away to keep her family together, but even when that hadn’t worked
out she still hadn’t been in contact with John, according to Grandpa.
John nodded. “I knew they had something to do with this.” He stood up straight, and backed away from the door. I thought he was going to tell us to leave, but instead he reached to pull the passenger door open. I unlocked the doors after his first attempt proved unsuccessful, and he pulled on the door again. He looked down into the car and said, “What type of man would I be if I denied you to see them?”
Ella unbuckled her seatbelt at the speed of lightning and was out of the car before I even had the chance to turn the engine off. I followed her action after I took the keys out of the ignition, and got out. Once we were all standing outside of the car, Ella asked, “Are you seriously serious?” She looked like she was on the verge of tears. Her smile was wide, and contagious. I was excited too, and had a huge grin etched onto my face.
John nodded and chuckled at her excitement. “Does your mom know you’re here?” He looked hopeful, like us being here meant that she was going to stop by tomorrow and assume her position as mother.
“No,” Ella answered, looking down at her hands.
“She doesn’t know, and she probably wouldn’t approve either, but we couldn’t go back to Virginia without at least seeing them once.”
John nodded, and said, “Well, if you want to meet them then you’re more than welcome to come in.”
We nodded simultaneously, and then he led us to the house. On the inside it was a lot like a bachelor pad. There were no fancy decorations, only the main essentials. Other than that, the entrance to the house was pretty bare. When we walked in we passed the living room that consisted of two tan leather couches, a coffee table, and a lamp. There were no pictures hanging on the walls, and even though I was moments from meeting the twins, I couldn’t help but search for a picture that told me their sexes.
As we headed down the hallway, we turned into a room that held toys of all kinds and a small loveseat. Sitting on the loveseat was an old woman who was bouncing a chunky baby on her lap. Standing on the floor by her legs and using her knee to balance was a wobbly little boy.
Scarlet Awakening (Sweet Secrets #2) Page 8