4 p.m., 8 Hours…
Gwen
Still shaken up over my mother’s words to August, I didn’t reach for the box right away. How had a woman who’d barely paid me a lick of attention known I’d loved my best friend? Why would she have shown him a hint of her affection toward me, when all I’d ever received was a cold shoulder?
She’d pushed us together on my nineteenth birthday, and again while she’d been dying. She had known me well enough to predict I’d push August away. Yet during her illness, we couldn’t talk without fighting.
It didn’t make sense, but I didn’t have the energy to unwind that aggravating knot.
Unable to delay any longer, I snuck my fingers under the box’s fitted lid. It took three tries to loosen it. August had obviously cleaned the exterior, but trapped dirt—twenty-eight-year-old dirt—spilled out as I shimmied it up. The mess went unnoticed. I couldn’t focus on much besides the mysterious contents.
A gold locket was wedged in a corner. Papers that matched the diary were folded at one side, a tiny stuffed bear lodged between them.
Three things. All this stress over three little things.
I lifted the bear first, the least worrisome object. Who didn’t love stuffed animals? This cutie was purple with a white muzzle and black nose, a darker purple ribbon tied around its neck. It smelled of stale, musty dirt, but the fur was still soft. I petted it, then set it aside.
August’s attention was glued on me, his stare unwavering. I kept my focus on the box and reached for the papers, but at the last second I chose the locket. Again, it seemed the easier selection. The one with the least ramifications.
Dirt had lodged into its seam as well. It tumbled out when I pried it open, joining the debris on my bed. I frowned at the picture inside. “I don’t get it.” I rubbed my thumb over the faded image.
August leaned closer and the bed shifted. “Get what?”
Scrunching my face, I turned the locket over. There was nothing of interest except this one photo. “It’s of my aunt Sarah. Why would my mother have buried a picture of my aunt?”
My affair theory darkened. I’d overheard that phone call so many years ago, Mary hissing at her sister, telling her never to call again. Could Sarah have been the other woman? Had Mary’s own sister stolen her man, leaving her to raise her child alone? My body tensed at the possibility.
August eased the locket from my grip and studied it. “Seems odd, but I bet those pages explain it.”
Item number three. The scariest of them all.
Sucking back a massive breath, I pulled them out. They were more fragile than the bound diary, dirt and dust unkind over the years. I spread them out gingerly. Three pages. My mother must have had a thing for threes. I lifted them and began to read.
Dearest Gwen,
You will never read this. No one ever will. It makes it easier to tell you how much I love you. I loved you the moment you were conceived. I loved you for the nine months you filled my womb. I loved you more than I have ever loved anyone or anything, and giving you up is the hardest thing I will ever have to do. But having Mary raise you will keep you safe. My sister will take better care of you.
I gasped and clutched at my chest, as though that would ease the pain squeezing my heart. Tears burned my eyes.
“Baby, what is it?”
Oh God, oh God, oh God. I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t read more.
August slipped the trembling papers from my hand. When he said, “Holy shit,” I knew he’d read it.
As though detached, I observed my shaking hands, watched as my tears hit the gathered dirt on my blue duvet. A few spots turned muddy. I blinked and more tears fell. They felt like someone else’s tears. This felt like someone else’s room. That letter must belong to someone else.
“My mother wasn’t my mother,” I whispered.
August moved until he was alongside me, drawing me down to rest my head on his chest. He stroked my hair, kissed my head. I cried some more. I’d cried more the past two days than I had the past ten years. His soft shushing helped me gather myself. Gathering my thoughts proved more difficult.
“If Aunt Sarah was my mother, why did she stop calling and sending cards? Why did she cut me off?”
Harsh words from her sister shouldn’t have triggered her to disappear. Not when I’d been clueless to her identity. And why hadn’t it been safe to raise me herself? Why would Mom—Mary—have agreed to this?
A million questions swarmed my mind, along with a hint of relief…and a sting of guilt. Mary Hamilton hadn’t been my mother. The diary had belonged to Sarah, who had loved to dance and perform and cliff jump. Not Mary, who’d cheated me out of basic affection. The fact made me happy, which made me feel incredibly awful.
Mary had put her life on hold to raise me. She’d never wanted kids, as she’d once admitted. A burden like that could harden someone, embitter them. Keep them from dancing and laughing and living fully. I had in fact ruined her life.
No. Not me, I reminded myself. Her sister had.
August held me close. I burrowed closer, wanting to disappear, but I wanted answers more. I wiped my snotty nose before it dripped on his bare chest, then I kissed the center of his breastbone, nosed the dark curls dusting his skin. “I’m ready to read more.”
I gathered the pages and joined him at my headboard, cuddling into the crook of his arm as we read the rest together.
I didn’t think I wanted kids, but the second I knew you existed, everything changed. I couldn’t wait to share the news with your father. Ted Mercer was nothing but sweet with me, gentle and kind. You were created by two people very much in love. Unfortunately, I didn’t know him as well as I thought.
When I went to tell him we were going to have a baby, I found him in an alley by my dance center. He and another man were harassing a third person, who was begging for his life, something about money owed. There was a gunshot. The begging man died. It wasn’t your father who did the killing, but the man with him turned the gun on me.
Ted stalled the gunman while I got away. We met later, and he told me I would have to leave town, that the people he worked for were bad. I was a witness and I wasn’t safe. He didn’t have to tell me twice. Not with you growing inside me. I also never told him about you. I couldn’t risk the information falling into the wrong hands.
I would have run as far as possible, but I didn’t have money. I went to my parents for help, but they called me a sinner and turned me away. With nothing but the clothes on my back, I sought refuge with a dance teacher. Aside from the teacher and my unsupportive parents, Mary was the only other person who knew about my pregnancy. She also intercepted a threat directed toward me, a promise to end my life if I ever turned up.
You don’t know what it’s like, living like you could die at any moment. I dropped out of school and wouldn’t leave the house, wouldn’t even open the curtains. You were born there, in the basement, and I have never loved anyone as much as you. I have also never been so terrified.
I’m in no shape to skip town with a newborn. I can’t stay in San Francisco. But Mary showed up, days after your birth, with a suitcase stuffed with her own clothes because our parents had donated mine. She told me to leave town and plant roots somewhere safe. That you needed to be raised away from here. She said she would care for you until I got on my feet.
I cried for a week straight, then prepared to do as Mary asked. She put money in my wallet along with a bus ticket. She instructed me to send her suitcase back to her when I found a job and a home, explained that I should write my address at the back of my hidden journal. Somewhere discreet, in case it was intercepted. Then she would deliver you to me.
She organized everything, while I existed in a daze. She took charge, the way Mary always did. The good daughter. The strong daughter.
Today is the day I will be leaving you, Gwen, and the daze has cleared. I am not fit to raise a human being as perfect as you. I brought dangerous people into your life, before you were even born. I have no skills, no parents of my own to show me what to do.
Mary has an apartment. A job. A network of friends. I have nothing.
You deserve better than me.
I will not be sending that suitcase back. I will not be seeing you again. You will be better for it. You will lead a happy life, with my sister.
I’m sitting under a tree on Tank Hill now, about to bury this secret and my heart forever, but I don’t see another way.
Please know that I love you, Gwen. So incredibly much.
Sarah
Sarah. My mother. I no longer understood what those words meant. My life had become a novel. The twisty, crime kind with mafia and wise guys and bodies dumped into rivers, but under it all was a desperate teenager, drowning in despair. “She seemed so sad and alone.”
August’s expanding chest pressed against my body, making us both rise. He blew out a slow breath. “I can’t imagine what she went through.”
“And to leave me with her sister? Never come back for me? No wonder my mom or Mary, or whatever I’m supposed to call her, resented me.”
“She did come back, though, in a way. That’s why the luggage went missing. Eleven years late, but she sent for you.”
Eleven years. That number again. I picked apart my limited knowledge of my aunt-turned-mother. One fact rang clearer than the rest: she’d sent me birthday cards, one a year for eleven years, then they’d stopped. After a fight with her sister, because of me. There had never been a return address. I’d checked when the cards had stopped, thinking I’d reach out to her. My mother had likely been in the dark about her sister’s whereabouts. Had no way to deliver me to her.
If Sarah had called her to check on me, while refusing to reveal her location, it could have provoked Mary to lash out at her, tell her not to call again.
I filled August in on those details, my words tumbling out faster as I spoke. “Sarah must have sent the suitcase the next year, after that call, before my twelfth birthday. Assumed I got it and chose not to contact her. Do you think that’s why she cut our ties? Because I never reached out?”
His callused fingers grazed my arm, up and down as he stroked me. “This has to be an intensely sensitive issue for her. There’s major insecurity with that. She must have assumed you didn’t want contact. I’d choose to suffer over barging in on your life after that.”
“But why not call? So many years later, why send the case?”
“Maybe the same reason people text and email. It’s less personal. Rejection wouldn’t sting as much. And the diary and note allowed you to know Sarah better than a shocking call.”
I shut my eyes, listened to the gegong-gegong of August’s steady heart. My aunt was my mother. My mother was my aunt. Mary could have been the girl who’d tracked my father to the Blue-Eyed Raven, desperate to find him. Hoping for a clue to her sister’s location. There was no way to know. Mary and Ted were both gone. Still, I’d learned more today than I had in twenty-eight years.
Too much and not enough.
Here, tucked safely against August, the weight of it all felt bearable. Inconceivable, but bearable.
“Sarah gave me up to keep me safe and give me a better life,” I said, as though speaking it aloud would make the choice clearer. It did, slightly.
“Sounds to me like she felt cornered, unable to care for you.”
I couldn’t imagine that kind of terror and impotence, but I remembered how depressed I’d been in college, how alone. No supports in my life. Add a madman trying to kill me and a surprise baby, and I might have cracked as epically as her. I also wasn’t sure how to unpack this glimpse of my father, a man who’d threatened and had possibly killed people.
Thankfully, I hadn’t knocked on that red door earlier. Who knows what would have greeted me? In time, I’d go. I’d ask questions and learn all I could, find out if I had siblings. For now…
I wasn’t sure what I’d do for now.
“Are you angry with her?”
August’s question caught me off-guard. There were too many emotions to name. “I’m feeling kind of numb.”
Again, I replayed the steps that had led me here, a twisted chess game of calculated moves and countermoves. Each bit of information learned the past two days, each second, minute, hour had contributed to discovering this secret. Without every choice made, good or bad, this box would have stayed buried, this truth forever lost.
Another possibility struck, so hard, I nearly bit my tongue. “We wouldn’t be here.”
August unlatched my hand from his ribs. I hadn’t realized I’d dug my fingers in. He slinked down until we were eye to eye. “We wouldn’t be where?”
“If Mary got the suitcase when she was supposed to, seventeen years ago, she would have given me the diary and address. I wouldn’t have hesitated to move across the country.” I pressed closer to him, wound our legs together. I soaked in his handsome face. “I wouldn’t have driven you nuts as teens.”
There would have been no WTF.
No painful years without him.
No making up and falling in love.
No Ainsley and Rachel.
August kissed me and rolled me on top of him. He secured his arms around my waist. “I hate that you missed growing up with your mother, but I’d be lying if I said I’m sorry you never got that diary. I don’t know how I lived without you the past nine years, but I can promise you you’ll be the first and last person I speak with every day for the next ninety-nine, no matter what countries we’re living in.”
I’d rather make it nine hundred and nine. “Time zones might make that tough.”
“We’ll send each other timed recordings.”
“Of the dirty variety?”
He slapped my bottom. “Fuck yeah.” He closed his eyes and brushed our noses together. A sweet, butterfly kiss.
At first, when the letter had sunk in, all I’d lost had burned my throat. I’d lived with a woman who I’d burdened instead of one who could have loved me. But if the reverse had led to a life without August, I wouldn’t want it. He was my family. My life. My future. I rubbed my belly against his, imaging it swollen with our child. He would always come first.
I rested my full weight on him. He hugged me tighter. Our breaths slowed and thinned. I drifted off slightly, in and out of a foggy sort-of sleep, eventually waking half-on and half-off him. My room was dark, only a hallway light illuminating the space. I briefly wondered if I’d dreamed the letter and details I’d learned. I wasn’t sure if I wanted this revelation to be real or imagined.
Real, I thought to myself. As real as the man who’d gathered me close to his thudding heart.
“I bet today is hard for her,” I said, my voice thick from napping.
August stirred and hummed his agreement. “But it’s your birthday, and it’s already been rough. It’s up to you how we spend it. You can call Sarah, if that number still works. We can hang out with your friends.” He slipped his hands up my shirt and tickled my back. “We can spend it in bed.”
As nice as that sounded, I was too overwrought to have sex. I kept glancing at the diary, the unearthed note. Couldn’t stop picturing Sarah struggling today, hating herself for the choice she’d made. A deeper self-loathing than I’d ever experienced.
“I’d like to call her,” I said, unsure it was the smart move, yet unable to put it off. “And I’d like to see the girls tonight.” My support network. The women I’d be leaning on after August left. “Is that okay?”
“Only if I can kiss you all night long.” He planted several soft ones on my lips.
“I’ll need as many as you can give. They’ll have to last me awhile.”
We kissed some more, slow and deep. He hardened against my thigh but didn’t roll his hips or increase his groping. He knew exactly what I needed.
He grunted eventually and nudged me fully off him—a man could only take so much. I fell into the dirt pile smearing my bed.
He grimaced. “We need to shower again. A no-sex shower,” he added, his voice gruff. “Then you can call Sarah, and then I’ll take you out for your birthday. After, we’ll talk about when I’m coming back to San Francisco and how excited I am for you to meet me in Germany. I’m gonna spoil you rotten. That cool with you, Possum?”
As nervous as I was about my impending phone call, as devastated as I was for him to drive to the airport at 5:30 a.m., my smile couldn’t be faked. After all these years, August Cruz was my boyfriend. “It sounds perfect.”
I sat on my couch, legs tucked under me, the phone heavy in my hand. My pulse feathered rapidly. I tried dialing Sarah’s number several times, only to hit End each time. Part of me hoped the number was a dud, that I wouldn’t be able to reach her yet. An excuse to pretend my life was normalish for one more night. A foolish wish.
August was in the bedroom, giving me privacy. I couldn’t see him, but his proximity boosted my courage. I dialed again. The phone rang. I didn’t hang up.
Pound, pound, pound went my thundering heart. I pressed the phone harder to my ear. The ringing persisted. No one picked up. My reluctance shifted to desperation. A full one-eighty of mood swings. She had to answer. It had to be her number. Learning I’d never meet my father had been a harsh blow. This suddenly seemed essential, to hear Sarah’s voice, connect with a parent. Tonight. Now.
The tendons in my neck felt ready to snap.
“Hello?” A voice answered. Her voice. My mother.
I opened my mouth to reply. Nothing came out.
“Hello?” Louder this time. There was a sweetness to her tone, modulated and pleasant. She didn’t sound like me or her sister. She didn’t sound like anyone I knew. She was a stranger, who was anything but. Another mother I wanted to know.
“Hi…” I cleared my scratchy throat. “I’m sorry to call like this. I’m just… This is…” I’d never been less eloquent in my life, the alphabet jumbling in my head.
“Who is this?” An edge crept into Sarah’s cordial tone.
The truth had never seemed so daunting, three strangled words that would change both our lives forever. Finding my father had been a lifelong task, one I’d believed would have a concrete result. Like learning his name would give me closure. The treasure at the end of a grueling hunt. This wasn’t the end, though. Finding my mother was the beginning. A journey I was ready to start.
Reminding myself how near August was, how full my life would always be, I said, “I’m your daughter.”
She sucked a harsh breath. “Gwen?” Gone was her wariness, the tremble in my name hinting at tears.
My vision blurred. “It’s me.”
“But how?”
“It’s a long story.” The craziest of birthday adventures. “But the luggage you sent years ago got lost and turned up yesterday. Then I found your journal and the box on Tank Hill. I don’t know what to think or do, but…I needed to call.”
Sobbing slipstreamed through the line, ragged inhales. “Oh, Gwen. My Gwen.”
Each word swelled in my chest, so much hurt and love abrading her voice. Mine couldn’t pass the fire lining my throat. I pressed my hand to my quivering lips. It didn’t help. My tears fell, hope and regret wetting my cheeks. “I didn’t know who you were. I got the cards, but I didn’t know.”
“How could you?”
“Mom never said a word.” Mom. Mary. The woman who gave up her life to raise me.
“I should have called. I shouldn’t have assumed, but Gwen…I just couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. I didn’t think I deserved you.”
Exactly why I’d pushed August away. Like mother, like daughter.
A sniffly laugh escaped. “I can’t believe this.”
Her crying intensified. It set me off again, the two of us blubbering shamelessly. Eventually, she gained control over her breaths, each one slowing. Mine calmed as well. A shudder passed from her end. Then, “Happy birthday, baby.”
A birthday I’d never forget.