You Don't Know Me (4 page)

Yes, twenty years later, Annalise knew exactly what she’d put her mother through.

“Thanks, Mom. We should have won three in a row.”

“You’re not a one-person team out there. Remember to listen to your teammates. They can see the blockers and tell you where to attack. I definitely heard Ashley shout, ‘Hard line’ on that last volley in the second game.”

“I know. I have a hard time listening—I get into the game and I can’t hear anything but my adrenaline.” Colleen smoothed out the purple fleece blanket, catching the fur between her fingers, a common behavior when she was reliving a game. “And I need to work on my vertical. Coach says I’m not extending, so I’m not hitting at full power.”

“It helps if you jump with both arms up—you have more power that way. Don’t drop the other arm while you’re bringing your hitting hand back, or you’ll lose momentum.”

At least that’s what Annalise’s coach had told her, and it had launched her to varsity as a sophomore, just like Colleen with her power attack. If she’d only believed in herself a little more . . .

“I’ll try that.” Colleen frowned. “Been surfing volleyball coaching sites again?”

Annalise laughed, but her heart stuck in her throat. What was wrong with her family knowing she’d played volleyball? That piece of truth shouldn’t matter. But she’d rewritten so much of her life, determined to delete every piece of herself in her bid to start over, that she’d lost tidbits that might have turned into treasures.

Like being a volunteer volleyball coach for her daughter’s team.

“Get some rest. You only have two days before sectionals.” Annalise gave her a wink before she switched off the light and closed the door.

She wandered past the gallery of her children’s pictures. At the end of the hall, she stuck her head into her room, where Nathan lay in bed in his gray-striped pajamas, the news humming from the television. He wore his reading glasses, but she could see where they’d been propped on his head, mussing his short brown hair, and a hint of five o’clock shadow suggested he hadn’t shaved twice today. He’d been doing that since the start of his campaign, ever the well-groomed candidate. He balanced his computer on his lap, typing.

Always working, her Nathan. Always striving. Always trying to be better.

“I’m not sure we should have given Colleen a cell phone or her own set of keys for her birthday.”

Nathan flicked his eyes up at her. “Colleen’s a smart girl. She’ll be responsible.”

Except her mother had probably said that about her, too, at the age of sixteen. “She’s just growing up so fast . . .”

Nathan had returned to his typing.

Annalise sighed. “I’ll be right in. I’m going to make sure Uncle Frank is settled.”

He nodded, and she shut the door, making her way to the kitchen.

Jason sat at the table, the overhead light shining on his calculus. She slid a hand onto his shoulder, squeezed. Such an honorable young man. And handsome, too, with that slightly curly brown hair, the physique of an athlete, even if his passion leaned toward theater.

“I noticed that you didn’t mention your audition to your father tonight.”

He glanced up at her. He had her father’s amber eyes, and sometimes that simply took Annalise’s breath away. And he’d inherited her acting ability, one she didn’t realize she had until she moved to Deep Haven.

“They’ll have the cast lists up tomorrow. I’ll tell him if I land a part.”

His expression bore a hint of pleading. Oh, what was she supposed to do?

She gave his shoulder another squeeze.

Outside on the deck, wind piled leaves against the railing as the trees shivered off what sounded like rain. Or sleet. She turned on the outside light and let it shine across their covered grill, the now-empty planters.

She preferred to sleep with the outside lit up like a ballpark. A remnant of those early days in Deep Haven when the night seemed to swallow her, when she sat up on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, afraid to sleep.

No wonder she married Nathan the second he asked—she needed to hang on to someone to keep the memories away.

But that wasn’t entirely why. Nathan was an amazing man who offered her the life she needed. And her damaged heart had loved him the best it could. Still did.

She nuked a mug of water, added hot cocoa, and wandered down to the basement, where they’d tucked Frank away in the den. She knocked on his door, hoping he wasn’t yet asleep.

He answered fully clothed, his spectacles down over his nose.

“I brought you some hot cocoa, Uncle Frank.”

“Oh, Deidre, you’re so kind.”

“Shh. Annalise, please. Jason is upstairs.”

“Of course. Sorry. Sometimes I forget.”

“Sometimes I forget I was ever Deidre.”

He gave her a smile, then took the cocoa and blew on it before taking a sip. “Delicious.”

“My mother used to make it this way—with cinnamon and nutmeg. I don’t have her recipe, but I kept experimenting until I found something that tasted similar.” She folded her arms over her chest. “Do you have everything you need?” She looked past him into the den, where Nathan had pulled out the sofa bed before turning in. She didn’t spend much time down here—it smelled like gym socks. But Nathan had nearly worn out the treadmill in the corner of the main room, and he and the boys sometimes watched TV down here. She had big plans to paint the dark paneling cream, maybe install track lighting, replace the tweed furniture. For now she’d slipcovered. But change took time. It didn’t happen overnight.

Unless someone was in WitSec, of course.

“If you get cold, there’s a linen closet next to the bathroom. It has a couple blankets.” She pointed it out, not sure what else to say to Frank.

Or rather, wanting to say so much and not knowing where to start.

She turned toward the stairs.

“You made the right decision, Annalise.”

Maybe that was it, what she needed to hear, because it stopped her and, for a crazy second, burned moisture into her eyes. “Really?”

“Yes. I know what it’s cost you, but . . .”

She turned back at his pause. Searched his eyes. They were always kind, even when she hadn’t been . . . well, cooperative. In
fact, she remembered once frisbeeing a plate at his head. His quick reflexes had rescued him from a beheading.

“They’re okay. It was hard at first. Your mother would call me every once in a while, and of course I couldn’t tell her anything. They finally accepted it and the calls stopped.”

She drew in a breath at that, sinking into Nathan’s old recliner in the main room. “I think about my parents, especially on nights like this, when everyone has grandparents at the game. My mother would love to see Colleen play. My father would want to take Henry and Jason fishing.”

Frank carefully moved from the den doorway to sit on the sofa, cradling his cocoa.

“Funny, having you there tonight was the closest thing to having a relative.”

“I know what you’ve accomplished.”

“I haven’t accomplished anything. It’s Nathan. He found me; he built this life.”

“No, Deidre, you built this life with him. You created Annalise. You became a mother, a wife. You took your second chance and did something amazing with it.”

“I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I . . . well, if I had turned you down.”

He met her gaze.

Yeah, she knew the answer to that.

She ran her hands together. They were cold—always cold during the winter. “I hate keeping secrets from Nathan.”

Frank nodded.

“It’s like . . . there’s this part of myself that I’ve walled off. I sometimes feel like I’m staring at my life from a different vantage point, like it doesn’t really belong to me. And Nathan doesn’t
understand why I have to keep the outside lights on or why I can’t watch shows like
Law & Order
. Or even why sometimes I climb into bed with Colleen and hold on.”

Frank just kept nodding.

“Did you know that every year my mother would buy me a Christmas ornament for my collection? I wonder if she still does that.” She drew up her knees onto the chair, pulled her sweater around her. “My sister’s baby is named Deidre. But you probably knew that.”

He nodded once more, setting his cocoa on the side table.

“Sometimes I want to call them so badly, I find myself walking around the house with the phone.”

“Don’t do it. You’d come back from the grave, and . . . there would be too many questions. And who knows but Garcia still has connections in St. Louis.”

She looked away, wiping her hand across her cheek. “I thought I was over this. Sorry.”

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have just appeared. But I didn’t want some other agent popping into your life . . . and I wanted to see how you were doing.”

The affection in his voice reminded her just how much she’d depended on him in those early days. “How’s Margaret?”

Frank leaned forward and pressed his hands together. “She passed about eight years ago. Cancer.”

“Oh, Frank, I’m so sorry.”

“It was fast. She didn’t tell me until the end, and by that time, well . . . we only had a little time together.”

“You have a daughter, right?”

“She and her husband live in California, and I have a grandson. He’s twenty. Sometimes I see pictures on Facebook.”

Strange, he sounded even less connected to his family than she was. “Aren’t you getting close to retirement? Why don’t you move to California?”

He made a face. “You know, she’s busy, and she doesn’t need me loitering in her life.”

“Frank—”

He held up a hand. “I’m okay, Annalise. People don’t know what they have until they don’t have it anymore. Someday she might figure it out.”

“I know what
I
have, Frank. And I’m not going to lose this. But . . . I can’t look at Nathan without feeling the lie. I want to tell him the truth. I think he deserves it. But then what? I can see his face, and . . . maybe not knowing is better.”

Frank had this annoying way of not answering her. It made her words echo back to herself, made them pinch and burn.

“I should have told him in the beginning.”

Frank picked up his cocoa, took a sip.

“You drive me crazy, you know that?”

“I think I’m going to hang around here for a couple days. Make sure Garcia doesn’t show up.”

She stood. “Do me a favor: try not to blow my cover, will you, Uncle Frank?”

He grinned. “Listen, missy, don’t get snippy with me, or I’ll put you over my knee.”

She threw a pillow at him.

He ducked. “Still quicker than you.”

She left him downstairs, hiding a smile. Wasn’t that the way with relatives? You wanted to throttle them. But you couldn’t live without them.

She was still chuckling when she opened the bedroom door.

Nathan looked up again from his computer. “What’s so funny?”

And right then, for a golden moment, the door to her past opened and her opportunity appeared on the threshold. Maybe she
could
tell him the truth. How Uncle Frank wasn’t really a relative but her protector, the man who had saved her. How he’d brought her to Deep Haven because he loved this little town. How she’d taken one look at Nathan, standing in the vestibule of the community church, his hand extended, and seen a future she wanted.

How she’d been afraid that Nathan would run away at the first glimpse of her past, so she’d hid it from him. And ever so slowly, her secrets wove into a web of lies so well constructed that it became the fabric of her world.

But maybe if she told him now, it would cut through this veil that hung between them. He’d see all of her and . . . and . . .

Then what? Nathan hated betrayal. His father had betrayed his mother, and it destroyed all of them. He’d never forgive her. Worse, he’d despise her.

She couldn’t bear to see the reflection of Deidre in his eyes. The Deidre who had once bartered herself for drugs. Who’d awoken in an alley with no recollection of who she was, where she’d been. Who’d gotten her roommate and best friend murdered.

Even Annalise despised that Deidre.

And her children, what of them?

She couldn’t lose them.

“Nothing’s funny,” she said finally. “I’ll be to bed in a moment.”

He flicked off the television as she closed herself in the bathroom, reaching for her nightclothes hanging on the hook. Long flannel pajamas, wool socks, an extra sweatshirt. Sometimes she even slept with gloves.

Sexy.

She considered the layers. No, she couldn’t tell him the truth—not yet—but perhaps she could put a little spice back into their marriage. Help them find that spark, that intimacy she’d always longed for. Maybe then he’d understand.

She stripped off her clothes, examined for a moment the scar on her knee, then grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself. She sprayed on some of the perfume he’d given her last Christmas, pinched her nose to keep from sneezing, brushed her teeth, and finally exited the bathroom, her pulse pounding in her throat.

The light on her side of the bed bathed Nathan’s face, his eyes softly closed, eyelashes curled against his cheeks. His computer lay on the floor next to the bed, in sleep mode.

She padded across the room. He didn’t move.

Sitting on her side of the bed, she laid her hand on his chest. “Nathan?”

Nothing.

She leaned close, smelling his neck. She loved his aftershave, the way it sank into his skin, turning his smell masculine and strong. Despite the lack of spark, their romance had healed her, their love life always making her feel safe and cocooned.

He emitted a snore.

She ran her hand along his chin, feeling the whiskers there. Then pressed her palm again to his chest, gauging his breath as it rose and fell.

Yes, this was enough. To share this life, these children. To know they had a future. She didn’t need spark.

She returned to the bathroom to don her layers before slipping into bed.