Second Chance (13 page)

“Whatever. I like to focus on the positives.”

This time, the smile won. “So you still think we’ll be finished in two hours? Oh, wait. One and a half. Since we’ve already been working.”

He nodded. “Definitely.”

“You’re insane.”

“No, we can do it,” he said. He set the empty glass on the table and stood up. “Come on. We’ll time ourselves. Make it a contest.”

“Doesn’t a contest imply that we win something if we finish?” she asked.

He thought for a minute, the putty knife poised in mid-air. “Yes. A contest. Let’s have one.”

“Okayyy.” She stared at him. “What do we win?”

“You say we can’t finish in two hours,” he said. “And I say we can. So if you win, we’ll go grab ice cream.” He checked his watch. “Perry’s closes at ten o’clock. We’ll make it just in time.”

Ice cream sounded good. Insanely good. She hadn't been to the island ice cream shop in years and memories flooded back. Memories of summer afternoons with her grandmother, triple scoop cones of the most disgusting combination of ice creams imaginable. And memories of summer evenings with Cash, sitting outside on the miniscule patio adjacent to the shop, sharing a single cone. Passing it back and forth, licking each other's fingers as the ice cream melted and dripped. She shivered.

“OK,” Elle agreed slowly. “And if you win?”

Cash touched the wall with the knife and started scraping. “If I win?” He scraped some more, lost in thought. “If I win, you tell me why you showed me that letter.”

And just like that, her good mood was gone, replaced by all of the uncertainty and confusion that she’d been carrying around ever since she’d found the envelope stuffed in her grandmother’s desk. She planted her hands on her hips, leveling her eyes on him.

“I’ll tell you right now why I showed you,” she said.

The mirth and amusement vanished from his expression and he gestured at the wall. “But we need to finish.”

“You brought it up.”

“We were making a bet, Elle.”

“So, what?” she shot back.  “If you don’t win, then we never talk about it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you haven’t really said
anything
about it since I gave it to you.”

He tossed the knife on the floor in frustration and it clattered against the baseboard. “Jesus, Elle. We’re gonna do this now?”

“I’m sorry.” She glanced at the clock mounted on the wall in the hallway. “Did you want to schedule it or something?”

He frowned. “Don’t be like that.”

“How should I be then?” she asked.

He stared at her and she could see that the same anger she was feeling was flashing through his eyes. Which didn’t make a whole lot of sense to her since he brought it up.

“Why are you taunting me?” he asked.

“Taunting you?”

“Did you think showing me that letter was going to make me feel good?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “What exactly were you hoping for?”

“I was hoping for an explanation, Cash,” she said, annoyed that she had to spell it out for him.

“An explanation,” he said, looking at her.

“Yeah,” she answered. “An explanation.”

He folded his arms across his chest and stared at her. She tried to hold his gaze, but his eyes were like hot coals and she finally had to look away.

“Okay,” he said slowly, his voice even. “I’ll explain. I wrote that letter because I missed you. Because I had no goddamn clue as to why you just disappeared. I had no idea if I’d done something, if you’d met someone else or if you’d moved to Egypt. No clue. Then when you didn’t answer the letter, I figured it was a lost cause. I took the hint. Loud and clear.” His eyes hardened. “So there you go. There’s your explanation.”

His words played in slow motion through her head and she tried to make sense of them. She had to have missed a sentence. Missed a statement. Missed something.

Because he was not making sense.

“What?” It was all she could manage.

“And, for the record, I
really
appreciate you bringing it to me,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “It’s great to know you got it and chose not to respond to it. Ever. Unless giving it to me was your response. Maybe just delayed then. By a decade or so. I guess you just needed to get to it on your to-do list.”

“I just found it!” she said.

“Wow,” he said. “It really was way down on your list. Terrific. Thanks for that.”

“No!” she said, frustration spilling over. “I just found this in my grandmother’s house. I’d never seen it before today!”

He stared at her, the anger in his face changing over to doubt. His brow furrowed. “You just found it?”

She nodded. “I was going through her things. Looking for the title. And I found it. I’d never seen it before. There was a note with it from her. She apologized for not sending it sooner.”

Cash started to say something, then stopped, completely confused.

“But
your
letter doesn’t make any sense at all,” Elle said, her own anger beginning to surface again. “You were the one who stopped talking to me.”

He made a face. “I was not.”

“Yeah. You were. I went back to Wisconsin and you made every promise to me in the book,” she said. “And then? Nothing. Nada. Like you vanished.”

“That is absolutely not true,” he said, his eyes narrowed.

“It’s one hundred percent true,” Elle countered. “I waited. And I waited. And I waited. I got nothing from you. I wrote you twice and called you I don’t know how many times before I gave up and quit.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I assure you it’s very possible,” she said. “Because I remember doing it. And I remember the crying afterward. Crystal clear.”

He reached in his back pocket and pulled out the letter. “Why the hell would I have written this then? I mean, did you even read it when you found it?”

“I…yes…I…wait!” Elle said. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “I’m so confused.”

“Me too.”

She opened her eyes, took a deep breath. “Cash. I never got any letters from you. I never got any phone calls. I never got anything.” She pointed at the letter in his hand. “And I never saw that until I found it today.”

He stared at the letter for a long moment, then he looked at her. His eyes were bright with unshed tears. She knew they wouldn't spill over but it disarmed her, seeing him so resolute, so vulnerable.

“I sent fourteen letters. I called probably twenty-five times.” He paused. “I loved you, Elle. I didn’t forget you. I loved you.”

TWENTY-THREE

Elle sat down on the couch next to him and took a deep breath. Her ribs ached and she thought it might be because her heart was hammering so hard against her chest. “Tell me.”

Cash leaned back into the couch and crossed his arms. He stared at the floor. “I think I sent the first letter a few days after you went home. Just telling you I missed you, wished you hadn’t gone home, that kind of thing. I was lonely after you left. I really missed you.”

She felt her throat constrict. He’d written to her? He’d missed her?

“I called the following weekend.”

“No, you didn’t.”

He lifted his eyes and stared at her. “Yes, I did. I spoke to your mother. Susanna.” His voice was flat. Unemotional.

Elle paled. “My mother?”

He nodded. “I left a message with her. Asking you to call.”

“I never got it.”

Cash’s smile was cold. “I know. Which is why I tried again. And again. And again. Every single time, I got a voicemail.”

Elle frowned. “But I never got any. I was always the first one home. There were never any messages from you. I would have heard them.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that every time I called, your phone would ring twice, then roll straight to voice mail.”

She thought back to her senior year. It was the year her mother had first gotten her a cell phone, a bulky apparatus that weighed almost five pounds and took up half the available space in her purse. She’d still used the house phone, though, and she tried to remember if the answering machine at home had ever had messages. She couldn’t recall.

“So when I couldn’t get ahold of you by phone, I started writing letters. Long ones, at first.” Cash closed his eyes at the memory. “I’d spend hours writing to you. Hours. Might have pulled a few shitty grades that first semester.”

“I didn’t get any letters, either,” Elle said.

“Which is what I don't get. I was pretty sure you weren't getting my voicemails.” He chewed on his lip as he thought. “Your mom never liked me, you know.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Elle asked. “You think…?”

“What? That she intercepted my letters?” Cash’s expression was fierce. “Yes. Absolutely. Not a doubt in my mind. At least now, anyway. Back then, I had my suspicions. It was why I gave that last letter to your grandmother. I figured it was my final shot at reaching you.”

Elle let his words sink in. Was her mother really capable of that? Why would she care? She’d never even met Cash. She thought about her animosity towards him, how she’d stiffened when Elle had told her they were dating. Elle thought it was because she didn’t want her dating anyone, didn’t want Elle distracted from her studies or from getting ready for college. But this felt specific. Personal.

“But the phone calls?” Elle’s voice was laced with doubt. “I don’t know how
…”

“I’m sure she would have found a way,” Cash said. “She was hell bent on keeping us apart. That’s the only thing I’m certain of.”

Elle shook her head and closed her eyes. This wasn’t what she’d expected to hear.

“Elle,” Cash said. She felt his fingertips on her chin. “Look at me.”

Slowly, she opened her eyes and focused on his.

“I didn’t walk away,” he whispered. “I tried. For almost a year, I called and wrote to you. I didn’t walk away. I loved you.”

This time, when her throat tightened and tears spilled on to her cheeks, she couldn’t stop them. He wiped them away, his thumb stroking her skin.

She looked away as she tried to steady her breathing, tried to will the tears to stop. She couldn’t do this. Not now, when she was due to leave in a matter of days. She couldn’t step back into a past that she’d given up on over ten years ago. She wouldn’t let herself.

“Look at me,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes instead.

“Look at me,” he repeated.

She opened her eyes and stole a glance at him. His mouth was set in a firm line, his own eyes moist.

“I loved you,” he said. “Not hearing from you…it was the worst feeling, Elle. Like I’d lost a part of me. A part I thought was gonna be with me forever, you know?”

She nodded. She knew.

“When you didn’t respond to that last letter, I knew it was finished.” It was his turn to breathe deeply. “Didn’t want to believe it, but I knew. It had been almost a year. So I let it go. Let you go. But I never forgot you.”

She shook her head. “What do you mean? You’ve been hung up on me all these years?” She seriously doubted that.

“Yeah,” he said. “I have.”

She rolled her eyes and shifted away from him but he caught her arm and hauled her closer.

“No, I didn’t join the monastery,” he admitted. “I dated. Even got engaged. But you were always there, you know? In the back of my mind. And everyone I was ever with, it was like I compared them to you. Had this internal barometer that I measured everyone else against. No one compared. A few came close, but no one compared.”

“Like your fiance?” Elle tripped over the word. She hated learning he’d been engaged to someone but she had this morbid desire to hear more.

He chuckled. “No. Sloane was the complete antithesis of you.”

Elle raised her eyebrows, not sure what that might mean. “Oh?”

“Self-centered. Spoiled. A royal bitch.” He shrugged. “I honestly don’t know what the hell I was thinking when we were together.”

“You said fiance,” Elle said. “Does that mean you didn’t get married?”

He nodded. “She called it off. Thank God. Although, honestly, I think it was more her grandmother’s idea to end it than hers.”

“Her grandmother?”

“Yeah. You might know her.” Cash looked at her. “Evelyn. Evelyn Landemeer.”

TWENTY-FOUR

“I want to know everything,” Elle said. “Every single thing you remember.”

She’d unearthed an unopened bottle of scotch in the kitchen and brought it and two tumblers back to the couch. She poured some of the amber liquid into both cups and handed one to Cash.

He took a swig. “Where do you want me to start?”

“At the beginning,” Elle said. She sipped her drink and winced as the fiery liquid scorched her throat. “The day I left.”

Cash nodded. “OK.”