Safe Harbor (The Lake Trilogy, Book 3) (18 page)

“Hey, men!” I say cheerfully as I enter the room. “Mind if I steal my favorite guy away for a bit?”

“Ok, but I really can’t be gone long,” Wes says moving toward the door laughing.

“Very funny, Uncle Wes! I’m going to take my fiancé with me and let you and Dad duke it out for who takes second and third place.” I kiss Wes on the cheek, and take Will’s hand. I decide not to take the file folder as it would be too obvious that I had something serious to talk with him about.

“Take a walk with me?” I ask
when we’re halfway down the hall.

“I’d go anywhere with you, babe,” he says, kissing my hand.

We walk out the back door and begin the path to the dock. He asks how I’m coming along with unpacking and if the strangeness of being back is wearing off. I tell him that the only strange thing about being home is the freedom we now have. I had worried about the media hounding us, but since Will is Mr. Congeniality with them, I don’t worry about them at all. We talk about braving it and going to the next Concert on the Green and both agree that we should tell the event coordinators that we plan on going. We don’t want to take anything away from whoever is performing, but it’s time for us to reconnect with our community.

“Have you thought any more about Luke’s invitation for us to live with them after we’re married?” I ask as we
sit at the edge of the dock.

“I have. You?” he replies.

“Yes. It’s weird to be torn on the issue. On the one hand, who wants to live with their parents after they get married? I mean there will be lots of
married stuff
going on.” I blush and smile coyly at Will and he raises his eyebrows and smiles at me. “But, on the other hand…I still feel like a baby in this new family of mine. I just got Luke and Claire three years ago. After not having any family for so long, I have to admit, it’s hard to want to leave.”

“I u
nderstand. I…have…an idea though. I’m not sure how you’re going to respond to it, but if you don’t like it at all, we can ditch it and come up with a new one, ok?” I nod and feel my face squish together in confusion. “How would you feel about us moving into my old house?”

“The big, stately, White House replica?” I ask a little shocked.

“Yeah,” he says slowly.

“I don’t know, Will. It seems like it would be weird to move into the master bedroom your parents shared, don’t you think?” I’m creeped out at just the thought.

“That’s just it. We wouldn’t have to. There are five suites in the house. We can choose any of them. We can remodel the whole place, and even turn their old room into something other than a bedroom if you want,” he says. He’s nervously excited about this. He must have a slew of plans and ideas to revamp the house to look nothing like Gregory Meyer. “The real bonus would be that we’d be super close to Luke and Claire.”

“Can I think about it? I’m not saying no. I just need some time to consider it. And…maybe it would help if we walked through the house and talked about the changes we would make?”

“That sounds fair,” he says smiling.

“So,” I begin. I need to start this conversation about all the exes and their children before we run out of time. Wes may have already told Eliana and I know Will’s going to need to process some of this with her. “I was thinking about something you said.”

“What’s that?” he asks, stroking the inside of my arm sweetly as we let our legs dangle from the dock.

“Do you really wish you had gotten to know Marcus?” I ask softly.

“Yeah...well, the Marcus that
you
knew. Not the Marcus that got twisted by his mom and our dad,” he says.

“You really think you wouldn’t have felt so alone
? It’s not like you would have been raised in the same house, or even in some co-parented manner,” I say, trying to fully understand where he’s coming from.

“Maybe not, but
I can’t help but feel like just knowing him in a brotherly capacity, that the simple biological connection, would have counted for something. I’ve thought a lot about that. It’s why I’m actually looking forward to meeting Erin now.”

T
his is when I tell him.

I tell him about Victoria and Cheryl. I tell him about Michael
and Sarah. I give him as many details as I can remember about who knows what about whom. I also tell him about the pattern of the children being born the same or following year as his father divorced their mothers. I explain to Will that he actually has four siblings. Including Marcus, he has two brothers and two sisters.

I do my best to explain how Cheryl doesn’
t want to testify. I also tell him that not only does Erin want to meet him, but that everything indicates Michael does, too.

Will is quiet as he processes what I’m telling him. A few tears escape his eyes, but other than that he shows little emotion. I can’t imagine what he must be feeling. To have been so desperate for so long to not
be all by himself and now to find out that his desperation and grief could have been healed by knowing he wasn’t alone after all. It must be devastating.

“Will?” I prompt.

Will says nothing, only starting to shake his head.

“Baby?” I begin to rub Will’s back in an attempt to comfort him.

“It’s not fair,” he whispers. “It’s just not fair.”

The tears begin to fall
in huge drops for both of us. Will, for the pain his father caused him by keeping him from his siblings and for me, the pain of watching Will grieve. It’s a devastating feeling to watch the person you love most in the world wrench with pain and not be able to fix it.

After an hour of alternating between tears and rage, Will is starting to ask questions. Many of them I know the answers to since they’re just a recap of what I’ve already told him. He
wants to know names and ages, but as he begins to ask deeper questions for which I don’t have the answers I suggest we see Luke. Some of the answers Will is looking for may be found in the file Luke showed me earlier. I didn’t read everything on each form so I’m hoping that we’ll find the answers there.

We find Luke and Wes in the office and
Will immediate checks on his mother through a question to Wes.

“
Did you tell my mother?” he asks Wes.

“Yes, but…”
Wes begins, knowing that Will is asking if his mother knew about the other children…Will’s siblings.

“But what?” Will’s face is hard.
When it comes to his mom he’s even more protective of her than he is of me. It’s been difficult for him to let go and let Wes take care of her.

“Well…Luke and I didn’t know this, but…she already k
new.” Wes’ delivery is straightforward, the only appropriate approach for this scenario.

“What?”
Will doesn’t wait for a response. He moves from the bedroom and immediately starts calling for his mother. His face is actually turning red and I know that he’s more hurt by her secrecy than his father’s. I immediately follow him, feeling like Luke and Wes are on my heels, almost tripping on me, since I’m having trouble keeping up with my short legs.

“William? What it is? Are you ok?” Eliana rushes from the kitchen into the Great Room.

“No, I’m not ok,” he says sternly. I’ve never heard him use this tone with her. “You knew! You knew and you never told me!” Eliana looks at Wes and he gives her a tight-lipped nod.

“Oh, William, it’s not what you think,” she says in defense.

“Really? Because what I think is that you knew I had brothers and sisters and you never told me. What I think is that you faked your way through our whole conversation about Loretta and Erin, acting like it was all news to you,” Will shouts.

“C’mon, Will, settle down. Let’s just calm down and talk about this,” Wes tells him.

“Back off, Wes! This doesn’t concern you.” Will’s tone and volume are just as aggressive with Wes and now I
know
just how angry Will is. “How could you do that to me? All the times I cried to you, telling you how much I wished I had a brother or a sister. How could you not tell me? All those years you told me I didn’t have any siblings because I was special. Lies!”

“
You were special. You
are
special!” she pleads with him. I’ve never seen Eliana look this pained. Even when she watched her husband get shot, or when he died. “By the time I had you I knew I was going to spend the better part of my life walking on egg shells with your father, fearful that he would take you away from me.” She pauses, collecting her thoughts. Wes comes to her side, draping a comforting arm around her. “Marlene came to see me one day when you were almost two. I think Marcus would have been close to four then. I knew who she was, remembering when she and Gregory came to my family’s store in Hickory. She told me about how she couldn’t go through with the abortion Gregory told her to have, and that he had been supporting her since Marcus’ birth.

“
She came to tell me how unfair her life was…how hard Gregory had been on her, leaving her with so little compared to what he could have afforded. And then she told me about his other ex-wives and their children. How cruel he had been to them, especially Cheryl, leaving all of them to take care of themselves. She came there to warn me that if I wasn’t careful, I’d be out next. The thing was, when she left, all I felt was envy. I
envied
those women. They thought they were kicked aside like garbage, but I knew they had really been set free. Life with Gregory was a prison sentence. I had any material thing I wanted, but I didn’t have freedom. I couldn’t come and go as I pleased. I couldn’t dress as I wanted. I couldn’t eat the food I liked. I couldn’t even watch television or see the movies I wanted. I lived for the times your father was out of town for even just a day or two just so I could go to a movie! I couldn’t even be the mother to my son I wanted to be.” Eliana is trying her best to explain, but Will is so distraught over finding out that his mother knew everything all along that I’m not sure if what she’s telling him is really sinking in.

“You knew how
alone
I felt. You knew how badly I wanted a brother or a sister,” Will pleads softly.

“William, the age difference between you and the others was so great that it never occurred to me to try and connect you with them. Wh
en I tried to arrange a play date for you and Marcus, your father found out and forbade me from ever communicating with Marlene again,” she says.

“But…when I was older, and I understood who my father really was…” Will is trying desperately to understand why something so important was kept from him. He’s reaching out with questions, but no answer is going to satisfy him.

“I was scared. Any time I defied your father in any way he threatened to take you from me. So every decision I made, every secret I kept…everything I did, I did so I wouldn’t lose you. I would rather have lived in that hell with him as long as I had you, than to have been set free like the others and never see you again.” Eliana reaches out for Will but he pulls away, causing a different kind of sadness to wash over her.

With nothing left to say, Will walks away and upstairs to the loft.

“Please help him understand,” Eliana begs of me.

“I’
ll try,” I tell her.

Leaving Eliana in the comforting arms of Wes, I go upstairs to find Will in our oversized chair.
He looks sad and small, like a broken little boy.

“Hey,” I say softly, squishing my body against his in the chair.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he says.

“You do, do you?” I run my fingers through Will’s hair.

“You’re going to tell me what I told you the day you found out about your father and the explosion. You’re going to tell me that sometimes not knowing something protects you from something worse. That I need to see my mom as she was all those years, protecting me at the cost of her own freedom.”

“Wow, I’m good,”
I say with a smirk.

“I know all of those things
, Layla. And I know my mom spent years doing everything she could to protect me.” Will turns his body to face me. I swing my legs over his lap to make us both more comfortable. “But why wouldn’t she tell me later, after we left him, after we were free?”

“You still couldn’t have done anything about it, Will.
”

“But just to
know
. When we got to Florida, if she had told me why she couldn’t tell me before, I would have understood.  She knew Luke was going to call the exes as witnesses, and when I told her about Loretta, she acted shocked. I just don’t understand,” he says. His voice is faltering, like he’s holding back tears.

“Honey, you have to give her some time. It’s not as easy for her to shake some of the old habits. She spent almost 20 years pretending to be someone she wasn’t, hiding things from people, from you. She’s just learning how to be genuine again. It never occurred to her to volunteer this information to you. She didn’t keep
it from you to hurt you. She initially kept it from you to
save
you. And now, well, she’s figuring out how that she has to be aware and intentional about opening up. It’s not second nature to her, Will.”