forty-one
Harley
I don’t bother checkingmy rear-view mirror to see if Cassandra or Bea are following me. I have a feeling they both know where my next stop is, and that this is a conversation I need to have in private.
I would usually let myself into my mom’s house with the key I still have, but not tonight.
Tonight, I knock.
"Harley?” She opens the door for me, tying up the front of her soft pink robe. "What’s going on?”
I know she's confused about my unannounced visit.
"Max Anderson, mom?” I ask, watching all the color drain from her face, and a sob that she’d been holding for thirty years finally breaks free.
"I’m so sorry, Harley.”
"He was right here. Myfatherwas right here. I idolized that man, mom. You knew it and you let me. You listened to me talk about how much I aspired to be like him, and you never said athing.My whole fucking life, I looked up to him as some sort of…some sort of fuckinghero. And this whole time, he was the coward who abandoned my pregnant mom. You let me look up to him after he abandoned you?”
"He didn’t leaveyou, Harley.He leftme.” Her voice breaks as she brings her trembling hand to wipe tears away from her bloodshot eyes. "I had no idea about Angela when we met. I fell in love with him hard and fast. When I found out I was pregnant with you, I was ecstatic, but he panicked. That’s when he told me about Angela. I gave him time to decide what he wanted to do, and she fell pregnant with Austin during that time. I was heartbroken, so I left town. Grangewood Creek had always been my home, so you and I moved back here when it was time for you to start school.” She reaches for a tissue on the kitchen counter to blow her nose.
"He toldmehe wanted to be a part of my life.”
"You spoke to him?” she asks, and I nod. "You stopped asking about who your father was, Harley. If you asked as you had gotten older, I would have told you. But you stopped caring.” She’s quick with an excuse, trying to defend her actions, failing to see that she isn't the victim in all of this.
"That’s because I thought he didn’t want me, Mom! Why would I ask about a man who I thought abandoned me? If I had known who he was, maybe my life would have been different. Austin wouldn’t have resented me. He wouldn’t have ruined my fucking career that I worked so God damn hard for.” Confusion washes over her face while she tries to make sense of what I’m talking about.
"Austin didn’t ruin your career, Harley. The fight did.”She takes a step closer to me, but I take a step backward.
"Austin was behind it. Remember how one got away? It washim. He usedMax’s money, his lawyers, and his position in the NFL to make sure his name was never released. That’s howthe cause of my injury was never made public. Because of him and his father’s connections in the game.” Guilt washes over her. She feels responsible.
"If I had known he was my father, and that Austin was my brother, maybehe wouldn’t have resented me. Maybe he wouldn’t have hated me so much that he felt the need to break me. To take everything away from me,” I say, tears falling down my cheeks.
"Who’s the man in the photo I found in your bedside table?” I ask, remembering the picturing of my pregnant mom, next to a man with his hand on her bump.
"He was just a friend from school that I bumped into when I was pregnant. You assumed he was your father, and I didn’t have the heart to correct you,” she says, reaching her hand out for mine, but I cross my arms over my chest.
Lie after lie, after fucking lie.
"You should have told me.” My voice trembles, my bottom lip quivering. I haven’t cried since I was a teenager, and now the floodgates are well and truly open.After the accident, I wasn’t sad. I was fucking pissed. How were there people out there with such little regard for others? How could they inflict so much pain, and not care, or have to suffer the consequences?
I never mourned my old life the way I should have. I finished physical therapy and was given the all clear to start my new normal.I paid movers to pack away my penthouse in North Carolina and had everything shipped back to Grangewood Creek.
I left behind anything that reminded me of the sport I loved and the career I longed for. I purchased the old Maxwell farm and put my business degree to work.
I was all guns blazing during the day, but once the sun went down, I drowned my sorrows in whisky and rarely leftmy apartment. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my two best friends.
Robbie helped me hire a team of guys to do the renovation and construction on the winery, but we ended up doing most of the work ourselves. He convinced me we should put our heads together to create our property development business, and the rest is history.
I worked with my head down, kept myself busy, and stayed out of trouble.
It's like I've gone back seven years, the dark cloud looming over me again like it once did, and I need to stop it before it takes over completely.
"I just…I need time, Mom. I need time,” I say, slamming the wire door behind me. She doesn’t bother to call out my name. She just let's me go.
Quickly checking my phone, I see missed calls from Bea but nothing from Cassandra, and I feel it in my fucking chest. In the six months that she’s been home, I’ve fallen head over fucking heels in love with this girl and I might have just ruined everything.
All she was trying to do was protect me. Trying to figure out the best way to tell me news that she felt compelled to. News that should have been told to me years ago by my mother.
