More Than Lies (45 page)

I race up the stairs. Once I’m behind the closed door of the guest bedroom that I’ve often wished truly was my own, I pull the dress over my head and toss the material onto the bed. Next I kick out of my heels and walk over to the dresser drawers pulling clothes out. My favorite pajamas are still here. I forgot them when I stayed here during Christmas. I keep my bra and panties on, pulling my purple t-shirts that says, Turtles, across the chest and my matching flannel bottoms that have Donatello’s face all over them. Some girls like Hello Kitty and anything pink. I love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Don’t ask me why. I just do.

It’s practically summer already even if it’s still May. In Mississippi, summer sometimes starts in spring if you gauge by the temperature outdoors. Bill and Pam keep the air conditioner on in the sixties year round so it’s always cold inside the house.

Lastly, I slip on a pair of flip-flops and then head out of the bedroom, down the stairs, finding both Bill and Pam sitting in the living room. Looks of concern mar both of their expressions.

What the heck am I going to tell them? Their son and I broke up so I came to get sympathy from his parents. That sounds pathetic.

I walk over to the couch and sit next to Pam. Bill’s seated in a recliner a few feet away from us.

“It’s just how you like it. A little bit of sugar with a whole lot of creamer.” I smile, not full on, but I know she is trying to ease me into telling them what’s going on.

I pick up the small ceramic cup and bring it up to my lips. I doubt the coffee is too hot. With the amount of cream I like it always makes the coffee warm. I taste a small amount first to ensure. When I know it won’t burn my tongue, I gulp the liquid down almost until it’s empty. I don’t savor the flavor by sipping when it comes to coffee. I drink it like it’s going out of style.

“Talk to us, Taralynn. What happened tonight that has you upset” Bill sips from his mug, but then places it on the table and forces his attention on me.

Going with honesty, I tell them a lot of what happened tonight. I leave out Shawn cheating. They don’t need to know those kinds of details. I mainly focus on my heartache and end up letting it slip that I’m in love with their son. They allowing me to talk for a long time, and them just listening is helping. They aren’t offering up suggestions on how to get over him, but talking about it is removing a small amount of weight.

When I’m done, I’m lying with my head in Pam’s lap and she’s running her hands through my hair. It’s calming, soothing, and I think I could actually fall asleep. I’m tired. Then again it is sometime in the early hours of the morning. I’m used to being asleep at this time.

“Honey, would you like more coffee?”

“No, I’m okay.” A lingering question that I sometimes wonder crosses my mind. “Why do you call me, honey? You’ve always done it and you’ve never referred to anyone else as honey.”

Pam laughs. “Well, I guess you have Shawn to thank for that. The first day he met you, he said your blonde hair reminded him of honeysuckles. After that, every time I saw you, that’s what I thought about.”

Huh. He’s never told me that. Of course that was years ago, he probably doesn’t remember.

I’m about to sit up and ask them if I can sleep upstairs tonight when a car’s light flashes through the window in the living room. It catches Bill’s attention too. He stands, and then walks to the door.

It strikes me strange when he grabs his keys from a table near the door and shoves them into his pocket. Bill opens the door.

“She’s in there with Pam.” He nods his head behind him then his palm flies up. “You and I are going for a drive.”

“Not until I see Tara.” Shawn’s voice makes me shoot up from Pam’s lap. I see him standing in the door, but his dad won’t allow him inside. Shawn looks toward me, when our eyes lock, the tears pool into my eyes.

“Later. First, you and I are going to talk.” Bill pushes Shawn backwards. That’s when I see my dad walk through the door. What’s he doing here? And with Shawn, too. That doesn’t add up.

“Daddy?” I stand from my seated position on the couch. Looking at my dad. I wait for him to explain why he’s here. Did Bill or Pam call him while I was changing? No way. They wouldn’t. What would be the point?

When he walks closer, I take in his disheveled suit and worry starts to form in the pit of my stomach. His tie is missing and a few button from his white shirt are unbuttoned. His jacket is a wrinkled mess. Even his hair is all jacked up like he’s been running his hands through it all night. His eyes shock me the most. They’re glossy and blood shot, like…

“Dad, what’s wrong?” He’s actually been crying and he looks like he might be close to doing it again. This cannot be good.

When he stops in front of me, he pulls me to his chest where he wraps his arms around me and squeezes so tight it’s tough to inhale or even exhale. I feel his body physically relax after a long minute of him holding onto me.

“Jacob?” Pam’s voice is also etched with the same concern I’m filled with.

My dad pulls back, but doesn’t fully release me. His hands go to my face where he cups my cheeks.

“Tonight, I thought I lost you forever, too.” A tear fall from his eye, but I can’t process what he means. Lost me? Lost me how? Pam beats me to my questions.

“Jacob, what do mean?”

He glances in her direction and then his eyes come back to mine. That’s when he lays everything out. Jared crashed his motorcycle and a girl ended up being killed in the crash. Apparently, everyone thought that girl was me until my dad showed up to identify the body that wasn’t me. Jared was badly hurt and was unconscious so he couldn’t tell anyone the identity of the girl.

Other things from tonight are starting to become clearer. Shawn thought I was dead. That’s why he trashed my room and then when he saw me was so shocked and overwhelmed that he wouldn’t let me go. I almost feel bad for kneeing him in the balls now. Almost. The jackass still severed my heart from my body.

Jared. Oh, my heart goes out to him. And there a woman died. It could have been me. Jared asked me to stay with him. I couldn’t. I couldn’t use him as a crutch or as anything to ease the heart Shawn smashed. I wanted to be alone so I had Jared take me to Mac’s, then I don’t know where he went.

“Oh my God, Jacob. I can’t imagine what you went through, tonight. Shawn and the boys either.” Pam’s eyes drop to the ground as if she’s in thought. She’s probably thinking about Shawn.

He thought I was dead continues to boom inside my head.

“I’m going to leave you two alone.” Pam goes to leave, but my dad reaches out and stops her when he wraps his hand around her wrist. They look at each other. It’s almost like they are having a silent conversation. It’s weird, then he speaks and confuses me more.

“I’m going to tell her.” His eyes come back to mine for a brief moment then he turns back to Pam. “Do you have any pictures?” Pam nods and I’m stuck wondering what’s going on.

“Jacob, I’m not sure tonight is the best time to do that.”

“Pam, please. I have to get this out. I have to tell her. It’s clawing at me.” He shakes his head. “I should never have kept it from her. And tonight,” He sucks in a large gulp of air. “Tonight I thought I’d never have the chance to tell her about…” He doesn’t finish.

“I’ll get them.” She walks off, but before she does the look in her eyes has me worried.

“Dad?”

“Sit down, Taralynn.” He lets go of me for the first time since grabbing onto me when he arrived half an hour ago.

I sit and he sits down next to me on the couch. I’m turned, facing him as he leans all the way against the back of the soft material.

“I told myself the night you were born that I’d tell you the truth one day. I guess that day is today.”

“Tell me what?” He’s scaring me. Does he realize how freaked out what he just said has made me? I don’t know what to expect. I feel like he’s about to drop a bomb on me. I don’t know how much more I can handle tonight.

Pam re-enters the room. She’s holding a picture frame. It’s turned so the only thing I see is the back. She hands it to my dad and then leaves again. When I look back at my dad, he’s staring at the photo inside the frame. There is a look on longing in his eyes that causes my heart to hurt. His eyes are filled with what I think is sadness and pain, but I don’t know why. I don’t know who’s in the photo so I ask.

“Who’s the picture of?” He doesn’t answer, but he does start to talk.

“When Katherine and I married, she got pregnant with Trent almost immediately after the wedding. I wasn’t upset about your brother being born, but I would have rather it happened a few years down the road. I’d just started working for a law firm. I wasn’t even partner. I was at the bottom of the bottom and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to afford my now growing family. Katherine was enough work and a drain on my wallet as is, but then you add a baby to the mix. Eventually I let my worries and stress play a factor in distancing myself from Katherine more and more. I worked more. I had to really if I ever want a partnership.” His fingers brush over the frame briefly before he continues on.

“A few years after Trent’s birth, I had an affair with my secretary and it wasn’t just a one-time thing. It continued for four years and then she called it off when I wouldn’t leave Katherine. It’s not that I loved Katherine anymore, I didn’t. I realized when I started cheating that I had never truly been in love with my wife. But I had a son. I loved my son more than anything and that’s what kept me married to a woman I didn’t want to be with. The woman I had fallen in love with, the woman that should have been my forever didn’t understand that. She begged and that ended up becoming her obsession for a while. Eventually it started fights between us. I couldn’t leave my family and she didn’t understand why I’d stay if I truly loved her like I claimed.” He chokes up on the last part. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around my father cheating on my mother. It not something I’ve ever thought about, but looking back, I’ve never seen them so much as kiss each other.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Just hear me out, sweetheart.” He looks at me waiting for an answer. I nod my head telling him to go on. “The other woman ended our relationship one night out of the blue. She said, she finally understood why I couldn’t leave my child. Then she told me she never wanted to see me again and I should forget all about her. As if that were possible. I was in shock at first and I left her that night thinking she would come to her senses in a day or two, take me back, and we would figure us out and work around my marriage with Katherine. I was a fool. Her resignation was sitting on my desk when I walked into my office the next morning. She must have moved out of her apartment the same night I left because she was gone when I came back. She had her phone number changed too so I had no way of contacting her. It was seven month before I saw those beautiful blue eyes again.” He looks down at picture, then lifts his head, and turns his eyes toward me. “But they weren’t hers any longer, they were yours.”

A tear falls from his eye the same time he slips the photo around to face me. I stare down and it’s like looking at myself in the mirror, but I know that isn’t me in the picture. The picture is old.

“The night you were born, I held you in my arms only after about two minutes of finding out you existed. When you opened your eyes was when I saw your mother again and every time I’ve looked at you since I see so much of her in you. How can I not? With the exception of the dark complexion you got from me, you look just like her.”

“I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

“This is Lynn.” He raises the photo. “Your real mom.”

What do I say to all this? First I have my heart shattered then I find out my whole life’s been a big fat lie and all within a few hours of each other. This is too much to deal with.

“Why are you just now telling me this? Why have I thought and called someone else, Mother, my entire life?” It makes sense now. She hates me because I’m not hers. I never had a hope in hell of gaining her approval, let alone her love. “Why isn’t she in my life?” I take the photo frame from him only to hold it up toward him. “Why aren’t I calling her mom?”

Where is she? Why isn’t she in my life? So many questions are running through my brain at once that I can’t catch up. My heart is pounding so hard in chest, I’m sure it’s going to come out.

“She’s dead.” It’s like glass shattering, only it’s not glass; it’s me. You can pick up glass and toss it in the trash, then buy something new. How does that work for a person’s soul? How do I fix this?

My father continues speaking and I hear every word, but it’s like I’m hearing him at a distance. My mother, my real mother took her own life a few hours after I was born. She never got over him. She was weak; he thinks he made her so weak that she couldn’t deal with a life without him in it if he wasn’t with her.

“Pam and Lynn were best friends. She called me the night you we’re born, after Lynn committed suicide. I didn’t learn that until after I met you. Your mom left me a note asking me to take care of you because she couldn’t and you deserved more than she could give. With the note was the paperwork for your birth certificate. Lynn named you, Tara Michelle Evans. I added the Lynn onto Tara before I submitted the papers. Michelle is Pam’s middle name. I know you know that, but you are actually named after her. Pam even tried to convince me to let her adopt you, but I wouldn’t. You were my daughter. No one was going to raise you, but me. So when I saw the spot for the mothers name was blank on the birth certificate, I made a decision. I named Katherine as your mother, falsifying government documents no less.”

Oh my God. Please, someone tell me he is making this stuff up. This can’t be real. This can’t be my reality.

“I’m sorry, Taralynn. At the time I thought I made the right choice. Looking back, oh looking back I wish I had done so many things differently. When I see the way you look at Shawn, it scares the shit out of me.” I look up, leaving my thoughts for a moment.

“What do you mean? What does any of this have to do with Shawn and me?”