Don't Let Go (20 page)

“Seth?” I choked. “His name is Seth? He has a—oh, my God.” It was too much. Suddenly the nameless, faceless little boy I’d mourned for and prayed for the last twenty-six years was a fleshed-out person with a name and a life, and it made the loss even more grueling. “He’s beautiful,” I breathed.

Noah didn’t have them back to back, I realized through my haze, so he could see the years. Ninth grade, eleventh, a cap and gown picture, a snapshot of him standing next to a pretty girl, looking less like Becca at that point and more like Noah. And the last one, in a policeman’s uniform at an academy graduation, looking very much like Noah, grinning next to two other guys. Men. He was a man now.

“Why—how?” I pushed out. “Where did these come from?” I sucked in a shaky breath. “And why didn’t you tell me?”

“My dad sent them,” he said. His hand came to my face and tried to lift my chin but I jerked my face away, not wanting to look away from the little boy I’d last seen when he was two minutes old. “You have these, too.”

“No!” I yelled, the sound more of a wail. “I have nothing!” At his shocked face, I pushed him back and walked the room, pressing his wallet to my chest. I gulped in air, unable to get enough, like something was pulling the oxygen from the room. “How did he do this?” I asked, turning to face him, begging with my eyes.

Noah’s face showed a myriad of reactions—confusion, disbelief, questions. “I don’t understand,” he said, more to himself than to me.

“The adoption was sealed, Noah. No contact. How the hell did he get pictures, and—” A sob took over my throat. “I’ve been here all along. How could he not show me—”

My knees threatened to give way again, and I spurred myself into motion before the feeling could win. Before I’d let this agony overwhelm me, I had to get the facts. Walking straight to the door, I opened it and headed to my car, Noah’s wallet still held against my chest.

“Jules, wait,” Noah said, springing into action behind me.

“I have to talk to your dad.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“I don’t need you,” I said, wheeling on him on the sidewalk. “I have a twenty-year-old beef with him that’s about to come to a fucking head right now.”

Noah’s eyes flared anger that I felt had more to do with my saying I didn’t need him than what I’d said about his father.

“You don’t need to drive,” he said, his voice low and commanding. “Give me your keys, let me put some shoes on, and wait your ass right here.”

I felt the muscles in my face, my neck, my whole body twitch with adrenaline.

“Fine,” I said, slamming my keys into his hand.

I walked around to the passenger side while he glared at me, and then he turned back into the house. I got in and felt the cold quiet sink in around me, my breathing being the loudest thing. I pulled Noah’s wallet away from my chest and started at the beginning. A faded photo that was marked
Seth, six months
. Just six months after I’d seen him last, it was the closest in resemblance to the baby I remembered.

“I loved you,” I whispered, sobs shaking my body again. “I always loved you.”

The driver’s side door opened and Noah got in, grimacing as his knees crammed against the steering column. He adjusted it and shut the door, giving me a look before he started the engine, an odd expression taking over his features.

“What?” I asked.

He shook his head slightly, almost as if that motion, too, were inside his own thoughts.

“The last time we were in a car together, you were crying then too.” His eyes met mine. “You’d already made up your mind.” I looked away, unable to bear looking at him as he said that. “Jules, I didn’t know you didn’t have these pictures, too. I wondered when there was nothing at your house, but then—and now with what you told me this morning about your parents pretending it never happened.” He rubbed at his eyes and raked his fingers back through still-damp hair, making his short cut stick up in little dark spikes. “It all makes sense now.”

“It’s about to make more,” I said.

I turned back to the pictures, running a finger over the last one, the one of Seth in a policeman’s uniform.

“That’s the last one I ever received,” he said, starting the car and putting it in reverse. “That was about four or five years ago. I guess once he hit twenty-one they stopped sending.”

Seth looked so much like Noah in that photo, it was like turning back time.

We were quiet on the drive to the diner. He was right, it was weird being in the car with him again, seeing him at the wheel. Weird and oddly right.

“Who told you I had photos in Italy?” Noah asked finally when we turned onto the street that flanked the river.

“I was talking to Shayna at the library,” I said.

He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “You two get along too well.”

I would have laughed at that another time. If my world hadn’t been upended and the diner wasn’t rolling into view. Instead, every moment of every day that Johnny Mack Ryan had tortured me with his indifference and ugly words came to the surface and spread over me like a giant shield of armor.

Georgette Pruitt was headed up the sidewalk in our direction, looking purposeful and colorful all in purple. Lord.

“Can I have my wallet back?” Noah asked as he pulled in a spot and parked.

“No.”

I got out and marched to the door, not caring what my drowned-rat face looked like. Not giving any thought to whether I had dried snot down all my black clothing after the day from hell that had barely made it to one in the afternoon.

Not caring if Noah was with me or stayed in the car. What I had to say was between me and his father, and probably a diner full of people. So damn be it.

“Jules, I need to talk to—” Georgette called out, upping her steps to catch up to me.

“Go see Ruthie,” I said, waving her away.

“No, it’s about the Chamber party,” she said, like that made things different. If I had to hear one more thing about flowers or floats or snowy things, even in a party atmosphere, I was going to do something unladylike.

“Ruthie,” I said, already swinging open the door.

I saw him immediately. He was out of the kitchen and behind the bar, refilling coffee during a lull. Good. He’d have plenty of time to give me his undivided attention.

Johnny Mack looked up as I walked in, a scowl clouding his face when he saw it was me before he looked away. Long-buried hurt freshened by recent events stung to the bone.

I slammed Noah’s wallet down on the counter, pictures facing up. “Explain.”

He let go of a deep sigh, sounding exhausted. “Maybe you should explain what you’re doing with Noah’s wallet.”

“I gave it to her,” Noah said from behind me.

Johnny Mack looked up, surprised. “What the hell are you doing with Julianna Doucette?”

“It’s White now,” I said. “Been that way for twenty-something years now, did you miss the memo?”

“Dad, I told you,” Noah said, his voice carrying that dark demanding something that made people listen. “Enough of this.”

“You have that sweet Shayna now, boy,” Johnny Mack said. “Don’t go messing—”

“I could give a shit who your
boy
is with now,” I said, my voice rising enough to turn a few heads. I tapped the photos in the wallet. “We’re not here for that. I want to know why you have these.”

“Not your business,” he said quietly.

“Not my
business
?” I said, scoffing. “He’s my son.”

Johnny Mack shook his head. “You gave up the right to call him that—”

“I said enough!” Noah said, making me jump. He came up to the bar beside me and splayed both hands wide on the counter. “Stop being an ass, Dad, it’s beneath you.”

Johnny Mack’s expression was priceless. Like Noah, not too many people talked to him that way. I watched his jaw muscles work and he sucked in a breath through his nose.

“I always assumed Jules had these pictures too,” Noah said. Why on earth didn’t you—”

“I know why you didn’t share them with me,” I said, cutting Noah off, tears burning my eyes and throat again. “You’ve made that quite clear through the years.”

I felt Noah’s hand come up to the back of my neck, and I watched Johnny Mack’s eyes narrow as he took it in as well. Just the fact that it bothered him gave me courage.

“How could you hate me that much?” I asked, my voice dropping to almost a whisper as I braved out the question I’d wanted to ask for years. Emotion shook my words as they left my mouth. “Do you even remember loving me?”

He looked like he wanted to chew barbed wire as his eyes made a quick dart around the room. “You threw that away when you let that boy go.”

“I was
seventeen
,” I said, louder than I intended to, tears tracking down my cheeks. “Doing what my mom and dad said was best to do. I didn’t want it that way, but I was too scared to say no. They sent me to that god-awful place to show me what being a teenage mother would be like, remember? I was fifty different kinds of terrified.”

“I would have helped you,” he said, sudden emotions coming to his face, mixed with the old anger.

“Until I told
you
no about something,” I said. “Until I pissed you off. You’re no better than they were. So I did what I did. And everyone left me.” I moved away so that Noah’s hand would drop. “I lost my son, I lost Noah, my parents went in denial, and you spent the next twenty-six years making damn sure I paid for my sins.” I slammed a fist on the counter in front of him. “And how dare you insult my daughter today.”

His mouth worked and then clamped shut before he sighed with irritability. “I was out of line with that comment earlier, I apologize,” he said, staring at coasters on the counter instead of looking at me. It sounded forced, but I didn’t care.

“Jules said the adoption was sealed, Dad,” Noah said, laying a hand on his open wallet. “How’d you pull that off?”

Johnny Mack grabbed a bar cloth and wiped the length of what he could reach, then gave up with a sigh, rested his hands on the cloth and met my eyes. “Your mother gave them to me.”

• • •

For the first time in years, there was no animosity in his eyes. No hate. Just—a giving up of sorts. Giving up my mother. Throwing her under the bus. It wasn’t possible. My mother was controlling and had done many questionable things in the name of “taking care of people,” but it was too far outside the realm of belief.

I shook my head as every nerve ending on my body woke up. “I don’t believe you.”

Johnny Mack shrugged. “That’s your choice, but it’s the truth.”

“How?” Noah said, moving closer to me again. As if he sensed my impending breakdown.

Johnny Mack met his son’s gaze and then looked off into the diner, avoiding my hard stare.

“Mary arranged that as part of the adoption,” he said. “That correspondence and two copies of photographs a year would be sent to her, and her only, until he was twenty-one.” He darted a look my way and then just as quickly feigned interest in his rag. “She always gave me the second one. I sent them to Noah.”

The trembling started at my core, like all warmth had left my body. I gripped the counter to stem it, but it just got worse.

“Why—” Noah began, his voice hoarse. “Why would they agree to that?”

“Mary set up a trust in his name in exchange for it,” Johnny Mack said, not looking at either of us.

“No,” I whispered. “That’s not—” I shook my head, unable to believe that she would have done that to me.

“Why didn’t anyone tell Jules about this?” Noah asked, voicing the question I couldn’t seem to push out of my mouth. “Or me, for that matter? I didn’t know any of that. Dad!” he yelled, when Johnny Mack didn’t answer, making the old man jump and turn to face him. “Why?”

“Because Mary didn’t think she could handle it,” Johnny Mack said with a snarl to his voice and lips. “Okay?” He turned and looked me dead in the eye with both irritation and pity. “I didn’t want to say that out loud, but there, you feel better knowing that? She made me promise not to tell you about the pictures or anything related to the boy. She said it was better for you to move on.”

My stomach roiled against its contents as every muscle contracted. I grasped Noah’s wallet and backed up, running into a customer who I heard offer apologies but I couldn’t see. All I could see was Johnny Mack’s face, looking at me with something related to remorse, as if saying it all out loud somehow finally highlighted the insanity of it.

Better for me.

I sucked in air as what felt like my mother’s final blow knocked the wind from my chest, and as I turned for the door, I suddenly felt weightless. Blackness tinged the edges of my waterlogged vision, sounds of chatter started to echo, and as I reached for the knob it disappeared.

Arms caught me, wrapping around my middle.

“I’ve got you,” came Noah’s voice against my ear. He held me tight against him, one arm around my waist and one holding my head as sounds started coming back into normal tones. “Just breathe, baby, I’ve got you.”

He called me baby,
I thought, my woozy thoughts swimming around in the delicious aroma that was Noah.

“I need to go—home,” I managed to say as my feet felt solid floor again.

“We’re going,” he said, lifting my chin to look at my eyes. “Are you okay to walk?”

I blinked and nodded and pulled gently away from him, feeling the odd mix of my body coming back to life as my soul shut down. It was the last straw, the last thing my mind was willing to take on, and my heart felt like it turned cold in my chest.

“Noah,” Johnny Mack said from behind us. “There’s something I need to tell you. I was going to make it a surprise, but now I think I should tell both of you—”

“Save it,” Noah snapped before he led me out the door.

He put me in the car and we drove in silence to my house. I had nothing left. No more tears, thank God, I was completely out of those. Nothing but betrayal and rage coursed through me as we passed the houses I’d seen all my life. As we passed the old one I’d shared with Hayden. That’s where I should have stayed, I realized. I should have sold Mom’s house when she died and stayed where we were. Away from the negativity and rules and controlling influence that her house still held over me.