Until Now (27 page)

He tapped his fingers on the wheel. “Sometimes the two go hand in hand.”

New and different thoughts whirled through my mind now as we closed the rest of the gap toward home. It was true, what he’d implied. I’d walk through fire for Drake and Lila, no question. I may have inherited my mother’s lack of maternal instinct, but I knew what it meant to love and protect someone with everything I had. To keep them safe from danger. Maybe in that way, I
was
different from Chelsea. Better.

We arrived back in Weldon at quarter to ten, both of us yawning and road-weary. It felt like we’d been gone for days, enduring some huge catastrophic event together. I half-expected the Monahans’ house to look changed somehow when Ryan pulled up in front of it, parking my car alongside the curb behind his. But it was the same—cozy and quiet and dappled in morning sunlight.

Ryan placed his hand on the door handle, preparing to get out and leave me to drive myself home, but I touched his arm, stopping him. “I
was
planning on taking them,” I told him. “Drake and Lila. I wanted to bring them home, but when I actually went inside and saw them, I realized I couldn’t. They’re happy there with them. Happier than they would’ve been with me. And that hurt.” I dropped my fingers from his arm. “It still does.”

He’d taken off his sunglasses, and his pale blue eyes were dim and bloodshot as they latched onto mine. “Don’t you want them to be happy?”

I closed my eyes against the intensity of his gaze. Of course I wanted them to be happy. Of course I wanted them have a better childhood than I’d had, in a stable home filled with family and love. But at the same time, I wanted them to still need me, to run to me with their banged elbows and bad dreams and crayoned masterpieces for me to admire. The fact that I couldn’t have both right now—the twins contented and thriving
and
living here with me—was what killed me the most.

With effort, I opened my eyes and looked into his. “I don’t know what I want,” I said. It was the truth. Mostly.

Ryan nodded like he’d known this about me right from the start. “Well,” he said, opening the door to get out. I didn’t stop him this time. “Let me know when you figure it out.”

My deadline to leave the Brogans’ was looming, and there were still no prospects. By the time I arrived at work on Friday morning, exactly a week before I had to move out, I felt so desperate that I actually considered asking Abby if I could stay with her and Deena. But I decided against it just as quickly when I remembered what she’d said to me the day after the disastrous night at Fusion with Cody and his girlfriend, when I’d asked her if she’d known about Kiara’s existence this entire time.

“Well, yeah,” she’d said, unbothered. “I thought you knew, too.”

I couldn’t figure out which was worse—that she knew and didn’t mention it, or that she took me for the type of woman who would knowingly and happily hook up with someone else’s boyfriend. In any case, I hadn’t socialized with Abby outside of work since. She’d stopped hanging around my desk too, which really cut down on the lecturing from Wade.

But that didn’t mean he’d let his guard down all the way. A few minutes before my lunch break, he pulled me into his office for a chat. Terrified that he was about to fire me for something—I couldn’t lose my damn
job
on top of everything else—I held my breath as I sunk into the chair across from the desk he never sat at.

“You hear from that mother of yours yet?” he asked, pacing in the small space between the window and the shriveled plant in the corner that he always forgot to water.

I exhaled. He wasn’t going to holler at me or fire me. He just wanted an update. “No,” I said. “Well, she could’ve called my stepfather, but he and I aren’t in contact anymore.”

“And your brother and sister? What’s new with them?”

I lowered my gaze, a lump forming my throat at the thought of my little siblings. Over the past six days, I’d been trying to make peace with the current situation, even though I still didn’t like it. But seeing them again had loosened something in me that had been tangled for months. They were okay. They were safe.

But I still couldn’t talk about them. Not yet.

The war of emotions obviously showed in my face, because my boss sat down at his desk for the first time since I’d met him and leaned across the surface, his dark brown eyes steady on mine.

“If there’s ever anything I can do,” he said in his deep, gravelly voice, “you let me know. Got that, Ms. Calvert?”

His kindness expanded the lump even further, and it was all I could do not to break into sobs right there. “Thanks,” I managed to say.

“You’re welcome.” He stood up again and jutted his chin toward the half-open door behind me. “Now go eat some carbs. You’re due for a workout later.”

* * *

When I got back to the Brogans’ house at four-thirty, the place was deserted. I headed straight for the kitchen to get a pre-dinner snack. The intense strength-training session Wade had just put me through left me sore, starving, and about a thousand times less stressed. This endorphin rush was likely the reason why I barely batted an eye when the deck door opened and Leo the dog sauntered in, followed by Taylor. She paused when she saw me there, standing at the counter with a container of raspberry yogurt in my hand.

“Hey,” I said, spoon hovering inches from my lips.

She nodded to me and bent down to unhook the dog’s leash. “I just came over to walk Leo,” she said, like I’d accused her of coming over to see
me
.

I nodded back at her and shoved a spoonful of yogurt in my mouth, even though I still hadn’t swallowed my last bite. It wasn’t often that I felt awkward around my best friend, and I didn’t seem to know what to do with my hands.

Taylor grabbed Leo’s water bowl from the floor and approached the counter, sidling in next to me at the sink. I scooted over to give her more room. Silently, she filled the bowl with water and then placed it back on the floor. Leo immediately began lapping, his tongue splashing fat droplets all over the tile.

“Did you find a place yet?” Taylor asked, wiping her hands off on her shorts. She looked extra pretty today with her cheeks pink from exertion and her wavy chestnut hair spilling over her bare, tanned shoulders.

“No. Not yet.” I dipped my spoon in the container for more yogurt, but instead of scooping up another mouthful, I tossed both items into the sink beside me. My appetite had disappeared. “Tay,” I said, leaning back against the counter and gripping the edge with my fingers. “When are you going to let me apologize?”

She bit her bottom lip, her anxious-thinking pose. Beside us, Leo continued to slurp loudly.

“I did what you asked,” I pressed on when she failed to answer. “I gave you time. Lots of time. I just want us to get back to normal.”

She stared at me, her green eyes bright and unyielding. After a moment, she folded her arms over her chest and looked down, focusing on some arbitrary point on the floor. “Remember senior year,” she said, “when you started hanging around with that new crowd at school and spent every weekend drinking and getting high? Remember how you treated me back then? Like I was someone you only hung around with when you needed something or you had nothing better to do?”

“I remember,” I said softly. Three years had passed since then, but I still felt guilty whenever I thought about it. And scared. I could’ve lost her.

“Well,” she continued, her face still tilted away from me. “I stood by you through that, and forgave you for it, because I was so sure it would never happen again. That once you sobered up and took a good look at yourself, you’d see all the amazing things you had going for you and how much you stood to lose.” She looked at me again, her mouth a hard line. “And it’s so goddamn
frustrating
, watching you slide back there again. You just don’t get it, Robin. You don’t see in yourself what everyone else sees when they look at you. I thought you were starting to, I really did. You were doing so well. You turned your whole life around when the twins were born, and then—”

“And then they were gone,” I finished for her. “And I stopped trying to be a good person, because there was no point anymore. The only reason I changed at all was because of them.”

“You’ve always been a good person,” she said. “But if you see the twins as your sole source of happiness, then it’s no wonder you fell apart when they left.”

Exactly. They’d been such a huge part of my life, my biggest source of joy, and once they were gone, I’d become unmoored. Then I’d spent the next few months trying to recreate that joy in different things—all the wrong things.
Well
, I thought, my mind flashing on that morning in Ryan’s bed, his arm heavy across my waist as Mason’s soft curls brushed against my chin.
Not everything I did was wrong
.

Well-attuned to my various facial expressions after eight years of friendship, Taylor knew exactly what I was thinking about. “What’s happening with Ryan?” she said, pulling out a kitchen chair and sitting down on it. She seemed less pissed at me now, so I did the same.

“Nothing,” I said, tracing a scratch in the table with my thumb. “Not anymore, anyway. I screwed that up too. Big time.”

She quirked a dark eyebrow, urging me to go on, so I did. I told her everything I’d been keeping from her for the past several months—vodka, Abby, Fusion, Cody, Nicole, Ryan catching me with Cody, our fight, my jealously over Chelsea, the anniversary party…and lastly, what had happened last weekend, Ryan and I driving to Lowry to see the twins. I told her about that, too…going all that way to get them, only to leave them where they belonged. Until this point in my story, I’d been relatively dry-eyed. But talking about that moment, when I realized they were better off without me, wrecked me all over again.

“They were wrong about one thing, you know,” Taylor said, handing me a napkin from the wooden holder on the table. “The twins’ grandparents, I mean. They shouldn’t have asked you not to contact them at first. They’re obviously set in their ways and have their own opinions on what’s best for Drake and Lila, but I don’t think that was fair. You’re their big sister. They belong in your life, and you belong in theirs.”

I mopped my eyes with the napkin and gave her a grateful look. God, how did she always know just the right thing to say? Because she was Taylor, I guess, and my best friend for a reason.

“I’m so sorry,” I told her, balling up one napkin and reaching for another. “For not being honest with you and for acting like a total bitch that night at Milo’s, when you and Michael talked about getting married. I don’t know why I reacted that way.”

“Because we’re so young? Because we sprung it on you without warning? Because your mom’s marriage made you all cynical and jaded?”

I laughed in spite of myself. “All of that,” I said. “And also because I love you guys and don’t want to see you rush into anything that might…” I whirled my hand around, searching for the right word. “…jeopardize what you have.”

She reached over to pet Leo, who’d stationed himself by her side. “I get what you’re saying, and we love you too. A lot of people care about you, Rob.” She knocked her knee against mine until I looked up at her. “Let them,” she said firmly.

Faces flashed through my head like a slideshow: the twins, Taylor and Michael, Steve and Lynn, Wade, Jane…and Ryan and Mason. These last two faces were the ones I saw most clearly.

People care. Let them
.

“I’ll try,” I told her. “I promise.”

“Good.” She drew a long, deep breath through her nose, as if cleansing the air between us. “Now. Moving on. I know it’s a year away, and I don’t even have a ring yet, but you have to promise me you’re going to help me plan this wedding. I can handle the dress shopping, but I don’t know anything about hiring photographers or ordering flowers or any of that kind of stuff. And what will I do with my
hair
?”

“Don’t worry,” I said, suddenly inspired. “I just happen to know an amazing hair and makeup stylist.”

This was stretching the truth a bit…I’d never actually seen any samples of Nicole’s work, but she was always busy and had clients booking months in advance. I figured a year would be enough notice. All I could do was hope she wouldn’t knock me unconscious before I could ask.

“Well, I’d better get going,” Taylor said, giving Leo one last pat before standing up. “Michael will be home from work soon.”

As usual, her eyes softened as she said his name. It amazed me that the mere thought of him could still make her react that way after almost five years together, but I could sort of understand it now. Some guys just had that effect.

Alone again, I gave the dog a quick scratch under the ears and then headed upstairs to shower. As I trudged to the bathroom, my body sore from both my workout and the fierce, forgiving hug Taylor had given me before she left, my cell phone chimed in my purse. I paused on the stairs and dug it out, glancing at the screen.
Unknown number
. This was the fourth time this week that I’d received an anonymous call on my cell, and they were all the same.

But this time, when I said
hello
only to be greeted by a long stretch of silence, I didn’t hang up right away. Instead, I stayed on the line and waited. I heard nothing aside from the occasional click or burst of static but I knew, somehow, that I wasn’t alone.

“Mom?” I said finally, and the instant the word left my mouth, the phone went dead.

I hung up and quickly hit redial, but all I got was the harsh, continuous beep of a busy signal. I hung up a second time and scrolled through my contacts, searching for a name I hadn’t seen or thought about in a long time. Surprisingly, he answered on the first ring.

“Alan,” I said, continuing up the stairs to my room. “Have you heard from my mother at all?”

“Your mother? No, not since June. Why?”

I told him about the anonymous calls I’d been receiving on my cell. “I think it’s her,” I said, sitting on the bed. “Maybe she misses the twins and wants to come home.”

“I think it’s possible that she misses the twins,” he said after a pause. “But I don’t think she wants to come home. That woman is not cut out to be a parent. You should know that even better than me.” He cleared his throat. “I’d be surprised if it
was
her, calling you. She abandoned her two small children, left them without a mother. Somehow I doubt that she was hit with a sudden case of remorse.”

I opened my mouth to snap at him but then closed it again when I realized he was right. My God. Alan was
right
. “What would you do if she did come back?” I asked instead. “Would you ever forgive her?”

He made a scoffing noise. “Hardly. She’s made her bed.”

He didn’t ask me the same question, and I was glad. I didn’t know what I’d do when—or if—my mother ever came home. Maybe I’d be like Jane, neutral and forgiving. Or maybe I’d be like Alan, bitter to the end. In a lot of ways he wasn’t any better than she was, but if I could say one thing for him, he’d made sure his children were safe and taken care of, even if he didn’t see them often himself.

“I heard you visited the twins on Saturday,” he said, reading my mind.

“Yeah.” I glanced over at the nightstand, where I’d placed the framed picture of the kids as babies that I’d taken from the Redwood Hills house the day Alan told me where Mom was. “I figured it was time.”