Cursed be the Wicked (33 page)

I’m guessing this is her way of introducing Jack and me, hoping it will open the door to new possibilities despite her mistakes.

I sit back and wonder for a while what he’s doing right now. If he’s okay, if he stuck around Salem, or if maybe he left town after his talk with Finn and me that night.

It hurts that I didn’t get the opportunity to tell him he has a son before I left.

My mind wanders to Finn then, and as I fall asleep, I’m not dreaming of monsters or fights, or parents that were far from perfect. I’m dreaming of her. With her soft, perfectly shaped, luscious lips on mine, and how all I want is to hear her tell me what a jackass I am for thinking I know everything.

Chapter 20

Moving On

Dreams of Finn invade my subconscious to the point that at five a.m., I go ahead and get out of bed. I have a lot of catching up to do today anyway.

I start some coffee and grab the stack of envelopes I picked up at the post office yesterday.

I flip through the first few.
Junk, junk, bill, bill.

I start skimming, faster and faster, dropping most of what I hold into the garbage as I pass them until one return address catches my attention as it’s falling into the silver trash can beside me.

I put the other mail down and reach in to pick it up.

It’s from the insurance company I’ve been dealing with on Mom’s house.

I pull the check out from the envelope and feel my eyes grow wide. The amount they’ve written me a check for is far more than I had expected. I have to blink, checking it a few times before I trust the number of zeros I’m seeing.

“Holy shit.”

I can do anything with this check.

Go
anywhere.

I can travel the world and visit Hong Kong on my own, without having to write about it if I don’t want to. I think about Mom and how, had she had this much money, she could have gone with Jack to Berkley for crying out loud.

I stop and think about that for a minute. About all of the mistakes she made. Sure, she made a lot. But there’s someone else that made mistakes too.

Jack.

He left even though he knew he didn’t want to. He knew Mom was making the wrong choice. Maybe if he’d stayed, he could have forced her to see that what she was doing wasn’t the way to go.

Maybe not, but
maybe
he could have.

My mind delves deeper and I realize there’s one more person who’s made a similar mistake recently.

Me. There’s only one place I want to travel to right now. The one place I spent the better part of my life avoiding. Now it’s the only place I want to be. The home of who used to be my only living blood relative, along with the one person who’s managed to take my heart and turn it upside right again.

Made everything right again.

Finn.

Epiphanies are funny things. Once you have them, there’s no going back, even if it means risking your heart. Once I admit that Salem holds things inside its city limits that have become very important to me, there are only a few things left for me to do.

First, I write Bill, and tell him I quit.

Not because I suddenly don’t want to travel anymore, but because I think it’s high time I stop settling for the easy way out and start writing about things that mean something to me.

Second, I make some arrangements with regards to my apartment and pack up the essentials I know I can’t live without.

Third, I drive.

The drive up the east coast is agonizing. Despite the fact that I don’t stop to sleep, time drags. Traffic through Virginia sucks, I now hate fast food, and I can’t get to Salem fast enough.

Twenty-four hours later, though, I’m here.

My original plan was to drive directly to Geneva’s but now that I’m here, I know there’s one stop I need to make before seeing Finn.

I pull up to the local savings and loan building and park. The old brick building has tinted windows but I know he’s in there, sitting at his desk, pushing papers.

I sit for a minute and appreciate that I’m not moving right now. I check the clock. I’ve still got time, so I lay my head against the steering wheel and close my eyes for five minutes. When I open them, I’m ready.

I get out of the car and go inside. It’s clean, the carpet looks new and there’s a receptionist’s desk that lines most of the front room. I can almost smell the money that passes through this place every day.

“Dan Moss please?” I say to the woman behind the mahogany counter.

“Is he expecting you?”

I smile.

“No,” I tell her. “He’s not. But trust me, he wants to see me.”

He won’t but there’s no getting out of this visit. He isn’t going to want to disappoint his bosses by telling them he passed up an opportunity for them to make money.

“Can I give him your name?” she requests sweetly and I smile.

“No.”

I feel a little bad. I’ve confused this poor woman but she’ll live. She goes back to the offices to retrieve him for me. I spot him straightening his suit as he strolls down the hallway, laughing with the receptionist at some dumb ass joke he’s probably just told. When he steps out into the lobby and sees me, the grin is wiped right off of his face.

“Dan,” I say, holding my stance. I hide the shit-eating grin I want to sport. For now.

He’s not sure how to take my presence. It takes him a good minute before he can speak. A full minute is a long time.

“Coop, I thought you left.”

“I did, Dan. But now, I’m back.”

I need to work on not seeming so smug.

“Oh, you uh, forget something?”

“You could say that,” I tell him. Then I reach into my pocket and pull out my checkbook. Dan flinches when I pull it out and I nearly laugh but I hold it in.

“I have a message for you, Dan,” I tell him as I begin writing a check out to the mortgage company.

“What’s that?”

I rip it out of the register and hand it to him to fill the numbers out for me.

“Finn’s not going to date you. Ever.”

He looks at the check, confused.

“I’m paying Geneva’s mortgage in full. I’ll be back later for the receipt, and then we’re never discussing it again. Understand?”

Dan swallows and adjusts his tie. “You realize her balance is well over forty thousand dollars?”

It’s almost funny to me that he still thinks he can intimidate me. Not that he did before, but having this kind of money in the bank makes answering him even sweeter.

“I don’t give a shit what the balance is,” I tell him. “There’s plenty in the account to cover it.”

And then some.

“I don’t know if I can accept a check from something other than the owner of the property.”

“Bullshit. Make it happen, Dan,” I tell him then start to leave before I remember one last thing.

“And Dan?”

He looks up from the check I’ve given him.

“Be sure to tell your little brother, if I ever catch him giving Finn a hard time again, he won’t get the opportunity for a cheap shot next time.”

I tell him because regardless of whether or not she can take care of herself, I want to protect her. Always.

Dan nods and I leave.

When I stop at Geneva’s to try to catch Finn, I’m sorely disappointed when I find that nobody’s home. After I leave there, I head over to the one place I know she spends a whole lot of her time.

The B&B.

After I park, I grab the duffel I’ve brought with me out of the backseat of my Chevy and head in to see if my old room is still available. I’m stopped cold when I see him working on the grounds around the side of the house.

At least I think it’s him.

“He showed up about a week after you left.”

I look down beside me to see Finn and immediately smile. When she looks up at me, she gives nothing away. Not until she speaks.

“Thought you’d never get here,” she tells me and my brow dips.

“I hate to ask this, but how could you possibly have known I was on my way?”

She shrugs and goes back to watching Jack do manual labor. “I might have had a dream.”

“A dream,” I repeat, recalling another time she had a dream and she still doesn’t look back up at me. She just smirks and crosses her arms.

“Back to repeating everything I say again, Coop?” She sighs heavily. “I thought we were past that.”

It’s all I need to know she hasn’t been blowing me off. She knows me better than I know myself.

I watch Jack pull weeds out from around the flowers and bushes and I wonder if the two of them have really talked again since that night.

“I told him you’d gone,” Finn says, like she can read my mind. “He seemed kind of sad about that.”

“And you?”

“Me?”

She looks up, confused.

“Did you miss me, Finn?” I smile at her. Hell, I can’t help it these days.

She thinks about it.

“A little.”

There’s no hole in my chest when she says it. With Finn, a little is all I need.

I motion toward Jack with my chin. “Where’s he been staying?”

“Not sure, I let him keep a room for a night or two for the work he does but it seems like he’s uncomfortable here. Sometimes he disappears on me but only for a couple of days at a time.” She tilts her head, watching him. “I’m sure it’s difficult, connecting with people after all these years.”

I can imagine.

“Does he know?”

“No, I didn’t think it was my place to say anything.”

I nod.

“I’ve got to talk to him sometime,” I say under my breath. “I was hoping you and I could talk though.”

She turns and sighs. Her eyes are bright and her lips are turned up just a tad. She’s definitely happy to see me.

“We can do that later. You staying here?”

“I was hoping to.”

“Well,” she takes my duffel. “I know where you live then.”

I stop her for a second and get something out of the bag. Something I’ll need if I’m planning to talk with Jack.

“What’s that?” she eyes it carefully.

I hold it up for her. “Maggie’s final wishes.”

Her mouth falls open but it turns into a knowing grin, then she leaves me there to go inside. She says something to Jack before she does and he stops what he’s doing, looks around until he sees me.

I tuck my mother’s journal under my arm and go over to him.

“Hey, Jack.”

He stands, wiping his gloves on his jeans before taking them off and dropping them to the ground.

He shakes my hand and I feel like, on some level, I’m meeting him for the first time.

“Good to see you, Cooper.”

I’m nervous all of a sudden. I can’t speak right away. I’m afraid my voice will shake. So I end up standing there like a buffoon for a couple of moments before saying anything to him.

It’s awkward.

“Listen.” I clear my throat. “I wanted to thank you for talking to me and Finn that night.”

He shrugs.

“And to say I’m sorry. For doubting you had anything but the best of intentions with Mom.”

“I’d have worried if you didn’t doubt, Coop,” he tells me with a smirk. Today, I decide, must be one of his good days.

“Got a minute?” I ask him, hoping this is as good a time as any to give him the news I have.

“Uh,” he looks around for Finn but she’s nowhere to be seen, “I guess so.”

I lead him around to the back of the house to sit on the back patio where we can have some privacy. There’s nothing back here but land. The grass is turning brown now but the trees still hold some color. It’s cold but it’s not so cold I can’t stand it. There’s no wind, and there’s plenty of sunshine.

When we sit down, I realize I don’t know how to begin this conversation.

“I, um.” Nervous laughter escapes me. Then I pull the journal out from under my arm and the tension subsides.

“To be honest, I don’t really know how to tell you this, Jack, so, I think I’ll let Maggie do the honors.”

His brow furrows when I hand him the book she had mailed to me. When he looks down and sees her name on the outside, he lets out a long sigh and his fingers glide across the letters, shaking.

“Mag Pie.”

I nod. “Before she died, she wrote a very important message she wanted us to get,” I tell him. Then I open it up to where I’ve marked a few passages that were clearly meant for him to see.

The page she says the worst mistake she ever made was underestimating him and what he was capable of handling.

The one where she writes about dreams they talked about, the night she told him she loved him for the first time.

And then the last entry. The letter she wrote to me.

He reads it and toward the end, his eyes are wet. When he closes the journal, he looks up at me, speechless.

“Just breathe, Jack.”

He does, a few times. He wipes his eyes and rubs his stubble. He stares off at the trees for a few quiet moments, then finally, he talks.

“What,” he stops, collecting his thoughts. “What does this mean?”

He knows what it means. But I get it. He needs some back up. Just like I do.

“Tell me something, Jack,” I ask him, smiling. “What blood type are you?”

His brow scrunches as he thinks it over.

“I was tested a few years ago. I was drunk driving.” My eyes widen and he assures me, “Don’t worry, no one was injured, except my car.”

I breathe out with relief.

“They tested my blood alcohol level at the hospital that night though.”

“And?”

“It was
A.
”

After Jack lets the information I’ve given him sink in, he tells me he has to get back to work. I keep an eye on him for a while, making sure he doesn’t try to run off on me again.

He doesn’t.

The rest of the evening, I help out around the B&B. In part to keep myself busy, but mostly so I can spend some time with Finn.

After putting me to work on some loose hinges to several doors, she leaves to run an errand. By the time I’m done, I can’t find her anywhere.

I look around for her but everyone I cross paths with tells me she’s left for the day. When I check my watch, it’s late, much later than I expected it to be and even when I try to call her cell, she doesn’t answer. I won’t give up, but for now, I head up to my room. I need a break.

I open the door and low and behold, there she is, asleep in my bed, with nothing but a T-shirt on. All is right when I lay eyes on her. There’s no ache in my chest, no hole to fill. I’m not anxious or worried.

I am content, and as I watch her sleep, it occurs to me, there isn’t anywhere else I’d rather her be.

I close the door quietly but she opens her eyes when the lock clicks. I grin as I step closer to the bed, kicking my shoes off on the way.