AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Do you have any interest in attending my brother’s college graduation Saturday morning? And then lunch after with my family?
For the second time in two minutes, I almost choke on my drink, setting it back down on the saucer with clumsy fingers as I read over the text again. Frannie raises her eyebrows at me, and for a second, she looks so much like her brother. I tilt my phone toward her, and her eyes glide over the screen before she brings two fingers to her temple, eyes closing as she shakes her head.
“That boy has less communication skills than anyone I know.” She stifles what looks to be a yawn, looking back at me before continuing. “Sorry, Greta has been a nightmare to get down lately. Would you really want to help Savannah, knowing that she was with my brother?” I try my best to keep my head from rearing back in surprise.
“I’d help just about anyone.”
There it was. The truth. Plain as day. The people-pleaser in me on display for the world to see, my heart on my sleeve and my fingers in my ears to keep out the people talking sense.
Instead of pressing me further on that, she says “We’re going to my place after graduation, sort of a party thing. You’re welcome to join us after lunch with Mom and Dad.”
“I thought you lived in…”
“Middle of nowhere?” Mateo finishes for me, and I nod. “Yeah, they both do. It’s like driving through the freakin’Hills Have Eyesout there.”
“Fuck off,” Seer chides, tossing her straw wrapper at the man next to me. “What he means to say is, yes, we live in a quaint small town about a quarter of a mile apart, and it makes for the perfect space for a good party.” Mateo rolls his eyes.
“Does Fitz usually go to your parties?” My question is laced with disbelief that’s only further confirmed by Frannie’s unapologetic shrug.
“No, but I think you could ask him to spend Saturday night picking up dog poop and he’d do it, if you were there with him.” Heat creeps up my face, and I bite my lips to keep the smile from spreading the way it wants to.
“Oh my god,” Seer breathes, crossing her arms. “Look at that, she knows you’re right.” She leans forward, looking around with a conspiratory glance. “Was Carla right? Is it the promise of unlimited head that keeps him in check?”
“Aaaaand that’s my cue to head back to the kitchen,” Mateo says, standing up at the same time Frannie mimes vomiting into her tea.
Chapter 50
Piper
Five Years Ago
Therainpoundedonthe window outside, but the room was quiet, still. Nearly everyone was asleep, sprawled out on couches, the floor, pallets made haphazardly with blankets so that they could all be together.
I was at one end of a couch, curled up under an old blanket too small for my frame - the only one I could find after everyone else claimed theirs. Mickey’s feet were pressed into my side, and his head lay in Melissa’s lap. She was running her fingers over his scalp, his hair still short from chemo, and muttering to Liz, his sister, who sat on the other side of a small coffee table.
They thought I was asleep. They didn't know that in the hours that passed since we finished watching the final Cars movie with his nephews, and they’d been quietly planning their attempt to keep him in Kansas - to force him to move back, to give up his treatment and come live with them - I’d been listening.
“I just can’t believe she’s doing this to us,” Melissa said.
“It feels like it’s out of spite,” Liz responded, and I heard her husband, Tyler, snore loudly. “She just keeps him from us because she doesn’t want us to make memories with him before he’s gone.”
“Meanwhile, she’s getting to make all the memories she wants.” I bit the inside of my lips, willing myself to keep my eyes closed. “While she acts like we don’t matter. Like his daughter doesn’t matter.”
My breath caught in my chest.
His daughter. Kayla. The daughter I didn’t know about until days before. The daughter they hadn’t mentioned in the years we were together, until confronted with Mickey’s lies and his sickly appearance when we’d arrived for this visit.
The daughter that DNA said wasn’t his.
Not that I cared about that. I was the last person to believe that blood meant anything, with the chosen family that had stood by us during years of chemo, of hospital visits, while the people in this very room stayed states away, musing their feelings on social media. No, the DNA was just a pin in the thing I’d said since the second I found out about Kayla. To me, it was interesting that this child and her mother seemingly weren’t involved in his life until after he was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
And the cold, visceral feeling that had run down my spine when she’d messaged me the day we left to head to Kansas for this trip - asking me to speak with Mickey about signing paperwork for their daughter, like I’d known that they had been seeing each other for years under my nose - shot into me again.
“Kelsie won’t tell her who her father is, I just wanted her to have someone she can look up to,” Mickey had said when I confronted him. After I’d called his father, who, just as shocked as I was - or so it seemed - told me that they had put this issue to rest years before. Kelsie had accused Mickey of fathering Kayla, and he’d taken a DNA test that proved otherwise. I had personally gone to get a copy of it myself the day we arrived in this shithole town. And when those results came back, his family moved on with their lives.
Until Kelsie had messaged me, and Alex, my mother, and I slowly unraveled years worth of lies, of secret meetings that he’d hidden from me since reconnecting with the child who thought he was her father, despite every piece of evidence I had saying otherwise.
So when Kelsie had shown up at the Davis family house, while I sat on the couch next to Mickey, trimming his nails because he was too weak to do it himself, every inch of my soul wanted to confront her. Calling her out for taking advantage of a sick - dying - man, and his family. For lying to the child she claimed to love.
