Page 79 of Licks

But here, in this letter, she’d asked August to be there for me.

Her diary was on the passenger seat, printed in her youthful lettering, ripe with the memories of a Sunshine Girl who had loved to dance and listen to music and had dreamed of performing on Broadway. A girl who’d fallen in love. Had she wanted kids back then? Had she dreamed of carrying her lover’s child?

I lifted the journal carefully, thumbed through the pages slowly. My limbs were too heavy to move at a normal speed. I stopped on her first kiss again, reread the reverence and excitement in her words. I felt for this girl. I ached to read her happily ever after. I wanted her to find true love.

I cared about teenage Mary Hamilton.

If I weren’t strapped into my seat, the revelation would have knocked me over. A full stone-cold faint. Regret followed, for what she’d stolen from me. If she’d talked to me, had explained about her past, shared what had beaten her down into the shell of a person she’d become, maybe we could have connected, had some form of relationship. All I’d been left with was a shadow of her past.

Still, a hint of hope lightened the heaviness. I didn’t hate my mother. I’d grown to pity her through her words. Not an ideal sentiment, but better. My pulse tapped a faster tune, and my haziness cleared. I should leave this car, knock on that red door, discover if I had a brother or sister, but the diary was on my lap, drawing me in. My mother was drawing me in.

I flipped to where I’d last read the journal, the page about the park bench. The next few entries were typical teenage drama: grumbles about a girl at school who’d ditched her at lunch, choice words about her zealot parents. She mooned over the man she loved. And dance. Always dance.

Then I caught my breath.

Cliff jumping. My mother had gone cliff jumping.

I want to fly, she’d written. I want to be a bird and feel sunshine in my hair and the wind rushing my face. I want to jump off something higher and defy the laws of gravity. It makes me feel alive. Cliff jumping made me forget.

It was the same reason I skydived and bungee jumped and rock climbed, to forget when stressed. Feel alive and fly. But my mother had sneered when I’d share my daredevil stunts. I’d assumed it was judgment, her turning her nose up at my choices. That my love of adrenaline rushes had come from my father.

Maybe Mary Hamilton had been jealous, not disapproving. Seeing me and my life could have turned her hate inward, resentment toward herself for giving up on her dreams. There was no way to know, but my mind drifted to August, the man who’d given me this insight. The man I’d left standing in the street.

I wouldn’t have read these pages if I’d known my father had died. He’d been right about that. My animosity would have kept me from delving into them. There would have been no point.

But I had, and everything was different now. I was clearer. Calmer. Too calm, like an ocean so flat you could see how stranded you truly were.

August had forgiven me my failings. Sincerity had bled through his declaration of love. His criticism had also been honest. You push people away when they start to care too much.

As a teen, I’d let Kayla’s claims infect me. She’d preyed on my insecurities, telling me I dragged August down, and I’d been a willing victim. Belief I wasn’t good enough for him had propelled me to cut him from my life. And I’d just done the same again, had deemed myself unworthy of his love. My self-loathing may have seemed deeper than that, rooted in our sordid history, his presence in my life destined to be a reminder of my faults. My failures.

Those had just been excuses.

I was hurting him before he could hurt me. Protecting myself. Still believing true happiness was beyond my reach.

My gym session with the girls should have taught me otherwise. Rachel’s Law & Order performance had pointed out the fullness of my life. My friends. My physical pursuits. My job. So many good things. I’d earned them all, had nurtured my friendships, had worked hard at CrossFit and placing children in loving homes. If I didn’t deserve August, that would mean I didn’t deserve this goodness, either.

Which was bullshit. Like August had accused.

The childish insecurities I’d thought I’d banished still had power over me, and it wasn’t cool.

I would never meet my father because of the hurt I’d inflicted on August, but pushing him away now was more pain he didn’t deserve. Pain I didn’t deserve. Like I hadn’t deserved a cold mother and challenging childhood. I was better than that. I’d built myself up since then, physically, emotionally. Yet I’d boomeranged back to those insecurities and had brushed August off.

What had I been thinking?

Except the truth was painfully obvious: I hadn’t been thinking. That had been reaction. Knee-jerk. Irrational. Possibly unforgivable.

Desperate to apologize, again, I scrambled for my cell phone, only to find the screen blank. Fuck.

We’d been out all night. I’d rushed to meet the girls, had then booked a flight and met August. I’d loaned my stupid car-charger to a coworker and had forgotten to get it back. Now I was stuck in my Impreza, outside my late father’s house, hesitant to knock on the door or leave.

I could walk up those front steps alone, summon my courage and face whatever greeted me in that house, but all the decisions and outcomes that had led to narrowly missing Ted Mercer’s death seemed unbelievably coincidental. As though the confrontation wasn’t supposed to happen. Maybe that man’s secrets weren’t meant to be dredged up, unknown siblings, or not.

That large uncertainty kept me glued to my seat. I needed to talk to my best friend and Badass PI partner, decide on the smart thing to do, but I couldn’t reach him. Even worse, he might not answer if I called.

Dead phone clutched in my hand, I plunked my forehead onto my steering wheel.

August