Secondary Colors (29 page)

Jim takes her hand with the gentlest of touches and walks her over to us.

“Bailey, we’d like you to meet someone very important, Aidan.” Margo kneels down to her daughter’s height. “Would you like to say hello to our guest?”

She’s half hiding behind Jim’s leg, one green eye poking out at Aidan.

“Hello,” a whisper of a voice greets him. It’s an angelic, tiny voice, one that tugs violently at the strings of my heart.

“Hello, Bailey,” he responds, kneeling down beside Margo. I rub him on the back when he extends a hand out to her and she takes refuge behind Jim.

“Baby, come here.” Bailey hesitantly comes out of her hiding spot and walks up to her mother, side-glancing Aidan suspiciously. She’s not very trusting…like me. Margo takes the beautiful child into her arms and sits her on her lap. “Do you remember what Mommy told you about her belly, how Mommy couldn’t grow a baby of her own?”

Bailey nods her head with understanding, or as much as a three-year-old could possibly understand about this subject.

“I didn’t come from Mama’s tummy.”

“Even though you’re my baby. No, you didn’t. But Mama and Dada love you so much.”

“I love you, Mama.”

“Would you like to know whose tummy you came from, Bails?”

She nods her head.

“Yes, Mommy.”

Margo points to my stomach.

Bailey’s eyes widen. She looks at me and then back at Margo for confirmation. She nods, tears shimmering in her eyes. Bailey crawls off her mother’s lap and walks over to my tummy, setting her little head against it, as if she were trying to hear the ocean. When she pulls away, her curious eyes are watching my face.

“Are you my mommy, too?” she asks. Frozen, I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. How do I answer this?

“Yes, baby. Evie’s your mommy, too.”

My eyes find Margo’s, both filled with tears of joy and fear. When mine meet my baby’s again, she has an enormous, baby-teethed grin on her face.

“I knowed it,” she says, jumping at me and clinging her tiny arms to my neck. I wrap my arms about her small body, bringing her as close to my heart as I can bring her.

As we’re driving back home, quietly contemplating everything, endless white passing the frosted car windows, he says, “I realized something just now.” His face turned away from mine, I’m unable to see the expression plaguing it.

“What?”

“We have a child together,” he states, his head still turned from me.

“Yeah,” I confirm, but he isn’t seeking validation.

“And our parents have—”

“Yeah.”

A pause rests in the air before we erupt into laughter.

“That’s awful,” he chuckles.

“It really is.”

What else can I say? It’s awkward, but a part of me feels at peace in some small way. Everything is out in the open. No more secrets and lies. Now, to mend the rest of my wounds. I know my mother and I will find a way back to each other. She’s human. She falters like everyone else. Even if she was having an affair with Charles during my parents’ marriage, it was my father’s decision to give up on me. She never has. And I can’t give up on her.

I only hope Holt forgives me and understands my leaving had nothing to do with him. He didn’t deserve it, especially after he poured his heart out to me.

“Stupidly, I knew,” Aid says, interrupting my mental road trip.

“About Bailey?”

“No,” he murmurs, his face turning away from mine. “I had no idea about her. If I had, you bet things would’ve been different.” He regards me again. “I meant about you and him.”

“Ah.” I keep my eyes on the icy road ahead. I’d like to say it’s for safety reasons, but I’m uncomfortable talking about Holt. “What gave us away?”

“I first suspected you were attracted to him at the Fourth of July barbeque.” He doesn’t say it with disdain or grief. It’s more like a mundane fact. “You kept sneaking glances at him. He kept doing the same thing. He would watch you. Even when he caught me observing him do it, he wouldn’t keep his eyes off you.”

“He watched me?” I mutter, mostly to myself. But Aidan nods in response.

“Anyway,” he continues, “after you disappeared during the fireworks, I searched for you in the crowd. When I found you coming out of the woods, I thought it was strange. As we were rejoining the rest of the crowd, I glanced back from where you’d emerged and—” He pauses, as if he’s weighing out whether or not he should tell me.

“And?”

“I saw him standing at the edge of the trees, watching us with that expression.”

“What expression?”

“Like I’d stolen you away from him.”

He did care.

“What confirmed your suspicions about us?”

“Besides you telling me?” He chuckles. I’m glad he can still be my friend, even now. “That night I stopped by your house uninvited. You were vibrant. It was an aura about you I hadn’t seen in years. Before your father left. There was a flush on your cheeks and a light in your eyes. And I knew it wasn’t me who made you that way.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“It wasn’t my business. I didn’t have a claim on you, Evie. You were allowed to see whoever you wanted. I—I wanted my chance, too.”

“Aidan,” I whisper, my chest tightening. We need a change of topic. “How are our parents?”

“My father left my mother. He’s been living with Meredith, and my mom moved out of town.” He laughs to himself and shakes his head. “I actually felt guilty for my dad cheating on her, angry at him for betraying her. All that time, she knew. And then she lied to me about you and Bailey. I’ll never forgive her for this. She isn’t deserving.”

“She was protecting you,” I’m seriously sticking up for this woman, “in her own twisted way.”

“She was protecting herself, her image, her money, her ego. She never once thought of anyone else but herself.” He turns to me. “Your mom misses you.”

“How do you know?”

“My dad told me.” This is weird. It’s clearly written on his face. If our parents decide to marry, that would make us step-siblings. Imagine the family holidays. “Are you planning to see her while you’re in town?”

“Yes, eventually.”

“I’ll come with you if you want me to.”

“No, this is something I need to do on my own.”

I swear Aidan to secrecy about my being in town and lay low at the motel for a couple days while I figure out the best way to tackle Holt and my mother, only emerging from the four walls of my room to grab a bite, usually in the next town over to keep from anyone recognizing me. It’s a bitch to drive twenty minutes away to eat, but easier than dealing with anyone and their questions.

When I’m finally ready, I go to see Meredith first. Driving up the narrow dirt driveway through the woods, my stomach ties into knots and my heart lands in my butt. I make sure Holt’s truck isn’t around. It’s not. But my mother’s car is. I enter the house without a knock or calling out to her. There’s movement coming from her room. I walk up the stairs and notice the door is open. I’m praying I don’t walk in on anything since Charles moved in. I’m about to announce my presence when Meredith calls out for him, “Is that you, darling?” I step up to the doorway. She’s packing a bag on the bed with her back to me.

“Charles?”

“It isn’t Charles,” I mutter.

Her spine stiffens into a pole.

“Evie,” she whisper-cries before facing me slowly, her hand balled against her chest. She drops back onto the bed, watching me through tearful eyes.

“Mom.” My voice mirrors hers.

Before I see Holt, I hear him, his feet stomping on the porch beyond the front door. He steps into the warmth of the small cottage, his boots caked with snow, his jacket covered in the tiny white flakes. He doesn’t see me as he unwraps the scarf from his neck and hangs it on the rack.

Suddenly rendered incapable of a deeper thought, “You really should lock your doors,” I mumble, the words stammering from my mouth like an antique Model A sputtering down a bumpy road.

He stares at me, his eyes widening then narrowing into a scowl. “After all these months, those are the first words out of your mouth? Take you awhile to think of that, did it?”

“I wasn’t sure what I’d say. I honestly wasn’t sure you’d still be here,” I lie. I knew he’d be here. I also mulled over our encounter in my head repeatedly like a record playing on a loop. But when it came down to it, nothing ever seemed good enough.

“Well, I am. Now what?” he asks, shouldering off his black wool coat and flinging it across one of the many comfy chairs in the living room of the cottage he resurrected with his own two hands. The same ones that resurrected me, gave me tenderness, pleasure, love.

“It depends.”

“On?”

“Why you stayed.”

“Why did you leave?” he shoots out, crossing his arms over his chest, closing himself off to me.

“Wasn’t that what I was supposed to do? Wasn’t that what we planned?” I turn from him, tears welling in my eyes.

“Until I bared myself to you, Evie. You didn’t leave like planned. You ran.” He’s pacing across the room behind me, the floorboards grumbling under his weighty steps. “I thought running was my thing.”

“Apparently, we’re both good at it.”

Through watery vision, I admire the powder-covered meadow outside the window, the lake frozen over, dead and still as everything else. “This place looks great.”

“Evie, where the fuck have you been?” he demands.

I turn back to him, my tears sucking back into my skull. “I went to New York to work with Sonya.”

“You took the job at the gallery.” He seems disappointed.

“No. I spent the first two-and-a-half months painting, meeting people in the art world, learning, healing, and following my dreams. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Yes,” he says with the most heartfelt voice, “with me by your side.”

“I couldn’t do it, Holt.” I find the strength to face him again. “I was so hurt, so angry, so lost. I needed time to figure things out, figure myself out.”

“I understand being hurt by your parents. I understand the desire to run away better than anyone. But why would you run from
me
? I never did anything to betray your trust.”