Page 31 of Accidentally Mine

Roselynn

I yawned as I took the long trip to the rehab center that afternoon to visit my aunt.

Brent had offered Ernest, but he’d been too hospitable, and I felt bad taking away his mode of transportation when I could easily just use public.

As I was sitting in the T car on the Orange Line, I got an email with a message from my father’s business partner, Steve.

Steve was not just my father’s business partner.

He was my dad’s biggest confidante, and had been working with him for years, since my father wasn’t the best when it came to balancing the books.

Because I’d been trying to keep my whereabouts as quiet as possible, I hadn’t given Steve my new number, so all he had to get in touch with me was an email account.

But this was his fourth message to me. I knew I had to contact him.

I’d just been dragging my feet, then I’d been too busy with Aunt Marie.

If I was honest with myself, I hadn’t been ready to deal with my father’s business, especially when I couldn’t even bring myself to deal with my childhood house.

It was just three blocks away from my aunt’s house on Leeds. I could have walked over there any time, but I knew the second I went inside, I’d be a sobbing mess. And when I went through it all, I’d be one step closer to leaving it all behind. Forever.

Yesterday, I might have given myself three days, but so far, I hadn’t been able to tick off any of the items on my to-do list. My mind had been stalled on the fantasy of Brent.

Every free moment, I found myself grinning goofily and thinking of him.

Which was stupid, because I knew better than anyone that it had to end.

I needed to get that under wraps. And soon, before the big bad wolf showed up.

As I walked into the rehab facility, my mind again strayed to Brent.

The pancakes had been lovely, but my favorite part of the morning had been the kitchen sex.

He had a lot of rooms in that brownstone of his for us to christen.

The mudroom, and his upstairs bathroom…we hadn’t been in his hot tub yet.

I groaned inwardly as I realized there wasn’t time. Two days after this one, I had to be out of Boston. For good.

In Aunt Marie’s room, the massive bouquet about blocked out the light coming in through the window—the most beautiful, giant red roses. They made the room smell heavenly.

“Who’s the secret admirer?” I asked Marie, reaching for the card.

This one was signed. To my sweet lady. Love, Ernest.

My jaw dropped. I looked over at my aunt, who was fighting a Mona Lisa smile. She was wearing a new lounging outfit and lipstick, and it looked like someone had done her hair. In fact, she looked at least ten years younger, her face flushed and happy. “Are you freaking kidding me?”

“Don’t be so surprised. Yes, we’ve been getting friendly during his visits.

He’s a very nice man. We actually have so many friends in common, believe it or not,” she said, fluffing her new do.

“Did you know we were both born in the same hospital, five years apart? And my sister dated his best friend. We both went to South Boston High School. Can you believe it?”

I put the card back among the flowers. “No. That’s amazing. He seems like a really nice man. Brent thinks highly of him.”

“He brought those flowers to me, and you know what he said?” I expected something stirringly romantic, but without waiting for me to ask, she said, “What’s better than roses on a piano? Two lips on my organ.” She guffawed loudly.

I felt my face heating. Oh, my god. They were a match made in heaven.

“And then he told me this really great joke,” she continued.

“So a man brings some flowers home to his wife. She’s so surprised by his romantic gesture that she lays back on the dining table, throws her legs in the air and spreads them.

Her husband, confused, looks down and goes, ‘What’s that for?

’ His wife replies, ‘For the flowers, of course!’ He thinks for a moment and asks, ‘Don’t we have a vase?

’” She threw her head back and laughed, slapping her knee.

I sat down in the chair across from her bed and smiled, relieved despite the dirty joke. This was amazing news. It would definitely make leaving easier if I knew my Aunt Marie would have someone to look after her.

A heavy stone settled in my stomach as I realized it didn’t make things easier at all. Anthony, if he found out where she was, would use her to drag me back here in a flat second.

My aunt eyed me closely. “Ernest has told me that you and Brent have been getting closer too.” I nodded, raking my teeth savagely over my bottom lip. She reached out and touched my cheek. “Is he the reason why you look like you’re facing the firing squad?”

I frowned, the backs of my eyes prickling. “I think I’m falling for him. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time. You know I have to leave.”

“I don’t know that,” she said with an innocent bat of her eyelashes.

“Are you crazy, Auntie? Of course I do,” I said, sighing. It was probably my fault for keeping all the worst details from her. “Anthony is a horrible, vengeful person. I think the second he gets out, he’ll come looking for me. And not to give me a hug and tell me he missed me.”

“But you care about Brent.”

“I do. So much I don’t want to see him hurt. Don’t want to drag him into this. I’ve already hurt him enough.” I moaned, sitting on my hands so she wouldn’t see them tremble. “On the night I left Boston, I caused a terrible accident, Auntie. I nearly killed him.”

She opened her mouth but didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Ernest told me about the woman who left the scene of the accident. Was that you ? And he knows about it?”

I nodded, pushing my hair away from my face.

“I was trying to get away from Anthony, and he was on my tail. Anthony got trapped in his car during the accident and the police were able to catch up with him. I didn’t know at the time that he’d been involved in anything illegal at all.

I was stupid. So stupid.” I bit my lip. “So even if Anthony doesn’t come for me, the police will. I’m in serious trouble.”

Aunt Marie sat there for a while, processing this information, then took on the same calm, motherly demeanor she’d had when I was ten and skinned my knee on the playground.

“You did what you had to do,” she finally said, voice firm. “The police will see that.”

“I can’t turn myself in, because if I do, Anthony will know just where to find me.” I blew out a breath. “And he would find me. He would have me tortured. I would be a sitting duck.”

“Then, don’t turn yourself in. And something tells me that if Brent knows that you’re responsible, and he hasn’t turned you in himself, he wouldn’t want you to leave now.” She shook her head. “You always had a problem with that. Learning to depend on people.”

I knew that, all too well.

“Anthony’s a monster,” I mumbled. “I know what he could do to me. And he could do the same to Brent. He could kill us both. The only way to protect Brent is to go.”

“Why don’t you let Brent make that decision?” she asked me. “Tell Brent about Anthony. Trust him to help you, if he chooses to. And then, maybe, you can stop running.”

I sighed. “What if I tell him, and he doesn’t want me?”

“He won’t feel that way. But if he does, at least you’ll have an answer. Leaving now, without closure with him, wouldn’t that always make you wonder? Regret is a terrible thing to live with, Rebecca. But I guess you already know that.”

I did. I kissed my aunt on the forehead and helped her with her lunch. We chatted a little more about mundane things, about a couple of neighbors who had asked after her, a few interesting pieces of mail she’d received and whether I was keeping up watering her garden.

Then I went back to Southie. But this time, I got off at the Broadway stop on the Red Line and walked the three blocks to my father’s house.

The Dodge Dart, up on blocks, so choked with ivy the rusting surface of the car was now completely covered in green leaves, made me smile.

Climbed the peeling stairs to the front porch, I ran a hand over the porch swing where I used to play, pushing it so high that I broke the darn thing countless times.

I used the old key I’d never taken off my keychain to go inside.

Walking through the cozy rooms, now somehow smaller than I remembered, I inhaled the familiar smell of the place, furniture polish and my father’s Old Spice.

I sat in my dad’s old La-Z-Boy and went through the drawers and drawers of photographs of me, my mother, and my father.

My mother was so beautiful. Dad had said countless times that I looked like her, but all I saw was that we had the same eyes.

She and my father had saved every one of the school projects I’d done.

There were boxes and boxes of them, all of them signed by Rebecca Reece.

I didn’t think they’d ever thrown anything out.

As I sorted through things, I set aside the most precious—old photos, my mother’s scarf, Dad’s raggedy throw his own mother had made. I had quite a pile going and wondered how I could take with me all that my heart wanted to keep forever.

I went up to my bedroom and sat on my bed, a cloud of dust puffing out as I hugged my old, one-eyed teddy bear and stared at the strips of pictures taped on the mirror of me and my friends from high school.

Junior prom. Homecoming. I’d been so happy.

Back then, I thought I’d grow up to live right here in Boston, with a doting husband and a dozen kids.

I couldn’t have imagined anything better.

That all ended one September day when I laid eyes on Anthony Markin.

I scanned the rest of my childhood things, coated in dust. My dad had kept the room just as I’d left it when I went off to college.

A shrine to me. He’d told me it would be there for me, as long as I wanted.

He’d said that to me, time and time again, even when I decided to live on-campus at BC, before I’d met Anthony.

You may be leaving now, but I don’t want you to think you’re not welcome with me, Bec. You can always come back.

But after things went so horribly wrong with Anthony, I couldn’t.

And now I never would.

Tears stinging my eyes, I closed up the house and walked another three blocks to the Saint Augustine cemetery.

My father and I used to come here every Saturday to lay flowers at my mother’s grave.

Now, there was a heap of dirt over my father’s grave, growing new seedlings of grass, and my father’s information had been newly engraved.

I stood in front of the stone, reading their names again and again: Rose Reece, Beloved Wife and Mother. Lyndon Reece, Beloved Husband and Father. Forever Loved, Forever Missed, Forever Together.

“What do I do, Mom and Dad?” I whispered to them. “Please show me the way.”

Tears flowed down my cheeks. I couldn’t hold them back.

God, I hated this. I hated this life so much, living in a state of flux all the time, never being able to call somewhere home for fear that I’d be found and have to pick up and leave.

I didn’t want to run anymore. I wanted to put down roots.

To have friends and family in a place I loved and not have to look over my shoulder wherever I went.

I wanted to wake every day in the same bed and gaze into the eyes of someone who really loved me, someone who thought I always came first, knowing that we would be together forever.

I didn’t want to keep drifting like a leaf on the wind, never knowing where I’d end up, or who I’d be with, losing pieces of myself every day, until I crumbled away into nothing.

Maybe I couldn’t go back to the way it was before. But I wanted to stop being on the run.