Chapter Thirty-Eight
Shawn
“What are they doing here?” my father asked as he eyed the two of us coming in behind Valerie’s mother. He was watching the news, his nightly ritual.
“They have come home for a chat,” Valerie’s mother answered, almost cautiously. Even though she had tried to make it abundantly clear that this had nothing to do with Paul and that we must be mistaken, regardless of the mounting evidence against him, there was still a sense of distrust in her voice.
He spat out a bitter laugh. “Well, I think that my son said quite enough when he moved out and apparently, Valerie decided to follow.”
I watched as Valerie’s mother drew in a long breath and then pulled the note that Valerie had given her for proof. She brought it over toward him and pushed it into his hand. “Did you do this?” she asked, obviously trying to keep her composure.
He glared at it for a long time, before his lips curved into a smile. “No. I didn’t write this. Why?”
“Because I couldn’t imagine who else would. I didn’t…And no one else lives here.”
Casually, my father shrugged and ushered toward me before he answered, “Maybe he did it. You never can tell. He’s sneaky.”
I felt my blood pressure begin to rise as my fist clenched. I have been taking this kind of abuse from my father for too long. I certainly wasn’t about to take any more of it. He wasn’t going to make me out to be the bad guy this time. I was trying to help. I narrowed my eyes at him and stepped closer, but before I could say anything, Valerie’s mother answered him.
“He didn’t do it,” she replied solidly. This made me feel better about the situation. I figured that even if she was upset with me, she was still willing to help me figure out what was going on and that was important. She believed me and right now, she seemed to be the only person on the planet, besides Valerie, who had any kind of faith in me.
I calmed, feeling that at least someone had my back and sunk back a little to watch the scene unfold.
At this, my father turned off the television and stood up, now facing the three of us. Valerie had just come along to bear witness, because she really didn’t want to get involved, but she did want confirmation that what my mother said was correct.
I wanted the same validation, but I was a little more willing to participate, if I needed to, in order to have the truth come out.
However, I did realize that since my father had cut literally everyone else off, it was ultimately between him and Valerie’s mother. She needed him to tell her what happened. We tried to convince her already, but she wanted to hear it for herself.
Therefore, for as much as I could stand, I wanted to remain in the background. There was no reason for me to butt in when I didn’t have to. I remained quiet.
“How can you be so sure?” he demanded, after a condescending laugh.
“Because I know him. And right now, I’m thinking that I might know him even better than you do,” Valerie’s mother replied. “But this isn’t about him. This isn’t really even about Valerie.”
“Of course it is!” he hissed bitterly. “Everything is always about her.”
“No, Paul. You’re wrong. If this is about Valerie in the way that I fear, then the only problem here is between you and me.”
“You know, Diana, she could have written this,” he answered, thrusting it with his hand.
“I did not!” Valerie hissed. “If I wanted to leave, I would have just left!”
Her mother put her hand up to silence the outburst before she looked back at her husband. “No, Paul. Again, she didn’t write it either.”
“Oh and what are you? Some kind of teenage whisperer? You’re pretty naive to think that they wouldn’t pull something like that to tear us apart, just so they could be together…as gross as it is…” With that, my father’s lips curled upward in disgust as he looked between me and Valerie.
“No. I’m not naïve. I’m very observant and just like I know your son, I also know my daughter. I’ve spent far more time with them and don’t you dare say that their love is anything but beautiful!”
At this, everyone in the room gaped at my stepmother. I certainly didn’t expect that.
“They are just doing it to spite us!” my father insisted angrily.
“No. They’re not,” she answered. “I have watched the two of them try to navigate their feelings for one another since before we were even dating. While I hoped, for the sake of our marriage, that things would go differently, I can’t say that I’m surprised. The only thing that I could think of that did make me curious was the fact that they didn’t do something like this sooner.” She shook her head. “Seriously, think about it. You have been completely unfair to Shawn for years and he has tried to be good until now. Doesn’t that say something for the kind of man that he is?”
“Yeah,” my father spat back, “He’s weak. He couldn’t just pick any woman in the world. He had to go after your daughter.”
I felt my teeth clench as I growled at him. “I am not weak, Dad!”
At this, all eyes were on me. I hadn’t meant to speak, but his comment made me so angry that I couldn’t help but try to prove him wrong.
“Oh, really? Then why are you always the one to mess everything up for everyone. All you do is leave a cloud of destruction in your path. You’re just like your mother! All she ever did was build her life up, just so she could tear it apart. She had you and took off and you brought Diana and me together, probably just so you could watch us fall apart.” He narrowed his eyes at me and stared me down. “You’re not stupid, but you are pretty conniving…” He smiled in a wicked way and took a few steps toward me, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you.”
“Just tell us the truth!” I answered, trying not to say anything that I was going to regret. Even though my blood was boiling and my level of aggravation was skyrocketing, having all of those things said about me that wasn’t true, I refused to stoop to his level. Now that all eyes were on me the only thing I wanted to do was ensure that the truth was spoken. That was it. “Did you write the letter?”
My father ignored me, continuing to taunt me with his words. “You probably don’t even like Valerie. You are probably just doing all of this so that you can make the world fall apart. You strive in destruction and chaos. While the rest of the world burns, you think you are going to rise from the ashes. Your mother thought the same thing, but look where she ended up…”
I asked him again, “Did you mess with Diana’s phone?”
“You’re pathetic!” he yelled.
“Answer my question,” I replied, trying to stay level-headed as my father moved swiftly into my personal space. He was crowding me profusely, and it was all I could do to keep from hitting him.
“Even if you did like her, she would eventually figure out what a loser you are and she would leave you, just like your mother left me!”
“Answer me!” I screamed, but just as I was about to lose all control, I felt an arm push me back, while Diana ended up between us.
“That’s enough!” she exclaimed, glaring between me and my father, until finally, she stopped to focus on my father. “You know what? I’ve had enough. Even if you don’t want to admit what you did, I have had enough of this! I’m leaving!”
At that, the whole house grew deathly silent and my father gaped at Diana, as though she was completely out of her mind.
I backed up and eyed Valerie. For as much as I didn’t want to be the cause of their unhappiness, it was Diana who had made the decision and to that, all I could do in response was smile.
Epilogue
Four years passed. The divorce was final and as I stood in front of the mirror, staring at myself as I reflected in awe of what was about to happen and as far as we had come, I heard my mother come in behind me.
She smiled as tears welled up in her eyes. Her hand covered her mouth carefully as she tried to hold back the rush of emotion she felt. Behind her, Shawn’s mother came in and beamed brightly.
“You look absolutely beautiful,” Cindy said. “Shawn couldn’t have asked for a more perfect bride.”
In the four years since the two women finally found the real culprit behind all of the lies and manipulation, they first found common ground, and eventually became friends.
Shawn’s father had never admitted what he did or his end goal, but eventually, his reason and even his admission ceased to matter. Life went on for the four of us without him.
Even with all of the planning, all of the memories and all of the excitement that had led up to this day, I still couldn’t quite believe that it was here.
I was nervous and the jitters of both my mother and my soon-to-be mother-in-law didn’t help. Still, I was happy that they were there.
“Everything is going to be perfect!” my mother answered. I could tell that now, even with all of the reservations she had about the two of us going through with this at such a young age, she was completely content and at ease with our decision.
She didn’t say anything, but I could tell by the excitement in her eyes and that made me extremely happy.
“Thank you,” I answered, turning around in a flash of form-fitting white. My long train was my mother’s idea, but now that I was wearing it, I had come to enjoy the thought of having something traditional; even though we weren’t such a traditional couple.
I smiled and took a deep breath, trying to calm my frantic nerves.
“I think it’s almost time,” Cindy answered as she stuck her head out of the door and then made her way to her seat.
My mother hugged me briefly, probably afraid that she was going to lose it completely before she made her way back to her seat also.
It had been a long road. In addition to college and distance separating us at times, Shawn’s relentless, unsuccessful attempts to have his father join back into his life had caused a few highs and lows in the relationship, but we had persevered. And now, we were about to make our love official.
A few moments later, the organ started up and I began my walk toward my handsome groom. It was true, we were both young, but after dating through the rest of high school and college, we knew what we wanted so it didn’t make sense to wait anymore.
I smiled as I walked past the small congregation. Every face in the crowd I knew, but there was one that was not present, who I was certain would only be missed by one person.
Shawn’s father was invited to the wedding, but he never responded, despite the calls that Shawn had placed requesting his presence.
Still, even in his father’s absence, Shawn looked happier and prouder than I had ever seen him before.
This year had been good for us, even though things had not gone exactly as we had planned. Shawn’s father not caring about getting back into his son’s life wasn’t the only hurdle, but we had made it through and that was the important thing. After all, it was our life that we were living.
“It’s just as I told you a long time ago, Shawn…” I whispered to him as I made my way up to the altar and stood in front of him, “and it’s even truer today than ever before.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.” He smiled and swallowed hard before turning toward the priest.
“No matter what, we’ll always be friends forever,” I replied, smiling softly.
Then, just before the music officially stopped and the ceremony began, I heard Shawn whisper, “Yes, but starting today, we officially become so much more.”
At that moment, I couldn’t have been happier. I turned and smiled, realizing that was the moment when it all sunk in. This was finally happening and it was then that I started to look forward to our tried and true happily ever after.
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STEPBROTHER SUMMER
By Alycia Taylor
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2016. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
Ashley
I pressed my foot against the gas as the light turned green, and felt the slight jolt forward as the car made its way through the intersection.
I glanced at my GPS and sighed, thankful that I didn’t have to rely on the directions to the beach house from my memory. Because right now, I had no idea where I was. I figured that I probably should know exactly where I was, seeing how I spent every summer traveling this way from my family’s house, pressing my nose against the window, counting down the moments until I was awarded my first glimpse of the beach. But everything looked so different now. There was a large part of me that began to doubt I was even in the right place.
Five years is a long time, I reminded myself. Plus, the last five years in particular had felt like an eternity. Between the tragedy of my mother dying, rather suddenly, trying to put my life back together afterward when it kept changing faster than the shifting sands of the dunes I sifted through the last time I was here, my existence was far from easy. And this summer was only going to compact a whole host of feelings that I didn’t wish to have.
I dealt with my grief by compartmentalizing it. I packed it away in a space inside my mind, just like my father packed my mother’s things into boxes and stuffed them in the attic only a week after she passed away. I supposed doing the same relative concept with my emotions, I hadn’t actually worked through them. Instead, I had thrown myself into school in order to compensate for the lack of stability within my personal life. I had always been athletic and I did well in classes, but in order to get through the shock and tragedy of my mother’s passing, I had simply exited my own life, as per anything other than school and work. I lost touch with friends and stopped doing very much. Even though emotions, friends and attitudes changed, the only constant that remained was the lessons and structure of school.
That hadn’t stopped just because my mother died. The homework still mounted, the classes didn’t change, and throughout the week, there was always a practice or game to attend for sports. None of that stopped because I no longer had a mother, and that was what I needed in order to get through it. I didn’t need a father who was always angry or depressed, or friends and other family members who now looked at me like I was some orphan. Even though my father was still around, in many ways, he was emotionally unavailable. And even though everyone else was opened to giving me the space I needed, or the shoulder to cry on, I didn’t want any of it. I didn’t want their advice and I didn’t want their words of condolences. I just wanted my life to go on. In many ways, I wanted to escape and pretend like nothing had changed.
So while it wasn’t perfect, life was still better at school, buried up to my neck in papers, tests and assignments. I worked far too hard on them just to pass the time, so that I didn’t have to face my own reality.
When I went off to college though, it truly provided me with the new world I sought. I had friends who didn’t know that my mother had died and none of my teachers knew anything about me. I had a chance to be a normal person again and I enjoyed every bit of it.
But all of that was over for now, and I was having a hard time coming to grips with it. I wanted the safety of school, not the memories of my past, coming back to haunt me.
However, I tried not to think about any of that as I continued on. I glanced around the area that once was just a small town, but had seemed to grow three times the size since the last time I was here.
I glanced around as tiny fragments of memories skated past my vision. There was the drug store that had been there, probably since before most of the current locals were even born, and the movie theater that my family used to go to when the weather was unsuitable for the beach. Yet, all around the memories from a life that I could no longer begin to fathom without tearing up, there was so much that had changed.
Maybe it’s for the best…I thought as I came upon the bridge that would lead me back toward the shoreline. I have changed and my life has changed, so perhaps it is better that the beach I knew is left in the past as well.
This thought, after the initial upset of not knowing exactly where I was, despite the countless memories I had formed in this area, actually brought me some peace. After all, as I had gotten older, all that happened to the life I knew was either disappearing or disappointing me when I learned the truth.
These past five years, all I had ever wanted to do was get away. At school, I found that escape; but now, I was just returning home from my first year in college.
Well, this isn’t exactly going home, I reminded myself, feeling a seething sense of malice burning through my body as I stopped at the next light. Years ago, I would have thought nothing about calling the beach house home; but now, the closest thing to home I had was my dorm room.
Going to spend the summer at the beach house with my father, stepmother and my meathead of a stepbrother, both of whom I had only met once at my father’s wedding, was not my idea of a good time. After all, they were not my family. Just because my father needed someone to lay with on a constant basis and was okay with the baggage that she tugged, kicking and screaming, did not mean I had to be okay with it.
My stepmother was all right, I guess. She was a pretty woman, but nothing like my mother. She was younger than my father and more materialistic. I cursed myself now, because I was the one who had encouraged my father to get back out there and date. I thought it would help both of us, since for the past four years he had been swallowed up in a plague of depression that was volatile and began to affect his health. When he met and married my stepmother, easily and without much consideration for how it might affect my relationship with him, I realized that I was wrong, at least, about the fact that his finding a wife might make my life a little easier. I didn’t have to worry about him anymore, which was nice. But the way he acted around her caused me to think that perhaps he had conveniently forgotten all about my mother, like a bad dream, and that certainly was not okay.
My stepbrother was fun to look at, with his overdone muscles and enticing tattoos, but he was almost unbearable the second he opened his mouth. I didn’t care much for him from the moment I met him. I was all but dreading having to share my sacred place with these strangers, whom my mother probably wouldn’t even like anyway.
Plus, their existence would cause me to have to eventually come to terms with the fact that my life was now completely different. I hadn’t been able to make it over that hurdle in five years and, therefore, I doubted very highly that this summer was going to change my perspective for the better.
That thought was illustrated almost cruelly when I made my way up to the beach house. I realized that, like a solitary piece of my history frozen in time, although things had changed around it, it had stayed exactly the same.
With this realization, I slowed the car as I approached. I wasn’t quite sure how I was feeling. I was homesick for the school I had grown to love, even though I had only stayed there for two semesters. And I felt slightly sick at the thought of having to stay in this house with these people, since I was fairly certain I would have the same opinion I felt my mother would have of them.
On the way to the beach house, I had tried to think about my father and convince myself that he had always done his best.
After all, you were the one who told him that dating again would be a good idea, I reminded myself.
However, as I saw the house in front of me, unchanged by the years, though the tide seemed to go out on the beach that I remembered and come back with an updated version, forgetting the house, I lost all hope of the thoughts I tried to convince myself with the entire journey here.
I knew now that it wasn’t going to be fun to see the old beach house again and it wouldn’t be enough.
When I finally parked my car, with a great amount of effort, and gazed up at the unchanged form of mockery, I was convinced that what I truly wanted was impossible. I supposed then, as tears filled my eyes, that not so deep down, I knew that getting what I sought from coming back to this place wasn’t going to work. Seeing the ghosts of my past before me without substance and without conviction just wasn’t going to work, especially when I was forced to create new memories with people that were never supposed to be there in the first place.
This was not how my life was supposed to go… I thought as I shook my head in order to ward off the tears. I was angry and upset by the thought that this certainly wouldn’t be the last time that I really wanted to do nothing but cry hysterically, turn this car around and go back to the place where I felt safe.
However, I knew that I couldn’t do that. I owed it to my father, if nothing else, to give this summer a shot at being good. After all, he had talked with me about it for months.
Despite my feelings on the subject, that was all he seemed to want to talk to me about. He would ask briefly about school, but after the typical father questions, he would delve into his plans for the summer. Most of them included my presence, rather than my participation, which aggravated me a little. I t seemed that all he wanted to do was spend time showing his new wife all of the things he had fun doing with his old wife; as though he was happy to be rid of the source of the information, but thankful to still have the idea for the sake of fun.
I realized it wasn’t that way, though. I knew he just wanted to get himself off on the right foot with his wife of six months, but personally, I didn’t think bringing her back to the spot where he and my mother had every one of their special moments and family vacations was the right place to do it. Still, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that. I knew that if he had a sense for how I really felt, my father would be devastated.
So instead of turning the car around and heading straight back over the bridge, I wiped my eyes clear of any moistness, took a deep breath and turned off the car. I didn’t get out right away, though. Instead, I just sat there, and prepared myself to grin and bear my visceral reaction to this idea for the rest of the summer, while I secretly counted down the days until I could once again disappear into my studies.
However, for the first few tries, each time I grasped ahold of the door handle, I felt myself become overcome with emotion almost immediately.
Each time that happened, I would gaze up at the house and realize that everything had changed about my life since the last time I drove up to this piece of property and set foot inside this beach house. The eerie unchanged nature of the house taunted me each time I looked at it and so, it took me three tries to finally pull open the door.
The salty air had a nice breeze, but I didn’t notice it as I took in a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves.
It was, however, in this moment that I realized I had lost all hope of having any semblance of an enjoyable summer, as I defiantly took a few long strides forward, ready to take on whatever emotion or situation was about to come my way.