Page 151 of Love Notes & Lifelines
With a heavy sigh, I join them, standing just behind Stella. Emmy loves to paint, and she has her mother’s talent. Ruby sits next to her sister with some kind of nontoxic book that creates colors with water. She studies Emmy intently and mimics her motions.
Emmy’s so much like her mother. She holds out her paintbrush and adjusts the one in Ruby’s hand. It lasts all of ten seconds before Ruby sucks on the end of it.
Was I like that with Cally? Copying her every move?
“Do you know I had no real memory of this room before we moved in here?”
Stella leans back on her hands to peer up at me, then pats the floor beside her. I’ll always heed her invitations, but instead of sitting beside her, I sit behind her, wedging my right leg between her and an unhappy Daisie, wrap my arms around her middle, then rest my head on her shoulder.
When she melts into me, the anxiety tying my stomach in knots eases. “What did you remember of this room? I’m assuming it was your parents.”
“Yeah.”
Ruby hears my voice and looks at me with a string of drool falling from her double chin. There was a time when that might have repulsed me. Now I hope it’s a memory that will never fade.
Leaning into Stella, I swipe the drool from Ruby’s chin, but she laughs and tries to bite me. “You’re a little vampire, you know that?” I wipe the slimy goo on my pant leg. “The room always smelled like lilacs, but I have no recollection of ever being in here. Not even as a teenager. My mom was always in the library. Cally’s the one who made sure I’d done my homework and came home at curfew.”
I chuckle, but it’s full of sadness. “Cally showed up to a house party when I was a junior in high school. She was older than me, so she had already graduated college, but she still lived at home.”
Was that because of me?
Stella rests her head on my chest and hugs my arms.
“Anyway, I thought I’d ignore curfew. She had other plans.” The memory comes alive in my mind. It’s so real I can hear her voice, and a laugh full of love and sadness fills the room. “She showed up with a baseball bat at three in the morning and broke up the party, then hauled my ass home. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so hungover in my life, but she didn’t let me get away with it. The next morning, she woke me up at six and handed me a pair of work gloves and a push mower. She signed me up to mow everyone’s lawn within a mile radius of our house—and it wasone hundred degrees outside that day. I threw up in the bushes twice.”
Stella’s body shakes with a belly laugh. “Did you ever miss curfew again?”
“Hell no. Never.”
“She loved you, Beck.”
I move my chin to the top of her head and allow myself to soak in the love and emotions the memory evokes. “I know. How did I miss so much?”
“You didn’t,” she whispers. “You lived the life they all wanted for you—you can’t feel guilty for that.”
It’s easy to say, not so easy to do.
A knock at the door has Stella reaching for both girls and Daisie jumping to her feet. It gnaws at me in unimaginable ways because I know Stella’s scared, terrified really, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
I place a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure it’s one of the attorneys.” We’d holed up in here with the kids because Stella was worried all the commotion would scare them, and she’s right. It’s a lot, even for me.
Kissing the side of her head, I rise and walk to the door. When I open it, I find Teddy and Elijah standing shoulder to shoulder. Teddy bounces on his toes like a kid who’s had too much sugar, while Elijah wears an unreadable mask. Daisie barrels into them both, jumping and prancing and licking their hands while they shoo her away.
“Come in.” I usher them forward. The girls love them. It’s the rest of the crew they could do without. “What’s up?” I ask, resuming my spot behind Stella. “Daisie, sit.”
The damn dog gives me the side-eye then meanders back to her spot next to the girls like she’s a ninety-year-old grandma—she takes her sweet-ass time.
“Hey, Teddy.” Stella flashes him a small smile, but the tightness around her eyes relays her fears.
“Hi, Stella.” He paces beside us, and the girls stop painting to watch him. He waves at them, then lifts a laptop in his other hand. “I found the proof. Davis had it here the whole time but didn’t know what he was searching for. And the best part is, it matches what was happening at Crystal Waters. I couldn’t follow it to the end because I didn’t have the beginning. The beginning is right here,” he exclaims, each proclamation becoming more animated than the last.
My brows furrow into my line of sight. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, shit, Mr. Hayes. You won’t believe it.”
Being called Mr. Hayes in my father’s old bedroom gives me the heebie-fucking-jeebies.
“Jesus, Teddy. You’re standing in my bedroom. Call me fucking Beck.”
