The Wreck (28 page)

Carly followed him.

“Does she know?”

“No.”

“Who does?”

He walked so fast that Carly had to trot
to keep up with him. “Only my parents and my siblings. And Dr. Walsh, who
delivered her.”

Suddenly he stopped. “How could you do
this? How could you keep something like this from me? From my parents?
Do
you have any idea what this would’ve meant to them after losing Sam?”

“If you’ll let me explain—”

He held up his hand to stop her. “Save
it.” He snorted harshly. “No wonder why your brother-in-law, the man who’s
raising
my daughter
, can barely bring himself look at me. He must be
thrilled
that I’m back in town.”

“Brian, please,” she begged, tears
streaming down her face. “Let me tell you—”

“
There’s nothing you can say, Carly!
Go back with Tom and the kids. I need to get out of here before I say something
I’ll regret.”

She grabbed his arm. “Please, Bri. You
don’t understand.”

“You’re right.” He shook her off. “I
don’t. I can’t do this right now, and I can’t leave you here alone. I’m asking
you to go.”

“Will you come home later? Will you talk
to me? You have to let me explain. We can’t let this ruin everything!”

“Too late.” Knowing Matt would see Carly
safely home, Brian turned and walked away.

Carly
stood sobbing in the field and watched him until he was out of sight. Wiping
her face, she turned to find Cate waiting for her.

For an endless moment, the sisters stared
at each other before Cate closed the distance between them. “He knows.”

“He took one look at her, Cate.” Carly
wiped the dampness from her face. “I know I promised you and Tom I’d never tell
anyone, but when he asked me straight out, I couldn’t lie to him. I just
couldn’t.”

“I always knew this day might come.” With
tears running down her face, too, Cate put her arms around her sister and held
her. “When you explain everything to him, he’ll come around. He loves you too
much not to. He just needs some time to absorb it.”

“I don’t know. He’s furious, and I don’t
blame him.”

Cate took her by the shoulders. “Listen
to me, Carly. You did what you thought was best for him, for Zoë, for all of
you. Remember the way things were back then? You couldn’t talk, you couldn’t
leave the house, he was halfway across the country in college. You were both
traumatized by an unspeakable tragedy, and neither of you were in any condition
to raise a child. You did the right thing—the
only
thing you could do.
You can’t question everything just because he reacted badly.”

“He’ll want to know her.”

“And he will. She’ll be his niece.”

“What if that’s not enough for him?”

“It’ll have to be. He’s not capable of
destroying the life of a child he doesn’t even know just so he can have the
satisfaction of hearing her call him Dad. She has a dad, one she loves very
much. He’ll see that.”

“I can’t lose him again, Cate,” Carly
whispered. “It’d be the end of me.”

“You’re not going to lose him. Let’s get
through Zoë’s game, and then we’ll go find him. Tom and I will go with you.
We’ll find him, and we’ll explain it to him.”

Wondering if there was any explanation
Brian would accept, Carly let her sister lead her to the bleachers where Tom
waited for them with a stricken expression on his face. “Cate?”

She clutched her husband’s hand and
kissed his cheek. “Everything’s fine. What’s the score?”

Part IV:

August-September 2010

A time to love and a time to hate; a time
for war and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:8

B
rian walked for hours. His mind raced
with questions, disbelief, anger, and sadness. The sadness was unbearable. All
this time there had been a child, his child, his child with Carly.
No wonder
why she wants a baby so badly
.
She wants one she can keep
.
She’s
had to watch her sister raise the one she did have
.

When he thought about the years he’d
spent so completely alone only to find out he’d had a child!
All that time!
He had asked Carly if she’d known what having a grandchild would have meant to
his parents. What about what it would’ve meant to
him
to have a
daughter? Had she considered that?

He walked the length of the beach at the
lake and ended up at the willow. Studying the tree that had been their haven, he
wondered if Zoë had been conceived there on the night of the accident. Or had
it happened in Carly’s bedroom on the Fourth of July? He had no idea, but
suddenly he wanted to know. He
needed
to know.

Turning toward town, Brian had worked up
quite a head of steam by the time he made it to downtown. He was cognizant
enough to realize that charging into Carly’s apartment in his current state of
mind wasn’t wise, so he crossed Main Street, cut across the town common, and
went up the hill to the cemetery.

The late afternoon sun was warm on his
back as he stood at his brother’s grave. He sat down and rested against the
large stone. “Hey, Sammy.” Brian closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m
sorry it’s been a while. I was away for a long time.”

Brian pulled absently at the grass around
the base of the stone. “I found out today I have a daughter. Can you believe
that? She’s fourteen and gorgeous. She looks so much like Carly. It’s
unbelievable. And you should see her pitch! She’s got a smoking fastball, just
like I used to have. Remember?

“You just wouldn’t believe all the shit
that’s happened since that last night. It’s like my whole life is divided
squarely in half—before the wreck and after. And let me tell you, after has
pretty much sucked. Until recently, that is. Things have been pretty good
lately. Being back with Carly has been, just, well … amazing.” His eyes filled.
“We’re supposed to finally get married in two weeks.” He closed his eyes and
tipped his face into the sunshine. “I just can’t believe she kept this from me,
Sammy. I feel so cheated. Zoë, my daughter’s name is Zoë, is almost grown, and
I don’t even know her.”

After sitting there a long while, Brian
slowly rose to his feet, brushed off his shorts, and ran a hand over the stone
that marked his brother’s grave. “I miss you, buddy. That’s one thing that
hasn’t changed. I’ll be back soon.” He turned to leave and was surprised to see
Luke McInnis on his way up the hill.

“Hey, Brian. How’s it going?”

Brian shook the hand Luke offered.
“Pretty good. What brings you here?”

“My grandfather is buried right over
there.” Luke nodded to the row just past Sam. He fixed his eyes on Sam’s grave
and shook his head. “I don’t suppose you ever really get over something like
that, do you?”

“No.” Brian was reluctant to discuss his
late brother with someone he barely knew and hadn’t seen since high school.
“Well, I’ve got to get going. See ya around.”

“You’re probably headed to Carly’s. I
just saw her.”

Brian turned, studied him, wondered.
“Where?”

“She was with her sister and
brother-in-law. I think they were headed up to her place.”

“I’m meeting them there.”

“Well, don’t let me keep you. Good to
have you back in town, Brian. I hope you and Carly will be sticking around for
a while.”

“Take care, Luke.” Brian walked down the
hill and crossed the street to the town common. He glanced back over his
shoulder and saw Luke still watching him. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew
his cell phone and punched number one on his speed dial. “Dad? Hey, how’s it going?”

“Another frustrating day without an ounce
of progress. That’s how it’s going.”

“You aren’t getting stressed out again,
are you?”

“Trying not to.”

“So listen, I just had an odd
conversation with Luke McInnis. He didn’t do anything wrong, per se, but he
showed up at the cemetery as I was leaving and said he’d just seen Carly.
Something about the whole thing creeped me out.”

“Why aren’t you with Carly?”

“We had a, ah … a fight.”

“You didn’t leave her alone somewhere,
did you?” Michael asked with a frantic edge to his voice.

“Please, Dad. Give me some credit, will
you? She’s with her sister’s family.”

“I’m sorry. Of course you wouldn’t leave
her. This whole thing is turning me into a paranoid freak. I’ll have someone
take a look at Luke. I don’t really know him very well. What do you remember
about him?”

“Not much. He was always just kind of
there. I didn’t know him well, either.”

“Ask Carly what she remembers.”

“I will. Eventually.”

“So what in the world do you two have to
fight about?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,”
Brian mumbled.

“You’ll be with her tonight, right?”

Brian stood at the bottom of the stairs
that led to the apartment where they’d spent so many blissful hours since
they’d been back together. He looked up, knowing she was there with her sister
and brother-in-law, waiting to tell him how he’d come to have a child he hadn’t
known about for fourteen years. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be with her.”

“Let me know what she says about Luke.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Are you all right, son? You sound odd.
And you’ve been to the cemetery?”

“I hadn’t been to see Sam since I got
home. No biggie, Dad.” He had no idea what he would tell his parents about Zoë.
He needed to hear what Carly had to say before he decided anything. “You’d
better get home, or Mom will come and drag you out of there in front of all
your people.”

“I’m going. I’ll talk to you in the
morning.”

As he trudged up the stairs, Brian closed
the phone and returned it to his pocket. By the time he reached the small deck
where Carly’s flowers filled the air with sweet fragrance, his throat had
constricted and his heart was pounding.

He rested his hand on the doorknob for a
long moment, working up the courage to take the next step. What would he hear?
How would he feel about it? What would it mean for his future with Carly? Would
there even
be
a future with her? Questions he thought had been answered
were now back in play, and the stakes had never been higher for them.

Carly opened the door.

Despite his huge desire to be pissed with
her, he was affected by her ravaged face. He hated that he wanted to take her
in his arms and do whatever he could to make sure she never looked that way
again, but he couldn’t seem to move.

“I’m glad to see you.” She reached for
his hand. “Come in.”

He let her lead him inside.

Tom and Cate, who didn’t look much better
than Carly, jumped up from the sofa when they saw him.

“Brian,” Cate said, taking a step toward
him.

“I was wondering,” Brian said in the low,
controlled tone he had practiced on his way into town, “if the three of you
could maybe tell me how this happened.” He turned to Carly. “When did we, you
know, make a baby?”

“Fourth of July.” Carly linked and
unlinked her fingers as she all but vibrated with tension.

They were getting into personal terrain
here, and Brian hated doing it with an audience, but that didn’t stop him. “And
didn’t you tell me then you were still on the pill?”

Carly looked down at the floor and then
back at him, the sadness in her eyes so deep and so overwhelming that had he
not needed the answers so badly, he would’ve stopped right there. It was just
too much. “I hadn’t left the house in almost two months by then,” she said
softly. “I couldn’t very well send my mother to Planned Parenthood to get my
pills for me.”

“You could’ve sent me.”

“I never thought of it. I wasn’t
expecting to have the … opportunity to make love with you again.”

“So you lied.” Where there should have
been anger, there was only hurt and confusion. “Why would you do that, Carly?”

As if she couldn’t wait another moment to
touch him, she went to him and rested her hands on his chest. “I knew by the
Fourth of July that I wasn’t going to be able to go with you to Michigan. I was
so afraid we wouldn’t get another chance to be … together … like that before
you left. I knew I was taking a risk, but I needed you so badly, Brian. I
needed us to be
us
again, even if just for a short time. We’d spent two
endless weeks apart—other than the week of the accident, the worst two weeks of
my life up to that point—because you were frustrated with me for not talking.
Can you remember what it was like then? How awful everything was? And how badly
we needed each other that night?”

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. Tom and Cate
faded away, and there was only Carly. He looked down at her. “Did you know you
were pregnant when I left for school?”