Adam rubs my back as I press the heels of my hands against my eyelids; trying to push back the memory of the hours I spent hiding from my mother’s dead body. I think of how my legs ached as I stood in the crack between the refrigerator and the wall. How I convinced myself more than once that if I came out of my hiding place, this time she would be alive. How I pissed myself because I was too afraid to walk through the living room to go to the restroom. How the policeman who found me cried as he carried me out of the trailer. All this time I thought it was an accident. I thought my mother made a mistake, a miscalculation. Even after everything I went through before that policeman found me and in all the foster homes after that, I never hated my mother. Until now.
I sit up and wipe the tears away from my face. “Who’s the donor?”
The lines at the corners of his eyes deepen as he contemplates the answer to this question. He glances at Adam then back at me. “I think you might want to be alone when you hear this.”
Adam begins to stand and I put my hand on his knee to stop him. “Henry, you just told me my mother committed suicide,” I say incredulously. “Do you really think anything you tell me now is going to be more devastating than that? Who’s the fucking donor?”
Henry looks back and forth nervously between Adam and me as if we’ve just pointed guns at his head and asked him to open the bank vault. “Yes, I do think this news will be quite devastating, but I’ll respect your wishes if you want your friend here with you.” My leg starts bouncing uncontrollably as I wait for Henry’s next words. “Your father is the donor, but—” He puts a hand up to stop me from speaking when I open my mouth. “—before you accuse your mother of keeping you from your father while taking his money, there’s something you need to know.”
The few bites of yogurt I ate three hours ago are swirling in my belly as my stomach twists in knots from the anticipation.
“Claire, your mother was raped when she was seventeen by one of her cousins.”
I knew her uncle repeatedly raped her from age nine to fourteen, but she never told me anything about her cousin.
“Are you sure you don’t mean she was raped by her uncle? Because she told me about that.”
Henry shakes his head. “It was the son of the same uncle. Claire, your mother was a good person. She trusted too many people too much.”
“Until she didn’t trust anybody at all,” I say, beginning to understand why my mother kept me locked away in that trailer and why she was so adamant about teaching me how to stay safe.
Then another realization hits me. We were talking about the donor on the trust account before Henry told me my mother was raped by her cousin.
“Oh, God,” I whisper, and I double over in my chair, suddenly feeling as if a ten-ton slab of concrete is crushing my chest. “He’s my father.”
Adam slides off the chair and kneels in front of me. “I think we should leave.” He lifts my chin and takes my face in his hands. “You don’t need to hear any more of this shit.”
“My mother never told me any of this,” I whisper as he swipes his thumb across my face to brush away the tears. “He raped her and she still took his money.”
I grab Adam’s hands and pull them away from my face, but I hold tight to them as they rest in my lap.
“She did it because she wanted you to be taken care of,” Henry insists.
“Two hundred and seventeen thousand dollars.” Just saying the words aloud makes me feel filthy. “Why would he give her so much money?”
Almost as soon as I speak the words I know the answer. It was hush money to keep her from turning him in. It had to be. She used her pain to extort money from him. She gave up the chance for justice so that I would have a chance at a better life.
“I don’t want that money.”
Adam stares fiercely into my eyes. “You don’t have to take a single penny of it. Let’s get out of here. You don’t need this shit, especially not on your birthday.”
“You know we can’t legally keep this money. The money will just sit here collecting interest,” Henry informs me, as if I care. “She wanted you to have the money.”
Adam stands up and scoots aside so I can stand. Henry looks up at me from his desk with a sad look in his eyes. He’s disappointed that I can’t take the money my mother intended for me. I wonder silently if he ever had a relationship with my mother. How could someone so kind and straight-laced as Henry be so fiercely protective of a heroin addict who committed suicide and extorted money from her rapist?
I know my mother had a hard life. I didn’t know anyone who’d had a more difficult life than her. But that was no excuse for what she did. She left me homeless, drifting from one family to the next, never staying anywhere long enough to form any true friendships. Maybe she thought she was doing me a favor by tearing herself out of my life. Maybe she thought I would end up with a good family right away. She didn’t know it would take eight years for me to arrive on the Knight’s doorstep.
“I just have one more question,” I say as Adam and I reach the office door. “If my mom knew she was going to kill herself, why didn’t she call the police before she did it? Why didn’t she send me to the neighbors or something? Why did she make me stay there with her?”
Henry heaves a deep sigh. “I don’t know.”
“Are you sure you still want to go to dinner? We can stay at the hotel room and talk. Or we can go home. It’s up to you.”
I shake my head and close my eyes as I lean back against the headrest in the truck. “I don’t want to make any more decisions today. You decide.”
“Okay, we’re going home.”
“No! I want to see Senia tonight. Just go to the hotel and we can hang out there until dinner.”
“Anything you want.”
After we check in at the hotel, we go up to our room and curl up on the bed.
“I want to know what it’s like to not feel lost,” I say as I rest my head on Adam’s shoulder and he strokes my hair.
“I don’t know if anybody ever gets there, but we can try.”
“My mom and I used to play this game whenever someone knocked on our front door. She would face the door while I chose one of three hiding places: under the bed, in the closet, or in the nook between the fridge and the wall. As soon as she got rid of whoever was at the door, she’d come looking for me. If I was hiding in the first place she looked, she got to tickle me. I think of stuff like that then I think of the things Henry just told me and I don’t think I ever knew my mother.”
“None of this has to make any sense to you right now.”
“The thing is, it does make sense. She didn’t want to live. I almost don’t blame her for ending her life after everything she went through.” I curl my fingers around a piece of his shirt and squeeze tightly. “The worst part is that I still want her here. Even after everything I’ve learned today. And part of me knows that if I had been braver, if I had called 9-1-1 right away, she might still be here.”
“You don’t know that. You said it yourself; you don’t blame her after everything she went through. If you had saved her that day, she probably would have found another way to do it.”
I don’t say anything because he’s right. My mother didn’t want to live, not even for me.
“I’m just so angry with her.”
“One thing they taught us in anger management—”
“Oh, no,” I mutter.
He pokes my side and continues his pep talk over my laughter. “Go ahead laugh, but I’m serious. I know you like to meditate, but they taught us in anger management class to let go of the anger by imagining what you would say to the person you’re angry with if you forgave them. What would you say to your mom to let her know you’ve forgiven her?”
I pause for a moment to think about this. There are so many things I’d say to her. I’ve spent countless nights lying in bed unable to sleep as I imagine the conversations we’d have if she were still alive.
I sit up on the bed and cross my legs
as if I’m going to meditate. “I would tell her that I love her and that I know she did what she thought she needed to do to make the aching go away. I would tell her that I’m sorry about what happened to her and how I wish I was the one who could have healed her.”
Adam sits up and grabs my hands. “What else?”
“I’d thank her for thinking of my future. I’d thank her for loving me and taking care of me the only way she knew how.” I bite my lip as I look up. Adam’s eyes are completely focused, urging me on. “I’d tell her that I miss her so much.”
He pulls me toward him as I sob into his shoulder. “You’re going to be okay,” he says, planting a kiss on my forehead. “Because you have a bigger heart than anyone I’ve ever met. And my mom always says that life is a game and he, or she, who has the biggest heart wins.”
I pull back to look him in the eye. “Thank you for everything. For bringing me here, for making me laugh, for knowing exactly what to say. Thank you for loving me.”
He smiles as he shakes his head. “You’re going to be thanking me for that for a very long time ‘cause you’re never getting rid of me.”
Chapter Eighteen
Relentless Storm
By the time we walk out of the hotel, the rain is pouring onto the streets of downtown Raleigh. We had planned to walk the half-mile to the restaurant, but that’s not going to happen now. Adam finds a place to park in the parking deck on Blount Street and we race through the rain to meet Senia and Eddie. We pass a crowd of people standing outside The Pour House Music Hall waiting to be let in for the next show.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I invited a couple of my buddies from Duke,” Adam says as he opens the door for me at Bida Manda. “They’re a year younger than me so don’t hesitate to punch them if they come on to you.”
“Isn’t that your job?” I say as we approach the hostess.
“I’m on probation, remember?”
I sigh as I pull my wet hair into a low ponytail. “Why do I always go for the bad boys?”
The hostess leads us to a table and I immediately spot Senia waving at me from the back of the room where they sit at the end of a very long table. She bolts out of her chair and we run to each other as if we haven’t seen each other in four years instead of just four weeks. We hug and I yelp as she lifts me off the floor.
“Happy birthday!” she shouts.
“Save some of that energy for later, sexy,” I say, and she growls as she puts me down.
“You’re just so hard to resist in your wet T-shirt.” She hooks her arm in mine and waves at Adam as she drags me to the table.
Adam’s two friends are there and so is Eddie. Adam and his friends do a secret handshake before he sits on the end of the table next to his buddies and I sit across from him next to Senia.
“Claire, this is Rolly and Ian,” he says, pointing a thumb at Ian next to him.
Rolly is a big guy, possibly taller than Adam and built like a linebacker. Ian is almost as hot as Adam, with his perfectly symmetrical facial features and icy-blue eyes, though he’s a bit scrawnier. By the time dinner arrives, I’ve learned that Rolly and Ian are stepbrothers who also happen to be best friends. Their parents got married ten years ago and now they share a dorm at Duke. Their dorm was next to Adam’s two years ago and they met when Adam punched a hole through their wall.
Rolly’s chubby cheeks plump up as he grins at me. “But he went to anger management so he’s all better now.”
“She already knows about that,” Adam groans as he reaches for his glass of water and pushes it across the table toward me.
This is our routine every time we go out to eat so it’s second nature to him now. I finish the last two gulps in my almost empty glass and accept his glass.
“Yeah, but does she know about the time you threw Mike’s laptop out the window?” Ian asks, his eyebrows perking up.
“Let’s not go into all the shit the Incredible Adam broke in his fits of rage.” Adam shakes his head in a can-you-believe-these-guys expression.
I smile, but I’m silently wondering how he managed to change from being such a tyrant into the person he is now. We’ve been so busy trying to fix me; we haven’t delved enough into his pain.
The rest of the dinner is fun, and I actually have my first sip of alcohol when we all toast to my birthday. The waitress is in a good mood, so she allows me to use my expired ID when Eddie orders us each a champagne cocktail, which is just champagne with a flavored sugar cube.
“To the birthday girl,” Eddie says, raising his glass and we all follow suit.
Adam turns to me. “To the birthday girl. The girl who stole my heart and my water.”
My first sip of alcohol isn’t so bad, but Adam insists I’m not allowed to drink more than one glass. Within two sips, I’m already feeling warm and frisky. I smile at Adam across the table as my foot grazes his shin. His left eyebrow shoots up and I wink at him. He reaches for my drink and slides it across the table so it’s next to his empty bowl.
“I think you should stick to water.” I slide my foot farther up his leg and he grabs it under the table. “Look at the time. We’d better get going before we miss the show.”
After we settle the check, Ian and Rolly head home and we head next door. The crowd outside The Pour House is thinning as people hustle inside to get the best view of the stage at this intimate music hall. The outside of The Pour House looks like any dive bar. The inside is dark and crowded with some pool tables and standing room only in front of the stage. I’ve been here once before to watch a local indie band called Death Puppy, which turned out to be three nerdy hipsters performing an acoustic set of their mostly electronic music.
“Who’s playing tonight?” I ask as a pushy crowd herds us toward the bar.
“Chris Knight. It’s a secret performance for his local fans.”
Senia and I look at each other and she immediately throws her arm around my shoulder to pull me aside. Eddie and Adam look on from a few yards away in confusion as she presses me up against a wall and gets in my face.
“You can’t freak out, Claire, or he’s going to know. He’s going to know that Chris is your ex and it will all be downhill from there. No guy wants to find out their girlfriend used to be with a fucking rock star. Don’t freak out.”
My heart pounds against my chest, probably dying to get away from the oncoming musical assault. I can barely listen to his songs when they come on the radio or MTV. There is no way I’ll make it through an entire concert of his music while standing just a few feet away from him.
“Are you seriously implying I need to endure the next three hours of torture? No! I want out of here. What if he sees me?”
“Claire?”
The sound of Joanie Tipton’s lazy drawl makes my skin prickle.
“Claire, is that you?”
I turn to my right and Joanie is with Christa Monk and Veronica Evers. I don’t know if Joanie has shared my secret with her two best friends, but the bored looks on their faces tells me she probably hasn’t. My mind flashes quickly to two days after Joanie saw me in the hospital—the day I finally worked up the nerve and energy to go to Joanie’s dorm and beg her not to tell anybody. The truth was, I really didn’t care what Joanie or any of her cronies thought about me. I just didn’t want it to get back to Chris.
“Joanie,” I say, trying to keep my voice level.
“You’re here to see Chris? Are you two back together?”
Christa and Veronica’s eyes widen at this revelation.
“No, we’re not. I was actually just leaving.”
Senia grabs my arm. “No, we’re not. We’re just getting some drinks. Today’s Claire’s twenty-first birthday.”
She casts Joanie a deadly look, daring her to fuck up my birthday. Joanie sighs, already bored with us, when Adam appears at my side.
“Are you okay, babe?” he asks, and Joanie’s eyes light up at the sight of him.
“I’m fine.”
I can’t leave now
. Joanie is bound to run onto the stage and scream my secrets into the microphone if we’re not here to stop her. And she’d love to point out to Chris that I’m here with someone else—not that he’d care. I’m sure he’s moved on—many times.
“I think I need a drink,” I say, looking up at Adam.
He scrunches his eyebrows together. “Are you sure?”
I nod. It’s about the only thing I’m sure of right now.
“Enjoy the show, Joanie,” I say as I push Adam toward the bar.
I don’t want to introduce him to Joanie. The last thing I need is for her to pretend she’s drunk so she can accidentally spill some secrets like she did at Senia’s birthday party our freshman year—before I knew Joanie was only pretending to be my friend so she could get close to Chris.
Adam orders us both a beer then glares at me as he leans up against the bar. “Something’s wrong.”
The impulsive side of my brain is screaming at me to just tell him. This night is going to suck whether I tell him or not. The rational side of my brain is begging me to keep my mouth shut. I finally have someone who makes me feel happy; someone who might understand the mistakes I’ve made if I tell him in a more neutral environment. This is definitely not the place to come clean.
“I’m fine. I’m just really excited.” I take a swig of the beer, which is bitter and kind of gross compared to the sweet champagne.
The sound crew finishes setting up the instruments on stage and I can feel the anticipation building in the crowd.
“Let’s go see if we can squeeze in closer to the stage,” he says, grabbing my hand.
“No!” Senia and I shout in unison.
Adam and Eddie glare at us.
“We should stay next to the bar in case Claire wants to get shitfaced for her birthday,” Senia says.
“Yeah, I may want to get shitfaced.”
Adam shakes his head. “You are not getting drunk tonight.”
“It’s my birthday and I’m twenty-one. I think that’s my decision, buddy.”
He frowns at me. He knows something is up. I’m not acting like myself. I set the glass of beer on the counter and flag the bartender down to ask him for some water.