24. Romance Languages
An hour earlier than I needed to leave, Adam drove me to the café to collect my car. It wasn’t that I wanted to leave early; I just couldn’t sit still. I also needed to secure the takings from the previous day before Alex found out that I hadn’t.
My beaten up little car stood alone in the car park.
“Oh, it’s still here,” I said, feigning melancholy.
“Did you think it wouldn’t be?”
I had no qualms about leaving my car there overnight. Car thieves are fussy. If I’d left the engine running and a free-to-good-home sign on the windscreen, it still would have been there a month later.
I reached for the door handle but he pulled me back. “Adam, I have to go,” I said, grabbing his wrist to stop his hand creeping any further up my shirt.
“Not for ages,” he breathed, totally unremorseful.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to keep me here.”
He straightened up, grinning craftily. “You do know me, and I am trying to keep you here.”
“Should I be worried about going home?” I wondered.
“Of course not,” he replied, hesitating too long. “My reasons for keeping you here are purely personal.”
I wasn’t convinced. Picking up on my angst, he held my hand tighter than usual. “Someone incredibly smart once told me that everything works out in the end.”
I looked across at him. “And if it doesn’t?”
“Then it’s not the end.”
His grin was contagious and I smiled back. “Wise words, Adam Décarie.”
“Fighting words, Charlotte Blake,” he declared, sounding more American than usual.
I was halfway out of the car when I turned. “Did you mean it when you said you’d take me anywhere I wanted to go?” I asked.
He nodded but the gesture didn’t match his woeful expression. I remained still, waiting for him to add something.
“Where would you like to go?”
“Back to last night, in the tent, when nothing else mattered.”
Adam stared at me for a long time. I wondered if I’d said something stranger than usual. Finally he reached into the console of the car, pulling out a notebook and pen. He scrawled a few words, tore out the page, folded it and handed it to me.
“What’s this?”
“Everything I know,” he replied, flatly.
He couldn’t have written more than a couple of sentences. I had to consider the possibility that Adam really didn’t know anything. I started to unfold the paper but he stopped me.
“If you don’t get the answers you need, read it then. But give Alex a chance to tell you first,” he urged.
Unable to find my voice, I nodded, clenching my fist around the note.
“I love you, Charlotte.” He spoke strongly, like those four words were a big bandaid for my soul.
I scurried into the café before I could change my mind about leaving.
Seeing Ethan perched near the counter wasn’t unexpected. It was actually a relief. It meant Nicole was occupied and her questions would be minimal. I grabbed a calico bag from under the counter and filled it with the money from the till – just as I should have done the day before.
“What’s your rush?” she asked, bumping the till shut with her hip.
“I’ve got to get home. Can you lock up for me?”
“Sure I can,” she replied, glancing at Ethan.
I glanced at Ethan too, and caught him rolling his eyes at her. Obviously my request had cut into their plans. I felt no pity. I’d covered for Nicole the day before and if he dared to kick up about it, I was prepared to remind him of that.
“Thank you,” I said, glaring at Ethan.
Nicole must have noticed. She cleared her throat, pulling my attention back to her. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, granting me a small smile that I knew was false.
I slipped out of the café without another word. Dealing with that little stage show could wait.
My little car started on the first try – perhaps appreciative of having fuel in its rusted tank. The engine didn’t falter but I still drove slowly.
Beating Alex home wasn’t part of the plan, but as soon as I pulled up to the house I knew I had. I didn’t go inside. Instead, I sat waiting on the front steps, growing more anxious by the minute.
What could he possibly have to tell me? I wondered if he was going to try talking me out of my trip. Perhaps I’d done something to make him think that travelling was a bad idea. Unlikely, I reasoned. Alex always played fair. He’d made no secret of the fact that he was unhappy that I’d decided to end my trek in New York, but encouraging me for years and then talking me out of it at the last minute was not his style.
Adam’s note felt like a lump of lead in my pocket. I spent a long time watching the daylight fade as I weighed up the pros and cons of reading it. In the end – true to form – curiosity won.
Digging deep, I retrieved the paper. It was so scrunched that it took a few seconds to unfurl, giving me time to reconsider reading it – but I didn’t. Compromising with my conscience, I unfolded only half of the note.
The words didn’t make any sense, and for good reason. They were written in Latin.
“Mea filia, mea vita,” I recited, doubting my Latin pronunciation was any stronger than my French.
I’d seen the words before. My brother had two tattoos, an intricate Celtic band around his right arm and the Latin script across his heart, both acquired when he was a teenager. I’d never asked what it meant, assuming it was some phrase that was meaningless now he was grown-up and over the tough-guy-tattoo stage.
Adam had seen the tattoos when Alex took his wine-stained shirt off.
Adam’s major in college had been Romance Languages. He would have understood the Latin script perfectly. Languages were his thing. Drama was my thing, and judging by the way my hand was shaking, I sensed my drama was about to get a whole lot worse.
I unfolded the second half of the note, knowing Adam would have translated it for me. I was right. Nausea set in as I studied the words on the page, swallowing hard as bile rose in my throat.
“My daughter, my life.” I repeated it aloud over and over, so many times that it began to make no sense.
Alex had a daughter?
Impossible!
Before Gabrielle, there had never been anyone he was serious about…except me. I’d taken up his entire adult life…
And I suddenly realised why.
Pieces began falling into place at a crushing rate. I fell forward onto my knees, crawling to the edge of the veranda, reaching it in time to throw up in the garden bed below. I clutched my stomach, half sobbing and half retching, unable to stop until my body was too exhausted to continue. I laid my head on the cold stone paving, unsure if I’d ever have the strength to move again.
I don’t know how long I lay there before Alex arrived home. It was still light, so it couldn’t have been long. He ran to the veranda, shouting my name, probably thinking I was dead. I felt dead. My world had stopped – and from the little I knew, it was entirely his fault.
“Get away from me, Alex,” I murmured, too numb to throw any anger behind it.
He levered me to a sitting position, pulling me in close to him. He took the paper from my fingers and I felt him freeze.
“Let me explain,” he pleaded. “I need you to understand everything.”
I tried shaking my head but the hold he had on me made it impossible. “Tell me that it’s not true. Tell me Adam is wrong and I’ll believe you.” It took forever to get the words out.
It took longer for him to reply. “I can’t do that, Charli.”
“You have to, Alex,” I demanded. “I remember things. I know it’s not true.”
I could feel his hand trembling on my cheek. “The woman you remember was my mother, not yours. You’re my daughter.” His voice cracked with under the weight of his confession.
I pulled away, suddenl
y unable to draw enough oxygen out of the air. Alex pushed me forward, rubbing my back as I rested my head between my knees. I was dying.
“No,” I whimpered.
“It’s true, Charli.”
“No,” I repeated, sounding no stronger than before.
“I was only seventeen when you were born. Your mum’s name is Olivia. She was seventeen too. You were born in Sydney.” He rattled the information quickly. It was like he wanted to state as many facts as he could before I got up and ran away. If my legs had been functioning, I would have.
I couldn’t believe him. My whole life had been a lie. I couldn’t bear to hear any more. I covered my ears with my hands, pleading with him to stop.
“It’s the truth, Charli,” he groaned.
I found the strength to break his hold. “I will never believe a thing you tell me for the rest of my life.”
Alex was on his feet before I’d finished. He grabbed me by the wrist and roughly led me to the front door while he fumbled for the key. Once inside, he strode down the hallway, dragging me behind him. In the spare bedroom was the filing cabinet, and he dropped my arm to rifle through it. I rubbed my wrist as if he’d hurt me. If he thought he had, he ignored it. Finally he thrust a piece of paper at me.
“Read it,” he demanded.
It was my birth certificate.
I couldn’t deny it any longer. Even blocking my ears, closing my eyes and singing loudly couldn’t drown out the fact that I was indeed the daughter of Alex Blake and Olivia Fielding.
I slammed it into his chest. “I won’t hear it from you. I don’t ever want to hear another thing from you!”
Alex looked devastated. “Then go to Floss,” he said, defeated. “She knows everything.”
I glared at him as I backed away, and left the house without another word.
***
Floss and Norm lived in the centre of town, one street back from the Lawson’s. Floss was waiting for me on the porch, so Alex must have warned her. I ran across the lawn, throwing myself into her arms.
“Hello, love,” she said, hugging me tightly. “Let’s go inside and make some tea.”
I clung to her as we walked through the small front room into the tiny kitchen. “Alex is my father,” I blurted.
“I know, love,” she said, like it wasn’t all bad.
I surprised myself by crying. I thought I was all cried out. Floss passed me a big box of tissues and I grabbed a wad.
“Donna Blake was Alex’s mum. She was a good friend of mine. I’d known her for years but I hadn’t seen her since Alex was a boy,” she explained. “One day she turned up on my doorstep, all the way from Sydney with a tiny baby, just a few months old.”
“Where was Alex?”
“Working up north on a fishing boat. I didn’t think much of it at the time. He was a young man. It made sense for him to be out on his own,” she said, shrugging. “She said that the baby was her daughter, but something wasn’t right.”
“Why?”
“Donna had her demons,” she said gently. “She was a big drinker. I knew after just a few days that it had completely taken over her life. You were perfect in every way, certainly not the product of an alcoholic mother.”
“Alex left me with her?” I asked, horrified at his carelessness.
“No,” she replied emphatically. “Your mother relinquished custody to Alex when you were born. He was going it alone and struggling financially. He was offered a week of work and he had to take it, leaving you with Donna.” I scowled at the table, pretending to dab my eyes with the tissues to hide my disgust. Floss laid her hand on mine. “He was desperate, Charli. He had no idea she packed you up and brought you here. When the poor boy got home, you were gone. For nearly a month he had no idea where you were.”
“How did he find me?”
“I tracked him down.” She paused. “He arrived in town the very next day.”
“Why didn’t he set the record straight? Why didn’t he just tell people I was his?”
Floss sighed. “Donna was his mother. She’d created this huge fairy-tale about you, telling a million lies. Alex never knew his father, not even his name. He felt protective of his mum – even after what she’d done. So he went along with it, settling in as best he could on the pretence of being your brother. I took care of you during the day so Alex could work. Donna slipped deeper into drink. Alex was forever dragging her out of the pub, paying her debts, enduring her antics.”
“That’s so awful,” I gulped
“She was his mother, Charli,” Floss said tenderly. “He looked after her for years, hoping that she’d eventually conquer the drink.”
“But she never did,” I guessed.
Floss’s eyes were shiny with tears. “She went on a huge bender one day and just went to sleep. She had a massive stroke. She was just forty-one,” she said, sounding puzzled, like she still had trouble wrapping her head around it.
The hazy recollections of the woman who sang to me were of my grandmother. I’d remembered nursery rhymes and lullabies – not drunken tunes crooned at ten in the morning. How had I got it so wrong? Poor Alex never had a chance.
“Life got much better for the two of you after that. He scraped enough money together to buy the café. A year later he bought the house. He never intentionally lied to you, love. He’s been fighting for you since the day you were born. I hope you can see that.”
“What happened to my mother? Who is my mother?”
“I don’t know. You’re going to have to ask Alex.”
I groaned. It was all too hard.
Floss leaned over. “I’ve seen what that man has endured over the years, Charli. Anything less than total understanding from you will not be tolerated. Do you understand?”
“Would taking a few days out to get my head around it all be tolerable?” My voice was tiny, implying I was scared of her. Perhaps I was.
“Yes, love,” she said kindly, squeezing my hand.
***
The Décarie house was in darkness. Considering the late hour, I wasn’t surprised. If I had been thinking straight I would have gone home to bed, waiting until morning to see Adam. But I wasn’t thinking straight. Part of me doubted that I’d ever be capable of lucid thoughts again.
I wasn’t too jumbled to know that knocking on the front door would be a mistake. Dealing with Gabrielle could wait. The knowledge that she’d transitioned from a Parisienne witch to my stepmother was cringe-worthy. I remembered overhearing Alex tell Adam that Gabrielle knew everything about him. I wondered if that included his early admission to parenthood at seventeen.
Adam’s window slid open easier than expected. Climbing through it was easy, probably because I’d done it before.
The sheer curtains meant that even at night the room was never completely dark. I could see him lying completely motionless, so I knew he was awake. He never stopped tossing and turning in his sleep.
He threw back the covers and patted the space beside him.
I kicked off my shoes and crawled into his waiting arms, fighting back tears. “I have so much to tell you.”
He kissed the top of my head. “It can wait,” he soothed.
Being with him brought instant relief. I didn’t have to listen and I didn’t have to explain. Lying in the arms of the very best thing in my life was exactly where I needed to be. I had found my new safe place.
Four days passed before I even contemplated going home. Gabrielle, who was spending more time at our house than at her own, kept Alex in the loop.
“He misses you, Charli,” she told me over and over. The pressure from her was subtle but constant.
I wasn’t a complete monster. I knew Alex was hurting – I was just tragically inept to deal with it.
School had become an unlikely escape. No one there knew of the turmoil I was going through at home, and the thought of the Beautifuls catching wind of it made my stomach turn. Thankfully, torturing me wasn’t high on their list of priorities that week. All talk
was of the gala event they were planning. The guest list had ballooned to include just about everyone in town, except me.
Confiding in Nicole was a given. I’d never kept anything from her, but pinning her down long enough to break the news proved difficult. Her romance with Ethan was consuming her – and it wasn’t attractive. She cut more classes than she attended, to spend time with him. Far from discouraging her, Ethan parked down the street from the school, waiting to pick her up. Nicole dropped everything the minute her phone rang. Ethan Williams was starting to irritate me.
“Nic,” I called, trotting to catch up with her as she moseyed towards the art room.
She turned and stopped walking, but didn’t stop tapping away at her phone. “Where‘ve you been?” she asked, only half paying attention.
“Around. Where have you been?”
“I’ve been busy, really busy,” she said, grinning at her phone.
“How is Ethan?” I asked dryly.
She shoved her phone in her pocket and finally looked at me. “Everything is going exactly to plan. He’s lovely.”
I wanted to be happy for her but an uneasy feeling niggled at me. I wondered if I was jealous. Nicole was doing nothing that I hadn’t done since Adam arrived in town. But I loved him. Nicole had always considered Ethan more of a hobby.
The bell sounded and the corridor suddenly became deserted.
“I really need to talk to you,” I told her, glancing to make sure the coast was clear.
“What?”
I drew in a long breath, wondering how I could get through the soap opera that had become my life. Short, fractured sentences were the best I could muster.
Nicole stared at me, wide-eyed, long after I stopped talking.
“Say something,” I urged.
“Tell me again,” she said, struggling to speak.
“Alex is my father,” I replied, breaking it down for her.
Her expression was appalled. “Since when?”
“Since birth, presumably,” I snarled.