While You Were Gone: A Thought I Knew You Novella (13 page)

I don’t want to know those things. Someday, Wyatt might ask about his father, and I’ll decide then: is a father the person who raised you or the person who gave you life in the first place?

“Are you okay?” Paula asks. “You’re white as a ghost.”

I nod and kiss Wyatt’s cheeks, wet with drool and tears and red from the wind. He laughs and slaps at me with his chubby hands, his toothy grin inches from my face.

His smile is so much like Greg’s that, sometimes, it takes my breath away.

If Claire had seen him, really looked at him, she’d surely know. Anyone could see it. I put him down, and he scampers to Paula. Her arm snakes protectively around his shoulders.

At the kitchen window, I part the curtains. A small, dark car is leaving, making a left out of the parking lot. I wonder if it’s her, if Greg is with her. I wonder if they’ll be back. On the table, from the glossy picture strip, Greg’s wide smile grins back at me. For a second, and only a second, the pain of losing him is fresh all over again, a sharp knife twist right in my center, and I can’t catch my breath. I thought she would have taken the picture, but she left it, tossed carelessly on the table. I pick it up gingerly between my thumb and forefinger and hover it over the trash. I could do that: throw it away, shove it down under the paper plates with waffles and syrup and Wyatt’s leftover banana. The whole thing would be over, almost like it never happened.

Except it did happen. Wyatt plops on the floor and pulls out a bin of Duplos from under the couch, and I watch his chubby hands stack and click those bright little boxes together, his mind analyzing and compiling and solving problems. One day, he’ll ask me where his daddy is. This picture is all I have left of Greg, aside from Wyatt himself. The picture is all I have left to give him.

I look at it one last time, the crinkled eyes, the glinty glasses, his lips against my cheek—I swear I can almost feel them.

What I have now, with Cal, is so real, so honest. We fell in love when Wyatt was a newborn, the intensity of baby-mama fog matched only by my growing admiration for the man who cared for a baby who wasn’t his. My love for Greg was whirlwind and breathless but packaged in half truths and self-delusion. My love for Cal has grown organically to the steady swell of a low-tide ocean and just as expansive.

I open the junk drawer, the one with the garlic press, the lemon juicer, and the apple slicer that Cal got me for my birthday, a joke after picking up after a rash of abandoned cores. I shove the picture of Greg and me behind all the debris of domestic life, those shiny things you never use and sometimes forget you even have.

Dear Reader,

We hope you enjoyed
While You Were Gone (A
Thought I Knew You
Novella)
by Kate Moretti. Please consider leaving a review on your favorite book site.

Visit our website
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A
cknowledgments

First, thanks to the many readers who made
Thought I Knew You
successful enough to warrant a sequel(-ish). Thanks to everyone who asked, “But what is Greg’s story?” for inspiring me to write it. I even thank those of you who hated Greg with such vitriol that you extended this challenge.

Thanks to Red Adept Publishing for the always-thorough, always-professional editing, cover art, formatting, and friendship. It’s always a joy, and at this point, it feels warm and comfy in this house. Jessica and Karen, it was fun working together to bring Karen’s story to life.

Thank you to my outstanding first readers:

Elizabeth Buhman, who catches literally everything (I smile with gritted teeth at your notes). I can’t imagine I’ll ever write or publish anything without your eyes on it first. You are one of my favorite people, but you know that.

Thank you to Kimberly Giarratano, who says “more conflict,” and I oblige because she knows what she’s talking about.

Thanks to Mary Fan, who corrected my bumbling attempts at research on the violin, symphonies, and all things musical.

Thanks to Ann Garvin and Sonja Yoerg, who read this manuscript and offered their thoughts, notes, and ramblings. Not to mention wonderful praise, which I promptly displayed everywhere.

Lastly, thanks to the real Karen, who is nothing at all like the fictional Karen but who has always encouraged me to write my first novel, so much so that I named a seemingly throwaway character after her (only to bring her back five years later).

Thanks to my mom. She reads everything I write and sometimes forgets to tell me when she’s done. She drives around with my books in her car and sells them to her friends. She’s my Number One Fan.

Finally, thanks to Chip, who is always ignored while I write. He accommodates my writing schedule, which is not a schedule at all because I’m erratic and scatterbrained and unorganized. He does more housework than your average husband and picks up all my half-empty water cups. You do all my laundry, you make me laugh, you order my chaos.

About the Author

New York Times Bestselling Author Kate Moretti lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, two kids, and a dog. She’s worked in the pharmaceutical industry for ten years as a scientist, and has been an avid fiction reader her entire life.

She enjoys traveling and cooking, although with two kids, a day job, and writing, she doesn’t get to do those things as much as she’d like.

Her lifelong dream is to buy an old house with a secret passageway.

Excerpt of Kate Moretti’s Binds That Tie

Prologue

S
he hadn’t meant to kill him. She remembers it as still photographs in motion, like a flip book: the struggle, reaching for something—anything—on the mantel, the surprisingly soft thump as the leaded crystal connected with his skull, the heavy finality of his body slumping on the wood floor. She remembers how she’d thought bone should be harder, stronger, like steel, and how it seemed too easy to knock out a man. She remembers Chris’s face, long and white, as he stood in the doorway and stared at the body in the living room. His mouth opened, the baseball bat hanging like a failed punch line at his side. He said something—she doesn’t remember what—and she shrugged, thinking he was being melodramatic.

She remembers reaching for the phone and telling Chris to get some water. She’d seen that in the movies, that cold water would wake an unconscious person. She remembers Chris’s hand on her wrist, lowering the phone back into the cradle with a barely audible click. It’s incredible how such a small sound could have such a resonating effect, cleanly dividing their lives in half. After all, it was just a click, like the soft closing of a door. Or the dry-firing of a gun.

Chapter One

Maggie

T
he clack of fingers tapping the keyboard kept beat with the top-forty Muzak playing at low volume. The combination comforted Maggie, the tap-tap-tap of a tinny bass-line beat. Sometimes, when a song came on the car radio that Maggie heard at least twice a day, she mentally added the clicking, like a calming metronome.

“Riley Martin is here. She wants you, not me.” Linda Crawford rapped her orthopedic shoe gently against Maggie’s chair, her lip curled.

Maggie studied her coworker, the only other nurse in the pediatrician’s office. Linda was shaped like a beach ball, with a mound of permed blond hair and a permanent sneer. She was in her fifties, and a chronic shoulder injury gave her the wafting odor of Icy Hot. Maggie wasn’t surprised most of the kids asked for her instead. She stood and took the file from Linda’s outstretched hand. Quick, easy last appointment of the day.

In the examination room, Riley, a towheaded, spectacled five-year-old, sat giggling on the table. Her father, tall and broad, stood next to her and held her hand. Maggie saw the unabashed love of fathers for their little girls every day, but she’d learned to push down the quick stab in her center. The most staid of men folded like circus performers at the prodding of a child, but the girls, more than the boys, had that ignition effect. The girls, more than the boys, seemed to take that for granted.

“Hi, Riley. Gearing up for kindergarten?” Maggie donned a pair of rubber gloves and opened the file, scanning for due vaccinations.

“Yes. But Markie isn’t going with me to kindergarten. Daddy says I have to leave him home.” A tired, well-worn brown rabbit sat in her lap, and she rubbed the petal-pink silk on his inner ear.

“Ah, well, you know what? I heard rabbits are really very smart. I don’t think they even need kindergarten!” Maggie gathered a pre-filled syringe, tapped it once, and met Mr. Martin’s gaze over Riley’s head. He gave her a wry grin as she swabbed Riley’s arm with alcohol. “Just a DTaP today, no big deal. It’s not even a real shot, just a little booster. Riley, tell me, are you going on vacation this year?”

Riley launched into a long-winded description of Disney World, and while she was talking, Maggie snuck the needle into her bicep. As Maggie pushed the plunger down gently, Riley gasped.

Maggie laughed. “You barely noticed it! It was the smallest pinch. I told you, just a booster!” She pinched Riley’s chin and slipped a Band-Aid over the puncture wound.

As Maggie removed her gloves and tossed them in the trash, she caught Pete Martin’s eye. He gave her a wink. She smiled back, but as she left the exam room, she rolled her eyes. Pete Martin was over six feet tall, with salt-and-pepper hair and a quick, easy smile that he showered on women all over town.

She tossed Riley’s folder in the To-be-filed bin. Penelope, one of the young, blond twenty-something receptionists, snatched it up. She was sucking on a lollipop, filling the office with the syrupy, juvenile perfume of a grape Blow Pop.

“Riley didn’t ask for you. Pete did.” She twisted her mouth and raised her eyebrows, and Maggie couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, come on. I swear, Fridays are like well-visit Dad day.”

Maggie shook her head as she turned off her computer for the day. The wall clock above her desk read 3:55. She heard Charlene’s words in the back of her mind.
Pretty girls know they’re pretty.
Her mother’s voice had a tendency to sneak into Maggie’s consciousness at inopportune moments, a measured timbre with a cultivated borderline British accent that Maggie abhorred. Whenever Charlene spoke, Maggie wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her.
You were born and raised in New Jersey, home of the worst accent in America.
“Good night, Penelope.”

“I’m not far behind you.” She waggled her fingers in Maggie’s direction and packed up her bag. “Have a good weekend!”

Maggie waved to Linda, hunched over her computer, and stopped in the doorway of Dr. Tantella’s office to say good night. He was so engrossed in the mounds of paper on his desk, he gave her a noncommittal grunt and a quick dismissive flick of his wrist.

As she opened the door to her black Volkswagen and climbed into the driver’s seat, Maggie thought about Penelope’s words. She’d heard it before, though not usually so matter-of-fact. Penelope, with her soup-can blond curls and rounded doe eyes, had probably heard the same things growing up and viewed Maggie as a sort of kin. Maggie wondered if Penelope had a Charlene whispering in her ear.
Shhh, don’t protest, just say thank you.

The worst part was, Maggie often found her mother was right. Pretty girls
do
know they’re pretty. Even if they’re never told or they never see it in a mirror, the world teaches them. People give them free coffee and appreciative smiles, hold open doors and lend them quarters at the vending machine. She tied her long blond hair in a ponytail and started the car. She was digging in her purse for gum when she heard a rap on the window. Her head snapped up, and for a second, all she saw was the white, straight-toothed smile of Pete Martin. She pressed the button to roll down her window.

“I just wanted to say thanks for being so nice. To Riley.” His voice, smooth as butter, filled the car as he leaned in her open window. He smelled sharp, like citrus.

Maggie’s finger twitched over the
up
button. “No problem. She’s a lovely girl.”

“Last appointment of the day?”

“Yep, headed home. Have a good night.”

“Well, we have to bring Riley’s brother in next week. Will you be in on Wednesday?”

“I’m here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Mr. Martin.”

“You can call me Pete, you know.”

“Dr. Tantella insists on last names. It draws a line, I guess.” She gave a shrug and a polite, thin-lipped smile.

“Okay, then I’ll see you next Wednesday.” He backed up and held up his hand in a friendly half wave.

Maggie rolled up her window and watched him jog back to his car.
Yes, pretty girls know they’re pretty. They know because the world tells them.

“Chris!” Maggie called as the door slammed behind her.

The house was empty. He’d been avoiding her, staying later at work, not returning her text messages. In the quiet, when he wasn’t there to crowd her thoughts or flip her emotions, she acknowledged that she didn’t blame him. Only in his absence could she admit her role in their growing divide.

The irony was, in his absence, she loved him. She loved the way he’d pause in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the molding, to watch her cook dinner—when she did. She loved the gentle slope of his neck into his shoulder and the muscle that had formed there from years of manual labor. She loved his dark, curly hair and green eyes, a striking contrast to his wicked, toothy smile. The devil’s smile, Maggie’s sister had always called it. Because when he flashed it, he could do “whatever the devil he pleased.”

Maggie loved the slow way he moved through life, his mind chronicling what he didn’t say, the way he never rushed to fill silence. His shyness was often mistaken by strangers—or Charlene and Phillip—for stupidity, but she knew better. In his absence, she loved him. In his presence, she found that she struggled to like him anymore.

Forgiveness is a skill one learns only by being deeply hurt.
Charlene had murmured that as she folded Phillip’s golf shirts into an aluminum Rimowa
.
The memory startled Maggie.

She picked up her cell phone and texted Chris.
Coming home for dinner?

Not
when;
she knew better. It was Friday, and Maggie felt restless, a pulsing in her chest, and a thickness in her throat. She wandered the house.

Before she could change her mind, she sent him another message.
Do you want to go to Anabelle’s?

Then she waited. Anabelle’s, on their side of the Susquehanna, in Harrisburg city, was a small Italian BYOB they had discovered years earlier. It had only ten tables and one waiter who took their order with a mere head nod, never writing anything down. They’d often wondered if he could speak English. They’d fallen in love with the atmosphere, but through the years, they’d gone back for the cannelloni. They called it
their place.

She opened the fridge and closed it. Unloaded the dishwasher, folded a load of whites, and at eight, she texted Mika.
Where are you guys?

Unlike Chris, Mika texted back immediately.
At the hut, come meet us!!!!

She noticed her texts to Chris had gone unread. The pulsing edginess in her chest bloomed into anger. She wondered where and what he was doing.
Tracy.
The word stuck in the back of her throat. Until Tracy, she hadn’t known words could taste like anything, but
Tracy
always tasted like whiskey—a thin, caustic Wild Turkey. Bottom shelf.

Maggie grabbed a black shirt with a plunging neckline and matched it with a pair of skinny jeans. Wardrobe of the non-mom, because that’s what she was and probably would be forever. Not a mom. Her belly was flat from not bearing children. Her skin, never stretched, was a smooth expanse of peach. Painted toenails, impeccable manicures, bikini waxes, and expensive haircuts were the things that had replaced child-rearing.

Helen and Mika were both single, so their Friday and Saturday nights were for finding dates. Maggie and Mika had been freshman roommates, a haphazard pairing that rarely worked. In their case, it was kismet—two similar souls. Mika was shorter and slighter than Maggie, but they both emanated the cool chill of pretty girls.

They had tried to join the same sorority their sophomore year, but neither girl was selected during rush. Later, Mika, who’d always had more grit than Maggie, found one of the sisters drunk at a fraternity party and convinced her to say why. Apparently the bubbly, friendly blondes of Zeta Omega had thought them
snobs.
Maybe that was true for Mika, whose confidence never seemed to falter. She drifted through life as though she was doing the world a favor by being there. But Maggie just never knew the right thing to say, choosing instead to say nothing.

Maggie joined Mika and Helen every other week, although lately, when she and Chris got a movie and made popcorn, she found herself thinking about what the girls were doing, which guys they were talking to, or what numbers they were getting.

By the time Maggie got there, the Hut was jumping with throngs of sweaty twenty-somethings dancing to pulsing, loud music. The rough floor, in dire need of a refinish, was slick with spilt beer, and the air smelled like wet wood. The walls were adorned with neon beer signs, framed newspaper articles about local high school football heroes, a large mounted buck’s head, and random state license plates. The tension in Maggie’s shoulders released, and she closed her eyes.
Sometimes a girl just needs the comfort of her favorite dive bar.
She found Mika at their usual table. Helen was in the bathroom.

Mika warned, “She’s in rare form tonight.”

“Why?”

Mika shrugged. Helen had been a transplant to their all-girls college, and she’d become Maggie’s biology lab partner. Helen was too smart for her own good and, like them, found herself nearly friendless at twenty years old, a by-product of being raised alone by an iron-fisted grandmother. Helen drank too much and slept with strange men on a regular basis, a practice that started in college and continued longer than it should have. They made an unlikely threesome.

Maggie looked around the room and made eye contact with a tall, broad-shouldered man next to the pool tables. He smiled slowly, and her heart thumped.
This is why I come here. To feel loved.
Instantly she pushed the thought down.
Well, that’s silly.
Her phone buzzed in her back pocket, and when she pulled it out, Chris’s text showed on her locked display.

Just got this, sorry. Went out after work with the crew. Should I come home now?

She made a disgusted sound and tossed the phone into her purse without unlocking it. The text would show to Chris as unread. That seemed to be their pattern: half-hearted overtures that fell flat between them, the failure itself compounding resentment.
How long can you chip away at something until it finally breaks?

Maggie tapped the table and then shoved herself up. “Do you want another drink?”

When Mika shook her head, Maggie turned, colliding into someone. She looked up, meeting the stranger’s gaze. He gave her the same slow, sexy grin.
Now that’s a devil’s smile.