Aerie

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I low-key sobbed the whole way back to Ketchikan. Several people asked if I was alright, and I just nodded and kept crying.

How could Canaan talk to me like that? How could he do that? I mean, I know I’d panicked a little, but he’d…

He had turned on me.

Abandoning him? I—I wasn’t—I hadn’t—

I couldn’t even form coherent or complete thoughts. It hurt too much. Everything hurt.

The way he’d kissed me? The way we’d—the way we’d loved each other, so slowly, so beautifully? All my life, I’d cringed at the phrase making love. I mocked those who used it. Even if what two people shared was real, true, deep love, that phrase was just so trite and cliché and stupid and cheesy.

But he’d just…in that moment, he had been everything. My whole existence had been wrapped up in him, in the feel of him, the feel of us. These thoughts only made me sob all the harder, as I sat on the ferry from the airport to the Ketchikan docks. It was, suitably, a dull, dreary, chill, rainy day. I tugged the hood of my Helly Hanson raincoat up over my head as the ferry docked, the tail end swinging sideways to bump up against the dock, the deckhands scurrying to tie off ropes. I only had my purse and my backpack, so I was able to slip through the crowd of tourists sorting through the pile of suitcases being hauled from ferry to dock. I walked home to Grandma and Grandpa’s in the rain. Head down, eyes on the sidewalk, the rain spattering against my face, mingling raindrops with teardrops.

When I entered the foyer, I spotted Mom immediately, sitting in the formal room, murmuring in low tones on her cell phone.

“I have to let you go, Bob—Aerie just came back. Yeah, love you too, sweetheart. Okay, bye.” She tapped the screen to end the call and tossed the phone onto the small table beside the high-backed red velvet chair she was sitting in. She smiled at me. “Hi, honey. How was your trip?”

I stared at her warily, hoping the rain would mask the fact that I’d been crying. “Um, okay, I guess?”

Her gaze was sharp, and knowing. “Did you figure things out with Canaan?”

“Why do you care? I thought he was just a hoodlum to you.” I set my backpack and purse down, shrugged out of my coat and hung it up, and then gathered my bags as I headed for the stairs.

“Aerie, wait.” Mom’s voice was…quiet, something almost like desperate, if I didn’t know any better. “Please.”

I sighed, halting. “Mom, I’ve had…bad doesn’t even begin to describe how terrible this day has been. I’m just not in the mood for your drama right now.”

She blinked hard, sighing shakily. “Five minutes, please? Just hear me out for five minutes.”

I groaned, tipping my head back. “Fine. Five minutes. But if you start shit with me, I’m walking away.” I set my bags down and sat in the matching chair, angled toward hers, on the other side of the table.

“I had a long talk with Grandpa,” she said, after a few moments of silence. “And I—I realize now that I’ve been…I haven’t been very fair or loving to you and Tate.”

I snorted, unable to stop myself. “Wow, you think?”

She gave me a hurt look. “This is very hard for me, Aerie. Do you think you can cut me some slack?”

I drew in a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. “Sorry. You’re right, I’m not being very fair right now.”

Mom toyed with her phone, spinning it in circles on the table with one finger. “Can you answer one question for me? Honestly.”

I huffed a laugh. “You have to know at this point that I’m not going to mince words with you, Mom.”

“The whole modeling thing. You never wanted it? Either of you?” She hesitated, looking at me and then away. “You felt I was forcing you into it?”

I didn’t answer immediately. “I think this is something Tate and I may have slightly differing opinions on, in certain respects.” I kicked off my TOMS and dug my toes into the thick pile of the rug underfoot. “But we do both agree that, yes, you did push us into the whole Instagram model thing. For me, personally, I did like it. It was fun. I enjoyed the attention, the modeling, the clothes, the traveling. The money has been nice, too, since I’ve saved enough that I’m in a pretty good position until I figure out what I’m doing next. That’s beside the point, though. Your question was whether you forced us into it, and the answer is yes. You pushed us into it and we went with it because we were young, and you’re our mom, and because it all just kind of kept happening. We let it happen, and we went with it. Did we want it? I mean… maybe? Sort of?”

Mom blinked hard, and kept her attention on her phone. “I just wanted you to be successful. To not feel like college was the only avenue for you. You’re so beautiful, and you were just natural at it. I thought you two were…I thought it was what you wanted.”

I sat forward and sighed. “Come on, Mom. Really?” I shook my head. “You had to know we weren’t always thrilled with how crazy everything was. The day we graduated, you scheduled us out for weeks and months at a time, with zero downtime in between. Literally, we have done shoots or traveled or attended events nonstop since we were seventeen years old, Mom. We didn’t have a normal life as teenagers. There were good things, a lot of good things—so it’s not like I’m saying it was horrible, or that we hated it all the time. Even Tate, who I think liked it less than me, would agree with that.”

“I just—I wanted more for you than I had.”

I frowned. “What are you talking about? Grandma and Grandpa may not have been loaded, but it’s not like you were—”

“I’m talking about opportunities, Aerie.”

My frown only deepened. “Then I’m lost.”

She sighed. “How much do you know about how your father and I met?”

I was stunned speechless. Mom never, ever talked about our father. Like, EVER. The last time Tate and I brought up the topic to Mom, she walked out of the room without a word, and Tate and I had just stared at each like ooohhhhhkayyy? That was weird…and we never brought it up again.

I hunted for something to say. “Um. Not much. Like, nothing at all, really.”

“Do you know how old I am, right now?”

I frowned harder than ever. “Uhhh…ha, you think I’d know, right? Like, 43, right?”

Mom snorted, shaking her head. “I’m 40, Aerie. I turn 41 at the end of the year.”

“I do know your birthday is December 10^th.”

“Right.” She shot a glance at me. “And if you and Tate are twenty-one, how old would that make me when I had you two?”

I did some quick subtraction. “You’d have been…nineteen?” And the penny dropped. “You were nineteen?”

She nodded. “Nineteen. Eighteen when I conceived you.” She sat forward, reached out, and took my hands. “I was nineteen when I gave birth to you two, honey. Can you think about that? Nineteen, and a mother.”

I realized I’d never considered that, never considered how young Mom had been when she had us. How hard it must have been. “Mom, I—”

“We got married when we discovered I was pregnant. Grandpa pretty much…I’m not going to say he forced us to, but he heavily hinted that if we wanted their help, we’d get married. So we did, and…” She sighed, heavily. “It was the wrong thing for us—for me. Grandpa saw it pretty much right away, because it was obvious. Your father, he was…he was—well, not to put too fine a point on it, but he was a piece of shit. Good looking as hell, charming, funny…and a complete loser. Selfish, narcissistic, and immature. He was incapable of thinking about anything or anyone but himself. He would try to help with you and Tate, and he’d just…he’d get frustrated and quit. Storm off and go drink with his buddies. I was honestly shocked he lasted as long as he did. It was a relief when he told me he was leaving. I mean, I’d been expecting it for so long, I was relieved it was finally happening. He had never loved me, and only barely tolerated you two. He wasn’t cut out for fatherhood. Or adulthood at all, really.”

She picked up her phone, unlocked it, and then relocked it again, an unconscious gesture.

“My point in all this is that I never had any opportunities. I had dreams, before I had you guys. I was going to go to New York and be an actress. I had it all planned out. I was going to do commercials and then TV, and then transition to movies. I could have done it, too. I’d actually been discovered, so to speak, in a way. I’d been in a play in high school, and a TV agent’s granddaughter was in it with me. He came to see the play, saw me, and invited me to come to New York for some auditions. Mom and Dad made me finish high school first, and then I got pregnant within a month and a half of graduation. I’d been saving money, working to afford the trip and all that. Then I had you guys, and I never got to follow that dream. I don’t blame you, I hope you know that. But…I never had a choice. I got my degree in accounting while I was raising you guys, thanks to Mom and Dad, and worked in accounting until I met Bob, and he changed everything for me. I know you guys don’t like him, and I get it. He’s not for everyone. But he’s great to me, and he loves me and I love him, and he takes care of me. He made it so I could go back to school to get a management degree, so I could open my own talent agency. Working with you and Tate showed me I was good at it, and that I liked it. But it’s not…it’s not the dream I had. I was supposed to be the talent, not be the manager for the talent.”

“Mom, I had no idea.”

She sighed, smiling sadly. “I don’t think many kids ever really think about their parents like that. I know I never did, until I was an adult, and older than you are now.” Mom set her phone aside again. “My point in telling you all this is that I pushed you and Tate into modeling, yes, in part because I never got to follow my dreams. By watching you succeed in the world meant I could be close to it myself. But I also genuinely wanted you to succeed. I wanted you to be able to get out of Ketchikan. There’s nothing wrong with living here, and I really do mean that. It’s a wonderful place to grow up. But it’s not a place for a young girl to learn how to chase her dreams. How to…how to have more than a quiet life in Alaska. I wanted more for you two. You’re twenty-one, and you’ve seen the world. You have a lot of amazing connections. You have potential. Even if you never model again, the experiences will stand you and your sister in good stead. It’s given you the step up in the world I never had, and a step up in the world that most people never get.”

I shifted to look out the window, thinking about what she said. Eventually I turned back to face her. “You’re right. We know you meant well, Mom. We’ve always known that. You’re just…so stubborn, and just a tiny bit dramatic.”

Mom laughed. “Yes, well, you and Tate come by it honestly, then, don’t you?” Her expression shifted to concern. “You were crying when you came in. Don’t think I didn’t notice, sweetheart.”

I shook my head, looking away. “Yeah, well…” I trailed off, unsure what to say beyond that.

“Care to talk about it?”

I laughed and sighed at the same time. “God, Mom. It’s too much to put into words.”

“Did he hurt you?”

I nodded. “Yeah, but no more than I’ve hurt him.”

“You deserve happiness, Aerie.” Mom touched my knee. “If I’ve learned anything from what I’ve been through, it’s that you can’t find happiness in a man, honey. He’ll never fulfill you. He can make your life better, and he can be someone you can’t live without, but unless you’re okay in yourself, in your life, without him, he won’t be able to make you happy. Because you won’t let him.”

I frowned at her. “What do you mean, I won’t let him?”

“I was so…broken, I guess, by the way things happened with Vic that I just couldn’t trust men. I figured they’d all be like him: selfish, immature, assholes who think only of themselves. I did date a few guys while you and Tate were young, but always when you were at school, so you’d never know. I just didn’t want to ever bring anyone around you. All the guys I dated—and there weren’t that many—seemed to just support the cynicism I had about men. Then I met Bob, and I realized he was different. But I still had a really, really hard time letting myself be happy with him, because I just…I was sabotaging myself, and us. I wasn’t letting myself be happy.” She squeezed my knee. “Honey, it took me thousands of dollars in therapy to figure all this out, and I’m still working on it. And you know what it is, deep down? It’s not that I don’t trust Bob—I do. He’s proven to me that he won’t hurt me, that I can trust him. I knew that from the get-go. This is stuff that my therapist had to really work hard to dig out of me, by the way.

“The real problem is that I don’t trust myself. After Vic, I learned not to trust my own judgment. I even worry sometimes that Bob will turn on me, but I know that’s just stupid, but it’s all because Vic was such a huge mistake. It got me you and Tate, and you two girls—you’re my—you’re my greatest success. My only achievement in life. But Vic, your father? He was a huge, huge mistake, and I just constantly doubt myself as a result.”

I blinked. “Wow, Mom.” I frowned at her. “Wow. Grandpa must have really laid it out for you, huh?”

Mom chuckled. “Forty years old, and I got called into my father’s office yesterday for a lecture.” She smiled, though. “Once a parent, always a parent. You’re never done being a parent to your kids. And your Grandpa? Well. He doesn’t sit you down and talk to you about something unless it’s a big deal to him, and so yeah, he laid it out for me. Pointed out that I wasn’t thinking about you and Tate, that I was reacting emotionally instead of supporting my daughters. That we, as parents, may not always agree with our kids’ choices, but that it’s our duty and obligation as parents to support them and love them anyway. And I haven’t been doing that.”

“Things are kind of screwed up and crazy right now.”

“But I just don’t understand one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Why didn’t you and Tate just talk to me? About wanting to quit, I mean?”

I groaned. “God, Mom. You think you would have taken it any better if we had?”

She huffed. “Better than getting an email saying you were quitting, and then not being able to get hold of you, and not knowing where you were! And, oh yeah, finding out your sister is pregnant, and that you’re dating those twins. They were never good influences on you.”

“You don’t know them, Mom.”

She waved a hand. “I don’t want to get into that. My point is, yes, I would have taken you and Tate quitting, or wanting a break, far better had you talked to me about it like adults, rather than vanishing on me like runaway children.”

“You just don’t want to talk about it because you know you’re being judgmental. All the Badd brothers are wonderful men. And Canaan and Corin have been our only true friends our whole lives. And we were just as bad influences on them as they were on us!”

“Aerie, I’m just trying to protect you!”

“No, Mom. I’m not going to sit here and let you talk bad about them. Any of them, but especially not Canaan.”

She eyed me carefully. “I haven’t said anything about Canaan. Corin is the one who got your sister pregnant. Canaan has…well, I don’t know. Hurt you, at the very least.” Her expression went speculative. “But I find it interesting that you were so quick to defend him.”

“Things are messed up right now.”

“Let’s get back to you and Tate vanishing.”

I rolled my eyes. “Mom, honestly. You would have lost your ever-loving mind if we had told you beforehand. You would have yelled and screamed and coerced and manipulated us into staying with it. The one time we tried to suggest a vacation, you went mental.”

“I did not go mental, Aerie.”

I stared at her. “You don’t remember yelling at us for thirty minutes straight about work ethic and relevancy and how fast we’d lose any shot at Hollywood if we took a vacation?”

“I didn’t yell, and it wasn’t thirty minutes.”

I snorted. “Mom, we were in a hotel, and you got us a noise complaint.”

“You wanted to go to Tahiti!”

“For a week! To relax! We’d just wrapped that huge shoot for Modality Swimwear, which was eight days on a beach, sweating our asses off from dawn to dusk. And before that, a three-day festival in Bern, and before that a shoot in Manhattan, and a shoot in Vegas before that, and before that, I don’t even remember. The only downtime we ever got was while traveling, and that’s not exactly relaxing! We just wanted to take literally a week to catch our breath, and you weren’t having it.”

Mom sighed. “If I ever pushed you it was only ever—”

“I know, Mom. For our own good. In our best interests. We know.” I pinned her with a hard glare. “The problem with that is Tate and I are adults. We have our own ideas now about what’s in our best interests. And it feels to us like you’re still operating under the impression that we’re teenagers who would be lost without your guidance.”

She gestured angrily. “And would I be wrong? Tate is pregnant!” Her breath caught. “Exactly the thing I wanted to prevent. All the talks about being safe, and trying to impress on the two of you the importance of protection, of not getting pregnant, and Tate still ends up pregnant. History is repeating itself.”

“Except Corin isn’t our father. He’s nothing like him. He genuinely loves Tate. He’s not going to abandon her. They’re going to have a family. They’re going to be okay, Mom. It’s not the same as your experience.”

“But what is she going to do?”

I shrugged. “That’s her decision. Maybe she wants to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s not your choice—it’s hers. If she wants to stay in Ketchikan and be a mom and a wife and never go back out into the career field ever again, that’s her choice. Not mine, and not yours. It’s not what I want, but that’s me. We’re identical twins, and we’ve been on the same life path up until now, but we are separate people, not a single unit. Tate has her own life to live, her own decisions to make, and we have to love her and respect those decisions and support her no matter what.”

Mom had no answer to that. Eventually, she met my gaze. “Aerie, honey, what’s going on with you?”

I shook my head. “I’m not ready to talk about it. And I don’t mean just with you, I mean with anyone. It’s mine to deal with, and I just can’t handle talking about it right now.”

“Will you be okay?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Eventually?”

A nod from Mom. “Meaning you’re not, but you’re determined to figure it out yourself.”

“I’m not okay right now, no, but I will be, somehow, someday. I just don’t know how that’s going to look, or how I’m going to get there.”

“Well, if you ever want to talk about it, you can talk to me. I know I haven’t always been the confidante sort of mom for you girls, but I want to be. Because you are adults, and the days of me trying to help mold and guide your lives are over. Now I just have to accept that you’re not kids anymore and I will try to be there for you however I can.”

I sighed. I wasn’t sure what to say to that. But then something did occur to me. “There is one thing…you said you had to learn how to let Bob love you.”

She nodded. “We’ve been together for five years, and I’m just now starting to figure it out.” She sighed. “I’ve put Bob through a lot in the meantime.”

“How do you do that? How do you learn to let someone love you?”

Mom took time to think before answering. “It’s hard. I won’t lie, sweetheart, it’s really, really hard. It’s scary. It means stepping out in faith and trust and accepting the fact that you may end up getting hurt, and there’s no way to be one hundred percent sure he won’t let you down or hurt you. It means letting yourself be vulnerable when everything inside you is just absolutely screaming at you to protect yourself.” Mom’s gaze was knowing. “Something tells me you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

I nodded slowly. “Yes,” I whispered.

She leaned over and took my hands in hers. “Oh, honey. Who hurt you so badly?”

I shook my head. “I can’t—I can’t talk about that, Mom. I just managed to stop crying. If I get into that, I’ll start all over again, and I’m sick of crying.”

“It wasn’t Canaan, was it?”

I shook my head. “This is different.” I stood up and bent over to hug Mom. “I love you. We probably should have handled this whole hiatus thing differently, and I’m sorry for hurting or scaring you. It just felt to us like it was the only way to really make a clean break and get the time we needed to figure things out.”

“I love you, too, sweetheart.”

“How long are you in Ketchikan for?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Tate being pregnant changes everything. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do.”

I stared at her. “Are you—you aren’t thinking of staying here, are you?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “It has crossed my mind as a possibility, yes. Bob can telecommute for just about everything he needs to do—he might need to fly into Manhattan once in a while, but that’s it. As for me? I enjoy the talent agency work, but…I don’t love it. Not as much as I thought I would. I don’t know. I have to talk to Bob, and think through my options.”

“Mom, what would you even do here?”

She laughed. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”

“You got out of here as fast as you could. The minute you and Bob decided you were serious, you up and moved to New York. Now you’re thinking of moving back?”

Mom shrugged. “Yeah, I know, I know. But things are different now.” She sniffed. “I’m about to be a grandmother, Aerie. I…how can I live in New York when my daughter and my grandbaby are here?”

“Wow. I mean, that makes sense. I just…”

Mom’s eyes cut to mine, her gaze sharp. “Why do I feel like you’re surprised by the idea that I’d want to be near you and your sister, and eventually, my grandchild?”

I sighed. “That’s not what’s surprising.” I hesitated. “What is surprising, I guess, is that you’d even consider coming back to Ketchikan. I just always assumed that once you got out of here, you’d never come back.”

Mom laughed. “I’ve always assumed the same thing, actually.” She blew out a breath. “But I mean, I’ve only known Tate is pregnant for a matter of days, and I feel like everything has changed so much already. So by the time she’s ready to have the baby? Who knows?”

I rubbed my face with both hands. “You’re absolutely right about that.” I leaned over again to hug Mom. “I love you.”

She didn’t let go of the hug immediately. “Aerie, baby—I hope you know, like really know that you can talk to me. You know that, right? I really do just want you and Tate to be happy. You’re—it’s just that you’re my little baby girls, and it’s hard to let go. It’s hard to accept that you’re not babies anymore and that you’re going to do things I may not understand or agree with. But I really do want you two to be happy, and I promise to be better at supporting you.”

I sniffled, tears starting in my eyes. “Mom—god. You don’t know how bad I needed to hear that. Seriously.”

She brushed away her own tears as she stood up. “I haven’t been a very good mom, have I?”

“You’ve been a great mom. The best ever. Things just got a little crazy. They’re still a little crazy, but…well…they’re getting better.” I let out a breath and wiped my eyes. “I think you should probably tell Tate what you said to me. She probably needs to hear it even more than I did.”

“I will.”

I got to the stairs before Mom stopped me yet again. “Aerie? One last thing.”

I laughed and stopped on the stairs, turning around to glance at her. “For real, the last thing. I’m exhausted.”

“Just a quick piece of advice I’d like to offer, as unsolicited as it may be.’

“What’s that?”

“Men are stupid.”

I laughed. “That’s not exactly a newsflash, Mom.”

“No, but you have to keep that in mind. They do dumb things. They react without thinking, and then when we get pissed off, they’re like what’d I do?” Here, she deepened her voice to a mocking parody of a dumb male. “And then they’re all panicked because they realize they messed up, and expect us to just be like, oh honey, it’s fine. What I’m saying is, if Canaan did something to hurt you, he’s probably just now realizing it. So if he shows up, just…try to give him a chance.”

I walked upstairs and thought about what Mom had just said.

Will he show up?

That’s the burning question.

If—IF—Canaan shows up, I’ll not only give him a chance, I’ll be the first to apologize for freaking out on him. But he has to show up. I’m not going to chase him again. If he wants this, if he wants me…he has to prove it to me. It’d be better if I could just stop myself from being in love with him. Because…I was. I knew that much. I couldn’t deny it any longer and saw no point in trying. But what would loving Canaan get me, except heartache?

I collapsed into bed fully clothed, pulled the blankets over my head, and fell into a restless, troubled sleep, filled with dreams of Canaan cursing at me, walking away from me, dreams of growing old alone, dreams of Canaan looking right into my eyes and telling me he never loved me and never will.