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James had found out that I was having an affair, a stupid tryst with a dumb local waitress. Cheri—that was her name—slipped the details of our relationship to her manager, and within twenty-four hours, the entire small town of Rock Hill was gossiping about it. When Nina found out, she demanded a divorce. When James found out, he told me that he hated me.
“The night before I left,” he says. “You and I got in a fight about your affair.”
I nod.
“You called me a faggot.”
My entire body cringes, and my head bows in shame. I remember it as if it were yesterday. James berated me about my affair—Nina had just told me she wanted a divorce twenty minutes earlier—and I snapped. God help me, I snapped. Yes, I called my son one of the worst names I could think of.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
“You should know that I’m not gay, Tristan. I’m just different. I’m not a macho alpha womanizer like you. I don’t like sports and hunting and working on cars. Do you remember the story I told you when I first came here? About my ability to see people’s auras? It’s all true. That’s why I started painting. I was too scared to tell you or Mom. So, I started painting what I saw—I had to release it one way or another. You hated it because it wasn’t masculine. And yet you had no idea why I was doing it.”
Her eyes narrow on me.
“Everything I told you when I showed up here is true. I moved to LA, changed my name, started a business. The different-colored eyes and glasses are fake—people like weirdness in LA and gravitate toward it. And people trust female psychics more than male, so I slipped into that role. It’s all an act, and it paid the bills for lots of years.”
“How did you ...whydid you?”
“Come here? I’m broke, Tristan. Homeless. I lost my business, got evicted, moved into my Tahoe. I decided to leave LA, and I really didn’t know what else to do, so I considered coming back here. I worked from town to town to pay for food and gas. That’s when I saw your help-wanted ad. What are the odds, right? I applied just to see what would happen. Honestly, I thought you’d recognize me immediately.”
I scrub my hands over my face. “James, you had short snow-white hair and brown eyes when you left twenty years ago. You are now an adult, with long brown hair, different-colored eyes, glasses, and you call yourself Lavinia. Of course I didn’t recognize you.”
He nods, but I get the sense he’s disappointed that I didn’t recognize my son immediately. Hell, so am I.
Then he says, “Mom recognized me.”
“What? No, she didn’t.”
“Yes, she did. The day she attacked me. Except she wasn’t attacking me. She was grabbing for me, desperate for me, didn’t want me to leave her again. You didn’t give Mom her medication that morning. She was lucid enough to recognize me and flipped out.”
I blink.Holy shit. He’s right.
Andthisis the connection I noticed between them. This explains the strange, obsessive behavior. A mother and son reunited. An unbreakable bond. This is why James sang lullabies and stroked her hair as she slept—it’s exactly what Nina did to him when he was a baby. I get a sudden flashback of James, five years old, cuddling Nina just like he has been since he returned.
My heart shatters. “Son ...”
“You arehorribleto Mom, Tristan.”
“I know. I’m so, so—”
“You don’t deserve her. I didn’t even know you were married before her. Does she know?”
I nod, tears rolling down my cheeks.
“I can’t believe you allowed your drunk, crazy ex-wife intoherhouse. You had sex with her, Tristan, while Mom was incapacitated upstairs. You are a horrible, horrible person.”
I lunge out of the chair and barely make it to the sink before I vomit.
24
Tristan
James no longer wears his different-colored contact lenses or his glasses, and he keeps his long hair tied back in a bun. He looks like my son now.
And my son hates me.
James rarely speaks to me, and when he does, it’s in one- or two-word sentences, or sometimes just a grunt.
