Page 20 of The Beach Trap

I wipe a stray tear from my cheek, feeling pathetic and more alone than ever. But being alone beats being with Blake. I can’t stomach the thought of staying in this house with her even a minute longer. I really need that drink. Just because CoCo isn’t here to join me doesn’t mean I can’t take myself out for one.

I breathe in one more cleansing breath of the Gulf air and slip back inside the house, grab my purse and keys, and walk out the door. Blake is nowhere in sight, so I’m thankful for that. She doesn’t deserve to know where I’m going or when I’ll be back.

CHAPTER SIX

BLAKE

When I come downstairs, the house is empty and Kat’s Audi isn’t in the driveway. All she’s left behind is a wake of confused, upset feelings inside me. The Vanderhaavens’ dog is sprawled out on the ugly wicker couch like he owns the place, and the sight makes me perversely happy. Kat would pitch a fit if she saw him there.

So. It’s clear Kat is going to make it difficult for me to sell this house. No surprise—Kat has always made things difficult. I have a vivid memory of one day at camp when our cabin was supposed to go on a nature hike to the other side of the lake.

Kat couldn’t find the expensive hiking socks her mother had special ordered for her. She made a huge fuss, saying she absolutelyneededto wear those socks or she’d end up with blisters. It took so long to find her socks (she’d left them in the communal bathroom to dry) that she made us all late. By the time we returned and got to the mess hall for dinner, the food was mostly gone, andthenwe had to do the dishes as punishment.

At the time, I’d stood up for Kat when the other girls blamed her for ruining their day. But now I realize that that wholeexperience was a perfect encapsulation of Kat’s personality: high-maintenance and self-centered.

It took every bit of self-control to keep myself from crumbling when she was yelling at me a few minutes ago, and if I didn’t have Granddad to think of, I probably would have. But I can’t let my fear of confrontation keep me from getting what I deserve.

I head out the door that leads toward the beach. The deck wobbles under my weight, and I hold my breath, hoping it doesn’t collapse in a pile of worm-eaten wood.

If I’d been here under any other circumstances, I’d probably be dazzled by the glistening bluish-green waters of the Gulf, but my mind is elsewhere, the weight of the past on my shoulders.

There’s a special kind of shame that comes from knowing your father was a cheater, that your mother was the other woman, and that you are the product of their terrible decisions. I’m not sure which one of them should carry the blame, but it’s harder to be angry at my mother—maybe because she isn’t the one who left me on purpose. She was stolen from me by a college kid texting on his phone who ran a red light and T-boned her car.

But my father? He left me of his own volition.

I was so young when my mom died that my memories of her are spotty now. I remember she was tired a lot and we never had much money, but she somehow made my childhood feel magical. She’d cut my sandwiches into stars using cookie cutters, and she’d always turn the music up loud in the car so we could sing along with Madonna, Whitney, and Dolly.

She was beautiful, too. Curly golden hair, a tiny waist, and cleavage that must have helped her get better tips at her waitressing job. I’m like a two-dimensional version of her: thin blond hair, body like a prepubescent boy.

My mom had wanted to be a singer—that’s how she met myfather. It took me a lot of prying to get the story out of my grandmother, but she eventually told me they’d met at a bar in Nashville where my mother sometimes sang with a cover band. My father owned several commercial properties in Nashville, so he had reason to keep visiting my mother even though he lived a few hours away in Atlanta.

Per my grandma, when my mom found out she was pregnant with me, my father tried to convince her to have an abortion, but my mother wouldn’t do it. I sometimes wonder if that was because she wantedmeor because she hoped it would makehimstick around.

And I guess it did get him to stick around, sort of. He’d visit a couple of weekends a month, sometimes longer, which makes me wonder how he explained it to his wife. At the time I believed what my mom told me: that Daddy had to travel a lot for work. Now I wonder how long those visits would have lasted if my mother hadn’t been killed. If she’d still be his side piece, all these years later.

I’m not sure how my father found out that she’d died. Maybe they had mutual friends who reached out and let him know. Or maybe he figured it out because my mother wasn’t responding to calls and he eventually found her obituary online, weeks after her death.

That’s how I imagine it: my dark-haired father sitting in his office at some big walnut desk, realizing that his mistress hadn’t returned his calls in a while, then searching her name on the internet and finding out what had happened. I wonder if he canceled the rest of his day’s meetings, or if he shrugged it off and carried on with business as usual.

There’s no way for me to know because he never returned to my life. Not one phone call or letter or visit. The woman he had carried on an affair with for more than a decade haddied, and hecouldn’t even reach out to the child they created together. There’s no excuse for that. None whatsoever.

The worst part is that I spent the first nine years of my life believing he loved me. But you can’t love someone and then walk out of their life.

I assume he must have loved my mother—or at least, he loved the idea of her, the ability to take a break from his real life and indulge in a fantasy with a woman who was good enough to fuck but not good enough to marry.

But he didn’t really loveme.

As I remember all this, my heart aches with a familiar mixture of anger and betrayal. I need to talk to my granddad, the one person I have left who loves me unconditionally. I pull out my phone and FaceTime Martina, knowing that she’s working today.

Martina answers right away; she’s in the supply closet where they keep the adult diapers and urinals.

“Hey,” she says in a gentle voice. We talked last night, so she knows about my disappointment with the house. “How are you?”

“I’m okay,” I tell her, because I don’t want to get into everything that happened with Kat. “Can you help me talk to my granddad?”

“Sure thing,” she says, and I’m ever so grateful for this friend of mine.

Soon she’s out in the garden with Granddad, where he likes to sit and watch the birds. She reminds him how to hold her phone so he can see me, but I only see the top of his head.

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