Balls. So, much for the squeaky-clean Mayor of Newport?
FIFTEEN
HARPER
“I just don’t understand. My parents have always been tight as a couple. God knows my father has had his fair share of womenthrowingthemselves at him. But he’d never done anything about it. And now, to think he did bang someone behind mom’s back makes me sick to my stomach.”
I sat up straighter. “Just walk us through it, honey, from the beginning,” Molly encouraged with a hand on the sniveling girl's arm.
Suffice it to say that the sleepover I had visualized wasnothinglike the real deal. And that wasn’t a bad thing, well, for me anyway. My thoughts of having to sit through an evening with Storm talking about herself on one hand and girly bullshit on the other had not lit me up.
Drama, however, I craved as much as the next teenager. It appeared that those who had it all—didn’talways. What unfolded as Storm gave us the reasons behind her distress was so much more than that. And, for once in the privileged girl's life, her guard was down, and I saw the real person. And the version she allowed me to see wasn’t so bad after all, just like Molly had said.
In a nutshell, I was shown a Storm that I could finally get on board with.
Once she had pulled herself together and gotten over her initial tears, Storm took us over to the sofas by the window. On the surface of the coffee table was a battered old archive box. It was full of paperwork, postcards, photographs, and an old stuffed animal. Beside it was a letter; the branding on the envelope said something aboutinvestigations.
Storm explained that she found the letter already open in the box, and it was a report from a Private Investigator called Pierce Banks. He had been commissioned by her father to watch a family who had recently moved into the area from Jamestown. I didn’t recognize their surname, but the family included a man, a woman, and their son. Attached to the report was what looked like medical details.
Storm said that once she had read the letter, she had checked the rest of the box to establish why her father was investigating some random family.
Before Molly or I could ask any further questions, Storm delved into the box and plucked out some tatty old notepaper. She handed us both a couple of pages.
I scanned the fancy scrawl and gushing words, and Mols did the same. They were love letters addressed to Dom, aka Storm’s father.
“And thesearen’tfrom your mother?” I asked, waving one at her.
“No, of course not.”
“How do you know?” The letter I held stated it was fromYour Angel.
“The handwriting is totally different from my mother's, and she’s never referred to herself as that. How tacky.”
Initially, I wondered what the fuss was about, as it appeared the alleged affair had happened ages ago. From the date on the letter I held, Storm’s dad cheated on her mombeforeshe was even born.
“What if they just wrote to each other, like pen pals?” Molly naively suggested. Clearly, the stuff in the letter she had read wasn’t as colorful as the one I held. It sounded like Storm’s father was amazing in the sack; silver linings and all that.
“No. Some of the letters reveal that they saw each other regularly,” Storm explained.
Shuffling further back into my chair, I decided to play the devil's advocate. Something I excelled at. “How do you know it was an affair? Maybe this woman came into his life when he and your mother were on a break or something?” I saw Molly cringe at my reference to Friends. I held my hands up, palms to the ceiling,as Storm frantically itched her nose. I noted how her usually perfect makeup was now smeared down her cheeks. “Maybe it’s not how it looks—is my point?” I spluttered with a ‘What did I say wrong’face at Mols.
Storm took back the steamier letter I held and waved it in the air. “My parents never broke up once, even in the earlier days.”
Wrinkling my nose, I pointed out, “But it’s almosttwenty yearsold?”
Storm chewed the inside of her cheek and then started rooting through the box like a crazy person. “Maybe this was a previous girlfriend, you know. Someone he was withbeforeyour mom?”
She stopped rummaging in the box and shook her head. “No, my mother and father just celebrated theirsilverwedding anniversary.” I hadn’t a clue how many years that added up to, but I imagined a couple of decades.
I glanced at Molly, who was watching Storm with an indulgent expression. Her cell vibrated in her pocket, but she ignored it. That was a first. So, this shitwasserious if it caused her to leave Hudson unopened.
“Well?” Storm snapped, tugging my attention back.
“So? What do you want me to say? Congrats to your folks?”
She looked at me like I was stupid. “No. It means that he was married to my mother during his seedy fling! You celebrate your silver wedding for twenty-fiveyears together.”
Ah. So, they’d been married five years when he got itchy feet; didn’t that happen at seven years? I shook off my unhelpful thoughts.
