The Fable of Us (33 page)

Dad took another long pull on his cigar before blowing out a series of smoke rings. “You and Boone Cavanaugh were never going to wind up together. You both knew that, right along with the rest of us. Ford just happened to be the one to step in and bite the bullet.”

“He had no right to.”

“Right or not, he did it. And I’m not sorry to admit I was relieved. You deserved better than that boy, sweetheart.” Dad’s voice went quieter, edging into the soft realm. “You deserve better than any boy God’s seen fit to make, but I knew Boone would only become a bigger black hole in your life if he stayed.”

I crossed my arms over my knees and dropped my head onto them. Seven years later, and I was still about in tears talking to my dad about Boone Cavanaugh. I prayed I wouldn’t find myself in the same situation in another seven years. “He was never a black hole. He was pretty much the one bright spot in my universe. You guys never got it, but that’s the way it was.”

Dad snorted. “What do you call him getting you pregnant when you were both a couple of kids then?” He shook his head as he popped off another snort. “If that’s not a black hole, I don’t know what is. What were you two going to do if you had stayed together? Have that baby, let this whole city see you as a single teen mom pretending to play house with a boy whose five-year plan was staying out of prison? I wanted more for you, baby. I wanted the world.” He threw his arms out in front of us like the world was right there, just waiting for me to grab it. “Not some run-down shack in that trailer park he grew up in.”

“Don’t you see, Daddy? I had the world.
He
was my world. He was everything I wanted, and Ford took that away from me.” I didn’t realize I’d started to cry until I felt my dad’s arm wrap around my shoulders. It didn’t feel forced or unnatural; it felt like a concerned father trying to comfort his daughter.

He patted my back a few times before his arm returned to his side. “Don’t play the victim. Ford didn’t take anything from you. You just didn’t have a hard enough grip around it. Because somewhere inside you, you knew what we all did. Boone wasn’t your future.” His words weren’t gentle, but his voice was.

“I loved him.”

“I know baby.” He sighed. “I know.”

Swiping the tears away, I felt anger shoot back into my blood. I was on an emotional roller coaster and couldn’t find my way off. My dad was going to wish by the end of this conversation that he’d never sat beside me. “I loved him so much, and he just left. He took Ford’s word and walked away. Didn’t answer my calls, wouldn’t answer the door no matter how hard I pounded on it. He just seemed to forget all about me.”

My dad shifted beside me right before he worked the top button of his shirt undone. “That, baby, might not have been all Ford’s doing.” He stopped to put out his cigar. “I wasn’t planning on telling you this, your mama doesn’t even know, but I think you should know something about Boone you don’t.”

My heart stalled. “What?”

“He came back.”

“Wait.” I shook my head, feeling like I’d just been dropped in the middle of the desert and wasn’t sure which direction I was facing. “When did he come back?”

“A few days after the big scuttleloo.”

What he called a “scuttleloo” I called the worst day of my life—the day Boone and I had broken up.

Dad continued, “I suppose he needed a few days to cool his jets or whatever, but he came back to the house late one night, looking for you. I was out on the porch and caught him before he climbed that tree to sneak into your room.”

“Did you talk to him?” My voice was barely audible.

He gave a burly-sounding grunt. “I wanted to run him off with my shotgun, but it was locked in the safe. Your mama made sure of that after all that went down between you and Boone, guessing I’d shoot him on sight when and if he showed back up.”

“Daddy . . .”

“What?” He looked at me with an innocent expression. “That’s what any boy deserves who doesn’t take the proper precautions and responsibility to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.”

“It wasn’t unwanted.” I looked him straight in the eye, unyielding. “Unexpected, but please don’t ever call it unwanted again.”

He returned the unyielding stare, the master I’d probably picked mine up from. “You were eighteen.”

“It was my baby.”

He blinked and looked away. “So Boone wanted to see you. Right then and there, at half past midnight. I told him no and to get lost. He said he wasn’t leaving until he saw you. I told him you were asleep and I’d be damned if he ever saw you again. He said he’d wait outside until you woke up and that he’d be damned if he let me keep him from seeing you.” He waved his hand in an et cetera motion.

“So it was about a typical conversation between you and Boone.”

“Up to about this point. That was the day after . . . you’d lost the baby. You remember?”

The air shifted then, becoming less sticky and more chilly. Instead of encasing my skin, it felt more like it was attacking it. “I’ll never forget,” I whispered.

“You were catatonic and hadn’t left your room all day. I was worried, beyond worried.” Dad kicked at the same patch of earth I’d been working to death with the toe of my shoe. “You were dealing with so much, and I thought bringing Boone back into your life would set you off into a tailspin. You were fragile.”

My shoulders lifted then fell. “I’d lost a lot in a matter of four days.”

“I didn’t know what or who would be the one to pull the pin from you, baby, but I knew if I wasn’t careful, it would happen. Boone seemed like the most likely suspect, so I did what I had to do to keep him away.”

I swallowed and hugged my body. It was barely nine at night in the dead of summer in the south, so why did I feel like I’d been locked inside of a walk-in freezer? “What did you have to do?”

“Offered him a stack of cash. A thick stack.” He pinched his fingers together to show just how thick.

“You paid him off to stay away.” I should have known. I should have at least guessed.

“I would have done so much more.” He clasped his hands together and let his shoulders drop. “I
did
do so much more.”

“What does that mean?”

He was quiet for so long, I was almost convinced he wasn’t going to answer me. I knew from experience that trying to pry something from my dad was about as successful an endeavor as trying to pry a cub from a mama grizzly bear’s paws.

“I told him you lost the baby.” His eyes narrowed as he studied the night in front of us. “I told him it was gone. You should have seen him, Clara Belle. The life drained right out of his face. I’d never seen a person fall apart like that, right in front of me.” Dad stared at that space like eighteen-year-old Boone was in front of him all over again. “That lasted for about a minute, then he made a run for the door. He’s always been one strong son of a bitch, even for a kid, and I couldn’t hold him back. So I told him what I had to in order to get him to go away.”

My heart was beating so loudly, it drowned out the music from the band on the front lawn. “What did you tell him? What did you tell him, Daddy?”

He shook his head, glaring at that space in front of him like he was cursing it. “I told him that you’d had an—”

“Abortion.” An imposing shadow stepped out of the same space my dad had been staring at. “That you’d walked into some clinic and had our baby aborted.”

Dad shot to a stand, holding out his hand as he stepped in front of me. “Now, Boone, you’re walking in on the tail end of this conversation. I’d suggest you take a step back, cool that hot head of yours, and listen to what Clara has to say.”

My father’s posture indicated he was trying to protect me from Boone. From what, I didn’t know, but didn’t he see? I hadn’t needed protection from Boone—I’d needed protection from my family. From my father, and whatever lies he’d woven that were just as responsible as Ford’s for tearing Boone and me apart. From telling Boone I’d . . .

What had he just said? Abortion? My mind was lagging behind, not quite capable of keeping up with the moment.

When Boone looked at me, betrayal drowning in his eyes, I finally got it—why he’d left me like he had. So sudden. So final.

“I’m done listening to what she has to say,” he said, backing away from me like I was a viper about to strike.

He hadn’t just bought one lie back then—he’d bought two. He’d listened to Ford and my father, not even thinking to confirm what they’d said with me. I suddenly felt like that viper, ready to spew venom in Boone’s direction.

Thrusting off the porch, I stood as tall as I could. “You’ve never been ready to hear me out, Boone. You’ve been too busy listening to everyone else.”

And then I walked away. Again. For the second night in a row. I was hurt and confused and felt betrayed by so many people for so many reasons.

I didn’t really know where I was going until I wound up in my bedroom and slid the window open. I’d worked out so many problems and tears on this roof, it should have collapsed from the weight years ago.

After crawling out and finding a good spot, I told myself I wasn’t going to cry. Not over this. Not again. Not after finding out three men who’d held important roles in my life had all betrayed me. For whatever reasons—selfish or unselfish—they’d hurt me and cut me out of the equation, leaving me to be the victim of their outcome instead of the creator of my own.

I ordered myself not to cry again. I cursed and belittled myself, threatening that if I dared cry another tear over the past, I’d hurl myself over the roof and give myself a broken leg or something. I was already crying when I made my threats though, and they only made me cry more.

I’d come to a place in my life where I’d been certain I’d left all of this behind. I’d left Charleston and Boone and the baby behind. But if that was the case, why did I feel like I’d just been gutted at the same time my heart was attempting to exit my body via my throat? Why did I feel like everything I’d known had been a lie and everyone in it had been a liar?

I was trying so hard not to cry, because each tear that rolled down my cheek seemed to make it more real. Each one gave more credit to what had happened instead of allowing me to rebury it in the unmarked grave I’d been content to ignore for seven years.

I should have listened to the warning siren in my head and never come back here. I should have listened to it after I had come back and it kept going off, warning me to leave before things got worse. Because things had impossibly gotten worse.

We’re talking bottom floor of the Worse Building.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed a big shadow crawl through the window toward me, but I was going to ignore him. Maybe if that was the policy I’d applied to Boone Cavanaugh all those years ago, like my parents had ordered me to, I wouldn’t be here now—on top of my childhood home and crying my eyes apart.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look over. He just sat beside me, leaving a couple feet of space between us, and stared into the darkness that he seemed immune to. Whereas the dark had always seemed to envelop me and take me under, Boone had always been able to wade through it.

After a minute, I couldn’t take the silence anymore. He’d come looking for me and crawled out here for a reason. He should have had the balls to announce that reason without drawing out the waiting game.

“What are you doing here? I’m just your slut ex who got an abortion.” I’d been going for venomous hate, but my voice fell more in the overwhelmingly sad realm.

“You’re right. I never did stop to hear you out.” Boone looked at me. “Or listen. I would have done anything for you back then, but when it really mattered, when we probably both really needed to talk and listen to each other, I failed.” I wasn’t looking at him—not really—but even from the corner of my eye I could see his jaw go rigid. “I’m ready to listen now.”

I curled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. Sitting like this, on the roof next to Boone, transported me back in time, to a place I both wanted to never leave and never visit again. “But maybe I’m past being willing to explain.”

“Maybe.” He nodded. “And that’s on me. So if that’s the case, I’ll understand.”

“You seemed less ‘understanding’ down there.”

Boone shifted so he was almost facing me. He might have been ready to face this, but I wasn’t sure I was.

“Well, like your dad said, sometimes I just need to give myself a moment to cool my hot head.” One of his shoulders lifted. “Plus, he might have threatened to turn me into a shotgun target if I didn’t get up here and hear your side of the story.”

“I bet he was disappointed when you listened.”

Half a smile moved into place. “I’ve never seen a man so disappointed.”

He was wearing on me. Wearing me down or wearing me ragged, he was getting to me. It could have been the partial smile, or it could have been him, again, being the only one to ever come find me when I left, or it could have been that I’d never been good at saying no to Boone Cavanaugh. Whatever it was, it seemed that after years of silence and misguided beliefs, I was ready. Ready to talk, explain, and finally bury this all for good.

“Tell me this first,” I started slowly. “If what you believed was true, about what I’d done, why did you take me up on my offer?”

“The money.” His answer was immediate, but his voice gave him away.

“Oh yeah? The fat check you still haven’t cashed? That was your reason?” My brows lifted in his direction. “Well, paint me skeptical.”

“Seven years have gone by. That’s ancient history for all I care.” His tone was still off, barely, but it was enough to give away that he wasn’t telling the truth. At least not the
whole
truth.

“And that’s why you’re acting like it all happened yesterday?” I waved at him, his posture tense and his eyes darting over everything but me. “Well, slap a double coat of skeptical on me.”

That was when his eyes finally moved in my direction. They didn’t dart away. “You know why.”

“I know what?” I pressed, not about to make this easy on him. Why start now after years of trekking down the hard road?

“The same reason we touched on last night.”