Breakwater Bay (3 page)

She read it again. The words didn’t change. The meaning stayed the same. She wasn’t Merielle Hollis. She was . . . nobody. They had all known and they had never told her.

       
Please forgive me. I’ll love you forever,

Not her mother. Her face twisted; she could feel it as if it didn’t belong to her, like a crumpled piece of paper before you threw it in the trash. Like a crumpled life.

She wanted to crumple this letter and pretend it didn’t exist. But it did exist, and destroying it wouldn’t change the truth. She’d never been one of them. All these years they had known and let her think she was.

She folded the letter but couldn’t get it back in the envelope. Her father—
not your father
—covered her hand with his and took the letter with his free hand. Held hers when she tried to pull away.

“Your mother was uneasy in her soul. She thought you needed to know. I didn’t agree. This changes nothing.”

Meri shook her head, barely aware of her tears flying onto the table.

“I know it’s a shock, but don’t think for a second that it changes anything.”

“It changes everything.”

“No.”

“You’ve all been so good to me. And . . . And—”

“You are my daughter.”

“No, I’m—I’m—”

Gran sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands. “God, what have I done?”

Meri pushed to her feet, upsetting the chair. “It’s not your fault. It’s—” She didn’t know what it was. It was devastating. “I—I have to—” There was nothing she could do. She looked blindly at the two people she had loved all her life and felt like an imposter. It had all been an illusion. They had been a family and she had been . . . nothing.

She looked wildly around. Everything looked the same, but everything had changed. “I have to—”
Get out of this stifling kitchen, have to think, have to make it go away. Have to be what I was before tonight. Merielle Hollis.
But she wasn’t—and would never be. Merielle Hollis was lying with a stranger in a nearby grave.

She stumbled back, stopped. “I’m sorry.” She rushed toward the back door and ran out into the rain.

“Meri, come back.”

But Meri ran.

A
lden Corrigan stood in the dark in the back second-floor bedroom, resting one hand on the windowsill and looking out at the night. It was times like these he wished he still smoked. Funny, he hadn’t had a cigarette in over ten years, but it was still the first thing he wanted when things got tense.

He’d come up to the second floor because he could see the farmhouse from here, though he could only guess at what was going on inside.

He’d been against telling her. It was all water over the dam, years ago. No good would come from dredging it all up now. Dan hadn’t been much for it either. But Laura had left that letter, and Gran saw it as her duty to pass it on to Meri.

Stuff like that could tear a family apart. And none of them deserved that. He knew from experience that once there was a rift, it could never be put back together.

Alden shivered. He was half tempted to turn on the heat, but that would be rather like pissing in the wind. By the time it made its way to the second floor, it would be morning and hopefully the crisis would have abated. But hell, it was damn cold for April. And rainy.

Like then. Cold and rainy. When he stopped to think, he could still feel the bone-biting cold, the stiffness in his fingers, the wet clammy skin of the girl’s face, pale in the night. That face had haunted him for years. Still came to him sometimes late at night, or when he saw Meri after not seeing her for a while. That jolt of recognition. The remembrance of that night and a boy’s small comprehension.

The lights had been on that night, too. That must have been how he made it to the farmhouse. He really didn’t remember much about what happened after dragging the dinghy onto shore, until he woke up to Gran saying everything was all right.

God, his dad had been pissed—pissed, relieved, and proud. He could do that, his dad. A volatile combination of emotions all at once. It was enough to knock you sideways. Alden had always stood a bit in awe of his father. He was hardworking, gruff, stingy with his compliments, but good-hearted in his way.

That night he said, “You did good,” before he gave Alden a whipping for taking the dinghy out, not for disobeying him, but for doing something so stupid. It was a small price to pay for that “you did good.” And Alden cherished it even now.

Strangely enough, it was the sea that had taken his father’s life.

There was a sudden flare of light in the cottage. Alden leaned into the window enclosure. The kitchen door opened and closed. Someone ran across the yard. Jesus. Was she leaving?

He’d known this was a bad idea. Maybe he should have stayed. But he couldn’t bear to watch her reaction.

So he watched from the window. She ran past the car and out into the meadow, and he lost sight of her. He panicked and moved toward the door. Hadn’t he promised to take care of her?

He’d tried to. But the woman was thirty now, and Alden had thought that boyhood promise had been fulfilled years ago.

He refused to run out onto the dunes like some demented Heathcliff. She’d find her way here eventually. She always did. To rant and rave. To celebrate. To ask advice or think things through. Or just to sit and look out the window to the sea.

So instead of putting on his jacket and going to look for her, he went downstairs to the kitchen to put on water for tea. And to wait.

M
eri didn’t run for her car or down the road, but across the meadow, brittle and swollen with rain.

She hardly knew where she was going. She just ran, out into the night, the slashing rain, the biting wind. She ran until her side hurt, until her legs trembled beneath her, and her knees threatened to buckle.

The soil was soft and shifting. She slipped in a depression; her ankle turned and she went down on all fours, let out a wail, and beat the rain-soaked ground.
Why?
She wanted to curl up on the sand and grass and die.

She wasn’t who she thought she was. Had never been. They’d all lied to her, year after year. She didn’t have a real birth certificate. Everything about her was a lie.

She staggered to her feet, started up again, as if she could outrun the things she had just learned. She knew they loved her and would be worried, but right now she didn’t care; she hurt too much.

Meri ducked into the wind and rain, ignoring the pain in her side, and ran until she couldn’t take in enough air to keep going. She clutched at her middle, tried to straighten up, and saw the dark shingles and peaked roof of a place she knew almost as well as her own home.

The windows were all dark, except for one light on downstairs. Just one and she knew it was Alden’s reading lamp. He’d be sitting there like he did, surrounded by darkness except for that one light.

Did he know? Was that why he wouldn’t stay for dinner? Of course he did; coward that he was, he wouldn’t even stay to see her exposed. And pain turned to white blazing anger. And it was focused on one place—one person.

She dashed wet strands of hair out of her face, grabbed her side, and staggered toward that one small light. She splashed through deep puddles, slid on mud, tripped over rocks sticking out of the soil, and, finally, stumbled up the stone walk.

Meri banged on the door. She couldn’t even hear it over the pounding rain. She banged again, this time with both hands. The bell hadn’t worked in years. Why didn’t he ever fix anything?

“Dammit, Alden!”

The door opened so quickly that she fell into the house.

“Well, what an entrance.”

Y
ou knew. Didn’t you?” She clenched both fists and hit him full on the chest. Hit him again. “Didn’t you?”

“Ouch.” He grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands away, wrapping her in a comprehensive hug, but she wasn’t sure if it was for comfort or to stop her from taking out her anger on him.

“You did know.” She butted him with her forehead, the only part of her that was free, then collapsed against him, sobbing. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He didn’t speak, just stood holding her as if she were still a little girl. He’d always been there. Sometimes cold and distant, sometimes a safe haven. Big brother, best friend, Dutch uncle, devil’s advocate. It had been like that for as long as she could remember.

They stood in the entryway, silent, not moving, until her sobs turned to hiccups, and she began to shake with cold.

“I’ll get you some dry clothes,” Alden said and dropped his arms abruptly, leaving her alone and appalled at her behavior.

He hadn’t turned on any lights and Meri stumbled through the dark toward his bedroom, which had at one time been the cook’s quarters, long before her time or his.

She met him coming back.

“Towel on the bed along with some sweats. You’ll look ridiculous in them. But I think we could use a little humor, don’t you?”

A shrill whistling sound came from the kitchen. “Take a shower if you want. I’ll make you some tea.” He was acting as if she’d just been caught in an April shower instead of passing through the eye of hell. She stepped inside and slammed the door.

Even that was aborted, since the door was swollen from the humidity and refused to close. It made her laugh, but she quelled it. Laughter was too close to tears. She grabbed the towel off the bed and went into the bathroom.

Meri lost track of time in the shower. The water was hot and the jet was strong, and for a second she forgot that her life had just come tumbling down around her ears. She stood under the spray much like she had run through the rain, mindless, trying to drive the knowledge away. But it wasn’t going away—even if she shriveled up to nothing.

She turned off the water and climbed out of the tub. Toweled off her hair, and smelling like Alden’s soap and shampoo, went to the bedroom to put on his clothes.

There was something weird about that and on a better day she might have found something clever to say about it, but tonight, she just let it wrap around her. Protective, even though the sweatshirt sleeves were a good six inches too long, and the pants had to be rolled up several times just so she wouldn’t trip on them. And apropos of the man who was something between enigma, work in progress, and sage of the ages, he’d left her a pair of wooly socks to wear.

Raw and exhausted, she padded out to the living room, where a tea tray and newly lit fire were waiting. Alden wasn’t there, but she heard his voice from the dining room.

She had meant to come out and apologize for treating him like a punching bag, for being ungrateful and selfish, but the apology died on her lips.

“Why don’t I keep her here for a while tonight? Give her a chance to calm down.”

She marched over to the archway and ambushed him as he hung up.

“Keep me? Keep me? You make me sound like a child or a half-wit.”

“Do I? I just thought that you might want to get a little distance on the whole thing and give them a chance to recover from your outburst. They’re pretty upset, and I think we’ve all had enough drama for one day.”

Her eyes filled up again. She didn’t think she had any tears left.

“Plus it’s still raining and I’ll have to walk you home, and then I’ll have to walk home again. I’ve gotten wet enough for you this evening.” He walked past her to the coffee table and began to pour tea into two mugs.

Like a slap to a hysteric, his attitude drove any tears away. He always knew just when to administer a dash of cold water, this reclusive, sometimes bitter, man. She probably needed it, but tonight she was too bruised to withstand it; she lashed back.

“Why do you sit around in the dark? You have money.” It was a cheap shot, and she didn’t expect an answer.

“Not as much as you might think.”

It surprised her so much that she blurted out. “Two kids can’t cost that much.”

He handed her a mug. “When their mother is Jennifer, they can. Besides, this is all I need.” He made an offhanded gesture at the room; the couch, chair, and a few tables spotlighted by the fire and reading lamp, the ceiling disappearing into darkness, the windows and French doors framing the night.

When she was a child and Alden’s dad had been alive, there had been much more furniture. Antiques and family heirlooms and all the detritus from several generations of Corrigans.

But Alden had begun minimizing after his father’s death, and his ex-wife had helped herself to many of the family heirlooms.

Meri took the mug. Alden’s divorce had not been amicable, she knew that. She remembered coming home from college once, anxious to consult him about the internship she was up for. But when she reached the house, she heard them arguing. Yelling, really. Nora and Lucas were sitting outside on the steps, huddled together. There was a crash from inside the house. Nora pulled the younger Lucas to his feet, and they ran toward the beach; Meri crept away and tried to forget.

“Why don’t you sit down?”

“What? Oh.”

Meri squeezed past the wingback chair, its crinkled leather patched with gaffer’s tape. Stepped over the pile of books that littered the floor, and curled up on the couch. It was old like everything else in the room and was beginning to sag. But it was as comfortable as her grandmother’s lap.
Her grandmother.
A half sob escaped.

“Enough. You’ve had your cry; you took long enough in the shower to decipher the Rosetta stone, so you must have had time by now to get your head screwed on right.”

“You could be a little sympathetic. It’s horrible to show up to your birthday dinner and find out you were . . . you were . . .” She couldn’t say it.

“Switched at birth?” he said in sepulchral tones.

“Sometimes I hate you,” she blurted.

With the rain pelting against the glass of the French doors, and the waves crashing in the distance behind him, with the fire flickering against his harsh features, he looked like how she imagined Mephistopheles had looked when he pinned Faust to certain damnation.

“Do you?”