Things Remembered (Accidentally On Purpose Companion Novel #3)

by L. D. Davis

  The conversation at dinner, as it always seemed to do, lingered on the uber-successes of my cousins and their spouses. Luke and Emmet talked about Luke’s ever growing law firm, some of the cases they’ve had, and Luke’s arch nemesis, a fierce female attorney named Vivian.

  Donya and Emmy chattered on and on about Emmya, the name of the boutiques and designer label Donya had begun a couple years ago. Emmy was her right-hand woman and handled a lot of the business side of the label.

  Tabitha, a best-selling romance author, babbled on and on about her new releases, the success of her past release, and told everyone that there was some talk about one of the books getting made into a movie.

  Leo proudly bragged about the success of his restaurants, and how they were featured on a Miami morning news show recently and had rave reviews on various websites. Of course, they also all congratulated themselves on going forth and populating the earth with endless stories about their ankle biters.

  When finally, the conversation came to me, where I could actively participate, Luke asked me how my job was going. My job. None of them looked at my “job” as a career, because why would anyone want to be in middle management when they could be in the upper ranks of a company, or be their own boss? No, it was just a job to them, a place where I showed up to miserably earn money and go home. I liked my “job” and had worked hard to get it. I thought it was a career, not a job, but all the uninterested gazes thought otherwise.

  “My career,” I said with a little bit of emphasis on the word, “is going well. Sterling Corp is expanding faster than anyone would have expected after all the trouble we’ve had in the past. We’re also getting more involved with the community. I am actually on the Sterling Corp Street Team, which is basically a group of us that participates in various community events. For example, we may have a Sterling Corp tent at a festival, and give out little gadgets, or hats, or toys with Sterling Corp printed on it. Last year we were a sponsor for a 5K run and walk for breast cancer. Just so we’re clear, I didn’t run, but I did walk.”

  I thought that all I had said was, at least, interesting—maybe not as interesting as a multi-million-dollar settlement, or having superstars wearing clothes I designed, or having a bestselling novel or having a hip place to stuff my face, but it was interesting. However, the only thing Luke could comment on was the name, Sterling.

  “You don’t have to say that name so much,” he said, trying to appear like he was joking. “We all know who you work for.”

  He gained a few smiles from around the table, albeit uncomfortable smiles as their eyes darted to Emmy, who had the good grace to keep her head bowed.

  I tilted my head inquiringly, and asked, “What name would that be, Luke? Sterling?”

  He threw a hand up and pasted on a smile that lacked depth. “There you go again.”

  I felt myself getting rather bristly. “It is the company that I work for. I work for Sterling Corporation. You work for Kessler, Keane, Grayne, and Associates. Donya and Emmy work for Emmya. Tabitha works for TTMedia, and Leo works for Pesciano LLC and whatever the names of his restaurants are. You have all mentioned the names of your workplaces repeatedly in the past hour and a half. Why should I omit the name of the company where I have a ‘job’?” My air quotes were so exaggerated, my knuckles cracked.

  Luke stared at me, incredulous.

  “Are you kidding me? You know what the difference is, Mayson. None of those names dredge up bad memories and sour feelings.”

  “Okay, you guys,” Tabitha said lightly. “No fighting when there’s salted caramel cake at the table.”

  “No fighting when there’s salted caramel cake and good wine,” Emmy chirped, pouring herself a glass of wine, no doubt in a hurry to change the subject. “Let me tell you guys the story behind this bottle of wine.”

  Donya groaned and shook her head. I was sure that it must have been a freakin’ hilarious story, but my panties were in a twist and it was chafing.

  I cut Emmy off mid-sentence as I glared down the table at her husband, who I usually got along with swimmingly.

  “What happened to your wife has nothing to do with me,” I snapped. “It has nothing to do with my career.”

  The whole table fell silent.

  “How can you say that?” Luke asked in astonishment after a moment. “Emmy is your family and your best friend. How can you say that what that bastard did to her has nothing to do with you?”

  Emmy growled with exasperation and gave Luke an equally exasperated look.

  “Can we not?” she said to him.

  It was too late. We were already doing it.

  “I’m sorry for what happened to her,” I said, and meant it. “But I wasn’t talking about her. I wasn’t even talking about Kyle. I was talking about me and my career at Sterling Corporation. I sit here quietly and let you all yammer on about your lives, but I’m supposed to be quiet because you don’t like the name of the company I work for? Because you are unable to differentiate between the company Sterling and one single man named Sterling? That’s not my problem. That’s your problem.”

  “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I can’t differentiate between the company and the piece-of-shit, low-life, abusive, asshole drug addict.”

  “Luke,” Emmy sighed his name heavily.

  “Then you can’t differentiate between him and me,” I snapped at him, ignoring his wife again.

  Luke shook his head. “You’re not the same.”

  “We are the same!” I shouted. “If you are going to call him a piece-of-shit, low-life, abusive, asshole drug addict after his years of sobriety, and after all the good things he’s done since that incident, then I am the same. I am a piece-of-shit, low-life, abusive, asshole drug addict, too! Nothing I’ve done or accomplished since my hardcore drug days counts, if that’s the way you want to look at things.”

  “Why are you defending him?” Emmet asked, jumping into the melee. His hands were fisted on the table and his jaw was tight with tension.

  “Because he’s the only real damn friend I’ve got,” I responded immediately.

  Eyes narrowed, some with suspicion, some with confusion.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Emmy asked. “You hate Kyle Sterling.”

  I looked directly into her eyes. I knew I shouldn’t say what I was about to say, not with her husband right beside her, but my filter was gone, probably washed away at sea.

  “I don’t love him as you love him, but I don’t hate him.”

  I could tell that Emmy stopped breathing for a second. Her body stilled and tensed and she looked at me like she wished I’d take the words back because she couldn’t deny them any more than Kyle could deny still loving her. I understood it better after talking to Kyle, but I knew Luke wouldn’t be able to see it quite as clearly as I did.

  As my eyes reluctantly looked away from Emmy and fell on Luke, I knew I was right. He still looked furious, but there was no missing the pain in his eyes, either, as he looked at his wife’s profile.

  His voice was ice cold when he spoke, still unable to tear his eyes from Emmy, who had finally turned her head to look at him.

  “So,” he started and paused. “You have befriended your cousin’s abuser.”

  Everyone was silent as they looked at me for my response, everyone but Emmy and Luke, who still stared at each other as their hands locked together on the table.

  “I befriended the man who saved my life,” I said quietly. Emmy and Luke both finally looked at me again.

  “What do you mean?” Tabitha demanded beside me. “We know everything about you and I don’t recall Kyle Sterling being your lifesaver at any time.”

  “You don’t know me,” I snapped at her, and then looked around the table. “None of you really know me. You don’t know who I am!”

  “I’ve known you since you were born!” Tabitha snapped back at me.

  “You don’t know anything about me! None of you do!”

  “Because you never want
to tell us anything,” Emmy retorted. “For example, we asked you about Grant for weeks, and you wouldn’t tell us anything. So we stopped asking.”

  “Oh, you asked about Grant,” I said, rolling my eyes. “When was the last time you asked me about work? When was the last time you asked me how I was doing at my meetings? Do you know anything about my struggle with addiction? Do you know how I feel? About anything?” I leaned forward, placing my palms on the table. “You don’t know me. I am a fucking joke to you people, the village idiot. My life doesn’t rank with the rest of you because I’m single and childless, and, therefore, couldn’t possibly understand how life fucking works.”

  “That’s not true,” Tabitha whispered as she stared at me.

  “Oh, it’s not?” I stared back at her. “Mayson can go ahead to Belmar a few days ahead to make sure everything is ready. She doesn’t have anything to do, and her job isn’t that important. She can miss a few days. We’ll put all the little girls in Mayson’s room. She doesn’t have a husband to share her bed with, so it should be fine. Have Mayson watch the kids. She doesn’t have any of her own, so she should help us out so we can enjoy our vacation. Mayson couldn’t possibly be busy or have anything to do with her own life. ‘Let me know how many things you have to do after you have a kid,’” I mocked Emmy’s own words she had used only a few weeks ago.

  “You’re making it seem like we don’t care at all,” Emmy said, her voice cracking with emotion. “You’re making us out to be careless assholes.”

  “You are careless assholes! Unless it has something to do with you and your little happy mommy trio, it doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s bullshit,” she exclaimed.

  At the same time, Tabitha cried out the same words she had said a few minutes before. “That’s not true!”

  “You never answered Tabitha’s question,” Leo cut in before the rest of the table could erupt into further argument. “What do you mean that Kyle saved your life? How did he save your life? Is that figuratively or literally?”

  “Yes,” Luke said sarcastically. “Please explain how Kyle Sterling has become a saint.”

  Everyone quieted. Everyone looked at me and waited.

  “Both,” I finally said to Leo and everyone else. “I was doing drugs again. He helped me stop and he’s helped me stay clean ever since.”

  They all gawked at me, shocked, horrified, and confused. None of them knew about my slip back into depravity.

  “Wait,” Donya said, shaking her head as if to clear it. “You’ve been clean for eleven years, Mayson.”

  “I went into recovery almost eleven years ago, but I’ve only been clean for two years,” I responded before looking directly at Luke. “Whatever Kyle Sterling is to you, he’s not that man for me, and I refuse to pretend otherwise. If Emmy and Kyle had never worked out their shit, then that would be one thing, but they did. It’s you who hasn’t worked out your shit, Luke.”

  I got to my feet then. I was so finished with the conversation, but Emmy wasn’t. She stood up, too, swiping angrily at fat tears on her face. She pointed violently in my direction.

  “You cannot accuse us of not caring when you don’t volunteer pertinent information about yourself! None of us knew. You didn’t tell any of us.” She gestured to the table. “But you told Kyle, the guy you hated.”

  “I didn’t have a choice! And for the record, I did try to tell you! I tried to tell all three of you at once one day on the phone, but as usual, as soon as I started talking about myself, you guys turned it back to yourselves before I could say it.”

  “You’re exaggerating, I’m sure,” Emmy said dryly, putting a hand on her hip.

  I shouted my next words, losing nearly every bit of control I had left.

  “I told you that I was struggling! I told you that I needed help! Do you know what you said? The same bullshit you always say. ‘Try taking a couple of toddlers to the grocery store, May. That’s a real struggle.’ Then you all laughed and started telling stories about your stupid kids at the stupid store! You cut me off like you always do.”

  Emmy looked like I had slapped her in the face. Her mouth hung open and she stared at me with astonishment as she slowly shook her head.

  “You had been clean for over eight years,” Tabitha said, just as disbelieving as Emmy. “I don’t think any of us would have for a second thought that you were struggling with drugs again. You were doing so well.”

  “Does it matter what it was I was struggling with?” I yelled. “Am I less important because I don’t struggle with children and a husband?”

  “Why didn’t you make us listen?” Emmy shouted back at me.

  “Why should I have to make you listen?” I cried.

  Everyone was quiet again. Emmy continued to stare at me as tears dripped from her eyes, but she said nothing. There was really nothing more for any of us to say. We would just go round and round in circles.

  When Emmet’s eyes shifted behind me, I turned around and found that we had a small audience. Lucas, Owen, and Lenny, the three older children of the three couples at the table, stood just beyond the sliding glass doors, watching us apprehensively.

  I immediately felt sorry that they had heard any part of the argument. Although I wasn’t necessarily fond of children, I was pretty fond of the ones watching us. Kids should be kids, unburdened by the complications of adults. No child should have to witness their parents getting yelled at by an unstable crazy woman.

  “I’m done,” I murmured to the table at large without looking directly at any one of its occupants.

  I bypassed the back door and walked around the house to make my escape. No one called my name and no one followed me.

  I walked the few blocks to the boardwalk and beach, thankful that I was already wearing a light jacket. I played the epic argument over in my mind, remembering every word and every high strung emotion between all of us. Then I pushed rewind and played it again and again.

  Over the years, my cousins and I have had our disagreements, but none of them had been as open and raw as the one we’d just had. Maybe it could have been avoided, but only if I had kept my mouth shut and accepted the assigned role they had bestowed upon me. I wasn’t wrong, though. I wasn’t wrong in defending Kyle, despite what had happened between him and Emmy, and I wasn’t wrong in calling my cousins out for the way they had treated me over the years.

  I knew I wasn’t wrong, but the fight weighed heavily on me. The sense of separateness that I had always felt with my family intensified. The small rifts that had lain between us were suddenly canyons. It was all of them on one side, and me—just me—on my own side. Alone, as I had been for most my life.

  When I returned to the house a couple hours later, it was mostly dark. The kitchen light was on and I heard the soft murmurs of conversation. I didn’t have to go look to know that it was my Uncle Fred and Donya. I had never seen a father and daughter with the incredible dynamic that they had. He had a better relationship with her than he did with Emmy or any of his other kids.

  Donya and Emmy became best friends when they were in kindergarten. D’s home life wasn’t the greatest, so she spent an extraordinary amount of time with the Graynes. She was so very much entwined with the family that I was seven or eight years old before I realized that my fair skinned Aunt Sam hadn’t actually given birth to the black beauty.

  For reasons I’ll never know, Donya and Uncle Fred formed a tight bond. Emmy never admitted it out loud to me, but sometimes I see the envy and regret in her eyes when she sees her closest friend and her father together. I never admitted it out loud, either, but I was definitely envious.

  I loved my dad. I loved his smile. I loved his laugh and the way he used to tease me and tickle me until I couldn’t breathe. I have fond memories of him dancing with me in the dance studio attached to our house, and of him sneaking me candy and other sweets when my mom wasn’t looking. I remember what it was like when he came home from a business trip, and how I would throw myself into his arms and h
e would hold me so, so tight. They are beautiful memories that I’ll have with me always, but the truth is that those memories are few and far between.

  The truth is, the older I got, the less I saw of my father. Adam Grayne, like his elder brother Fred, had a keen sense for business, but unlike his older brother, my dad had put business first. He was gone most of the time and barely saw me as I changed from a small girl to a bigger girl, and from a bigger girl to prepubescent girl, and from that to a sassy tween. He wasn’t there for most of my pageants and recitals, or when I used to beg to play with other children. He wasn’t there when my mother made me dance until my toes bled. He wasn’t there when I began to rebel, or when I started doing drugs. He didn’t make a significant appearance in my life until only a couple months before his life had ended, and by then, it was too late. There was nothing left of our relationship to salvage. There was nothing left of me to salvage.

  Sometimes I wonder how different my life could have been if my dad had been as involved and active as Fred. Would he have put a stop to all the damn princess training my mother had me in, and let me be a regular kid? Could a healthy relationship with him have steered me clear away from drugs? What if I had him to talk to as easily as Donya speaks to Fred? What kind of a person would I have become? Who would I be today if my dad had cared enough about me to be there for me?

  I know that people succeed in life all the time without one parent—or sometimes both parents—but my parents were married. They weren’t estranged, and despite my mother’s callousness, they weren’t abusive. It was like he was always right there at my fingertips, but still very much out of reach. Maybe it would have been better for me altogether had I never known him.

  Uncle Fred always treated me very well, and I know he loves me, but he doesn’t love me like a father loves a daughter. I’ll never know what Donya has with him, or even what Emmy has with him.