Page 93 of Licks

“Maybe the same reason people text and email. It’s less personal. Rejection wouldn’t sting as much. And the diary and note allowed you to know Sarah better than a shocking call.”

I shut my eyes, listened to the gegong-gegong of August’s steady heart. My aunt was my mother. My mother was my aunt. Mary could have been the girl who’d tracked my father to the Blue-Eyed Raven, desperate to find him. Hoping for a clue to her sister’s location. There was no way to know. Mary and Ted were both gone. Still, I’d learned more today than I had in twenty-eight years.

Too much and not enough.

Here, tucked safely against August, the weight of it all felt bearable. Inconceivable, but bearable.

“Sarah gave me up to keep me safe and give me a better life,” I said, as though speaking it aloud would make the choice clearer. It did, slightly.

“Sounds to me like she felt cornered, unable to care for you.”

I couldn’t imagine that kind of terror and impotence, but I remembered how depressed I’d been in college, how alone. No supports in my life. Add a madman trying to kill me and a surprise baby, and I might have cracked as epically as her. I also wasn’t sure how to unpack this glimpse of my father, a man who’d threatened and had possibly killed people.

Thankfully, I hadn’t knocked on that red door earlier. Who knows what would have greeted me? In time, I’d go. I’d ask questions and learn all I could, find out if I had siblings. For now…

I wasn’t sure what I’d do for now.

“Are you angry with her?”

August’s question caught me off-guard. There were too many emotions to name. “I’m feeling kind of numb.”

Again, I replayed the steps that had led me here, a twisted chess game of calculated moves and countermoves. Each bit of information learned the past two days, each second, minute, hour had contributed to discovering this secret. Without every choice made, good or bad, this box would have stayed buried, this truth forever lost.

Another possibility struck, so hard, I nearly bit my tongue. “We wouldn’t be here.”

August unlatched my hand from his ribs. I hadn’t realized I’d dug my fingers in. He slinked down until we were eye to eye. “We wouldn’t be where?”

“If Mary got the suitcase when she was supposed to, seventeen years ago, she would have given me the diary and address. I wouldn’t have hesitated to move across the country.” I pressed closer to him, wound our legs together. I soaked in his handsome face. “I wouldn’t have driven you nuts as teens.”

There would have been no WTF.

No painful years without him.

No making up and falling in love.

No Ainsley and Rachel.

August kissed me and rolled me on top of him. He secured his arms around my waist. “I hate that you missed growing up with your mother, but I’d be lying if I said I’m sorry you never got that diary. I don’t know how I lived without you the past nine years, but I can promise you you’ll be the first and last person I speak with every day for the next ninety-nine, no matter what countries we’re living in.”

I’d rather make it nine hundred and nine. “Time zones might make that tough.”

“We’ll send each other timed recordings.”

“Of the dirty variety?”

He slapped my bottom. “Fuck yeah.” He closed his eyes and brushed our noses together. A sweet, butterfly kiss.

At first, when the letter had sunk in, all I’d lost had burned my throat. I’d lived with a woman who I’d burdened instead of one who could have loved me. But if the reverse had led to a life without August, I wouldn’t want it. He was my family. My life. My future. I rubbed my belly against his, imaging it swollen with our child. He would always come first.

I rested my full weight on him. He hugged me tighter. Our breaths slowed and thinned. I drifted off slightly, in and out of a foggy sort-of sleep, eventually waking half-on and half-off him. My room was dark, only a hallway light illuminating the space. I briefly wondered if I’d dreamed the letter and details I’d learned. I wasn’t sure if I wanted this revelation to be real or imagined.

Real, I thought to myself. As real as the man who’d gathered me close to his thudding heart.

“I bet today is hard for her,” I said, my voice thick from napping.

August stirred and hummed his agreement. “But it’s your birthday, and it’s already been rough. It’s up to you how we spend it. You can call Sarah, if that number still works. We can hang out with your friends.” He slipped his hands up my shirt and tickled my back. “We can spend it in bed.”

As nice as that sounded, I was too overwrought to have sex. I kept glancing at the diary, the unearthed note. Couldn’t stop picturing Sarah struggling today, hating herself for the choice she’d made. A deeper self-loathing than I’d ever experienced.