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Chapter Twenty-Five
Forty minutes later I had begun to worry when neither woman emerged from the upper deck. Sawyer obviously knew the score as he never once asked where they were or what they were doing up there.
We were keeping all the kids busy with a game of Who am I. The little ones were paired with Sawyer and I, Remy with Sawyer and Brynn with me. However, while Colby guessed the name on his forehead, my mind was on what was happening above us and was thankful there hadn’t been any screaming or yelling from them.
When it was almost time to head back, the twins became restless. Sawyer was about to head upstairs when I told him I’d go and ask the girls to come down. I thought he’d sensed there was a conversation going on between Tricia and Billie that was private when he hadn’t asked in front of the others what they were talking about.
“Everything all right?” I asked, as I climbed the stairs before I saw them, giving them a heads-up I was on my way. When I reached the top deck, it was clear both women had been crying, and were hugging each other tightly. My chest tightened when I saw the anguish etched on Tricia’s face and knew she had shared her secret with Billie.
A streak of pride ran through me that she’d found the courage to tell someone else, and I was certain her friend’s reaction would have helped Tricia’s confidence to challenge her mom. It felt like another huge stride forward for her in coming to terms with what had happened to her when she was young.
“Yeah, we’re good,” Billie mumbled, quietly rocking Tricia from side to side as they hugged, before leaving the embrace as she stood up. “I better go see to the twins. I’ll send Sawyer up to start the engine because I’d like to get home before it gets dark.” I nodded, and she wandered past me, paused, and touched my forearm before heading toward the stairs.
As she went out of sight, I scooped Tricia into my arms, expecting more tears but instead of that, she looked into my eyes and appeared determinedly stronger. It was a look of the woman I’d fallen in love with and she smiled.
“Poor Billie, she’s right about Brynn, and now that she knows, I don’t think I’ll feel afraid to show my affection toward Brynn. All my life I’ve been scared to show my true feelings and lived in fear of my horrible truth. That girl is a true friend, instead of looking horrified she pulled me against her and sobbed right along with me. She hurt because I hurt. When I met Billie, she was at a low point in her life. Logan had just left her to bring up Colby alone. She had no idea what a fighter she was, but Sawyer showed her the way and she isn’t afraid to face her demons anymore. As a mom who had done what it took, to provide for her son during her divorce, I didn’t expect Billie have empathy for any woman in my situation.”
“Don’t underestimate the good in people, Tricia. First you told me, then Miles… and now Billie.” I pulled her into my chest and kissed her head. My heart rate raced and then settled with the physical contact. I stared out at the dark blue ocean and inhaled a deep breath, wishing I could make all her hurt go away.
“Perhaps I do,” she mumbled.
“You’ve buried this for over thirty years and in a matter of months you’ve trusted two more people, apart from me. I think you’re learning to have faith in what we say to you. Let’s hope it’s a beginning to finding some peace through it all. Confronting your mom will be difficult, but I believe you’ll feel less burdened by some of the aspects surrounding your baby being placed for adoption. I’m not going to dismiss your feelings by telling you the shame will go away, but knowing how others feel about you and what happened may help you to live with yourself better.”
“How did I get so lucky all of a sudden?”
“Our luck was in the first time we met, baby. But I guess the timing was off,” I replied with a rueful smile, because we’d wasted those valuable years we could have had together.
“I can’t explain how it feels to know you love me despite all my flaws. You’re never going to get rid of me, do you know this?”
That morning before we’d left for the day, I had imagined proposing during some perfect moment, and from my perspective that moment would have been it, had the ring not been in my sports bag in the cabin downstairs. I decided it was probably just as well, as she had been crying and she’d have been stuck with an ugly selfie of her red-rimmed eyes as a memory.
“We need to be heading back,” Sawyer stated, standing on the stairs, his head barely appearing at our floor level. I nodded and he made his way up the rest of them.
“Are you good?” he asked. I immediately guessed Billie hadn’t clued him in because it would have been difficult to talk with all the kids downstairs.
“Yeah, never better.”
“Tricia, would you mind helping Billie in second berth? She’s laid them on the bed with the TV, but it’s the witching hour and the twins are getting cranky,” Sawyer said with a gentle smile on his face. I loved how perceptive my brother was. Since he was little, he’d always had a sixth sense when it came to awkward situations. I could tell Tricia knew Sawyer wanted to know what had happened. Pretending to kiss me she went up on tiptoe and whispered into my ear.
“You can tell him, I’d rather it came from you than from Billie,” she told me, as she planted a kiss on my cheek, turned, and made her way downstairs.
“Want to tell me what’s going on?” Sawyer asked after turning the key in the ignition and pressing the button to reel in the anchor. As soon as he fired the engine, he pushed on the throttle and steered us back inland.
It took me less than ten minutes to bring him up-to-date and during that time Sawyer sat staring ahead. I noticed his knuckles blanching more than once as his hand balled into a fist. By the time I was done, I could feel the tension in the air between us. At first, I prepared myself to be told it wasn’t Brynn’s fault and she shouldn’t have been shunned for Tricia’s past mistakes.
“God,” he said. Then nothing else for some time while he gathered his thoughts. “I don’t know what to say,” he eventually added and shrugged.
“I can’t imagine what she’s gone through all these years. She’d never told a soul until she told me… and she fainted when she did,” I admitted.
“Doesn’t it make you want to hunt that fucker down and make him suffer? I mean, it’s not like you not to have done that already… wait, you hav—”
“Already dead,” I chipped in. “And no … it wasn’t me. It was a snowboarding accident some years later,” I added when his eyes widened in horror at the thought I’d played a part in that.
“Fuck me, poor Tricia,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck and I felt how helpless he felt to know the right thing to say. “She’s getting help?”
“Yeah, been in therapy a while now,” I said, explaining how far along she had come and that she was about to confront her mom.
“All right, whatever you need, you’ve got it. If you need Billie to go with her I’ll take care of the kids,” he said, thinking ahead, and I saw the practical side of my brother kick in.
