Great Big Beautiful Life(115)

“There was no appendicitis?” I ask.

She shakes her head, eyes welling. “I should’ve made him listen. But he was in such a panic. And then—on the road…the paparazzi…he was so angry and scared. What were we thinking? That’s what he kept saying. We both understood right then what it would be like for her. She’d never belong to herself. Never. And then…” She chokes over a sob. “Then he was gone, and I knew. I had to save her. Like I couldn’t save him. That’s what we did, Cecil and I. We saved her.”

My mind swirls, a drunken carousel of hurt, sorrow, confusion.

And in the middle of it all, a tall, still figure.

“Does he know?” I rasp. “Have you told Hayden why he’s really here?” A new thought crashes into my mind, knocking everything even further off balance. “If the job was always his, why even bring me here?”

“He doesn’t know,” she croaks. “And it wasn’t his. The job…it didn’t exist.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “The book—”

“There wasn’t going to be a book.” Her jaw muscles leap, an expression that’s so Hayden it makes my chest feel like there’s a crack spreading down it. “I just needed time.”

“Time?” I demand feebly.

“To get to know him,” she says. “To see if…if she was happy. If there was a chance I might…that she might forgive me someday.”

“You were messing with me.” It feels like my lungs are folding in half, my heart crushed between them.

She stares at me, saying nothing.

“Why?” My voice rattles as it gains volume. “Why bring me here? Why do all of this?”

“Because he wouldn’t come otherwise!” she cries. “I’d tried to entice him to the island before, and he didn’t reply. So I gave up. I was okay with it. But Jodi wouldn’t let it go. She sent you that damn email—”

“Jodi?” I say. “Why?”

“Because she’s a meddler!” she says. “Because she thinks she’s doing her mother’s bidding! She figured with another writer in the mix, she could make Hayden see this as legitimate, as…as a story worth fighting for.”

I try to hold back the angry tears rising along my lashes. “You were using me.”

“At first,” she replies. “But this whole thing…Alice, you changed my mind. You made me feel like maybe I could share my story. I thought if I told Hayden the truth…if he accepted it…then maybe we could write the book after all. Nothing about him or his mother, of course. We’d protect their privacy. But the rest—everything that happened to Laura, everything I wish the world knew about my parents. My husband—” She shakes her head, eyes tight. “And then he came here yesterday and told me he didn’t want the job.”

My heart trips over a beat. “What?”

Her eyes open. She looks as distraught as I’ve ever seen her, like somehow this, out of everything she’s been through, was the blow she couldn’t take.

I sway on the spot, lean against the nearest wall. “He already turned it down?”

“I wouldn’t tell him about Cecil,” she says. “And then he said it didn’t matter, because he’d already decided he wasn’t the right person for the job. But the truth is, he disliked me. From the beginning. I could tell. Jodi doesn’t want to hear it—keeps storming out every time I cancel one of these little chats—but it’s been clear from the start. That boy wants nothing to do with me, even as a subject. Even as a paycheck.”

“He doesn’t know you!” I half shout. “How could he? You’ve lied to him every single day for a month.”

“I never lied to him,” she counters. “I only avoided certain things.”

“You have to tell him the truth.” My chest throbs from the betrayal, from the unfairness. “You can’t keep this from him.”

She shakes her head. “He doesn’t want the truth from me. He doesn’t want anything from me. And neither does his mother.”

“You don’t know that,” I fire back.

“I do,” she says.

“How?”

“Because I saw her!” she all but screams back.

For a second the house falls eerily quiet. Then she takes a step toward me, her voice shrinking to a plea. “I waited until she was eighteen, and then I found her. Through an investigator. She was living in Indiana, with this beautiful family, and I thought—I don’t know what I thought. I tried to let it be enough that she was alive, that she seemed happy. But I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I needed proof.”

“Proof of what?” I demand.

“That I’d done the right thing,” she says. “That when I gave her up, there really wasn’t another option. That’s why I started trying to disappear. To see if I could do it. If maybe I didn’t have to…” Her voice becomes garbled as emotion sticks in her throat. “If maybe I didn’t need to let her go. And every time the paparazzi caught me, I found just…just a tiny fucking kernel of comfort. Because it meant I did the right thing. And every year when her birthday passed and they still hadn’t found out about her, it made it all worth it. It was the only reason I could sleep at night. The only thing keeping me going. I was okay, finally, being alone. Until Jodi showed up.”