Page 41 of Lies and Lullabies
I froze on the doorstep. “Wait. I don’t want tosueanybody.”
Ethan waved a hand. “Petition for paternity. Same thing.”
“Dude, this has to be done carefully. Andquietly. No reporters.”
“I get it. Deep breaths, dude.”
“Thanks. I’m going out.”
“Ring if you need anything.”
I went out into the night, banging the screen door shut behind me. It was dark, but moonlight washed across the dirt road. When I tilted my chin toward the night sky, I remembered something else about Maine. The stars were fucking brilliant. With no urban light to mask them, they dazzled overhead.
In Los Angeles, the only stars were on the sidewalk. What was the use of that?
Nine
Kira
I left my father in charge of Vivi’s bedtime, because there was someone I needed to meet on Main Street.
Walking in the dark made me uncomfortable, even though Nest Lake was a safe place. The weekly crime report was full of people getting fined for fishing without a license or the occasional kegger thrown by teens in the woods.
But for me, there were no safe places. I’d always carry the knowledge that violence was real and terrible. Still, I paused for a moment at the town beach, just to prove I could—daring myself to remember that my independence was worth the risk.
This view of the lake at night had always made me feel wistful. Spots of lamplight shimmered from the lakefront homes, and occasional laughter floated over the glassy water. As a girl I’d imagined everyone else’s dinner tables were happier places than my own.
And maybe they were. My mother had left when I was nine, claiming she couldn’t abide another minute in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Eight years later, we’d gotten word that she had drowned in a boating accident on another tiny lake somewhere in Canada.
The relief I’d felt was my darkest secret. Her death meant that I could stop wondering whether she’d ever come back for me.
After she’d left, my father held down the fort as best he could. He loved his kids, I supposed, but he’d done so in a gruff and unbending way that had cut down me and Adam. Every year seemed to bring more tension. Adam coming out of the closet had led to a year of slammed doors and brief but spectacular shouting matches. Adam escaped to college as soon as he could, and rarely came back.
I’d been eager to follow him to Boston, and at eighteen, I’d become a bright-eyed freshman at Boston U. College life had been great, but early in my sophomore year, the assault had killed my joy along with my confidence.
I’d limped through the rest of the fall semester. Adam did his best to comfort me, but he was a busy law student, and I hadn’t wanted to let on how terrified and depressed I really was. So I took the spring and summer off, hiding out in Nest Lake to try to regain my footing. It had mostly worked, with a little help from a certain guitar-playing hottie.
But my return to school was cut short after discovering I was pregnant. The week before Christmas, I packed up my dorm room, this time moving across town to Adam’s little apartment, where I slept on the couch until his roommate moved out in the spring. During the last months of my pregnancy, I worked at the library, saving money and trying to prepare myself for becoming a parent.
At Adam’s law school graduation in May, I’d been as big as a house.
Vivi was born on a rainy night in early June. That summer, Adam studied for the bar exam during the baby’s screamy newborn days. Some nights he’d read contract law standing at the kitchen counter with Vivi wrapped in a sling around his chest.
My brother was my rock. He’d basically set aside his personal life these past four years because of me and Vivi.
But now that Jonas had reappeared, I felt the sand shifting under my feet once again. The poor man was in shock. I never meant to do that to him. After all, I’d had a taste of that shock myself. After I’d learned his real identity, I could barely make sense of it. I read his wikipedia entry, and it was like reading about an utter stranger. Song titles and famous girlfriends and European tours and music awards.
I couldn’t reconcile that information with the man I thought I knew. Except maybe the part about famous girlfriends.
Then a few more months slipped by without my taking any action. Vivi turned two. And then three. At various times I’d look Jonas up. Once I wrote down the mailing address of his L.A. management company.
But every time I pictured writing that letter, I was always reminded of thatotherletter I’d written already. And the idea of confessing something so huge in a letter left me cold. It would be like sealing my heart into an envelope and sending it into the void.
So I just didn’t. And every day that I waited made it harder to change my mind.
Now, I turned my back on the lake and walked the rest of the way to my father’s store. It was closed now, but I climbed the steps to the porch, where I’d left a six-pack chilling in a tub of ice. I lit the old citronella candle on the table and sat down to wait.
Five minutes later, I heard footsteps approaching.
