Tears fill my eyes, and I wipe them away. How cruel George was, hurting Mom like that. I can’t imagine.
“She was crying, and she tried to pull his hands back to her stomach again, maybe hoping if he could feel the baby move, he might … I don’t know. Change his mind? But he didn’t pull away. Instead, he grabbed her around the middle and forced her to the edge of the cliffs. I was moving toward them before I even knew what was happening. She was struggling, her feet scrambling on the dirt. She became a wild thing, but I suppose that’s what happens to mothers when their babies are threatened. She stomped on his foot, and it must have hurt enough that he loosened his grip on her. She dropped to the ground where he wouldn’t be able to push her. George wouldn’t stop, though. He reached for her again, and she pushed his hands away from her, thrashing around, and then …”
Peter remains silent until I can’t take it any longer. “And then?” I prompt.
“He went over.” I gasp, but he continues, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. “Billie, he was there one second, and the next … gone. Samantha crawled to the edge. I’d never heard someone scream that way. Never heard a sound so pained and shattered come from another person. She was reaching forward, reaching like she could catch him, and I threw my body on top of hers to keep her from falling right over the edge herself.”
Peter swallows so hard I can hear it, aclickin his throat like a puzzle piece being snapped into place. He reaches for aplastic jug of water on the table beside Isla’s bed and removes a plastic cup from an upside-down stack of them. His hands are shaking when he pours water for himself and takes a gulping drink before filling the glass again.
I watch him in total silence, too stunned to speak.
“She wanted to tell everyone what happened.” He scoffs, shaking his head. “Always so honest, your mother. I convinced her she had a good reason to lie. The best reason, really.” Peter watches me carefully. “You. What would happen to her baby if she went to prison? Even if we’d lied and told everyone George jumped over the edge himself, the story would never have held up to real inquiry. Neither of us was ready to lie like that. We knew we’d get caught.
“So instead, we went back to the party and I told everyone she’d said yes. That we were getting married. No one thought much of her tear-stained face or how stunned she seemed. They all thought she was happy. If only they knew.”
Dizziness washes over me, like I’m the one standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down at a vast chasm below. I grip the arm of the chair like it can save me, like it can keep me sitting here instead of free-falling into the past.
George Canterbury.
Mom.
George’s fiancée.
One night in London …
“Are you saying … George Canterbury is my father?” My voice is a choked whisper. The words hardly belong to me at all.
“I’ve always thought of him as more of a sperm donor, but yes. He was your biological father,” Peter confirms.
The irony of his comment doesn’t escape me. “Sperm donor” is exactly how I’ve thought of Peter over the years. A deadbeat dad who bowed out of all the hard work that comes with being a parent and left it—leftme—to my mother.
But now our family’s narrative has been flipped upside down. Peter just delivered the opposite of a villain monologue. It was actually a hero’s monologue—the story of a love so strong, it inspired a man to cover up a crime. Because I can hear what Peter didn’t say: Mom shoved George over the edge of that cliff. It might have been self-defense—scratch that. It wasdefinitelyself-defense. But she was responsible all the same. Peter married Mom knowing she was carrying another man’s kid. He kept us both safe. But with that kind of devotion …
“Why did you leave us?” It doesn’t make any sense. How could a man who loved a woman as much as Peter obviously loved Mom leave her six years after they got together?
“Have you ever loved someone who could never love you back?” Peter says. The lack of hesitation in his answer makes me realize this is a question he’s asked himself many times before.
I think of Mom. Can a person sick with addiction love anyone at all? Because the most powerful force in Mom’s life is alcohol. Did she start drinking because she was trying to forget something so horrific, only being totally numb makes it tolerable? I can’t imagine dealing with the memories. They must still torment her to this day—to the point that she ignores all of her responsibilities, including me.
So yeah, I know exactly what it’s like to love someone who can’t love you back. Looks like Peter and I have more incommon than I realized.
“I loved Samantha. Part of me always will. But I didn’t realize that when I pulled her away from one cliff that night, I led her straight to another one. Her guilt over what happened was … immense. Terrifying in its hugeness. I could never compete with that, and I could never be enough. Not when the hole that night left inside her was so damn big.” Everything about Peter is hollow right now. Like he scooped out his heart and misery and all of those past emotions and laid them bare, just for me.
But there’s one thing I can’t wrap my head around.
“How could you leave me alone with her? Why did you send us to America and keep Isla with you? I’ve essentially had to raise myself. I take care of everything. I take care ofher.We needed you.”I needed you, is what I want to say, but even in this moment, when so many hidden things are coming into the light, that feels too vulnerable. It feels like something that needs to stay in the dark. Because if I drag it out here, if I look at the shape and texture of it too closely, I’ll see the words for what they really are: The devastation of a lonely little girl who’s been missing her dad for the past eleven years.
But I guess the truth is, Peter’s not my actual father. He never was.
Maybe I never should have been missing him at all.
“I wish I could change what happened, but I can’t. And I’m sorry, Belinda. I didn’t want you to go, but Samantha could no longer be here. She said it was too painful. The memories haunted her, and she even said that the cliffs … they were always calling her back. I worried she would go out there and … Well, I was worried we would never see her again. I tried to keepyou with me and Isla, but she refused. She insisted on taking you from me and from your sister.
“I tried so hard to get her help. To convince her she should stay for the family,ourfamily, but she wasn’t interested in Isla. Or me. She only wanted you. The only tangible remnant of George.” Peter leans back, thrusting both hands in his hair as he watches me. “Nothing was stronger than the guilt she felt over what happened. She saved you, but she lost a part of herself in that moment on the cliff. And you will never know how sorry I am. For all of it.”
I am reeling. My entire life has been a lie. The man I believed was my father isn’t. My real father is dead, thanks to my mother, though if she hadn’t taken action, maybe neither of us would be here today. It makes me understand Mom’s behavior throughout my life a little better, but I still have so many questions. They swirl and twist in my brain, questions about who George was, and why he’d sleep with Mom if he was engaged, and what she saw in someone who was so clearly awful. I want to know why she didn’t fall in love with Peter at school, and what her generation called the friend zone, and what Mom felt in the moment Peter covered her body with his own, saving her and me from an almost inevitable demise.
But the biggest question of all, the one that pulses through my head like the beat of a powerful drum, is this: How does all of this connect to Emily’s death and Isla being in a coma? Why was Isla tracing the Legacy List from 1998, and what could she have figured out for herself if Peter never told her about George?
