Stargazey Nights (16 page)

“That's fine,” Meri told her. “It will make up for the forest of candles on the cake at work.”

They ate cake and Gran pulled a festively wrapped package from the shopping bag she'd placed by the side of her chair.

Meri opened it slowly and neatly, a trait that she was born with and was a big plus in her chosen profession, but sometimes made her brothers scream, “Just tear off the paper.”

“How are the three Musketeers? Are Gabe and Penny all set for the baby?”

“Oh yeah, for months now.” Dan sighed, and Meri knew he was thinking about her mother who had died only four years before. She would never see any of her grandchildren.

“Let's see. Matt just got a raise, and Will is having way too much fun at Georgetown.”

“Oh yeah, I got e-cards from both of them yesterday. And Penny sent a lovely card and signed both Gabe and her names.”

The paper came off and Meri opened the box. It contained a hand-knitted pullover sweater in Meri's favorite colors of blue, lavender, and burgundy. “It's gorgeous. Did May McAllister knit this?”

“Yes, she did. And she said if it didn't fit just right to bring it by the store and she'd fix it.”

“Everything she's ever made has fit perfectly,” Meri said. “Thank you so much.”

Gran smiled.

Dan stood and pulled a jeweler's box out of his pants pocket. He walked over to Meri and handed it to her, then stood beside her as she opened it. It was a locket of brushed gold. The inside held two tiny pictures, one of her mother and one of Dan.

Sudden tears sprang to Meri's eyes. “Thank you. It's beautiful.”

He hugged her. “You're the most precious thing in the world to me and to your mother, too.”

Meri smiled up at him as he clasped the necklace around her neck. She was so lucky that this man had come into their lives and took them both into his heart. He'd been more than a stepdad; her real father couldn't have loved her more.

Meri had noticed a cardboard box, a little larger than a shoe box, sitting in the alcove of the antique kitchen hutch. It was just an ordinary cardboard box that might be sent through the mail, though this one was dented and smashed from years of storage.

Now Gran went to the hutch, but instead of retrieving the box, she took an envelope from the top and brought it to the table where she placed it in front of Meri.

“Another present?” Meri asked.

Her father's lips tightened. “Not exactly a present,” he said.

“More like a confession,” Gran said, and Meri swore there were tears in her eyes.

Chapter 2

C
onfession? What kind of confession? Meri looked at Gran, but Gran was staring at the letter like it was poison. She felt her dad's hand come to rest on her shoulder.

For an eon Meri could only look at the envelope.

Gran continued to stand on the opposite side of the table, her head bowed. Her father pulled out a chair and sat down next to her. “Open it. And just remember, it doesn't change anything about our family.”

With a swift look toward him, Meri picked up the envelope, watching her trembling fingers from a distance like she sometimes did when she was working, suspending excitement or any emotion so as not to rush and chance marring the surface.

On the front was just her name, Merielle. Nothing more. No “to” and “from,” no “Happy Birthday.” Just Merielle. And the room became colder. She recognized her mother's handwriting.

She turned the envelope over. It was sealed, and she really, really didn't want to open it. Why had her mother left her a letter and why had they waited more than four years to give it to her?

It wasn't as if Gran had just “come across” it while cleaning out the attic. Meri could tell by her face and her stooped shoulders that she had known about its existence. So why wait so long? And why now?

A young tabby jumped to the table, startling them all. He padded over to sniff the envelope. Gran swept him off the table with a brush of her hand. Not gently. Not like Gran at all.

Meri's stomach began to ache.

She tested the seal, then gently worked the flap away from the envelope. It opened easily. Too easily for someone who had mixed feelings about opening it at all.

She pulled out the single sheet of stationery inside. She didn't look up, afraid of the expressions she might see. She unfolded the paper.

Dear Meri.

The rest of the words swam before her eyes as they rested on the upper-right corner. August 2010. A few weeks before her mother died.

Meri sat there staring at the letter, waiting, hoping that one of them would pull it from her fingers. Say it was a mistake, just a joke, because from the few words she made out, this wasn't an ordinary “advice to my daughter when I'm gone” letter.

 

Dear Meri,

 

You are the most precious gift God ever could give me. You made Gran's and my life complete after Huey died. He didn't live to see you born, or know the circumstances of your birth, but I know he is looking down from heaven and loving you from afar.

 

Meri's eyes fogged over. She swallowed hard, brushed at her eyes and read on.

 

There's no easy way to say this. And I hope with all my heart that you will forgive me, and love me in spite of what I've done.

 

Of course I'll always love you.
But what was there to forgive? Was she the product of an affair while her father was off flying the friendly skies? She would never have thought her mother could be unfaithful, but it happened all the time. She wouldn't judge her.

 

So I'll just say it as best as I can. Trust your father, Dan, for he has become your real father, and he loves you like his own, as I do.

 

Meri blinked.
As I do?
What did that mean? Cold began to creep over her skin.

 

I was pregnant when Huey died. The baby came early and only lived a few hours.

 

The room went out of focus. What baby? That baby was her. There wasn't another baby. She cut a look toward her father, who tried to smile, she thought, but it just made his mouth look like a straight line. She dragged her attention back to the letter and the words she did not want to read.

 

You remember Katy Dewar? She's the midwife who lives over by Briggs Marsh. She delivered my baby, a daughter, here in this house. But there was a terrible storm. A teenage runaway took refuge here. She was pregnant and had come looking for Katy to help her. She also gave birth to a girl the same night my baby died. Her baby was strong and healthy. The girl was terribly sick, but she refused to go to the hospital. She was frightened of something or someone; she begged us to keep her baby and not to try to find her family. That baby was you.

Unfortunately, the girl died and we buried her and my baby in the family plot and you became my daughter. Some may say it was wrong to keep you, but I knew in my heart I couldn't let you go and I regret nothing. You became my daughter. You are my daughter. You are Gran's granddaughter. Always remember that.

 

Someone sobbed, but Meri couldn't tell if it was her or Gran. She was not her mother's daughter. Her mother's daughter was buried at the little church down the road. It couldn't be true. Meri shook her head, over and over; once she started she didn't seem to be able to stop.

It wasn't true. She had a birth certificate.
Not yours.
A passport.
Based on a lie.
A driver's license.

Oh, God. It was a nightmare. She would wake up. She had to. Because if she didn't, it would mean that her whole life had been a lie and she didn't exist at all.

She read it again. The words didn't change. The meaning stayed the same. She wasn't Merielle Hollis. She was . . . nobody. They had all known and they had never told her.

 

Please forgive me. I'll love you forever,

 

Mom

 

Not her mother. Her face twisted; she could feel it as if it didn't belong to her, like a crumpled piece of paper before you threw it in the trash. Like a crumpled life.

She wanted to crumple this letter and pretend it didn't exist. But it did exist, and destroying it wouldn't change the truth. She'd never been one of them. All these years they had known and let her think she was.

She folded the letter but couldn't get it back in the envelope. Her father—
not your father
—covered her hand with his and took the letter with his free hand. Held hers when she tried to pull away.

“Your mother was uneasy in her soul. She thought you needed to know. I didn't agree. This changes nothing.”

Meri shook her head, barely aware of her tears flying onto the table.

“I know it's a shock, but don't think for a second that it changes anything.”

“It changes everything.”

“No.”

“You've all been so good to me. And . . . And—”

“You are my daughter.”

“No, I'm—I'm—”

Gran sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands. “God, what have I done?”

Meri pushed to her feet, upsetting the chair. “It's not your fault. It's—” She didn't know what it was. It was devastating. “I—I have to—” There was nothing she could do. She looked blindly at the two people she had loved all her life and felt like an imposter. It had all been an illusion. They had been a family and she had been . . . nothing.

She looked wildly around. Everything looked the same, but everything had changed. “I have to—”
Get out of this stifling kitchen, have to think, have to make it go away. Have to be what I was before tonight. Merielle Hollis.
But she wasn't—and would never be. Merielle Hollis was lying with a stranger in a nearby grave.

She stumbled back, stopped. “I'm sorry.” She rushed toward the back door and ran out into the rain.

“Meri, come back.”

But Meri ran.

 

A
lden Corrigan stood in the dark in the back second-floor bedroom, resting one hand on the windowsill and looking out at the night. It was times like these he wished he still smoked. Funny, he hadn't had a cigarette in over ten years, but it was still the first thing he wanted when things got tense.

He'd come up to the second floor because he could see the farmhouse from here, though he could only guess at what was going on inside.

He'd been against telling her. It was all water over the dam, years ago. No good would come from dredging it all up now. Dan hadn't been much for it either. But Laura had left that letter, and Gran saw it as her duty to pass it on to Meri.

Stuff like that could tear a family apart. And none of them deserved that. He knew from experience that once there was a rift, it could never be put back together.

Alden shivered. He was half tempted to turn on the heat, but that would be rather like pissing in the wind. By the time it made its way to the second floor, it would be morning and hopefully the crisis would have abated. But hell, it was damn cold for April. And rainy.

Like then. Cold and rainy. When he stopped to think, he could still feel the bone-biting cold, the stiffness in his fingers, the wet clammy skin of the girl's face, pale in the night. That face had haunted him for years. Still came to him sometimes late at night, or when he saw Meri after not seeing her for a while. That jolt of recognition. The remembrance of that night and a boy's small comprehension.

The lights had been on that night, too. That must have been how he made it to the farmhouse. He really didn't remember much about what happened after dragging the dinghy onto shore, until he woke up to Gran saying everything was all right.

God, his dad had been pissed—pissed, relieved, and proud. He could do that, his dad. A volatile combination of emotions all at once. It was enough to knock you sideways. Alden had always stood a bit in awe of his father. He was hardworking, gruff, stingy with his compliments, but good-hearted in his way.

That night he said, “You did good,” before he gave Alden a whipping for taking the dinghy out, not for disobeying him, but for doing something so stupid. It was a small price to pay for that “you did good.” And Alden cherished it even now.

Strangely enough, it was the sea that had taken his father's life.

There was a sudden flare of light in the cottage. Alden leaned into the window enclosure. The kitchen door opened and closed. Someone ran across the yard. Jesus. Was she leaving?

He'd known this was a bad idea. Maybe he should have stayed. But he couldn't bear to watch her reaction.

So he watched from the window. She ran past the car and out into the meadow, and he lost sight of her. He panicked and moved toward the door. Hadn't he promised to take care of her?

He'd tried to. But the woman was thirty now, and Alden had thought that boyhood promise had been fulfilled years ago.

He refused to run out onto the dunes like some demented Heathcliff. She'd find her way here eventually. She always did. To rant and rave. To celebrate. To ask advice or think things through. Or just to sit and look out the window to the sea.

So instead of putting on his jacket and going to look for her, he went downstairs to the kitchen to put on water for tea. And to wait.

 

M
eri didn't run for her car or down the road, but across the meadow, brittle and swollen with rain.

She hardly knew where she was going. She just ran, out into the night, the slashing rain, the biting wind. She ran until her side hurt, until her legs trembled beneath her, and her knees threatened to buckle.

The soil was soft and shifting. She slipped in a depression; her ankle turned and she went down on all fours, let out a wail, and beat the rain-soaked ground.
Why?
She wanted to curl up on the sand and grass and die.

She wasn't who she thought she was. Had never been. They'd all lied to her, year after year. She didn't have a real birth certificate. Everything about her was a lie.

She staggered to her feet, started up again, as if she could outrun the things she had just learned. She knew they loved her and would be worried, but right now she didn't care; she hurt too much.

Meri ducked into the wind and rain, ignoring the pain in her side, and ran until she couldn't take in enough air to keep going. She clutched at her middle, tried to straighten up, and saw the dark shingles and peaked roof of a place she knew almost as well as her own home.

The windows were all dark, except for one light on downstairs. Just one and she knew it was Alden's reading lamp. He'd be sitting there like he did, surrounded by darkness except for that one light.

Did he know? Was that why he wouldn't stay for dinner? Of course he did; coward that he was, he wouldn't even stay to see her exposed. And pain turned to white blazing anger. And it was focused on one place—one person.

She dashed wet strands of hair out of her face, grabbed her side, and staggered toward that one small light. She splashed through deep puddles, slid on mud, tripped over rocks sticking out of the soil, and, finally, stumbled up the stone walk.

Meri banged on the door. She couldn't even hear it over the pounding rain. She banged again, this time with both hands. The bell hadn't worked in years. Why didn't he ever fix anything?

“Dammit, Alden!”

The door opened so quickly that she fell into the house.

“Well, what an entrance.”

 

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