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“God, no.” She waved her hands in denial. “No, Roland, absolutely not. What happened that day... No, that was not why I haven’t come back before, I swear. I can’t believe you thought that.”
His shoulders slumped in obvious relief.
“I was sixteen and you were twelve,” he said.
“Nothing happened,” Allison said. “Nothing. Yes, I freaked out afterward but that was from embarrassment, not... I don’t know, trauma?”
“I know what a kid freaking out looks like. This was different,” Roland said.
“Was it? I don’t remember much after that day,” she said, realizing as she said it that that day, that incident, was the last thing she remembered from her final summer at The Dragon.
“What do you remember?”
“I remember the wave hitting me,” she said. “I remember you carrying me to the beach and not letting me go even after I was safe. I remember kissing you and, after, you telling me not to wear white T-shirts in the water anymore. I remember running to the bathroom to cry. After that day, it’s all a blank. But that’s... I’m sure that’s because of the fall. I’m the one who was grinding on top of you, not the other way around.”
“I might have done a little grinding,” he said, wincing.
“It was, like, three seconds,” she said. “And I was on top.” She’d hoped the joke would bring back his smile but it didn’t.
“You really don’t remember anything after that?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Nothing,” she said. “What did I do?”
“You blanked me. Completely. I tried to talk to you about it, to make sure you were okay, and you wouldn’t say a word to me. You’d hide in your room when I was around.”
“Sounds like a very typical twelve-year-old-girl reaction to extreme humiliation.”
“I hoped that’s all it was, but I never knew for sure. When Dad said your aunt was taking you home to live with her because of your accident... I don’t know. I’ve never been able to shake the feeling it had something to do with me.”
Allison couldn’t believe she’d forgotten that day, that moment with Roland. Her first kiss. And with Roland of all people. What other lovely and terrible memories had her head injury stolen from her?
“No, of course that wasn’t it.”
“Then what was it? Why did it take Dad dying to get you back here?” he asked. He still looked equal parts relieved and confused.
“You don’t know?” she asked.
“Here’s what I know. You and I were alone at the house. The ‘incident’ happened. You stopped talking to me. I’m at work a couple days later, and Deacon called and said you fell down the stairs and you were going to the ER. Next thing I know, your aunt showed up and told Dad she was taking you home with her. I told him we had to stop her, but Dad said we had to let you go. What I don’t know is why you didn’t come back on your eighteenth birthday. Or nineteenth. Or anytime between then and now.”
“There’s a lot more to it than that. Dr. Capello didn’t tell you about the phone call?”
Roland looked at her, wide-eyed and baffled. “What phone call?”
“Roland... I thought you knew,” she said. “Someone called my aunt. It was right before my... Before I got hurt. Whoever called her, they pretended to be me. They told my aunt someone in the house was going to kill me. And then, bam, next thing she hears I’m in the hospital with a head injury.”
Roland rubbed his face and shook his head. “Dad said you fell. That’s all he told us. So who the hell called your aunt?”
“I don’t know,” Allison said. “My aunt said it sounded like me, but she also said the person cried the entire time on the phone, sounded hysterical. I’ve never figured it out.” She knew it had to be one of the kids in the house but she could never picture any of them betraying her like that for any reason.
“Why would anyone pretend to be you? Why would they say those things? I know none of us would do that,” Roland said. “I was at work. And Deacon and Thora were devastated when you were gone. I’d never seen either of them cry so hard. Thora screamed at Dad to find a way to force your aunt to give you back to us. Deacon tried to talk Dad into buying you back from your aunt. I cried. Kendra cried. God, even Dad cried when he thought no one was looking.”
The thought of them all weeping for her, mourning her, broke Allison’s heart all over again. Had she lost her family over a dumb prank gone wrong? Or had something truly sinister happened? Both seemed impossible to believe.
“I cried, too,” Allison said. “But Aunt Frankie wouldn’t even let me talk about visiting. No letters. No phone calls. I guess she told Dr. Capello you all weren’t allowed to contact me, either.”
“Dad said something about your aunt not wanting us to call you. But he said it was because she didn’t want you getting homesick or trying to run away or something. He never told us... Why would he never tell us about that?”
Roland stepped back from the water and sat on the sand. She sat next to him.
“I can’t believe Dr. Capello didn’t tell you about the call,” Allison said. “I thought you knew.”
“Do you really think someone tried to kill you?” Roland asked. “Not by accident, I mean?”
“It doesn’t make much sense but...something bad definitely happened and then I never heard from you or your dad or anyone again. That’s why I didn’t come back before. Whoever wanted me gone got what they wanted.” Allison forced a smile. “See? Not your fault at all.”
Roland rolled onto his back and lay in the sand. Allison stayed sitting upright. She didn’t really want sand all over her black T-shirt or in her bra.
“I want you to know I never forgot about you,” Allison said. “I would have come back if I hadn’t been too scared to. Sometimes I dreamed about...”
Roland took her hand again and twined his fingers within hers, hers within his, and rested their joined hands on his chest.
“Tell me what you dreamed of,” Roland said.
She smiled and looked up at the gray late-evening sky. The first stars were peeking out from behind the dark curtain of night, and she was alone on the beach with the first boy she ever loved, holding his hand with no witness but the ocean.
“I dreamed you’d come and find me,” she said.
“Why me?”
“Wishful thinking,” she said. “You were always my favorite.”
“Favorite sibling?”
“Favorite person. Ever. On earth. I was a little in love with you. And maybe a little in lust...”
Roland did a double take.
“What?” she said. “Twelve-year-old girls think about sex. News at eleven.”
“I’m stunned. Stunned, I tell you,” he said.
Allison tried to punch him in the arm, but he caught her hand before she could make contact and then held it a moment before suddenly letting it go as if he realized he was doing something he shouldn’t.
“You can hold my hand,” she said teasingly. “I’m not going to jump on you and start grinding again.”
“Too bad.”
She went to punch him again, and once more he ducked and caught her hand, and with one impressive show of strength he swooped her up into his arms and carried her to the edge of the water.
“No, no, no! Don’t you dare!” She screamed and laughed and laughed and screamed.
“You’re going in the drink,” he said.
“I’m wearing suede!”
“Fine,” he said with a sigh, and then dumped her on her feet on the dry sand. “But only because of the suede. You probably need a dunk in cold water. Not that it helped last time,” he teased.
“It’s not my fault you were so sexy at sixteen. I lost my head. I won’t do it again, I promise,” she said.
“Good.” He pinched her nose. They were having the conversation they should have had thirteen years ago. Better late than never.
“Unless you want me to do it again,” she said, grinning.
“Behave, twerp. I’m...unavailable.”
“Ten minutes ago you told me you weren’t married and you had no kids,” she reminded him. “And don’t call me twerp, jerk.”
He laughed and her heart danced a little in her chest. She was too happy. Happiness like this scared her.
“This is...a little different.”
“Now I’m intrigued,” she said, more nervous now than curious.
“I’ll tell you, but you have to promise you won’t act weird after I tell you,” he said. “Everyone acts weird after I tell them.”
“I will not act weird,” Allison said. “Promise. I’ll tell you my weird thing if you tell me your weird thing. Deal?”
“Deal,” he said. They shook hands to make it official.
“Now tell me.”
“Before I came back here to help take care of Dad, I was living...in a monastery,” he said.
“You were living in a monastery? Okay. Why?”
He smiled at her, almost apologetically.
“Same reason anyone who lives in a monastery lives in a monastery,” he said. “I’m a monk.”
Chapter 7
“Holy shit.”
That was either the most wrong thing for Allison to say or the most right. She couldn’t be sure.
Roland lay on his back on the sand, hands twined behind his head, and quietly smiling. He must be used to reactions like that. One didn’t normally suspect ruggedly handsome men of about thirty to be monks. At least, she didn’t. She laughed but it wasn’t a happy sound. Fifteen minutes ago it seemed like the only things that had changed since she left were their heights and weights and ages. But as Roland lay there on the sand waiting for her to say something else, something not stupid...she realized everything had changed. Absolutely everything. She had no idea who this man was.
“I didn’t know monks were, you know, still a thing,” Allison said, trying to hide her shock behind flippancy.
“We’re still a thing,” he said.
“It’s just... I’ve never met a monk before.”
“Have you ever been to a monastery?” Roland asked. “Because that’s the best place to meet them. Often the only place.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“A little. But quietly and on the inside.”
“You’re really a monk. An actual real-live monk.”
“I really am. I belong to Saint Brendan’s. It’s a couple hours down the coast.”
Roland’s choice of verb stung. He wasn’t a member of Saint Brendan’s. He didn’t live there. He belonged to them. A tiny part of Allison had once thought he belonged to her. A bigger part of her once dreamed she belonged to him.
“So what’s it like being a monk?” she asked, talking over the pain. “Can you work miracles? Recite a Bible verse? Sing a monk song? Monks sing, right? They sing and swing that smoky ball thing?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, kid, but you were born to be the baby sister.”
“Hurtful,” she said, shaking her head. “Very hurtful.”
“I shocked you, didn’t I?” he asked. He rolled up off the sand and looked intently at her.
“Yeah,” she said with real feeling. He had shocked her, and like an electric shock, it had hurt. “I could probably shock you, too, if I wanted. Which I don’t.”
Why should she care if he was a monk or not? It was an interesting job, yes, but what did that have to do with her?
“A monk,” she said again. “That wouldn’t have been in my top one hundred guesses. Are you currently a monk? Or an ex-monk?”
“I’m a monk on abbot-authorized medical leave.”
“So you’re planning on going back? I mean, after your... When you can?” she asked, and she wanted him to say, No, of course not.
“That’s the plan,” he said. “Though I’m trying not to think about it. The longer before I go back, the better.”
She nodded. “Right.”
“Are you upset?” he asked.
“Why would I be upset?”
He turned his gaze to the ocean waves. “Same reason Dad was upset. You think I’m wasting my life on a fairy tale. You think it’s medieval. You think I’d be happier doing a thousand other things with my life...” Allison could tell he’d heard those arguments a thousand times. “Dad’s not religious. He worships science. I broke his heart when I joined.”
“It’s none of my business what you do with your life,” Allison said. Roland looked at her, furrowing his brow as if she’d said something wrong.
“That’s the sort of polite thing strangers say. We’ve got too much history to be polite strangers.”
“What can I say? Roland, I was an English major. Most people thought I was throwing my life away on that, too. I’m not going to judge you.”
“No vows of celibacy and poverty with being an English major,” he said.
She chortled a dramatic, mocking chortle. “Oh, trust me—English majors and poverty go back as far as monks and celibacy.”
“Are these fake diamond earrings, then?” He tugged her earlobe and she batted his hand away, still playing the part of the annoying baby sister.
“These were a gift,” she said. “I couldn’t afford them on my own. I spend all my money on books.” It was McQueen who’d bought all her jewelry and her clothes including the ones she was wearing—suede boots, designer jeans, a leather jacket that cost McQueen as much as a small used car and La Perla underwear. If she were trying to pass for a starving artist, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
“I can believe that,” Roland said. “We’d have to take your book out of your hand to get you to eat. You loved them more than anything.”
“You don’t become an English major because you love books. You do it because you need books. It’s a codependent relationship.”
He grinned. “Very poetic. Spoken like an English major.”
“Why did you become a monk?”
“Guess for a similar reason you were an English major. I didn’t love God, but I needed God.”
“I didn’t even know you were religious.”
“In my own way,” he said. “The monastery hosts concerts all summer. Dad would take us to them sometimes if he liked the composer they were showcasing. We met a few of the monks and... I don’t know, I liked them. I liked being there. I felt safe there. When I made the mistake of joking with Brother Ambrose about how much I liked it there, he invited me to a discernment weekend. They recruit hard.”
“Looking for a few good monks, huh?”
Roland smiled. “They gave me some books to read, too. One of them was by a Cistercian monk, Thomas Merton.”
“He’s the Kentucky monk, right? I know that guy. I mean, not personally. I think he’s dead.”
“For a few decades,” Roland said. “Anyway, in his book he said the true self was the spiritual self. I didn’t know who my true self was. I thought maybe if I figured out who my spiritual self was, I’d know.”
“Did you find your true self?” Allison asked.
“I found out who I’m not,” Roland said. “And I found a little peace, which was more than I had before I went in.” He turned his face to her and smiled. “So that’s why I must politely ask you not to jump me. Now it’s your turn.”
Allison quietly panicked. How on earth could she tell Roland she’d been a billionaire’s mistress for six years now that she knew he was a monk?
“Nothing nearly that interesting,” she said, brushing the question off as nonchalantly as she could manage. “I haven’t been a nun, that’s for sure.”
Roland let it go and sat up again, and Allison almost reached out to brush the sand off his back. But she didn’t touch him, didn’t even want to. Everything was different now. He might have her old big brother’s face and eyes and smile, but this man sitting next to her was a complete stranger. A few minutes ago, she’d tried to punch him and he’d caught her hand—like when they were kids. And he’d swooped her up and pretended to throw her in the water—like when they were kids. But he was playing the part of the Old Roland for her and she was playing the part of the Old Allison for him. That might have worked except neither of them were very good actors. She’d made a mistake coming back here. She’d made a terrible mistake. She realized she’d come home to find her old family and her old family didn’t live here anymore.
She was as alone here as she’d been in her apartment right after McQueen had left her.
She’d come all this way for nothing.
“Well,” Allison said, standing up and dramatically brushing the sand off her clothes. “I should run along.”
“Allison?”
“It’s late. I didn’t mean to stay this long.”
“You’re really not staying here?” he asked. “Not even for a night?”
“Tourist season’s over. I can find a hotel easy.” Allison stood up and wiped the sand off her pants. “I’ll stay the night in Astoria and run by the hospital tomorrow morning.”
“Do you want to at least see the house again before you go?” he asked.
For his sake, for the sake of the hurt he was trying to hide, she decided to humor him.
“All right,” she said. “It would be nice to see the house one more time.”
In silence, they walked back to the deck, and at the side door took their sandy shoes and socks off and left them on the rack in the mudroom. She hung up her jacket, as well, and saw windbreakers and flip-flops, umbrellas and heavy winter coats. Something for every season on the coast. Roland stripped off his sand-covered checkered flannel and hung it up on a hook. Underneath he wore a plain white T-shirt that hugged his strong shoulders. She grinned to herself at the sight.
“What?” Roland asked.
“What’s a monk doing with big shoulders like yours?”
Roland laughed, almost blushed, modest as a monk.
“We carry the cares of the world on our shoulders,” he said. “It’s our version of resistance training.”
Roland opened the mudroom door to the house and said, “After you.”
She paused before passing through, a small pause, but Roland noticed.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “No one else is home.”
“Sorry. It’s a little weird coming back here,” she said. “Been a long time.”
She wasn’t scared of Roland, though he was a stranger now. And she wasn’t scared of anyone who might be lurking in the shadows waiting to jump out and throw her down the stairs. What scared her was the ache in her chest, the ache of longing for this house, this family, even though she knew better.
Allison stepped gingerly through the door into the foyer. Glancing around, she saw that little had changed since she’d left. There was the sunroom with the floor-to-ceiling windows. And she saw the same long ebony table with the wooden benches in the dining room—the perfect table for a family of eight. Roland led her down the hall and she saw the kitchen, which was much like she recalled except in her day the walls had been yellow and now they were painted red. Big kitchen. A family kitchen. Not fancy. Not formal. There were even drawings still hanging on the fridge. Allison walked over to inspect them. One drawing was of a series of brightly colored fish, all of them with human hairstyles. The Roland fish had long blond hair, the father fish had brown wavy hair and a gray beard, the Deacon fish had black hair sticking in all directions and the Thora fish had wavy hair the color of the setting sun. At the bottom of the page in a child’s hand was written The Fishpellos.
“I did that,” Allison said, staring at the Allison fish with the curly brown hair. “I was...nine? Eight?”
“Something like that,” Roland said. “My hair was never that long, though. You made me look like Bon Jovi. I mean, if he were a fish.”
“There’s nothing wrong with looking like Bon Jovi,” she said. She had added on to the drawing as the years passed and kids had come to the house and stayed. Oliver had a blond bowl cut so Allison had drawn him with a fish bowl over his head, while she’d drawn Kendra’s beaded braids as rainbow stripes. Even the cat, Potatoes O’Brien, got the Fishpello treatment. He was, of course, a catfish.
“Yours looks like you,” Roland said. “Got the nice pouty fish lips.” He made a fish face, mocking her rather thick bottom lip. McQueen had been a fan of her little lip bow, too.
Allison half laughed, half groaned. “I cannot believe this thing is still on the fridge. It’s so stupid.”
“Dad thought it was the cutest thing ever. He missed you, you know,” Roland said. “We all missed you.”
“Missed you, too,” she said quietly. “Didn’t realize how much until I got your letter.”
“I should have written you a long time ago,” he said. “I talked to Dad about you sometimes. I asked him once if he thought it would be okay to look for you. He said if you wanted us, you’d come back on your own. But you didn’t. I told myself you forgot about us. Better than thinking you hated me.”
“Don’t move,” she said.
“What?”
“Just...stay here.” Allison walked back to the mudroom, grabbed her bag off the hook and pulled out the photograph that she’d kept with her for thirteen years and four moves. She took it back to the kitchen where Roland stood waiting, back against the fridge.
“Here,” she said, and handed him the photograph. “Proof I never forgot.”
He took the picture from her and stared at it. Then he turned and put it on the fridge with a magnet. Then he took his wallet out from his back pocket and removed a photo of his own. It was the missing section of her picture, the torn-off part. With another magnet he put the two halves of the photograph together. Now it was complete. Allison in Roland’s arms, Roland standing next to Deacon standing next to Thora and all of them holding their sparklers together so that the four glowing tips became one.
“You gave me the picture?” Allison asked.
“I guess you really don’t remember anything from that time,” he said. “You were in the hospital and I wanted to go talk to you. Dad had told us you were going home with your aunt when you got discharged so I knew it was probably my last chance to clear the air with you. I waited until after dark and I snuck in to see you.”
Allison looked at him, stunned.
“You were asleep,” he said. “So not a big surprise you don’t remember that. But I talked to you for a long time, anyway. Probably my first confession.”
“What did you confess?”
“I said...” Roland paused. His eyes darkened. “I said I was sorry about what happened between us. I said I wished I’d been at home so I could have helped you when you fell. I said I hoped you’d get to come home to us soon. But if you didn’t, I wanted you to have this picture of us until you could come home again.”
Allison blinked and hot tears fell.
“I wondered where this picture came from,” she said. “I thought your dad put it in my suitcase.”
“I wanted you to remember us,” Roland said. “I should have given you the whole picture but I wanted to remember you, too. Monks don’t carry wallets but I had that picture of you in my prayer book until I left.” He paused and seemed to be deciding if he should say what he said next. “I prayed for you.”
“You did? What did you pray?” she asked, deeply touched. Had anyone else ever prayed for her?
“Nothing big. That you were happy. That you were okay. That you’d come home someday,” he said. “And here you are.”
She touched the photograph where the torn seams met. Seeing the two halves of the picture together again made the old wound in her heart, the one left when she was taken away, ache a little, but the good kind of aching, the kind of aching that meant the wound was healing.
“I’ll stay the night,” she said, smiling through her tears.
“You will?”
“Why not?” she said with a resigned sigh. “One night won’t kill me.”
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