Underground Secrets (The Underground #1) (21 page)

I travel a lot to meet with clients. You know, the ones who want my skills to match their exact expectations, but it’s usually more West Coast, than Midwest or even East Coast. So I am hoping that having another store in Chicago will bring more business to that part of the country. And, if everything works out in Chicago after a few years, we will try and add another store in New York.

The only downside to this week is that I think Wes is done for. I know I shouldn’t care, but I do. I don’t know how he did it, but he has gotten under my skin. He is almost in my every thought. He hasn’t called, texted, or tried to contact me in any other way. He must’ve have really meant it when he said he didn’t think that he could just be friends anymore. I need to get over it. Rid him from my thoughts, but I just can’t.

I don’t know if I should be worried about the fact that Carter hasn’t tried to contact me either. I thought for sure my days were numbered once he got out, but just like Wes, no contact. It’s making me paranoid as shit. Is he really just going to leave it be? Or does he have some greater plan? Either way, I don’t like feeling like I have to watch my back at every turn.

It’s now Wednesday evening and I’m just getting into my apartment. Gemma is out on a new date, so I have the place to myself - which is fine by me. I don’t really care for the way Gem huffs, puffs, and stares at me while I make my fifth drink or so, to help me sleep. I know she wants to say something to me about it, but she knows better by now. She knows I won’t listen. I feel like everything outside of work is going to shit and yet, nothing has even happened.

I sit my purse down on the small table sitting by the door and head to make a nice tall glass of whiskey when my phone rings. “Of course my phone would ring just as I’m about to get my first drink in,” I say out loud to myself. I sit the half-filled glass down, but not before debating taking a quick chug. “Fuck it.” I down the whiskey and then grab my phone from my purse. It has already stopped ringing before I get to it, so I swipe the screen to see who called. My brother Michael. I call him back and it only rings once on his end before he picks up.

“Marlie,” he answers.

His voice sounds off. Way off. Hoarse and hushed like he’s been crying.

“Michael? What’s wrong? You sound upset.”

He sobs loudly before he can find the words.

“It’s dad, he… I went to go check on him and… and… oh god, Marlie!” Another round of sobs.

Now I’m freaking the hell out and on the verge of crying myself, “What Michael? What about dad?

“He had another heart attack and he didn’t make it, Marlie.”

My world falls from underneath me.

“No,” I whisper. Because that’s all I can get out.

I
’M AT THE AIRPORT
getting ready to board the plane to head back to Indiana. I am completely detached from life right now. I am doing everything as if I’m in a catatonic state. I’m just not quite there.

After I got off the phone with my brother, I sat silently on the floor completely numb until Gemma showed up and brought me somewhat back to reality. Now here I am, off to Indiana to make the arrangements for my dad’s funeral. I can’t believe it is happening. That he’s gone and I’ll never get him back. I don’t know if I can’t accept it or if I am just heartless, but I haven’t shed a single tear. I’ve tried, I really have, but it’s just not coming to me.

Gemma is staying back and taking a later flight so she can do a few things for me at the shop for the rest of the week. I still have Alex and Henry working, and Gemma is pretty much going over everything that needs to be done while we’re gone.

I want a drink so badly right now. To help numb me even more than I already am. But I can’t. I can’t be that person that can’t hold her shit together. My brother is a complete mess as it is and we don’t need us both to be that way.

After Gemma got back home and got me up and talking, I pulled myself together and called my brother back and had him tell me everything. He had been trying to get ahold of our dad for most of the afternoon to stop by and see if he needed anything before he went home for the day. So after work, he drove over to my dad’s and that’s when he found him, on the floor, in the kitchen. He had called 911 right before he had called me.

I get off the plane and start looking around for Michael. He is picking me up and taking me to dad’s to go through his things and make the arrangements and calls that we need to make. He offered for me to stay with him but I want to stay at dads. Maybe it’ll help me cry. Maybe it won’t. I spot Michael and slowly inch towards him. He grabs my bags, sets them down, and envelopes me in an air restricting hug.

“Hey,” I say with what feels like my last portion of air.

“Hey,” He pulls back and looks at me, mirroring my expression of sadness. “You ready to do this?”

“No,” and I mean it. He nods his head and starts walking.

It was only a few years ago we were doing this for my mother. At least we were prepared her death. My father’s death comes as a complete shock to me. Sure he had a minor heart attack a while back, but all his health checkups have gone great since. He completely changed his lifestyle. He started to eat a healthy diet and would go to the gym and exercise. He was doing excellent, so I just don’t get how there weren’t any signs that he was on the verge of another.

****

T
ODAY IS THE DAY
of my father’s funeral. We held the visitation last night and it was so heartwarming seeing all the friends and family show up for my father. They told stories about him as a little boy and the mischief he got into as a teenager. They talked about watching him and my mother fall in love, and raising Michael and me. It went really well and it was an enjoyable time given the circumstances, but it’s not something anyone ever wants to do.

My brother, Gemma, and I had been working non-stop planning the visitation and funeral and going through all of his things. Still no crying on my end. I thought for sure the visitation would have brought something to the surface, but it didn’t and I am starting to hate myself for it. What kind of person am I if can’t shed a tear for my own fathers passing? I keep trying to sum it up as still being in shock, but I’m not feeling as robotic as I was a few days ago.

Right now, I am standing in the guest room at my dad’s; the room I used when I visited. I stand here staring down at the black lace dress lying on the bed that I am supposed to wear to put my father to his final rest today. It’s the same dress I wore to my mother’s funeral. I feel like it’s fitting that I wear the same dress. I don’t know why, I just feel like it’s the right thing to do.

I miss my mother and now, my father. I wish I was a kid again, where nothing bad happens and my mother and father are here and have me enveloped up in their loving arms, telling me stories or kissing me where I have been hurt and making it all better. But this hurt can’t be kissed away. The kind of hurt I feel from their passing, the kind of I have because of Carter and the mistakes I have made. No one can ever kiss that kind of hurt away.

“Hey,” Gemma says as she places her hand on my shoulder. I didn’t even know she was in the room with me. I wonder how long she’s even been in here.

“Hey.”

“You okay?”

I really wish people would quit asking me that. That’s pretty much all I was asked at the visitation last night. Like, what do they expect me to say? Yes, I am fucking fantastic that my father died? I couldn’t wait for him join my mother? No. I am not fucking okay.

I grab the dress and turn towards her, “As ready as anyone can be who is spending the day burying their second parent within a few years.” It comes out a lot harsher than I wanted it to sound, but today I don’t care. I want to get today over with so I can go home and finish a bottle or two of whiskey before I have to get back to reality.

Isn’t that sad?

The funeral is coming to an end and they are getting ready to put my father six feet under. I have stood silent during the whole thing just staring at his casket, thinking about never being able to see him again. That this is my last day to see him and it hurts. It hurts so fucking bad. As they begin to move to lower it, something washes over me and I slowly walk up and place a shaky hand over the casket. I haven’t been able to say anything about my father since I learned he died. Words have failed me.

All of a sudden, I realize what I need to do to get out what I am feeling.

They have stopped moving the casket and all eyes are now on me. Not that I notice at this point. I do what I only can ever do when words fail me.

I sing.

As I am singing for my father, to my father, flashes of memories of the times I shared with just him and I float through my head. That’s when the first tear appears. Streaming down my face like a slow steady leak. I stop singing for a moment and remove my hand from my father’s casket to swipe the tear from my cheek. Then I place the same hand back onto my father’s casket and continue to sing as more tears start to flow silently. When I start to sing the chorus, I lose it. All the tears that I haven’t shed are all coming out now. I’m choking up as try to finish singing the words that I failed to speak, but I can’t. I cannot finish, because now I am sobbing and choking on my own tears.

Oh god! My daddy, he’s gone, he’s really, really gone. I want him back. I need him with me
! I fall to my knees and start banging on my father’s casket, demanding for him to come back.

The next thing I know, I am being picked up and cradled by my brother, who has a fresh bout of tears flowing when I look up at him. I look over at Gemma and she is weeping and following Michael who is carrying me away from the funeral.

“I’m sorry,” I cry to my brother. He shushes me and holds me tighter as I burry my head into his chest and let him take me away.

FIFTEEN

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I
WAKE UP
with a killer headache like I had drank the night before. I hadn’t. Michael drove me back to dad’s and stayed with Gemma and me until I fell asleep. For some reason I feel much better, well besides the headache, but I feel like I was able to let go. Like my breathing is back to normal knowing that I let it all go yesterday at the funeral. My chest still aches for my father. I still expect to see my dad sitting at the table reading the paper and talking about us fishing later. I have a massive hole in my chest that can never be filled now that he is gone. At least I feel like can breathe again.

Now, I am up clearing my plate from breakfast. I’m going spend the day clearing out dad’s things. I am doing what I can until Thursday when my flight is scheduled to head back to Denver. Michael will finish up the rest. We have decided to sell dad’s house but will most likely wait a little while until his death isn’t so fresh and hurtful.

Today I am going up to the small attic with Gemma, and sift through his things up there while Michael goes through the basement. Michael should be here within the hour but I’m not going to wait for him.

Gemma and I and are only up in the attic for a good twenty minutes when Gemma stumbles across something. “Uh, Marlie?”

“Yeah?” I ask, not bothering to turn around because I am feeling elated as I look through pictures of all of us from when Michael and I were kids. Pictures of family trips, picnics, our old house, swimming in the river, and so much more.

“I… I think you need to come over here and see this.”

I place the pictures gently back into the box I got them from and stand up to walk over the other side of the attic.

“What you got?” She doesn’t say anything, she just hands me an unfolded piece of paper with weary eyes. I take the paper and begin to read. My eyes widen as I start to read what floors me in all possible ways. It’s definitely a letter. But it’s who the letter is from that tops the cake. It’s a letter to my father written by Carter. Apparently they were freaking pen pals. As I read the contents of the letter I start questioning certain things. Like why my dad never told me Carter was writing to him from prison? That he knew what Carter had done to me?

“What the fuck?”

Gemma stands up and points to the box she had pulled the letter from, “I know, that’s exactly what I was thinking. There is a whole stack of them in this box.”

I quickly kneel down to the box and grab the rest of the stack.

“Hello?” a voice from the bottom of the steps calls up. I begin to panic, not wanting my brother to see these letters. I don’t even know what’s all in them, I just know it can’t be any good.

“Shit. It’s Michael. Gem, will you go down there and keep him distracted? I want, no, I
need
to read these and he can’t know about them.”

“You got it.” Then she is gone, leaving me alone with this stack of letters, feeling like they are weighing me down. They feel so heavy in my hand. Not because the stack is huge, no, it’s because of the contents I am sure that is written in them. I get up and move over to a wicker chair by the one small circular window up here and begin to read.