It still hurts, though.
Claire ventures a glance up at James, but her eyes slide away when she registers his dark mood.
“This is for you, Julian.” Her generally steady voice wavers. She gives him a soccer ball.
“Cool.” He tucks the ball under his bent arm. His other soccer ball is packed up in a box somewhere in the garage.
“This, too.” Claire reaches inside the bag. “It’s a football.”
Julian snorts. “That’s not a fútbol.”
“An American football,” she clarifies with a quick smile. “Your father used to play. He once had a good passing arm. You’ll have to ask him to show you.”
Julian shrugs one shoulder. “Sure. Whatever.”
“Julian, go kick the ball around with your brother out back.”
“Why?” he asks, startled. “I haven’t seen Señora Carla in almost a year.”
“She and I need to talk.”
“I want to talk with her.”
“Julian,” he snaps, loud and sharp. The name bounces around the kitchen.
Julian pales. He looks from his father to Claire and back again. He swallows, and James knows he senses something is off. How does his dad know this woman if he can’t remember her? He shuffles his feet and angrily slams the soccer ball into the floor. He catches it after one bounce and tucks it against his waist. “Come on, Marc, let’s get out of here.” He clamps a hand around Marc’s nape and pushes his brother out of the kitchen.
When the French door to the backyard slams loudly, James swings around to glare at his mother. Claire twists her lips. She picks up the knife and slices into the egg sandwiches. “You would have sent me away had I told you the truth,” she explains about her time in Puerto Escondido. “I wanted . . .” The knife stills, hovering above the next sandwich.
James tightly folds his arms over his chest. “Do tell, Mother.” He sneers, any patience for his family long depleted. “What did you want?”
She raises her chin. “I wanted to meet my grandchildren.”
A troubling thought moves through him like a cold front. Gooseflesh bubbles the skin on his arms. Did she know from the outset Thomas faked his death?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Claire says, aligning sandwich halves on plates. “Thomas didn’t tell me about you or why he kept you hidden until after Aimee found you. He also told me what Phil did to Aimee, and that he thinks he tried to kill you in Mexico.” She pauses, wiping a mayonnaise drip from a plate edge with her fingertip. “Needless to say, your brothers and I aren’t on the best of terms.”
I had three sons. Once.
Carlos documented many conversations with Señora Carla. James remembers reading that one small confession. Carla’s loneliness had appealed to Carlos’s own desolation. He yearned for genuine companionship but had a difficult time trusting. He and Carla developed a sort of kinship. An openness evolved between them that wouldn’t have occurred had he known he was her son.
Claire wipes down the countertop and rinses the knife, sliding the blade back into its slot in the knife rack. She motions toward the sandwiches. Four of them. “I made lunch.”
A peace offering, James surmises. “Don’t expect to pick things up where you left them off. I’m not the man you knew in Mexico.”
Claire blinks hard. Her fingers flutter to the top button of her blouse.
“You’re also not the woman my sons believe you to be.” His voice is a whisper of warning.
Their gazes fuse across the marble kitchen island. After a moment, his mother’s determined expression slides away, crestfallen. Her chin dips in a slight nod. She empties the shopping bag, gummy bears for Marc and Oreos for Julian. Their favorites.
She nudges a flat rectangular box tied in a red ribbon toward James; then she collects her keys and purse. James watches her leave.
She stops at the kitchen doorway. “Welcome home, James.” She doesn’t wait for his reply, and a moment later he hears the front door click shut.
He stares at the box in front of him. His mother never gave just because gifts. Outside of birthdays and holidays, she never gifted him anything. Curiosity piqued, he unravels the ribbon. He hates how his heart races with anticipation and he despises he feels like his sons did a short time ago. Elated.
He lifts the lid and takes in the set of Filbert brushes, their feathered pig-hair bristles ideal for blending oils and acrylics. A fist-size lump clogs his throat. His mother bought him art supplies, after all these years.
Well, Mom. It’s a little late. He has no desire to paint again.
He tosses the box back onto the countertop and the fourth sandwich into the trash. The rest he wraps for later since he’s still full from breakfast. The boys probably are, too.
Later, he and his sons spend the afternoon unpacking and organizing their rooms. They shipped only clothes, toys, important documents, and a few mementos, like photos of their mother. Aside from a couple of small boxes of books and files, James leaves his own belongings untouched. His taste in clothing is different from what it had been as Carlos, and he can’t stomach seeing the custom suits and shirts Aimee elected to box rather than donate. Those clothes from his time before.
He now sees his life divided into three periods. The time before the fugue and the time after. The third period, the in-between, will always be shrouded in mystery, like the moment before dawn when the world isn’t dark or light, just a hazy gray. He’ll only know what Carlos elected to write about in the journals. And reading about it is entirely different from experiencing it.
His gaze darts over the remaining cardboard boxes in the garage. The rest are his. He’ll start his after period from scratch and go shopping tomorrow.
The locksmith and alarm company arrive after three. While bolts are changed and the alarm system inspected and switched to a new service, Marc paints at the kitchen table. Hoping to appease Julian, James sets up his Xbox. His son declines his challenge to a game and promptly launches into a single-man game of Halo.
Julian hasn’t mentioned Señora Carla, and while that worries James, he’s thankful Julian doesn’t want to talk about her. At least not yet. He isn’t ready to talk about his mother either. Underneath the surface, he’s still seething over how she deceived them for five years. But more so, he fears the truth will crush his sons, Julian especially. He was fatherless the first four years of his life, and the father who adopted him doesn’t remember why he took him in. He knows only what Carlos wrote. James needs to handle this situation like a fish caught with bare hands, else he’ll slip away.
They eat breakfast leftovers for dinner, and after the boys are in bed, James paces the hallways, desperate for a late-night run. He needs to buy a treadmill.
He needs to get out.
He grabs a beer from the fridge, pops the cap, and debates calling Nick to join him, as he continues to wander through the house, restless. It’s late, already past ten thirty, and a work night, reminding James about his other dilemma. He must get serious about finding a job, he thinks, pacing by the front window and catching a glimpse of the night outside.
He stops, beer poised against his mouth. His phone vibrates in his back pocket, but he ignores it. It’s been sounding off all day, and the last person he wants to speak with after the unexpected visit from his mother, is Thomas. The guy won’t let him alone. Besides, his full attention is focused on the SUV parked in front of his house, headlights on, motor running. He hears the engine through the open window.
Movement inside the vehicle sets his heart into supersonic speed, a fist hammering into his sternum. The gesture is so familiar, it’s startling. Electricity dances across his skin, and air surges from his lungs, carrying one word: Aimee.
CHAPTER 8
CARLOS
Five Years Ago
June 22
Puerto Escondido, Mexico
My heart slammed in my chest the way it had the day my wife died, when the nurse had placed Marcus in my arms and Raquel had put her trust in me. My past was as much an unknown to her as it was to me, yet we’d fallen in love and married. She’d given me her son Julian.
And now I could lose him.
I gunned the open-top Jeep on the Costera, shifting to a higher gear. The wind dried the sweat in my hair but offered no escape from the heat, let alone Imelda’s concerns about my documentation. And those concerns were valid. Though I hadn’t had issues, I did wonder about the cards in my wallet. Alarms didn’t sound and the authorities hadn’t come running when I married Raquel, adopted Julian, and paid my taxes. That didn’t mean my paperwork hadn’t been forged. It only meant I hadn’t done anything to show up as a blip on someone’s radar screen.