One More Time (21 page)

If only I hadn’t gone to Charleston, then none of this would be happening. Charleston was supposed to be about me and Adam hanging out and going through the remainder of my aunt’s shit.
Fuck! So many secrets and lies. If only I hadn’t gone.
Just thinking of Adam made my chest ache. As I thought back on my time in Charleston, I felt sick…sick with guilt. If I wasn’t careful, it was going to eat me alive.

The entire drive to Charleston, all I could think about was seeing my brother again. As soon as I spotted him waiting on the porch for me, I gave a loud “Whoop” of excitement. Before I could even get the car in park, my door was open and we were slapping each other on the back. Damn, how I missed him. Once we settled with beers, we talked about where he had been stationed in Afghanistan and what he’d been doing. That eventually led to me telling him about my aunt’s last days and how hard it was watching her waste away. It was nice being in her house. In a weird way, it felt as if she was there with us in spirit.

After a quick shower and a change of clothes, Adam met me in the living room. We ordered pizza, drank more beer, watched soccer and talked about how I had managed to gain both a girlfriend and a daughter in the short time since we last spoke. Adam was skeptical, but I assured him it was the real deal. Not only was he an uncle, I was crazy in love with both of my girls. By the time we turned in for the night, it was too late to call Ibby. I figured I’d call her sometime the next day.

The next morning we were up bright and early. Being that I also had to deal with movers, we only had one day to tackle my aunt’s place. By ten that morning, we had everything out of the closet and were slowly going through it. At noon we stopped for a quick lunch and I thought about calling home, but remembered Ibbs and Milly were meeting Ellie and Mac at the park for a playdate. Slowly but surely we made headway. It was shocking how much shit one woman could cram into a single walk-in closet. Neither Adam nor I were enjoying this…at all. It was a trip down memory lane neither of us wanted to experience. Most of it consisted of boxes full of old photographs and documents from before and after we were born. I couldn’t get over how happy my parents looked in the pictures. They were not happy people. After the fourth photo album Adam let out a disgusted sigh.

“Is it just me or do they look ecstatically happy in all these pictures?”

I was thinking the same thing as I held up a picture. “Look how much you look like Dad.” Adam had our Dad’s dark hair, whereas I had our mom’s blondish color. However we both shared Mom’s grey eyes, and Dad’s muscular build.

“I didn’t realize how much you favor Mom and I favor Dad,” Adam admitted. “Hey, what’s this?” He held up a leather bound book.

“No clue,” I answered as I thumbed through yet another scrapbook full of fake happy pictures.

As he opened it up, several papers fell out. I gathered them off the floor while he looked through the pages of the book.

After a minute or so, he looked up with a shocked expression on his face. “Holy shit, this is Mom’s journal.”

I glanced down at the papers in my hand and started trying to make sense of what I was reading. After a minute or so it clicked. “I think these are the police reports from that night.”

For the next few hours, we each took turns reading our mother’s journal. After we scoured over the police reports and what appeared to be the results from the insurance investigator, we were completely dumbstruck. What we’d discovered was mind boggling.

Having no clue as to how we were supposed to process this information, we left it sitting in the middle of the floor and went for burgers. Halfway through the meal, Adam spoke up.

“None of this is your fault, D. W-we didn’t know,” he stammered.

“It’s all my fault, Adam, and we both know it.”

“Don’t take this on, little brother. It’s just as much mine as it is yours. Think long and hard before you go off half-cocked, okay?”

We both knew it was way too late for that. Once the Pandora’s Box that was our mother’s journal had been opened, nothing would ever again be the same. All I could think about was the devastation her selfishness had caused. Anger burned a hole in my gut and I wanted to hurt something. Instead, we drove home in silence and I went straight to my room where I locked myself in. I could hear Adam cleaning up the rest of the shit downstairs. For hours I sat there going over everything in my head. By the time the sun was up, I was more a mess than ever.

After a quick shower, I gave Adam a half-assed goodbye and headed to Isabella’s townhome. He was pissed I was leaving so soon, but I had to.

Crazy thoughts rolled through my head as I watched the movers load the stuff onto the trucks. After two hours, I gave a nod to the movers and headed for Charlotte. My plan was to move the girls in as quickly as possible and get the fuck out. I don’t know what I was thinking.
I can’t be a dad or a husband.
Before Isabella, I was a selfish prick who could never commit.
I am still that guy
. I kept trying to convince myself nothing had changed.
Ibby and Milly deserve someone clean and good, not tainted and definitely not me.
I knew leaving my girls would be the hardest thing I’d ever done, but it was the right thing. In the end, they would be better off without me.

After Ibby stormed out of the house, I went straight to our bedroom and packed a duffle. Then I drove toward Dragonfly, thinking I’d bunk on the office sofa until I could find a better place to stay. A part of me wanted to go back and talk to her, to explain why I had to go. Another part of me knew she wouldn’t understand.
She’ll think you’re a horrible person. Hell, you are a horrible person.
My phone rang and, hoping it was Isabella, I picked it up on the first ring.

“Ibby?”

“No, it’s Piper. Where are you?”

“I’m in the middle of something. Can I call you back later?”

“You don’t sound right. Are you okay?” The concern in her voice made me want to howl at the unfairness of it all.

“Not really,” I admitted.

“Gage is at work. Come over. I’ll make you lunch and we can talk.” Taking her up on her offer, I told her I’d be over in ten.

Ten minutes later, she greeted me at the door with a beer and a hug. “You look like shit, babe. Did things go bad with your brother?”

I told her I couldn’t drink because I had to work later. Not accepting my answer, she phoned Kurt and told him she needed me for something for the rest of the day and asked him if someone else could cover my shift that night. After what seemed like a million questions, Kurt finally agreed. Piper hung up and handed me the beer. “Chug the first one. It’ll loosen you up. I’m going to slowly sip mine and paint my toenails. We can talk about what’s bothering you when you’re ready.”

Per her instructions, I downed the beer. Still tense, I strolled to the fridge, pulled out two more, opened them and carried them back to the living room. Halfway through the second, I began telling her about what my brother and I had discovered in Charleston. In order to properly do this, I had to take her back to the beginning.

“Adam and I were best friends growing up. When I was twelve and he was fourteen, we moved from Chicago to a little town in Northern Virginia, right outside of Washington DC. Dad was a representative for an insurance company and had to travel a lot. He and Mom told us the move was job related. Mom was an interior decorator so she could pretty much do her job from anywhere. She always had fabric samples and shit in the back of the car. It was always a mess. I used to get so angry when she would pick us up from school and, instead of taking us home to do our homework, would cart us to client’s houses and make us study in the car while she talked decorating shit. Mom and Dad fought a lot before we moved to Virginia. After the move the fighting stopped and Mom started spending more time at home with us. Dad didn’t seem to travel as much, either. It was nice finally having both parents around.” Memories of my family played like a movie reel inside my head. “Dad bought us an awesome two story, white Victorian house. It was Mom’s dream house.” I stopped and took a huge chug of beer and watched Piper paint her toes a light blue color.

“Continue,” she instructed without looking up.

Taking another swig, I kept going. “A month or so after we moved in, the neighbors threw a party for us. The whole block showed up, including the kids three houses down. Jeff and Rob were the boy’s names and they were about the same ages. We had always lived next to really old people, so it was awesome having kids so close. Every day after school the four of us played together and every weekend we spent one or both nights at each other’s houses. It was great…until that night.”

Piper’s eyes met mine for a second before dropping back to her toes. “What night?”

“Right before my fourteenth birthday, my parent’s started fighting again. Mom was so unhappy. She’d spent the whole first year in Virginia redecorating the inside of the new house. When she finished that, she started trying to build her business back up. I guess it was harder than she thought. I remember her telling us how uptight the women were. She used to talk about moving back to Chicago a lot. She didn’t think we noticed how withdrawn and sad she was, but we did. She cried all the time. I used to sit in my room thinking up ways to make her smile.” I glanced up and Piper was staring at me with tears in her eyes. I quickly looked away. I couldn’t handle her tears. Not right now. Picking back up where I left off, I began talking about the things that led up to that night. “One night, Adam and I were playing hide-and-seek. I was hiding in the kitchen pantry and, before Adam had a chance to find me, the phone rang. Mom rushed into the kitchen to answer it. Being stuck in the pantry, I overheard her conversation.” Piper sniffled and I paused to take another drink. “Remember, Piper, I was fourteen years old. What the fuck did I know?”

“What did you over hear?” she quietly asked.

“I overheard her talking about how Dad was cheating on her.”

She physically flinched. If anyone knew what it felt like to be cheated on, it was Piper. For months she thought Gage was cheating on her and it almost destroyed her. “Oh, Dillon, I’m so sorry,” she said. “That must have been horrible to hear.”

I nodded my head. “It was. Only…I now know I heard wrong.” An oh-shit expression skittered across her face and I continued. “As soon as Mom hung up the phone, I ran straight to Adam and told him what I’d overheard. He didn’t believe me, so I let it go. Within a few weeks he’d changed his tune. He overheard Mom and Dad fighting and said it was about Dad cheating. You have to understand, this was especially hard on Adam because he idolized our dad. We both did, but Adam was Dad’s special boy. From that moment on, neither of us wanted anything to do with Dad. We felt so betrayed by our father and so damn sorry for our mother.”

“Why did she stay with him?” Piper asked.

“That’s what we couldn’t figure out. We told ourselves it was because she loved him so much.” I set the beer down and ran my hands over my face. “Fuck. Adam and I followed her around like little lost puppies, trying to make up for what Dad was doing to her.”

“That’s a lot to take on at such a young age,” Piper said.

“It was,” I agreed.

“So, what happened?”

“It continued like this for about six months. Dad pretended to be hurt by the distance while Adam and I did everything we could think of to protect Mom from him. When Dad was out of town, things were better. If Mom said she needed to go out to see friends, we lied to Dad when he called, and told him she’d gone to bed. When he was there, we did everything we could to keep them apart, so they wouldn’t fight. It was a constant strain on all of us. I remember thinking something had to give.”

“Did it?”

I let out a harsh laugh before answering, “Boy did it. One night Adam and I were spending the night with Jeff and Rob. Rob came down with the stomach crud and their mom decided to send us home. I guess she forgot to call and tell Mom we were on our way. It was dark out, so instead of walking on the street, we ran through our neighbors backyards. The second we hit our yard, we heard what sounded like a gunshot.”

“What?” Piper asked. Her eyes were the size of fifty cent pieces. “Tell me it wasn’t from your house,” she whispered. I stared down into her wide blue eyes.
Gage is a lucky man. I hope he knows this.
“Dillon?” she asked, making an obnoxious move-it-along gesture with her hand.
Fuck, this was hard.

“We both noticed Dad’s car sitting in the driveway. He wasn’t due home for a few days.” I stood and began pacing back and forth across her living room floor. “I was frozen with fear and Adam wanted to go investigate. Fuck, Piper, I let him go in there alone. Who the hell does that?”

I felt her hand on my back and jumped. “You were fourteen, D. Give yourself a break.”

“I contemplated running back to the neighbor’s house, but I heard Adam scream. All I could focus on was saving him.”

I didn’t realize I was breathing heavily until Piper wrapped her arms around me from behind and rested her head between my shoulder blades. “I’m here,” she crooned. Her voice vibrated through me, giving me the strength to get the rest out.

“The first thing I saw when I entered the house was Mom lying on the dining room floor. I remember thinking,
Why is Mom on the floor?
Then I noticed the blood pooling underneath her head and freaked. I wanted to go to her but Adam whimpered. It sounded as if he was in pain and diverted my attention from Mom. Adam was in the corner of the dining room sitting on his butt with his hands protectively over his head. My dad was hovering over him.” I took in a deep breath of air and she gave me a tight squeeze to let me know she was still there. “I thought Dad was hurting him, Piper. I thought Dad was the bad guy. I thought Dad was cheating on Mom.” Carefully, I pulled out of Piper’s grasp and walked over to the large bay window and peered out onto the street. “All I could think about was stopping Dad from hurting my brother like he had our mother. That’s when I noticed a gun under one of the dining room chairs.” Piper gasped. Pictures of me picking up the gun rolled through my head. “It was heavy. I expected it to weigh a lot less. The second I had it in my hands, Adam started screaming and I knew something horrible would happen if I didn’t stop our dad. So, I lifted it and pulled the trigger.” I let out a sad laugh. “Who knew I would be such a good shot?”