Paris
I FELT LIKE I had things left undone.
Staring at the ceiling, I listened to the soft breathing of Tyler, who was fast asleep beside me in my small bed.
Smiling, I glanced over at him. I still couldn’t believe he was my husband. The sight of him was almost too much. He was all long, muscled limbs and smooth, sun-kissed skin. Just looking at him caused my pulse to race.
We’d had sex before bed, and still, I thought about waking him up for more. It was silly, I knew. It was close to midnight and we had a lot to do tomorrow.
Still, I couldn’t sleep.
Tossing.
Turning.
Thinking.
Thinking about my father who I knew I would go see again. The man who would die alone because that was how he’d lived the majority of his life.
For some crazy reason I’d never been allowed in my sister’s room. The door had remained locked for all the years I’d lived here. And then, the other day when Tyler had ransacked my father’s office, I’d found the key my father must have kept in his office.
This was my last night in this house, and I couldn’t leave without setting foot inside the mausoleum my father had sanctioned for himself only.
Quietly, I slipped out of bed and shrugged into Tyler’s button down. I crept down the hallway in my bare feet. With shaky fingers, I unlocked the door and flicked the lights on.
My eyes searched the room, scanning the walls first. The mauve color. The floral wallpaper. So prim. So proper.
Was that who she was?
On her desk was a picture, and I tip-toed over to it. The photo was one of her with my parents at her high school graduation.
They looked happy.
There was no such picture of me with my father; he wasn’t ever interested in photo snapping where I was involved. Still, I was happy for the dead sister I’d never met. Happy that at least one of us had something real.
London had been gone for a long time, and yet, her room had remained unchanged. Frozen in time, it remained the room of a nineteen-year-old.
With my heart heavy, I carefully opened her closet. All her clothes were still there. Shoes. Sneakers. Hats. And even backpacks.
Closing the sliding door, I started around her room, dragging my fingertips across the top of the dresser. The dust was thick but not overtly so. Someone had been cleaning this space over the years.
The floorboards creaked beneath my feet when I circled the bed. Pausing for a moment, I considered my actions but then just sat on the mattress. It bowed as I did and the yellowed, ruffled comforter moved along with it.
Stretching my legs out in front of me, I leaned back against the headboard.
This was London Fairchild’s space. The original daughter with snowflake skin and red hair, like mine.
London Fairchild. The daughter that was loved, unlike me.
But I was finally okay with it.
I was Paris Fairchild, the replacement, and I finally was okay with that, too.
I had to be.
That part of my life was over, now, for good. I no longer had to live in the shadow of the perfect daughter I could never come close to being anything like.
Gazing around, I took in the little nuances I hadn’t at first. The bulletin board with concert tickets and movie stubs. Hairspray and ponytail holder on her dresser. Makeup and perfume on the vanity.
It was as if he was waiting for her to come home.
With a sigh, I turned sideways and casually opened the nightstand drawer. Books. Magazines. Lip glosses. I froze when I saw a diary. Her diary. A glimpse into the sister I never knew.
I had always wondered what she was like, and my opportunity to meet her was staring me in the face.
The only thing I knew about her were the details surrounding her death that I had managed to pry from our housekeeper’s mouth when I was nine. Unfortunately, she was fired immediately following the divulgence. According to her, though, it was London’s first summer back home from college and she was somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be. She’d snuck out and was driving back home alone late at night in the rain when she drove her car off a cliff.
I wondered where she’d gone?
Who was she with?
What kind of car she had?
A lot of questions that were never answered.
Invading her privacy seemed wrong. I shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t help myself when I reached in the drawer and grabbed the diary.
Opening it, I immediately flipped to the back. Since I knew how her story ended, I figured I’d start there and work my way back. I gasped when I saw the date of the last entry was the same day her car slid off the road and over a cliff in the rain. Hungry for information, I read it immediately.
July 3rd
Dear Diary,
I finally talked to him today. He told me he was having a party and asked me to come. I’m pretty sure he’s going to apologize and beg me to take him back.
Mommy and Daddy will be so mad when they find out I’m talking to him again. That I’ve decided to forgive him. Of course, I won’t tell him that right away. Tomorrow maybe. For now I have to run. It’s raining out and I need a new pair of rain boots to wear to his house tonight, and maybe even a new outfit.
This is it.
I can feel it.
The night he tells me he loves me.
Finally.
The door creaked open and I jumped. My heart raced with the fear of getting caught. However, then I realized there was no getting caught. My father would never be returning to this house.
I smiled when Tyler walked in the room all rumpled hair, bare-chested, and sleepy-eyed. “Hey, what are you doing up?” I asked.
That lazy grin tipped. “I think the better question is why aren’t you in bed?”
The diary felt heavy in my hands, so I laid it upon my knees. I wasn’t ashamed about what I was doing. I had always yearned to know London, and this was the only way I was ever going to meet her. Providing closure I desperately needed. Still, guilt loomed around me like I was invading her privacy.
Patting the bed beside me, I said, “I’m doing something I probably shouldn’t do.”
His steps were slow as he strode toward me and his grin tipped a bit more. “Oh, yeah, and what might that be?”
Without hesitation, I told him how I’d never set foot in my sister’s room and felt I needed to see it before leaving this house. That I knew, once I left, I wouldn’t be returning. The house held too many reminders of the childhood I longed for but never really had. That someday, maybe, depending on what happened with Highway 128, I’d tear it down and start fresh. Or maybe we would.
He smiled at me and tilted his back against the headboard. “Read it to me?”
“You sure?” I asked.
He nodded.
After summarizing the first journal entry, I lifted my hands from the page I’d covered and read aloud.
July 1st
Dear Diary,
I hate him.
I hate him so much.
He promised he’d wait for me and then he went and messed around.
He’s such a liar.
I hate him.
I.
Hate.
Him.
June 27th
Dear Diary,
I’ve been home for days and he still hasn’t called me. I’m dying inside not seeing him.
I told Mommy and Daddy about the two of us and needless to say, they weren’t happy. They forbade me from ever seeing him again.
I can’t do that.
I won’t.
I love him.
June 25th
Dear Diary,
I’m so mad.
Daddy is making me work this summer. I have to leave so early every morning. Mommy is always sneaking in here and making sure I’m up. She wants me to make Daddy proud. That seems impossible if you ask me, but hey, on the bright side, I’m getting paid. If I save enough, maybe we can run away together.
Wouldn’t that be romantic?
I took a break and looked at Tyler. “My sister felt like a prisoner in our house just like me.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right.”
Shock was all I felt. “She’d been suffocated and smothered and ruled to death, too. Like me. I had no idea.”
Tyler twirled a stray piece of my hair around his finger. “Maybe that’s just who your father is?”
I nodded in agreement and then went back to reading.
June 15th
Dear Diary,
I go home from college in less than a week.
My parents are going to completely lose it when I tell them I’m dropping pre-med.
It’s just not for me.
I hate having to live under their roof again with all their rules but I’m going home because I get to see him.
And I can’t wait.
I haven’t seen him since Spring Break and I know he’s going to ask me to marry him.
That means we have to tell Mommy and Daddy about us. They are going to freak out.
I’ll do it, though, for love.
For Corky and me.
Soon.
I promise.
“Let me see that.” Startling me, Tyler grabbed the diary from my hands.
The blur of his body as he took the book shocked me. As soon as he had it, he hurried to the end of the bed. He sat there with his feet on the ground and opened the diary.
Still stunned by his actions, I crawled on my hands and knees across the mattress toward him. “What is it?”
He was leafing through the entries at lightning speed. “Corky,” he whispered. “Corky. Corky. Corky. It’s written everywhere.”
I shrugged. “I guess that was the name of her boyfriend.”
“Corky,” he said again, skimming the earlier entries, still finding his name page after page.
The look in Tyler’s eyes told me that name meant something to him. “Do you know him?” I asked, my voice soft.
He hesitated a moment, his shoulders hunching up a little as he read, and said, “Yeah, I know him. He was my father.”
I drew in a ragged breath. “My sister and your father?”
The noise I made got Tyler’s attention and he stopped reading to glance over at me. The moonlight illuminated his face, allowing me to see the tortured expression on his face. “According to this, they met at a party and messed around, but afterwards Corky was playing hard to get.”
“Hard to get? It didn’t sound that way in her later entries. Something must have changed because she called him her boyfriend.”
“I don’t know what. It’s not clear in her entries. She seems to be up and down or he was hot and cold, who knows.”
Trying to keep up with what was written as he flipped through the diary pages was much too difficult, so I gave up. While he read, I thought back in time. “When I was visiting my father,” I told him, “he thought I was London and he told me to stay away from that Holiday boy. At the time I thought he was confusing London and I, but now, I don’t think so. I think he still thought I was London and was referring to your father.”
Glaring at me, Tyler drew in a deep breath and then he slammed the diary closed. “Take it,” he demanded like his hands were on fire.
I did. “It’s an old love affair, Tyler. It doesn’t mean anything.”
His gaze turned dark. “She died after going to see him. Doesn’t that seem off to you?”
“She died in a car accident.”
“Yeah, after seeing Corky, Paris. You never met my father. He was nothing but trouble. I’m sure it means something. Means everything.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, reaching for him as he stood.
Shrugging away from me, he strode toward the door. “Neither do I, but I intend to find out.”
“Don’t walk away, Tyler. Let’s talk about this,” I shouted.
He shook his head. “Done talking. I need some air,” he muttered and then left me right where I sat.
Damn him.
The mattress was old and lumpy, and yet I stayed right where I was. I couldn’t help but stare at the diary and will all of her secrets to just go away.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know her anymore.
Tyler would come back and get me.
Right?