Seeing the spitting image of my peanut standing there holding the gift I’d bought for her and staring up at me with those big blue eyes, did something to my heart. Maggie argued the groundkeepers would’ve taken it anyway if she hadn’t. I barely listened as she went on with that continued look of awe in her eyes while she stated her case.
Then there it was, the familiar lift of that stubborn jaw, something Maddie had done so often. “It was a long walk. I didn’t have any breakfast, so I got hungry, okay? I can refill the candy.”
Any other time I might’ve smiled, chuckled even, at her haughtiness. Instead, the pain in my heart was brutal. Not only did she look and sound exactly like Maddie, it was like over the years, the once timorous Maggie had found her stauncher side. It almost felt like a cruel joke God was playing on me.
Forgetting about the gift and ignoring the ache in my heart, I had to ask the obvious question. “What are you doing out here anyway?”
It felt impossible not to get sucked into those eyes, even as she explained about being in town to visit her sister’s grave for her birthday. “I figured since I was here it might be nice to visit the pier.”
I almost didn’t catch it, but then I did and I peered at her curiously. “You remember it?”
She started to say how she’d found an old painting but then paused as if catching herself then cleared her throat. “Well, I guess I did have a spark of a memory.”
It was too odd, so I pushed on. “And you remembered how to get here?”
“I wasn’t sure I would.” This time her response was more natural, and she went on to ask why I was there.
I casually explained how I, too, thought I’d check out the pier. “Only I knew better than to go down that road.”
The lift of that stubborn little chin coupled with her defensive response had me swallowing hard again. It was then that it hit me, and I began to panic. If her car was stuck in that mud, she may be asking me for a ride.
Making some small talk about her having gotten over her anxiety about driving, I quickly reminded her the rain was supposed to start up again, so she should call a tow truck ASAP.
“Your car could be stuck in there for days.” I made a show of reaching for my helmet, but I wasn’t fast enough.
“Wait,” she said, sounding as panicked as I already felt. “I have no signal. Can you give me a ride?”
She tapped at her phone screen as I swallowed even harder staring at her. When she glanced up, only one thing was still searing through my mind. “On the back of my bike?”
“Yes, please.”
“You don’t have a helmet,” I spat out without thinking.
“I’ll take my chances. But you can’t leave me here, Nico.”
Squeezing my eyes shut and my hand on the handlebar of my bike, I took a deep breath as my heart took another jab. I was done putting up a front. “Please don’t call me that. I can’t hear it, not in your voice.”
She was quiet for a moment before responding in a near whisper. “Okay. But can you please help me out here?”
Exhaling harshly, I agreed, and without the slightest hesitation—or maybe she did it before I changed my mind—she was on my bike. Feeling her body fit against mine so perfectly just as Maddie’s always did was as incredible as it was torturous. I did my best not to tense up, but it was impossible.
What happened next only added to the confusion of what Maggie made me feel. I offered her my helmet, which she tried to refuse. But of course, I insisted until she practically hissed. “I don’t want it.”
My heart nearly stopped just like the first time I’d seen her at the cemetery. If I didn’t already know it was impossible, I’d question if this was feisty Madeline and not her timid twin sister. Turning around to peer at her because once again I had to double check for the only thing that could confirm this was really Maggie, I glanced at her neck.
Still not there.
I tried another approach. “Please?”
It was the second time I was begging her in just a matter of minutes, and I could see the remorse in her eyes, yet she still kept that stiff chin up.
“No.”
Everything that’d been building since I saw her turn that corner to the moment I realized she just might be getting on my bike, gave. “We’re not moving until you put it on. The rain may be coming, Maggie. We can’t be driving in it either. So, I suggest you put the damn thing on.”
Those blue eyes did what Madeline’s had always done when defeated but refused to give in nicely. “Fine.” she said, taking the helmet from me as I stared at her, dumbfounded.
Maybe that blow to the head had done something to Maggie’s normally modest demeanor. Whatever it was, those thoughts flew out the door the moment I turned the bike on and her arms were around me, her body pressing against my back. Trying not to let it rattle me too much, I asked if she was okay because I remembered she was far more nervous about being on a motorcycle than Madeline ever was. Her murmured response that she was okay as she leaned her face against my back was once again so reminiscent of her sister it was beginning to do something to me.
The whole way back I had to remind myself to take deep breaths. That this would soon be over. My heart couldn’t decide which was worse: that I was forced to relive exactly what it felt to have Maddie on my bike, or that it’d have to end soon.
Finally, we reached a bread outlet on the outskirts of the town where I knew she’d get signal. I had to. As much as I loved feeling her body against mine, my tortured soul couldn’t take it a minute longer. She was off almost as soon as I stopped and calling Triple A.
I tried to gather my thoughts—my wits—as she spoke on the phone. I’d just about done so when she laid the next one on me. The wait for the tow truck would be an hour and a half.
My jaw nearly dropped. “Hour and a half?”
Even her wince was a cruel reminder of her sister, and I had to look away. “You don’t have to stay.”
Frowning, I glanced around the deserted area. “I’m not leaving you out here.” I sat back down onto the seat of my bike as I realized I’d practically stood when she announced how long the wait would be.
I started to apologize about even considering leaving her the first time. “I wouldn’t have gone more than a mile before turning back to get you if I’d driven away. I just . . .”
“Panicked?” Again with the wince, and the way she said it was just how Madeline would’ve. More like she knew than if she were actually guessing.
I nodded, taking a deep breath because it just couldn’t be helped. “You’re beautiful.”
She continued to awe me when she took the out-of-nowhere compliment in stride and smirked. “I’m a mud monster, Nicolas. You don’t have to lie.”
“Who’s lying?” I asked as I continued to indulge in that beautiful smile, but in case she didn’t know why I was saying all this, I added, “You look just like her.”
Just when I was beginning to feel somewhat comfortable in spite of the circumstances, her smile seemed to wane and she hit me with an odd question. “Did you and I ever . . .?”
I waited for her to finish, but she didn’t. For the first time today, she wasn’t as feisty as my Maddie, but it confused me. “Did we ever what?”
As if feeling frustrated, she blurted out the rest of her inquiry. “Did anything ever happen between you and me?”
“What?” I asked, completely disgusted that she’d even ask. “Fuck no! I would never do that to her. You wouldn’t either. Why would you even ask that?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head as her eyes welled up. “I’ve been so confused for years. It’s why I drove out to Radcliffe to talk to you.”
She spoke quickly, explaining how for years she’d been having something she referred to as flashes or triggers. How intense it’d been to see me at the cemetery and how ever since, it’d seemed every trigger she’d had was about me. When she got to the part about having dreams, I shook my head adamantly before she could go on.
Despite how genuinely upset this seemed to make her, I’d seen the way she’d looked at me a few times already. While it did something strange to me—tightened something in my chest—it also scared the hell out of me. There was no way I’d entertain the idea of possibly reconnecting with Maggie on a more intimate level. No matter how tempting the absurd idea was, especially now that I could feel Maddie’s presence so strongly. So, I had to be clear about one thing.
“Sweetheart, if there were any two people in the world Maddie could trust with her life, they were you and me.”
Clearly, the past was still a mystery to her, so I explained how she and I were the two people Maddie trusted most with her life. How she didn’t even trust their mother the way she trusted us because her mom could be pretty conniving when she wanted something.
“I know,” she whispered, glancing away. “Mama never told me about you or your brothers.”
She went on to explain how her mother had told her about everything else. Showed her endless photos and videos of her and her sister. Even brought her back to town a few times to see if anything would jog a memory.
This wasn’t a surprise to me. It explained a lot. Why Loretta had snuck her out of town the way she had without telling anyone. Why Maggie had never bothered to try and reconnect with us. If Loretta had reminded her about us, she would’ve reached out to Nolan. I was certain of it. At the very least to let him know she’d survived. She had to have read all the articles about the horrific accident, had to know what a miniscule chance she’d had of making it.
Even years after we’d found out she’d left town, Nolan still tried to find her and brought her up every now and again. We’d all thought it so odd that she’d just fallen off the face of the earth.
Glancing down at my watch, I realized it was about lunch time. Then I glanced up at Maggie, who still looked almost apologetic about her mother keeping something so significant from her. As if that were her fault in any way.
“You did say you hadn’t had breakfast, right?” I took a deep breath when she nodded, her eyes going a bit bright. Then I prayed I wouldn’t regret my next words. “Hop on.”
Famous last words, but judging from Maggie’s wretched expression earlier, she obviously still had a lot of unanswered questions. I may not have been able to answer them all, but there was one big one I was certain of the answer now. So we needed to have this talk, even if spending more time around her might be the end of me.
There was a table immediately available for us at the diner I chose in town. Though Maggie excused herself to clean up a little in the ladies’ room. I was still sitting there pondering everything I now knew about Maggie’s mysterious disappearance when she got back to the table and slipped into the booth across from me.
Looking into those eyes once again had me needing to catch my breath. Her face was washed clean of any trace of makeup, and she was exactly as I remembered her all those times we’d spent hours at the river and lake. The Hellman twins were natural beauties. There’d never been any denying it, but damn it if it didn’t feel like I was looking into Madeline’s eyes. She even seemed to sense me tensing, just as Maddie always read me like a book.
“I know this is hard for you, Nicolas. So, after you take me back to my car today, I understand if you never wanna see me again.”
Swallowing hard, I stared at her for a moment, unable to speak. Fortunately, we were interrupted by a waitress who took our orders. I didn’t think Maggie shared the same appreciation for the interruption as I did. In fact, she seemed annoyed by it even. Thankfully, the young waitress was too busy fluttering her lashes my way to notice.
As soon as she was done and walked away, I decided to get right to it. After today, I didn’t want there to be any more reason for us to need to talk again. This was sheer torture.
“Your mom blames me for Maddie’s death.”
This time Maggie did the silent staring, so I went on, explaining why I wasn’t surprised her mother didn’t tell her anything about us. How I wasn’t surprised when I found out she’d snuck out of town to begin with because I knew it even back then.
“Why would she blame you?”
“They found weed in Maddie’s system.”
“It was a trace,” she said as her eyes lit up with conviction.
She explained about having read all the stories. More than anything, now that she was an RN, she knew all about how there’d been no proof that she was actually smoking that day. She’d even come to the same conclusion I had: that Madeline had likely smoked it earlier in the week but her being under the influence couldn’t have been the cause of the accident. Much like her sister would’ve been if the tables were turned and Maddie was sitting here defending Maggie, she was adamant about that.
“It’s bullshit,” I said, agreeing with everything she argued but reiterating the one thing Maggie herself had just confirmed I’d known all along. “She blames me.”
“You need a refill, hon?”
The waitress smiled at me big, pointing at my half full glass. Before I even got a chance to respond, Maggie did.
“No, he doesn’t,” she said, shoving her own near empty glass at the waitress.
Without another word, the waitress nodded, taking Maggie’s glass and walking away.
“Fucking annoying,” Maggie added as I peered at her.
“I’ve never known you to be as outspoken as Maddie was.” I smiled, despite my churning insides. “You were always so sweetly soft-spoken. It’s what Nolan loved about you.”
Her hardened smile softened instantly as she shook her head. “I’ve just been so frustrated. The frustration has been mounting for years.”
She mentioned that coming to Huntsville this time she found out Loretta had kept a lot more from her than just her relationship with Nolan and mine with Maddie. She didn’t elaborate on what and I didn’t ask. Instead, I let her go on venting because it seemed she needed to.
The waitress dropped off our food with no further incident. We continued to talk as we ate. To my surprise, she said she knew I’d stopped coming out to Huntsville a little over a year ago because of Tara. Apparently, my brothers gave her a short and dirty version of what I’d been through since Madeline’s death.
Since she knew how much my family worried, I admitted I lied to them about where I’d be this weekend. To my surprise, she one-upped me. “Mama thinks I’m in Nashville.”
Even though she explained why, she didn’t have to. Even that made sense. Of course, Loretta would’ve freaked if she knew Maggie was headed somewhere where she might run into people from her past who would’ve made her mama’s lies fall apart. When I mentioned this had to have been so hard for her as close as she and Maddie had been, she surprised me with something else.
“Yes, it’s been hard. But not for the same reason it’s been for you. Sadly, I don’t remember Madeline much. Well, at all. So, it’s hard for me to miss her the way you do. But I do feel like a huge part of me is missing. Almost from the moment I woke, I felt this . . .” She paused for a moment as the waitress checked in on them again, then went on. “I don’t know. It’s like there’s this void in me I can’t seem to fill.”
“It’s her,” I said without hesitation.
I told her how I’d felt the exact same way for years and only recently truly accepted that it was a feeling that would never go away. “There’s a part of me that will forever be empty, no matter what. She took a part of my heart no one will ever be able to replace.”
She smiled sadly about that, but there was more to that smile. There was something behind the sadness in those eyes. Remorse. Like she was feeling bad about something, but before I could question it, she started to explain. “The thing is . . .” I stared into those eyes so full of emotion, and once again I felt this strange connection that felt wrong somehow, but I couldn’t look away. “All this time I’ve felt like there’s something empty in me too, something missing, but I’ve always questioned if it’s all her. I mean I don’t doubt that she and I were close. I’ve seen and heard all the videos. We even finished each other’s sentences.”
Yeah, they did, but I had to disagree about her thinking it could be anything else she was missing. If I hadn’t loved it, I might’ve envied the connection Madeline and Maggie had, and I told Maggie this. I couldn’t help but get lost in her eyes once again as I told her more about her and her sister’s connection. How because Maggie was the calmer one she was often the arbitrator between her mother and Maddie, especially when it came to anything her mother had to say about me.
That had her smile waning a bit. “Sounds like Mama gave you a real hard time.”
“Actually, that’s what stumped me most. Your mom had given me a hard time in the beginning, but she’d eventually come around.”
Not surprising, she nearly spat her soda out when I told her about the conversation Loretta and I had not long before the accident when she called me a good guy. Her nearly choking had me laughing because my brothers had been just as stunned by that when I told them too.
We discussed the car—the bug—Madeline had wanted so bad and both her mother and I gave into it. How it was one of the few things her mother and I had openly agreed about so close to her death. That it wasn’t the safest or most reliable, but because Madeline had us both wrapped around her finger, we’d both given into her pouty wishes.
But we were back full circle again to the subject of Loretta blaming me for Madeline’s death. Something I’d have to live with for the rest of my life. I glanced down at my hand, swallowing that reality down again, this time knowing without doubt it was the truth.
Her hand on mine from across the table had me looking up at her, but it was only for a moment because it was all I could take before I squeezed my eyes shut.
“What’s wrong?”
“Looking into your eyes.” I said, taking a deep breath but kept my eyes shut a bit longer until I gave in and opened them again, staring into hers. “It’s like looking into hers. It’s why I couldn’t talk to you in Radcliffe. I’m sorry about that. My brothers told me you’d driven over two hours.”
“You don’t have to apologize, Nicolas,” she said, squeezing my hand, and even that had me breathing deeper. “I’m sorry. I should’ve anticipated how hard it might be for you to see me. It’s just that you’d asked me to keep in touch—”
“I know.” I glanced down at her hand in mine then up at her eyes again and tried desperately to explain why I changed my mind. How seeing her after all this time had done such a number on me again.
To my horror, I was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion to the point I felt the warm tears in my eyes, and I did my best to blink them away. Mercifully, her phone dinged, and she was distracted by it momentarily.
She relayed what she read on her text. The Triple-A guy wasn’t far from where she was having him meet her at the bread outlet store we’d first stopped at. It was only then that I even noticed I’d hardly touched my food but refused a to-go container. I insisted on paying and we were out of there.
On our way back to my bike, Maggie once again apologized for what seeing her did to me. As if there was anything she could’ve done about it—except stay away. She actually offered to do just that; though I didn’t comment on any of that and I wasn’t sure why. All I knew was I couldn’t bring myself to tell her to stay away. My heart was already wondering how soon I’d need to see her again.
As we approached the bread store, she started to say she’d just get a ride from the tow truck driver and I could go, but I didn’t let her finish. “Stay on the bike,” I said then followed up with some BS about not being sure the guy would be able to get her car out of that mud.
It was partially true. As far as her car was in that road, they’d likely have to wait until the road was completely dry before risking the tow truck getting stuck too. My excuse for being there was that she’d need a ride back into town. But I was pretty sure we both knew that wasn’t true. More than likely the tow truck driver could’ve taken care of that for her as well.
But thankfully, she didn’t argue. When the tow truck driver arrived, we had him follow us back to where her car was stuck. Not five minutes into his examining the situation, he declared exactly what I’d warned. That she’d have to wait until the mud dried up a little more before he could risk driving his truck down that road.
No less than five minutes after that when he was taking all her info so he could meet her back there the next morning, he’d also started with the “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” cheesy lines.
Maggie went along, politely explaining how she’d grown up in Huntsville and they might’ve gone to school together. That shit shouldn’t have annoyed me so much, but it fucking did, especially after he took a closer look at his paperwork and read her name out loud. As if it suddenly dawned on him, yep, he did know her from way back.
“Holy shit! How’ve you been? I know you remember me,” he said with a big stupid smirk. “Steve. Steven “Smackdat” McKenzie.”
Gnashing my teeth now, I kept my thoughts to myself about the douche as Maggie went on to explain about the accident and her having lost her memory in it. As expected, Steve seemed shocked to hear it then explained about having been deployed at the time but thought he remembered having heard something about it.
Clearly, he had his facts wrong because he didn’t seem to realize Madeline died in the accident. If he had, his dumb ass wouldn’t have followed up by mentioning how crazy Maggie and Madeline used to make him. This had Maggie glancing at me subtly until he dropped his next question.
“How’s your sister doing by the way?”
“She’s dead,” I said before Maggie could respond.
Instantly, the guys eyes were on me, and his jaw dropped. As if she knew this guy had just hit a major sore spot, Maggie jumped in to explain the rest. Changing the subject from the sharp turn the conversation had taken, she asked Steve about himself.
After some more small talk, they finally got to confirming their meeting back here tomorrow morning. “So, it’s a date,” Steve said with that same stupid smile he’d worn earlier.
Maggie smiled politely but thankfully didn’t comment on that. Instead, she nodded. “I’ll just need a ride in the morning—”
“I’ll give you a ride,” I said before she could finish.
No surprise Maggie’s eyes widened in reaction. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” Clueless Steve added. “Because I can pick her—”
“I got this.” Without another word and without waiting for either of them to respond, I started my bike.
Even Maggie’s reaction to this was so reminiscent of Madeline I could only imagine she’d been watching closely to how Madeline reacted when anything even similar to this ever happened. She was on the back of my bike in the next minute, no arguing further and politely saying bye to Steve.
As I’d been waiting for Maggie to finish up with the douche, I had a thought. Even if Loretta brought her back to visit, there were places her mom wouldn’t have known about. And if she had heard about some of them like the haunted barn and a few other of our hangouts, she likely steered clear of them. Since it was still early, I could show her a few of those places. Maybe she could remember something, and it’d help with her frustration.
“Feel like driving around?” I asked, turning my head a little so she could hear me. “There are places I know about that your mom likely didn’t. Places like the pier only more accessible.”
I smiled when she nodded, and I could practically feel the excitement in her body’s reaction against mine. We drove out to where the old barn used to be; though it was gone now. There were several spots along the lake and river I hoped might jog some memories. She didn’t react to any of the spots near the lake, and I wasn’t even sure what kind of reaction I was expecting. Only what happened when we got to the side of the river and she got off my bike was not at all what I’d had in mind.