CHAPTER NINETEEN
Caitlin
“He said true things, but called them by wrong names.”
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Isaac stands on the back lanai, dressed in his running clothes, his thick arms crossed at his chest and a frown creasing his once perpetually cheery face. My best friend says that the day I agreed to be his girlfriend was the best day of his life, but I’ve seen him scowl more in the past few months than in all our years of friendship combined.
“Where have you been?” he asks, his voice rough, earning him a hard look from Danny as my brother heads into the house. “I’ve been worried sick.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, shutting the door behind Danny, figuring it’s best if Isaac and I stay outside so none of the kids can hear us fighting. “I went running, and ended up down by the beach. I started watching the waves and just…lost track of time.”
Isaac shakes his head, and the frown wrinkling his broad forehead deepens. “That’s not okay, Caitlin. You can’t go running off and stay gone for hours without telling anyone where you’re going. There are people here who care about you, and who get fucking worried when you disappear in the middle of the night.”
“I was fine, Isaac.” I ignore the irritation that flickers in my chest. Isaac cares, that’s why he’s worried, and I’m sure I’d be concerned if the shoe were on the other foot. “I know you think it’s dangerous for me to go running alone, but I promise you, I can take care of myself.”
“I seriously doubt that, Caitlin,” he snaps, his tone as harsh as it was the night he told me he thought Gabe was turning me into a callous, unfeeling person. “You’ve been one step away from falling apart for months. I know it, the kids know it, even Sherry knows it. We’re all just waiting for you to go running one night and never come back.”
Now it’s my turn to scowl. “That’s not fair, Isaac. It’s been a tough year, but the kids are doing great in school, and so am I. And if Sherry’s worried, she hasn’t said anything to me. She seemed fine when we hung out last weekend.”
“She’s afraid to upset you,” Isaac says. “It’s me she calls when you forget to show up for a coffee date, or blow off dinner without calling to reschedule.”
“I’ve done each of those things exactly once,” I say, propping my hands on my hips. “And I told her I was sorry. I got busy studying and spaced about dinner, and the time I missed coffee was the day I had to sign the kids up for swim lessons. I was in line longer than I thought I would be, and didn’t have cell service to call and let her know I—”
“Make all the excuses you want,” Isaac says, cutting me off. “But I know something’s not right with you. You haven’t been yourself since you started dating Gabe, and it’s only gotten worse since you lost the baby.”
I flinch. We never talk about the baby. We never talk about anything that happened between when I started dating Gabe, and the day Isaac moved to the island. That parcel of time has been mutually declared off limits. Isaac doesn’t want to hear about it, and I don’t want to share the private memories of my time with Gabe with anyone, not even my best friend.
But Isaac is more than my best friend now. He’s my boyfriend, my lover, and I should be able to trust him with every piece of me, but I don’t. And that is part of the reason I’ve been so long coming back to myself. Standing here, looking up at him, seeing the judgment on his face, I realize that I’ve been living up to his opinion of me. Every day, I see a reflection of the fragile girl Isaac thinks I am in my partner’s eyes, and that reflection is as unhealthy as living in the past, longing for a man I’ll never see again.
Both of those things have to change, or I’ll have to end it with Isaac. Not because he might one day catch me doing something illegal, but because he won’t let me be the person I am now, instead of the overwhelmed girl I was when we were growing up, or the broken woman he found when he first stepped off the plane last fall.
We’re going to have to have a long, hard talk and decide whether or not we can give each other room to breathe, grow, and change, but not this morning. I’m too tired to face that kind of talk, and I need to get the younger kids up and ready for Friday morning swim lessons.
I’d like to talk to Sherry before I approach Isaac, too, and see what she thinks. No matter what Isaac says, the last time we had dinner in Paia—the cute hippy town where Sherry lives with her boyfriend, Bjorn—I didn’t sense that she was upset or worried. If anything, she’s been the one who’s been distant, so obsessed with her first true love that she barely has time to come to dinner at the house anymore.
I make a mental note to call Sherry while I’m sitting in the bleachers watching Sean and Emmie splash around in the pool, and step past Isaac into the house, not bothering to address his last statement.
“So that’s it?” he calls after to me as I move into the kitchen and grab a bottle of water from the fridge. “Aren’t we going to finish this conversation?”
“I am finished,” I say in a tone I haven’t heard come out of my mouth in a long time. It’s a strong, grounded tone, and I know what I did tonight is partially responsible.
By stealing that hard drive, I helped save a young woman’s career and put her future back in her own hands. As soon as Mimi has the incriminating pictures in her possession, she’ll have more than enough material to tell Skip Munroe that their affair is over, and that he’d better keep his distance if he doesn’t want erotic photos of him and his buddies leaked to the press. She will never again have to put up with being blackmailed or used by a man who once swore he loved her.
I know how free she’s going to feel because it’s the same way I felt last summer, when Gabe and I made our third deposit into my college fund and I realized I was going to have enough money to get a college education, and break the cycle of poverty that had plagued my family for generations. Pulling jobs isn’t just about the rush I feel when I pick a lock or get in and out without getting caught, it’s about the rush of knowing I’m helping someone the law has let down, tipping the scales of justice back in the favor of those who wouldn’t have a fair shake any other way.
“Great,” Isaac says, his tone making it clear things are anything but great between us. “Then I’m going for a run, and don’t expect me back anytime soon.”
I turn to tell him he should enjoy himself, and stay gone as long as he wants to, but he’s already slamming out the back door. I watch him storm across the yard through the window above the sink, with a sigh. I have a feeling I’m going to be making Isaac mad a lot in the next few weeks, but I’m not going to back down.
I don’t want to be the girl made of glass anymore. I want to be strong—the woman Gabe was certain could handle anything life threw in her path.