Page 60 of 500 First Editions (The Romantics #3)

AUTUMN

PIGEONS AND PLOTS

W ander and Whitney replaced Jack almost immediately. They sandwiched me on the top step and stuffed a cup of coffee in my hand.

“How’d you sleep?” Whitney asked as she sipped her mug of herbal tea.

“Like shit.”

“Yeah. You look like it,” Wander said.

I snorted. “Gee. Thanks.”

She picked up one of the envelopes. “You read them all?”

I nodded.

“How was it?” Whitney asked.

I let out a sharp breath. “Brutal. Wonderful. Hurt like hell. Made me feel good. It gave me some answers. But it left me with even more questions.”

“I think that’s life,” Whitney said. “We rarely get all the answers at once. Sometimes we don’t get them at all.”

“Have you talked to anyone yet?” Wander asked.

“Anyone . . . meaning Ryan?” His name tasted like battery acid.

“Him. Your mom. Your sister. Your . . . not dad? Lisa . . .”

“I called Amber and Greg before you guys came out here.”

Whitney wrapped her arms around her bump and hunched forward like she was giving her little one a hug. “How was that?”

I shrugged. “I guess it was fine. I told Amber that she and I aren’t good. So, cheers to not being the bigger person.”

“Sometimes you just have to work through the hurt. It’s not always pretty, and people who hurt you don’t get to demand it be any less messy,” Wander said. “What about Greg?”

“I guess I feel relieved. It doesn’t excuse the fact that he was complicit in keeping it a secret or excused for being an ass to me as an adult. But knowing why makes it hurt a little less. I guess, in hindsight, he just didn’t want to lead me on anymore, and I can’t blame him.”

“Do you think you’ll still try to talk to him?” Whitney asked.

I had been thinking about that question since the moment I hung up. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m ready to make that decision yet.”

My phone lit up as Lisa tried to call me for the fifty-eleventh time. I sent her to voicemail.

“What about her?” Whitney asked. “It’s not like she made the decision not to tell you. She was just grandfathered in. Grandmothered in?”

“But she went along with it.” I had always looked up to Lisa. She was no nonsense. Honest. Kind. Direct. Firm, but fair. I wasn’t shocked that she knew. I was just hurt that she let it slide.

She would be the last person I called. Well, except for Ryan. But I wasn’t going to talk to him at all.

My mind went back to all the red bubble notifications I saw when I logged into my social media. I rarely used it, so I hadn’t thought to block him there. A torrent of messages from him sat in my inbox. He had even emailed me through my website.

That left only one person to call at the moment.

“I need to call my mom,” I said.

Wander handed me my phone and Whitney held my hand.

I wanted to throw up as I waited and waited for her to answer. “She’s probably at the salon and doesn’t have her phone on her,” I said to the girls. “I’ll just do it later.”

“Nope,” Wander said as she clapped her hand against mine, trapping the phone against my ear. “Wait it out.”

Just when I thought it would go to voicemail, the call connected.

Mom’s panicked voice came over the line in a hurry. “Hello? Autumn?”

My throat swelled, and I couldn’t get a word out. Tears filled my eyes as all the hurt returned in a tidal wave.

“Autumn? Are you there, hon?”

Wander pulled my phone out of my hand as I dropped my head and cried.

“Give her a fucking second, will you, Cynthia?” she snapped.

“Um . . . Okay.”

I took deep breaths and steadied myself before taking my phone back. “Mom?” It sounded like a pathetic whimper—the way a child would sound when they tiptoed into their parent’s room for comfort after a nightmare.

“I’m here,” she said as the noise of the salon thrummed in the background.

“If you need to go back to work?—”

“No, no. I’m at the salon, but I’m in the back. I’ve got one of the other girls covering my chair. I’m just glad you called. Where are you? Are you safe?”

I let out a deep breath. “I’m fine. I’m staying with friends. For now.”

“Good. Good. That’s good,” she stammered.

There was a long silence. “I don’t know what to say,” I admitted. “I’m fucking angry.”

Whitney’s hand tightened around mine while Wander put her arm around my back.

“I know you are. I don’t blame you one bit,” she said with her voice full of regret.

“Why didn’t you tell me Shep was my dad?”

She didn’t say anything, so I kept going.

“Did you think I would love you less?” The question was barely a whisper.

My mother’s sigh was weighed down with thirty years of remorse.

“I have made so many mistakes in my life, Autumn . . . Too many to count. I was holding on to threads and binding them with lies to try to make blankets. I was trying to hold everything together. I just wanted to give you and your sister a good life.”

“I had a good life, Mom! Knowing who my father was wouldn’t have changed that.”

“I know that now.” There was a break in the line, and it sounded like she was crying.

“I was more embarrassed than I was brave. I messed up. I had an affair and it led to my divorce from Greg. You didn’t choose to be born into that mess.

And rather than making the hard decisions and admitting my mistakes and infidelity to you, I was a victim of my pride.

I’m sorry that I didn’t put you and your sister first. I have regretted that decision for many years.

And I’m sorry that I wasn’t brave enough to come tell you the truth myself after Ryan confronted me. ”

No amount of asking why would change what had happened. But there was one more question I needed the answer to. “Did you tell him not to tell me?”

And for some reason I prayed that she had.

“No,” she said as the crinkle of a tissue caused static to burst into my ear. “I was shocked when you invited us over to see you off. I thought for sure he had gone right back home to tell you. How was the drive? You said you’re staying with a friend. Did you two make it to New York?”

“I left him at the airport,” I cried as a fresh wave of heartbreak pummeled me.

“Oh, Autumn . . .”

I waved it off like it was fine, as if she was right there in front of me. But it wasn’t fine. It would never be fine.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she said. And I believed her. “You two broke up?”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“Because he didn’t tell you?”

I used the hem of my shirt to wipe my tears. “I’ve had enough of people withholding information from me for one lifetime.”

“Autumn.” She hesitated, thinking over what she would say. “I’m the last person who should be giving you advice. Trust me, I’m aware of that. But if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that pride is a rather flimsy shield. It won’t protect you, honey.”

“He hurt me.”

“I hurt you too, and you’re talking to me.

Amber texted me and said you called her.

” She took a deep breath. “You’re forgetting I was there that day.

Ryan was ready to burn down my salon to make a point.

I don’t know what stopped him from telling you what he found out.

If I did, I would tell you. Just . . . have the conversation.

Do it for yourself; for all the times people made that decision for you. ”

Wander’s hand gently smoothed up and down my back as I said my goodbyes. Mom asked if I would call her later, but I wasn’t there yet and told her as much.

When the call ended, there was still a weight on my chest, but it felt like I could breathe a little more.

“Who’s next?” Whitney asked as she rested her head on my shoulder.

I tapped Lisa’s number and waited. She picked up on the second ring.

Her voice was groggy when she answered. “Hello?”

Shit. I didn’t think about the fact that she worked nights and had probably just gone to bed. “Did I wake you up?”

“Yes and thank fuck you did!” she shouted. “What the hell is wrong with you? Giving us a scare like that. Next time you go off the grid, how about a proof of life text? Or a flipping carrier pigeon? Where the hell are you?”

For some reason, getting lovingly yelled at made a little of the anger go away. “Have you talked to Ryan?” I hedged.

“Not today.”

“I’m in North Carolina. I’m staying at Wander’s. Whitney is here too.”

“So if Ryan asks if I’ve heard from you, the answer is that you’re in Canada?”

“I hear Saskatchewan is nice this time of year.”

“I’ll Photoshop a picture of you riding a moose. He’ll definitely buy it.”

I let out a sharp breath as my blood pressure lowered. “We can talk later. I didn’t think about the fact that you’d be asleep.”

“No. We’re going to talk now,” Lisa clipped. “I’ve waited over ten years to have this conversation, so get comfortable.”

Wander raised her eyebrows and mouthed the word, “Scary.”

Whitney nodded in agreement.

“I read the cards,” I said, eyeing the stack of opened envelopes with warped polka-dots from my tears. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Lisa softened. “Every time he’d write one, I’d put it on the shelf where we keep all your books. I always hoped you’d snoop around the house and find them.”

“Is that why you left the ultrasound photos in the box of things you gave me?”

“Yes. Shep . . . He used to keep one in the cab of his truck. The night he and I met, the first thing he told me was that he had a daughter. I saw the ultrasound and thought he meant a baby. And then he started talking about you and I swear he didn’t stop to take a breath for a solid twenty minutes. ”

“You knew the truth the day we met for the first time.”

“I did. Shep and I argued about it for a long time that night. The whole time we were married, it was really the only fight we ever had. But we fought about it a lot.” Grief warped her words.

“He believed that the way he loved you mattered more than the title. And that he wanted to be everything a father should be, even if he never got to hear you call him ‘Dad.’ Being Step Shep was everything to him because he was yours.”

The girls tightened around me, enveloping me in a group hug to keep me strong.