The Right Kind of Wrong (21 page)

"I've hidden myself pretty well. What gave me away?"

I grin. "Your reluctance to give up on my grandma. We found the letters you sent her over the years. The last one had the address to a nursing home. We followed it and well, here we are. We had no idea whether you'd be here or not. Especially since the content of your last letter wasn't positive. We were afraid we were going to be too late."

"Time is a funny thing. You wait for so many things your entire life. You wait to grow up, wait to get married and have kids, start a new chapter in your life, wait to die. Eventually, you learn to accept it, to welcome it when it comes. I was ready to die, but not now. I'm not ready yet."

"Then come home with us."

 
"I haven't been back to Everson since the day I left. I'm not sure going back is the wisest thing."

"James is dead. Grandpa is gone. If there was ever a time to come home, it's now. Please, come home."

We lock eyes and I plead with him. He tears his gaze away from mine and he wheezes. It sounds painful.
 

"What if your grandmother doesn't want me to come back?"

I squeeze his hand. "I think she's wanted you to come home since you left. I'm not saying things will be easy. I just... I think it's time."

He starts to cry again and when he looks at me, I see so much of my grandfather in him. I see why my grandmother could have fallen in love with this man. He's quiet for a long time.
 

And then, it's like he's done wasting time. "Okay, I'll go," he says.

I hug him just as Vince walks in.
 

I smile at him. "Guess who's coming home with us?"

Once we pack enough of Charlie's things to get him through a few weeks, we set off for Everson. Vince opts for the backseat so with Charlie in the front seat, I intend to use up every hour in the car we had to grill him on his life.
 

"Where did you go after you left Everson?"

"Everywhere. I had a friend who was a rancher in Texas so I took the train down there and worked for him for a few months. When I got restless there, I took the train west and spent a few months working at a Casino in Vegas. Spent a few months in Oregon, too. Pretty place."

"How did you end up in Wisconsin?" Vince pipes up from the back.
 

"My wife Sara had family there. When she got sick, she wanted to be near them. I guess, I was tired of never staying in one place, so I stayed in Wisconsin. Hasn't been bad. Reminds me of Iowa a little bit."

"You sent a letter to Grandma saying you saw her and Grandpa once. Where was that at?"

Charlie rubs his temple. "Des Moines."

I don't say anything and he closes his eyes. Minutes later he's snoring. I look at Vince through the rearview mirror. He stifles his laughter.

"He's an old man. Leave him alone," I tease.

"Yeah, whatever. So, what now?"
 

"I don't know. We get him back in one piece, let him and Grandma work things out and then we figure out how piece all this together for the project."

"You know we have something big here, right? Huge, actually. If we do this the right way, we could be looking at winning the entire thing."

I laugh. "Yeah, but you said that when we were doing it on my grandfather."

"Well, with me behind the camera lens, it doesn't matter what the subject is. We're bound to win."

"I'm surprised your head fit through the car door."

"Ass," he says smiling as he punches my headrest so my head jerks forward.
 

I smile. "Love you too." But after it comes out of my mouth, I gasp. "I mean, you know what I'm trying to say."

Vince smirks at me, "Yeah, I do. And for the record, I do too.
 

I let his words sink in. The way he says it replays in my mind, the contentedness seeps into my veins. It settles in my heart, and the past week's events play in my head like a movie. In under a week, I fell for the one person I hated more than anything. I discovered that my grandfather had a twin and said twin had an affair with my grandmother resulting in a baby whose father she lied about. I learned that my great-grandfather was a piece of shit and that my family is really fucked up.
 

When we make it back to my grandmother's, the sun is dipping below the horizon. I get out and my back aches with the weight of this week's events. My eyelids droop with the promise of a deep slumber. I could sleep for days, but there's too much for me to do. Too much to hear. Charlie gets out of the car slowly and when he makes it to the front porch, he shakes his head.

"It hasn't changed one bit."

"Neither have you," my grandmother says from the swing. She stands up and he drops his bag and hobbles over to her. They stand staring at each other for a few minutes. His hand reaches up and touches her face, cupping her chin. He starts to sob. "I never thought I'd see you again. Oh God, you're just as beautiful as you've always been."

Grandma puts her arms around his neck and lays her head on his chest. "Shh, it's okay. You're here now."
 

Vince's hand slips into mine and he leads me inside the house which is perfect because watching the reunion between Grandma and Charlie was starting to feel a little like voyeurism.
 

"Let them have a few minutes. It's been a long time since they've seen each other. They have a lot of catching up to do."

"They have a lot of answering to do, too."

Vince kisses me to shut me up. "All in good time."

I follow him upstairs, to my room. He flops on the bed with his laptop and various cameras in hand. "What's going to happen when we get back to California?"
 

I sit down on the bed next to him. "We have to get our asses in gear putting this thing together."

"No, I mean, with us," he says.

I try to play off the question. "I don't know. What do you want to happen?"

"You tell me. I think you still have unresolved business with Kyle."

"Just because we slept together and whatever this..." I point to the two of us, "is, doesn't mean you know everything about me."

"I know Kyle affects you more than you let on. I know that you want me to think you slept with him just because you wanted to, but that's not true, is it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you started whatever you had with him because you thought he might give you what you've been looking for since you left here. Validation. Attention. Love."

"That's not true," I say, my voice shaky.

He slides over and cups my face in his hands. He kisses my lips softly, and I can taste him when he pulls away. "It is true. But he wasn't the guy you thought he was. And I'm not either. I can be what you need, Kara. But you have to let go of our past. Can you do that?"

I look in his eyes and I see myself waking up to them. I remember the way it felt in his arms, the way he's been exactly what I've needed him to be while we're here. "I can try," I say finally.

"Then tell me, what happens when we get back to California?"

I swallow. "We try this us thing."

"Are you sure?"

I nod and he kisses me again. "I was hoping you'd say that. Even though you drive me fucking nuts and I wonder why we didn't stick with the whole hating each other thing, I can't imagine things any other way. I'm not sure if I can go back to the way things were, even if I wanted to."

I push him down on the bed and kiss his neck. "Then we won't."

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-E
IGHT

After a fairly awkward dinner, where no one really knows what to say, Vince sets up the video camera in the corner and Charlie goes through the timeline of his life after Everson. Every so often Grandma stops him to ask a question. But mostly he talks about all the places he's been and no matter how far he went, Grandma's ghost seemed to follow him. She blushes at this.

She asks him about Sara, but he doesn't say much about her. He met her in Denver. Married her six months later. She couldn't have kids so they lived without them, until she got sick. He asks Grandma the same question.
 

"We tried. Never could get pregnant again. Used to make Wesley crazy that we couldn't have more laughter in this house, but when we got Kara, he focused all his time and attention on her."

We ask Charlie more questions than he's probably had to answer in his lifetime. When Vince's video camera blinks low battery and it looks like both Grandma and Charlie are ready to fall asleep sitting up, we go to bed.

The morning brings a troubling addition when I hear arguing downstairs. I slip out from under Vince's arm and get dressed. When I hit the bottom of the stairs I hear an unmistakable voice.
 

My father's.

"You must not have any work to do if you're back in town," I say. He turns to me when he hears my voice.

I'm amazed at how little my father has changed. He's still the same tall, business-like man he's always been, only now his thick black hair is replaced by silvery strands and the skin around his eyes is puckered. His face is gaunt like he's forgotten that his body requires food.
 

"My God, you look just like your mother right now."

I grimace. This is already not going well. "What are you doing here, Dad?"
 

"I called him," Vince's says coming down the stairs.

"What? Why?" I say. "How'd you even get his number?"

"Parker gave it to me." He looks at my father and extends his hand. My father takes it. "Vince Gage."

"Jack Pierce," my father says back. "Vince said there were some things happening here that I needed to be aware of. He wouldn't tell me what, but I assumed since he took the time to call me, I probably should heed his advice."

I laugh then, because it's ridiculous he needed a phone call from a guy he's never met to get him back home. "You're kidding me, right? Do you want a fucking cookie for coming back when someone said they needed you?"

Vince grabs my arm but I push him off me. "Don't. Touch. Me."
 

My grandmother steps between us. "Kara, please, can we all just sit down and talk about this like adults?"

When I look at my grandmother, I see how frail she looks this morning and I immediately soften. "Fine." I sit down in a chair closest to me. Charlie is nowhere to be seen and I worry he might've left us in the middle of the night but then I hear the bathroom door open and he has no clue he's walking into an ambush.
 

"Elaine, do you have—" He stops when he sees my father. "Oh, I didn't realize you were having company this morning."

My father stands up. His eyes wide like he's looking at a ghost or a hologram of a dead man. "Mom, who the hell is this? He looks like…"

"Sit down," she says as she fixes herself a glass of water. When my father remains standing she says it a little more violently. "Jack, sit down, now."

He falls into his seat utterly confused. I can't blame him.

When my grandmother comes back with a glass of water, she sits in her rocker and motions Charlie over to the couch. "Charlie, this is Jack. He just got here and if you haven't guessed by the yelling, we're just getting started with things."

Charlie sits down on the end of the couch closest to my grandmother. My father stares at Charlie, his reaction spot-on with how I felt when I first met him. The tension sizzles hot in the room and I wonder who will be the first to cut it wide open.

"Jack, I have something to tell you."

He looks to me, then back to Grandma. "Okay?"

She holds up Charlie's hand. "This is Charlie Pierce, your father's twin brother."

My father looks at them incredulously. "This is ridiculous. Absolutely crazy. Dad didn't have a twin brother. This is… I don't know how he's doing this but it's not right. What does he want? Money?"

Grandma sighs and looks to me for help and I shrug. She's got the wrong person for that. The only person I want to help right now is myself.
 

"He's not here for any money and your father did have a twin, dear."

My father shakes his head. "Why didn't Dad say anything about him then? Where has he been my whole life and why is he coming out of the woodwork now?"

"It's… complicated," Grandma says.
 

My father needs proof. I nudge Vince in the ribs. "Go get the pictures. They're up on the dresser."
 

He nods and runs up the stairs. Charlie sits hunched over on his side of the couch. He looks like he wants desperately to say something but I think he's scared of my father.

"Elaine, I could—"

"No, Charlie. This isn't your mess to clean up. He needs to hear it from me."

"Hear what?" My father demands, his voice projecting louder. I shrink into the wall. It's been so long since I've heard him talk, let alone yell. Vince reaches the bottom of the stairs and hands my father the bundle of pictures.

My father flips through them slowly, staring at each one like the images will dissolve into the paper. He sets them on the coffee table and looks at my grandmother, then to Charlie.

Dad inhales deeply. "Okay. I believe you."

"Good, because there's more," Grandma says pained.

"Jesus."

"Wesley isn't your father, Charlie is."
 

"What?" My father squeaks out.
 

Grandma's eyes act like a faucet. One minute she's okay and the next tears spill out onto her cheek. Her shoulders quake and I resist the urge to run to her. You can't fix everything, Kara. Especially this.
 

"I'm so sorry, Jack. I never meant to—"
 

"Jesus Christ, Mom." My father puts his head in his hands. "You've lied to me my entire life. How could you do this to me? To Dad?"

Charlie's hand snakes across the arm of the couch until it fits inside Grandma's palm.

"It's all my fault. I betrayed my brother by falling in love with Elaine. I didn't mean for it to happen. It just did."