“You were off doing boy things just like you said, and playing house wasn’t exactly on that list, plus even if you saw the snacks I made, you wouldn’t have been able to tell because I wasn’t exactly allowed to use a knife, so I just pretended.”
“That’s cute. Life was so simple back then.”
“It sure was,” I echoed.
We slipped into a comfortable silence for a few minutes as we stared into the darkness that blanketed the property. Each of us seemingly lost in our own memories.
“That summer you moved here, my mom overheard you telling Arizona you didn’t like your new last name. She said Ari was confused and asked you why you had a new one. You didn’tknow, just that you weren’t supposed to talk about it. My mom was naturally curious but kept that information close to the chest and didn’t say anything. People have their reasons, she told me later, because as the years went by, she saw nothing amiss. So she thought nothing of it.”
His grasp tightened around me, as if he instinctively was desperate to keep me near.
“It wasn’t until after everything happened that she remembered that detail. It wasn’t a secret to me, obviously, that your dad was battling his demons our senior year. I knew you wouldn’t just up and leave me without a word.” His words lingered in the air, settling over me before he continued. “I suspected your family might have been in witness protection. It was the only way I could rationalize in my head the way your family disappeared, like poof, like you never even existed.”
“We weren’t,” I said, swallowing the lump that had formed in my throat. “I suppressed a lot of memories from my early childhood. I didn’t even know my real last name wasn’t Bradshaw until a few years ago.”
TheBin Bradshaw was why he called me Lily-Bee.
“Really?” I felt his body jerk in surprise behind me.
“Yes, it was quite a shock, let me tell you.”
“So what happened? Why did your family leave?”
I closed my eyes and could still see the image of my father, absolutely livid and unhinged, in the kitchen when I learned the truth all those years later. It was that night that solidified the end of his reign over me. Our relationship was over the moment I was on the receiving end of the threats he made while my mother just stood silently behind him.
Since that day, I tried in vain to bury the pain and loss, butwas always unsuccessful. His actions bled into every aspect of my life that had taken me off course while the what-ifs ate me alive.
And as I sat on the swing with Jaxon under the midnight sky, lit only by the moon, I prepared myself to explain thewhyfor the first time. I owed him the truth.
We didn’t just leave London. We ran.
Just like we did from here a decade ago.
With the weight of the words pressed against my lips, my heart thumped violently, as if it might burst free from my ribs. “My father was once a well-regarded surgeon back in the UK, not the handyman he pretended to be when we lived here.”
Jaxon ran his hands up and down my arms after an involuntary chill shivered down my spine, but stayed silent, giving me the time to find the words I needed.
“During what should have been a routine operation, he made a reckless decision that cost a patient their life. The hospital launched a formal review, and the patient’s family sued for wrongful death. The Medical Council investigated and ultimately revoked his medical license. His career was over, his reputation crucified in the press, and our family received death threats as a result. Someone even threw a Molotov cocktail through our window.”
“Jesus. Were any of you hurt?”
“No, thankfully, my dad was in the living room at the time and was able to extinguish the fire quickly before it spread and did any real damage.”
“Thank God.” Jaxon’s arms tightened around me. “Then what happened?”
“Rather than face the fallout, he moved our family here in aneffort to avoid being sued in the civil suit that was about to be filed against him. I knew about the fire, but not everything else. My dad missed a lot of my milestones because of his work. He felt guilty and said he and my mom wanted a simpler life, at least that was what they said whenever I asked why I had to say goodbye to my friends.”
“Guess that explains why your dad was able to expertly stitch you up himself without going to the hospital that time when you cut your arm open after crawling through the window of Arizona’s mom’s greenhouse.”
“Yes.” The memory made me smile. “We were in our super-spy era.”
“Oh, I remember.” He kissed the top of my head. “You girls literally thought you were invisible and yet couldn’t have been any more obvious if you tried when you were spying on my brothers and me.”
“If only.” A soft laugh escaped my lips. “My parents never spoke of our time in London, and I got grounded whenever I did. They hoped that, given my age, I’d forget as I got older, which I did, truthfully. It wasn’t until my Dad left the last week of summer before senior year started, and I overheard my mom arguing on the phone with him, something about papers regarding his mom’s estate and cleaning out her room at a nursing home, that I noticed my parents were acting weird.”
“I remember you telling me you didn’t even know you had any living relatives.”
“Exactly, it didn’t make sense, but at the same time, we were seniors, and I wanted our last year to be memorable. I was barely home. Always wherever you were, so I didn’t really pay attention as I should have at home.”
