He bowed his head as if to show reverence and ran a hand over his salt and pepper beard. “I can’t lie and tell you that her death didn’t surprise me. When people take their lives the one’s left behind are always wondering what they could have done differently. What they could have done more to stop it, or even help. It makes you wonder how she could have been so close and no one saw her pain.”
I shook my head. “That’s just the thing Dad, we didn’t. She seemed fine the last time I saw her.”
I was in the middle of finishing up the last semester of my first year at Georgetown. It was supposed to be my last. I went home for the weekend. It looked like I’d just gone back because I wanted to see my family, but really I’d missed my girl. I got home and saw Amelia in the garden, with Lana curled up at her feet listening to her read her poems. They’d caught me staring. I liked watching them together. It didn’t matter how old Lana got, she always listened to her mother read.
“Maybe so.” Dad’s voice cut into the memory. “It doesn’t make me wish any less that I could have saved her. She was good to us. She was good to me and the only thing I could have done for her is take care of her daughter, but as we know, Lana left. I looked for her too Ryan. Not for the years you looked but I looked for her.”
“I know.” He had. Dad looked for her for over a year and decided to call off the search party. He’d thought if she wanted to come home she would, and that we’d find her when she was ready to be found.
It made sense and realistically he couldn’t be expected to look for her forever, nevertheless it didn’t help me much.
“I looked for Lana everywhere I could and never found her. I would have taken care of her, because we were all she had left.” His eyes glazed over with a sheen of purpose. “Ryan, I’m going to be honest with you. You and I both know the police wouldn’t investigate if they didn’t need to. Missing documents are like gold dust to us with our criminal law cases. You know it’s something that could change the outcome of a scenario, or situation, a result. We were told Amelia committed suicide. If something different happened to her, or if there’s something more that happened, I want to know. I want to know if there was more at work to her death.”
He nodded and there was something in the depth of his light brown eyes that reached out to me. “I would greatly appreciate if you cooperated too and it maybe best to just leave Lana alone. Leave her out of this. I don’t want to make things worse than they are, or have been. We don’t know her reasons for leaving, disappearing more like. All I can assume is it must have been grief for her mother’s death.”
“Okay,” I answered and it felt like the hardest thing in the world to say. I had no plans to see Lana. I could only imagine that she’d probably make contact with the police herself and that would be it. None of us needed to contact her for anything. I didn’t. “What now?”
“I’m meeting with Detective Gracen tomorrow. He’ll be questioning me.”
“Questioning? That sounds like you need legal representation.” I narrowed my eyes at him wondering if he was being serious, acting so cool and calm.
“I do not. Calm yourself Ryan.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“I imagine they will want to see you at some point too. They want to question everyone and literally do a full reinvestigation. Recheck things out.”
Mom wasn’t going to like that. But as Dad said, matter of formality. I’d cooperate too. It was the least I could do for Amelia’s sake, I just didn’t like the vagueness and all the emotions it dug up.
“Fine, just let me know if you need me for anything else.”
He looked me over and templed his fingers. “You haven’t acted out the way you did days ago in years.”
“What do you mean?” I sighed.
“You reminded me of you at nineteen when you wanted to drop out of college. I was shocked you didn’t do it.”
I didn’t do it because plans changed up completely when Lana left. That part of me that found the strength to leave all the shit behind faded into the ether and I just stuck with what I was doing, settling for the life that had been paved out for me.
It changed me.
“Well, aren’t you glad I stayed? We’ve worked wonders with the business.” We had. O’Sheas LLP on Main Street turned into a chain of five multi-specialty law firms. The headquarters here in Wilmington along with another in Charlotte, then branches in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. There was talk of expanding to LA and San Francisco.
That was what happened when Dad and I worked together.
“Money means nothing when you aren’t happy.” A sympathetic smile arched his lips. “We can work hard and achieve all manner of successes like we have, but I remember there was a time in my son’s life when he was happy.”
“Dad, I’m fine,” I insisted.
He drew his brows together. “You say that, but the words don’t feel true. The son I remember looked like he had a reason to live. Then things changed and he became a shell.”
I pressed my lips together and tried to look like his words had no effect. “A shell Dad?”
“A shell. Not that I’m not thrilled with the success we’ve had, but I would have gladly kept on going with my one law firm that was making me wealthy, over the billion dollar fortune we have now, to see you the way you used to be.” Dad nodded. “My artist.”
I just stared at him.
He was always like that; even told me I had the choice of doing something else or working with him. That something else would have been art.
Mom was the one with the problem however, and I was a sucker for my mother. A big softie who would never defy his mother’s wishes.
She’d wanted me to have the wealth of a lawyer, the same kind Dad had. She thought it was a waste of my brain to do anything else.
“Well, things turned out the way they should,” I pointed out.
“Did they?” He quirked a brow. “You never said how she was. Lana. Was she okay?”
Dad didn’t know half of what I knew, and I knew more than I should. I simply nodded.
“She doing what she always wanted to do. Has her own brand now. Lana D’Angelo.” That was the first time I’d given him the surname.
“Lana D’Angelo.” He gave me a little smile, showing he was proud. At the same time, I could see the flicker of hurt in his eyes from how he’d worried about her.
“Lana D’Angelo,” I confirmed. She’d made it without me.
That was perhaps how it was supposed to be.
Dad smiled. “Must have been a shock to see you.”
I didn’t want to talk about it. I really didn’t six years ago as much as I knew he would have wanted me to say more than I had, and I didn’t want to talk now. Shutting down and shutting out was how I coped.
The result was it pushed everyone away, nevertheless it was what I needed.
“It was a shock.”
“Is that it, nothing more you want to talk about?”
“No.” My phone buzzed in my back pocket and as I pulled it out the reminder of how much my life sucked stared me in the face.
It was Tiffany and I wasn’t going to answer.
I wished like hell she’d just stop calling me, stop with everything.
Especially when Jack was with his grandparents.
I had no reason to speak to her other than about our son… well...her son, my child that I considered mine.
We’d been divorced now for eight months and just because I was talking to her on a cordial level didn’t mean I was ready to jump in bed with her, like she thought. She’d shared our bed with half the town so I was sure some poor idiot would keep her company.
I stood up to go and Dad looked worried as he heard the phone ring out.
“Dad, I’ll see you tomorrow. Let me know if I can do anything.”
“Yeah …sure.” He nodded.
I was going back to work. Better to work than stick my nose back in reality.
Everything was so depres
sing and unbearable.
As the phone buzzed in my pocket again, I thought of Lana.
I ended whatever I had with Tiffany when I was eighteen to be with Lana and it actually felt like freedom.
How ironic it was that I’d ended up marrying Tiffany and done everything I never wanted to do.
It was as if someone had shown me a version of my life. Of what would have happened if I’d chosen the alternate. Dad was right about me being a shell.
It was exactly what I felt like.
A shell. A shell and a shadow of my former self.
I drove home after work with everything on my mind. I hated having so much to think about. Seeing Lana again just added to it.
Before I even turned the corner for my house a sleek black Porsche came into view, parked on the drive.
My house was near the beach but in the crook between the woods and the estuary. Cape Fear River flowed into it bringing the scenery to life. I bought the place for the view.
I didn’t recognize the car, but I didn’t need to wonder who it belonged to for too long.
A woman with long black hair stood out in the distance by the boardwalk. Her hair drifted lightly in the breeze. Her beautiful dark skin looked striking against the white summer dress she wore and in the scenery before me with the oncoming evening she looked like a painting.
I’d imagined this happening so many times and called myself crazy for conjuring it that I had to wonder if my mind was screwing with me again.
Had I summoned her up again because I saw her yesterday?
Lana…
Lana, here at my house standing there in the lush green grass like it was something she’d always done.
When I parked, glanced at the car once more, then looked back out to her, I realized this wasn’t my wild imagination.
It was real.
She was real and as crushed as I was about the past, the sight of her wiped my mind clean of the bitterness.
Seeing her lulled me back to the fascination I’d always had for her.
Fascination and desire nearly drove me insane before we got together.
It was fascination and desire that fueled me as I continued to watch her, and made me want her all over again.
Almost two decades had passed and so much had happened.
So much had happened to me and here I was yet again sucked into the same wild effect she’d had on me.
She was here and she was real.
Back in the flesh here in Wilmington.
The place it all began.
Home.
Chapter 6
Ryan
Lana turned to face me as I approached.
Uncertainty instantly washed over her beautiful face and in the same instant it took me back to how she used to look and act around me years ago.
Nervous.
To me that was one of the sexiest things about her.
The nerves and uncertainty over what I was going to say and do. I couldn’t blame her, people often got like that around me because of my wild ways. No one could tell how I’d react.
Her soft pink lips parted when I stopped in front of her, my gaze clinging to hers. Still trying to process that she was really here.
The beginning of a smile tipped the corners of her pretty mouth but receded back into the uncertainty. She brought her hands together and assumed what I called her public presence. That was what I called it after I found her years ago and noticed that air of confidence about her I’d never seen before. It made her look like a different person.
After I’d found her I spent far too much time trawling the internet, looking her up. Trying to see what she’d done with her life and herself.
All the images I’d found showed her change, and almost slip into a mask, becoming the strong woman she presented to the world. Completely different to the little shy girl I used to know.
“Hi.” She spoke first.
“Hello.” Although I answered it felt like an automated response I was set to give by default.
“Please, don’t throw me off your property. I know I have no right to be here.” She gave me a half shrug. “I don’t have any right to be here at all, or probably to speak to you. I just wanted you to know I’m back. Back here in Wilmington for the investigation. Turns out the police were trying to find me but that name change of mine made it a little challenging. I… um didn’t want you to just see me around town or in passing and well… see me without me doing this part, first.” She nodded.
I got what she was saying and appreciated it. I had expected her return. Like her, I would have been on the next flight if I’d gotten the news I served her with yesterday.
“So you came here?” I asked, inclining my head to the side. “You don’t owe me anything. If I saw you around I would have assumed the reason for your return was the investigation.”
Her shoulders tensed. “I know…” she pulled in a deep breath. “I guess the other reason for my visit was because of that thing I do owe you.”
“What’s that?”
“An apology.”
I groaned inwardly, not knowing what to say.
An apology was an apology. It was an expression of sorrow. While it was a thing that a person could appreciate, it didn’t fix anything.
It didn’t mend damage done, and it didn’t resolve anything other than to give some peace of mind that the person who hurt you was sorry they did it.
The bitterness inside me wanted to ask her if she thought an apology was sufficient but I held off. It was like Dad said, she must have had her reasons for leaving. Reasons I wasn’t privy to.
I was just cut deep because it felt like I was the one she left. We were leaving anyway, but she left me behind.
“Ryan.” She held my gaze with a strong intensity. “I am truly sorry for all that happened. I know it’s not enough. An apology isn’t enough, but it’s something I needed to do.”
I stared back at her, unable to tell her that I accepted the apology, because I didn’t.
I didn’t accept because there was still so much she wasn’t saying. It was in my nature to hold on to a grudge until it killed me. What countered that was that damn desire and fascination I’d always had for her.
It told me she was here, expressing her sorrow to me for hurting me. The girl of my dreams was here in front of me as real as the sun setting behind us, and if I could still think of her as the girl of my dreams then maybe I could give her a chance.
“Do you want to come in?” That was my attempt at breaching my stubbornness. “For a drink… I still make Amelia’s sweet tea. Habit.”
The light in her eyes sparkled and she nodded, giving me that beautiful smile I first fell for when I met her at eight years old.
“I’d love that. I’d really love that.”
I turned to walk to the house and she fell in step with me.
When we got inside I noticed the way she scanned the place. I hadn’t been here long. It was a month shy of a year. I’d moved out of the house I’d bought when I’d married Tiffany the second I found out Jack wasn’t mine.
Pain and hurt drove me away because I couldn’t believe how low Tiffany had stooped. We’d had such an argument I don’t know how I didn’t kill her.
I’d found out the truth by accident when we were going through some documents in the attic. I came across her hospital records from when she had Jack. She liked keeping stuff around, even stuff I didn’t see any point in keeping. It was why I was in the attic.
I was going through the wad of paperwork and I didn’t know what the hell made me take note but I saw that Jack was blood type O. I was type AB. I’d never thought about it before but the red flag waved itself in front of me big time.
Then a paternity test confirmed it. A test confirmed I wasn’t the father to a child I loved with everything in me.
I led Lana into the living room. I had an open plan kitchen that led out here.
She walked over to a painting on the furthest wall and stopped to admire it. She k
new it well. It was the last painting I’d done when we were together. What she didn’t know was it was the last painting I’d done in the last seventeen years.
She turned back to face me with a little smile on her face. She was eighteen then. I did that painting a few days after her birthday. We’d just come back from the first real getaway. Everyone thought we were somewhere else. Her on a school trip. Me back at college. Really we spent the weekend together at a hotel in Charlotte.
We never left the bed.
Thinking back now, I know with absolute certainty her mother would have skinned me alive if she’d found out what I’d gotten up to with her barely legal daughter, but I would have done it all over again.
I’d made love to her, and it was then I got the idea for us to go away. It wasn’t the first time we were together, it was just the time that mattered the most and the first of the many times I’d had her that I classed it as making love.
“I remember this,” she stated with reminiscence.
“Yeah?”
“Hmmm hmmm. I still say it looks a lot like the woodland near Charlotte.”
“It’s the woodland near the mansion,” I maintained. It was a silly argument we’d had running.
She pointed to the painting and focused on the little gate at the start of the woods. It had a red ribbon looping through the chain.
“We saw something similar in Charlotte,” she noted.
“Coincidence.” I blinked.
When I did the painting I was thinking of a man I used to see walking his dog through that woodland area. The dog liked anything red. One day the dog went missing and the man started leaving red ribbons around the place in an attempt to guide it home.
He never found it. My theory was it got stolen. It was a Siberian Husky that was probably worth a pretty penny. I thought it was cool how he left the ribbons so I included one in the painting. By pure coincidence we saw a gated area in the woods in Charlotte that looked exactly like that.
When she looked around the room and saw stuff still packed in boxes, curiosity filled her face.
“I’m busy. Haven’t had much time to sort those out,” I tried to explain and leaned against the wall.
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