Page 45 of Everything We Left Behind

I shrugged both shoulders. “No clue. I hung up on him.”

“Carlos ...” She tossed up a hand. “Why?”

“Are you kidding me? This cloak-and-dagger shit is why I won’t have anything to do with that family.”

“You mean, your family.” She gave an impatient roll of her eyes and stood, brushing off the back of her cotton skirt. “Like it or not, you’re related to them, and there’s only one way to find outifyou’re like them. Go to California. Go see how they live. Go meet your friends and find out what you’re like. Go talk to Aimee.”

“And when I find out Iamjust like them?”

She sighed, her gaze floating down the beach. “I don’t know. Can we talk about this when you get back?”

I inhaled and briefly closed my eyes. “Yes.” I could live with that. For now. Then an idea popped in my head and was out of my mouth in a flash. “We could just get married.”

“Carlos ...” Her face fell.

“I thought you loved me.”

“You know I do,” she vehemently whispered.

But not enough to marry me, or to move to Puerto Escondido.

I swung back around toward the ocean, not really seeing it. “Forget I asked,” I said over my shoulder, because she was right. Best I get to know myself before getting attached to anyone else.

I heard Natalya sigh, then felt her arms around my waist. She kissed my spine and I covered her hands with mine. “We’ll work this out, Carlos. You’ll see.” She pressed her cheek against my back. “You’re a better man than you give yourself credit for.”

I looked up at the sky and disappearing sun. Thunder rumbled and I felt the vibration deep in my bones. Behind me, safe inside, the boys slept, the hour still early for a summer morning. Thomas said my identity and all accompanying paperwork was legitimate. How could I trust his word after all he’d put me through?

But if the paperwork wasn’t forged, that meant I was legally Julian’s father.

The realization came with some comfort. It also left me with a heavy heart. While I hadn’t been inclined to trust Thomas, in this one instance I had no choice. Going to California was the only way I could put my mind at ease. It was also the best way I could learn about James. I just hoped I’d make it there and back with my identity intact, in my head and on paper.

CHAPTER 13

JAMES

Present Day

June 27

Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii

James can’t sit still. His fingers tap the chair arm separating his seat from his sons’, and his knees bounce. He borrows a colored pencil from Marc just so he can hold on to something. It isn’t a paintbrush, but his fidgety fingers don’t care. What he doesn’t care for is why he’s nervous.

Toward the end of the flight, Julian looks at him, annoyed, so James stands and paces the aisle. When the pilot puts on the seatbelt sign and announces their descent, his chest muscles spasm. He’s finally meeting Natalya face-to-face. A woman who knows him intimately. Up until six months ago, their relationship was serious, like sexting and up-all-night-naked-under-the-sheets serious.

James groans and sinks into his chair, snapping the belt across his lap. He tells his sons to start packing their backpacks and helps Marc organize his colored pencils, picking up the ones that rolled onto the floor. Five of them, about the number of times he and Natalya have spoken on the phone since he surfaced. The first time had been the morning Julian climbed into the closet then dropped a metal lockbox on his lap. His son punched in the code and left the room. James found him downstairs bawling on the phone. While Natalya, back home in Hawaii, tried calming her nephew, James had been reading the documents and letters in the box. He then vomited in the toilet and called Thomas.

James felt like he would pass out. Panic and disbelief practically cut off his air supply. He wanted to book the first flight home. Instead, he reached a shaking hand toward the son he just met and demanded the phone.

“Who is this?” His voice came out strained, stretched rubber-band thin.

“I’m Natalya Hayes, your sister-in-law, an American like you. I live in Hawaii,” she explained. He liked her voice. The last name sounded familiar. It evoked images of wetsuits and surfboards, of mornings riding waves in Santa Cruz. Julian ran upstairs, wailing. A door slammed. James took the phone outside. He needed air and light and a one-way ticket home. He needed Aimee. His breath shuttered out of him.

God, she was the one person he desperately needed to talk to, that he ached to hold to the point that the emptiness in his arms left him gasping. He had to stop himself from crying out in anguish.

“I know you’re confused and I know Julian is upset,” Natalya was saying in a voice that sounded barely under control. “He’s angry, and he’s going to be angry for a very long time. But heisyour son. He knew this could happen. You prepared him for the possibility.”

“What possibility?” he snapped, rubbing his forehead with the base of his palm.

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