CHAPTER 7
JAMES
Present Day
June 22
Los Gatos, California
“You’re Señora Carla?”
“Well . . . yes,” she says as though this revelation shouldn’t be a surprise to him.
James swears. He can’t believe it. Claire vacationed in Puerto Escondido every summer and Christmas holiday for the past five years. She’d become close enough to Carlos and his sons that she was practically family. She hadn’t once told them she was family.
James clamps his hands behind his neck and glances wildly around the kitchen. When would the lying and deceit end?
Marc shoves past him and hugs Claire around her waist. He presses the side of his face against her belly. Claire gasps; then the biggest smile James recalls seeing on her appears. She rests her hands on Marc’s back, holding him against her.
“You love him.” The words sound like an accusation. A pulling sensation ripples through him. He jerks his gaze away, envious of the affection his mother doles out for his son. Her grandson.
James shoves down the sour knot in his throat. As much as he wants to keep the truth from Julian and Marcus, he’ll eventually have to tell them who Señora Carla really is. How will this news affect his sons on top of the other changes?
They won’t trust anyone, he thinks somberly. Imelda wasn’t their aunt. Carla wasn’t a random neighbor. And Carlos wasn’t their father’s true identity. The only genuine person in this mix is their aunt, Natalya Hayes. Thank God they at least have her.
Claire folds her legs until she’s eye level with Marc. She clasps his shoulders. James sharply inhales through his teeth. Will she tell him?
She better not breathe a word.
He’s outraged. These are his kids. There’s no way he’ll let his family screw with their heads. Between the death of their mother, and their father forgetting everything about them up until six months ago, they’ve dealt with more heartache and upheaval than any children should be expected to handle.
“I’ve missed you,” Claire tells Marc, and James relaxes slightly, even if only momentarily. She rains kisses on Marc’s forehead. “I have something for you. Julian, too.” She smiles at his older son.
Julian has managed to maneuver around James to hug Claire. Then his sons wait, anticipation making them fidget, as Claire dips her hand into a reusable shopping bag. She presents Marc with a watercolor paint set.
James almost falls back a step. A paint set, from the woman who made him return the very first set he’d received. It’d been a birthday gift from Aimee. She made it very clear during his adolescence that he needed to remain focused on studies and sports, not frivolous hobbies.
A memory lurches across the field of his mind. His thirteen-year-old self, sweaty T-shirt plastered to his chest, grass-stained football pants hugging his hips, scuffed helmet dangling from his fingertips, arriving at his bedroom after football practice to find Claire riffling through his drawers.
He had stopped in the doorway, heart pounding in his rib cage. “What’re you doing?”
“Miranda found paint on your shirt.” Claire slammed a bureau drawer, moved on to the next one.
The housekeeper. She must have seen the shirt in the laundry. Oil pigment stained, so he made sure that when he painted at the Tierneys’, he only wore ratty shirts—ones his mother wouldn’t miss should he have to throw them away.
Her hand disappeared into another drawer, pushing aside sock balls. One dropped to the floor. She wouldn’t find any more stained clothes, or paintbrushes, or pigment tubes, if that’s what she was looking for. He’d become quite the expert at keeping his frequent visits to the Tierneys’ a secret. His reason for spending so much time there was twofold. He really liked Aimee. She was cool and fun to hang out with. But he really loved to paint, and Mr. and Mrs. Tierney had given him a space in their home so he could do so. They even replenished his art supplies.
Why couldn’t his parents do the same? Why couldn’t his mother encourage him to pursue his passion like the Tierneys? His skill had flourished through their support.
Claire paused and leveled her gaze at him. “Are you painting?”
Why did she despise that he was?
He forced down that thick feeling in his throat and looked her in the eye. “No.” He’d also become skilled at lying.
“Then explain the paint on the shirt Miranda found.”
“It happened at school during a class project.” He wanted to retract the words as soon as they left his mouth. Like a fumbled handoff, he’d dropped the ball. He wore a uniform to school. “Sister Katherine gave us permission to take off our shirts if we had on an undershirt,” he embellished. “She didn’t have enough smocks for the whole class.”
She closed the drawer and approached him, unintentionally kicking aside the sock ball with the pointed toe of her designer heel. She cupped his dirt-crusted cheek. Her gaze pinged from his stringy hair to his chapped lips and back up to his eyes. Her lips parted on a resigned sigh.
“James, the shirt Miranda showed me is old and stretched out. Don’t wear clothes like that to school. You have a drawerful of clean, white undershirts.” Her nostrils flared slightly. “Go shower.” She patted his cheek and left.
James looked at his grass-stained, sweat-drenched socks, wishing she had as much interest in his art as she did in his attire and hygiene. At least the Tierneys framed his artwork. The most recent one he painted of a quarterback in the throwing stance right before the ball is released made him think he was better at wielding a paintbrush than passing a football.
James watches his son inspect the paint set. Marc doesn’t have any idea how monumental a gift this is.
“You’ll want this, too.” Claire shows him a pad of watercolor paper.
Marc makes grabby hands and takes the paper. “Gracias, Señora Carla.”
“You’re an excellent artist, just like your father.”
“What the—” James bites off the curse. He should be enjoying this moment with Marc. He should be happy Marc has an activity to keep him occupied as they get settled. Instead, anger and envy wrap their viselike grips around his chest.
He hates feeling this way. He’s read Carlos’s journals. He knows why his mother despised his painting.
It still hurts, though.
Claire ventures a glance up at James, but her eyes slide away when she registers his dark mood.
“This is for you, Julian.” Her generally steady voice wavers. She gives him a soccer ball.
“Cool.” He tucks the ball under his bent arm. His other soccer ball is packed up in a box somewhere in the garage.
“This, too.” Claire reaches inside the bag. “It’s a football.”
Julian snorts. “That’s not a fútbol.”
“An American football,” she clarifies with a quick smile. “Your father used to play. He once had a good passing arm. You’ll have to ask him to show you.”
Julian shrugs one shoulder. “Sure. Whatever.”
“Julian, go kick the ball around with your brother out back.”
“Why?” he asks, startled. “I haven’t seen Señora Carla in almost a year.”
“She and I need to talk.”
“I want to talk with her.”
“Julian,” he snaps, loud and sharp. The name bounces around the kitchen.
Julian pales. He looks from his father to Claire and back again. He swallows, and James knows he senses something is off. How does his dad know this woman if he can’t remember her? He shuffles his feet and angrily slams the soccer ball into the floor. He catches it after one bounce and tucks it against his waist. “Come on, Marc, let’s get out of here.” He clamps a hand around Marc’s nape and pushes his brother out of the kitchen.
When the French door to the backyard slams loudly, James swings around to glare at his mother. Claire twists her lips. She picks up the knife and slices into the egg sandwiches. “You would have sent me away had I told you the truth,” she explains about her time in Puerto Escondido. “I wanted . . .” The knife stills, hovering above the next sandwich.
James tightly folds his arms over his chest. “Do tell, Mother.” He sneers, any patience for his family long depleted. “What did you want?”
She raises her chin. “I wanted to meet my grandchildren.”
A troubling thought moves through him like a cold front. Gooseflesh bubbles the skin on his arms. Did she know from the outset Thomas faked his death?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Claire says, aligning sandwich halves on plates. “Thomas didn’t tell me about you or why he kept you hidden until after Aimee found you. He also told me what Phil did to Aimee, and that he thinks he tried to kill you in Mexico.” She pauses, wiping a mayonnaise drip from a plate edge with her fingertip. “Needless to say, your brothers and I aren’t on the best of terms.”
I had three sons. Once.
Carlos documented many conversations with Señora Carla. James remembers reading that one small confession. Carla’s loneliness had appealed to Carlos’s own desolation. He yearned for genuine companionship but had a difficult time trusting. He and Carla developed a sort of kinship. An openness evolved between them that wouldn’t have occurred had he known he was her son.
Claire wipes down the countertop and rinses the knife, sliding the blade back into its slot in the knife rack. She motions toward the sandwiches. Four of them. “I made lunch.”
A peace offering, James surmises. “Don’t expect to pick things up where you left them off. I’m not the man you knew in Mexico.”
Claire blinks hard. Her fingers flutter to the top button of her blouse.
“You’re also not the woman my sons believe you to be.” His voice is a whisper of warning.
Their gazes fuse across the marble kitchen island. After a moment, his mother’s determined expression slides away, crestfallen. Her chin dips in a slight nod. She empties the shopping bag, gummy bears for Marc and Oreos for Julian. Their favorites.
She nudges a flat rectangular box tied in a red ribbon toward James; then she collects her keys and purse. James watches her leave.
She stops at the kitchen doorway. “Welcome home, James.” She doesn’t wait for his reply, and a moment later he hears the front door click shut.
He stares at the box in front of him. His mother never gave just because gifts. Outside of birthdays and holidays, she never gifted him anything. Curiosity piqued, he unravels the ribbon. He hates how his heart races with anticipation and he despises he feels like his sons did a short time ago. Elated.
He lifts the lid and takes in the set of Filbert brushes, their feathered pig-hair bristles ideal for blending oils and acrylics. A fist-size lump clogs his throat. His mother bought him art supplies, after all these years.
Well, Mom. It’s a little late. He has no desire to paint again.
He tosses the box back onto the countertop and the fourth sandwich into the trash. The rest he wraps for later since he’s still full from breakfast. The boys probably are, too.
Later, he and his sons spend the afternoon unpacking and organizing their rooms. They shipped only clothes, toys, important documents, and a few mementos, like photos of their mother. Aside from a couple of small boxes of books and files, James leaves his own belongings untouched. His taste in clothing is different from what it had been as Carlos, and he can’t stomach seeing the custom suits and shirts Aimee elected to box rather than donate. Those clothes from his time before.
He now sees his life divided into three periods. The time before the fugue and the time after. The third period, the in-between, will always be shrouded in mystery, like the moment before dawn when the world isn’t dark or light, just a hazy gray. He’ll only know what Carlos elected to write about in the journals. And reading about it is entirely different from experiencing it.
His gaze darts over the remaining cardboard boxes in the garage. The rest are his. He’ll start his after period from scratch and go shopping tomorrow.
The locksmith and alarm company arrive after three. While bolts are changed and the alarm system inspected and switched to a new service, Marc paints at the kitchen table. Hoping to appease Julian, James sets up his Xbox. His son declines his challenge to a game and promptly launches into a single-man game of Halo.
Julian hasn’t mentioned Señora Carla, and while that worries James, he’s thankful Julian doesn’t want to talk about her. At least not yet. He isn’t ready to talk about his mother either. Underneath the surface, he’s still seething over how she deceived them for five years. But more so, he fears the truth will crush his sons, Julian especially. He was fatherless the first four years of his life, and the father who adopted him doesn’t remember why he took him in. He knows only what Carlos wrote. James needs to handle this situation like a fish caught with bare hands, else he’ll slip away.
They eat breakfast leftovers for dinner, and after the boys are in bed, James paces the hallways, desperate for a late-night run. He needs to buy a treadmill.
He needs to get out.
He grabs a beer from the fridge, pops the cap, and debates calling Nick to join him, as he continues to wander through the house, restless. It’s late, already past ten thirty, and a work night, reminding James about his other dilemma. He must get serious about finding a job, he thinks, pacing by the front window and catching a glimpse of the night outside.
He stops, beer poised against his mouth. His phone vibrates in his back pocket, but he ignores it. It’s been sounding off all day, and the last person he wants to speak with after the unexpected visit from his mother, is Thomas. The guy won’t let him alone. Besides, his full attention is focused on the SUV parked in front of his house, headlights on, motor running. He hears the engine through the open window.
Movement inside the vehicle sets his heart into supersonic speed, a fist hammering into his sternum. The gesture is so familiar, it’s startling. Electricity dances across his skin, and air surges from his lungs, carrying one word: Aimee.