There was a seating area outside the building where employees smoked, and probably ate lunch in summer. But now it was briskly cold. Windy. I sat down on a bench next to a middle age woman shivering, cigarette up to her lips. I sat there for three hours, until my fingers went numb and my head spun. I hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours and I was still hurting from the wine. But I didn’t have any money to buy lunch. Devin was blowing up my phone but I didn’t answer his texts.
Finally around two, a man came out the front door. I knew instantly it was him. I’d seen his picture on social media. Had studied his features to see if I could see myself in him.
I stood up and approached him. He gave me a smile, but then said, “Look, I don’t have any change for you.”
He thought I was a panhandler. A homeless kid. He had a kind face, with warm brown eyes. He wasn’t very old, and he was fit, handsome in his dress shirt and tie. “Are you Randy Hart?”
He frowned now. I rushed on before he went back into the building or called the cops on me. “Did you know a woman named Charlene Ennis? And have a daughter with her named Tiffany?” I reached out to steady myself on the concrete wall of the building. Everything was swaying now and I swallowed hard, the hot saliva in my mouth increasing.
“What the hell is this all about?” he asked cautiously.
“I’m Tiffany Ennis. I think I’m your daughter.” I lost focus on him as everything in front of me went fuzzy, dark.
Then my knees buckled and I passed out cold.
Chapter Fourteen
Six months later
“That’s it,” my father said, taping a box shut. “Last box.”
I smiled at him. “Thanks for helping me.” There was very little I had wanted to keep in my grandmother’s house, but I did decide to be practical and take dishes, glasses, towels with me back to Cat’s. The rest had been donated to charity or thrown out, but it had been a big job dealing with it. My father had been there twice now helping me sort through stuff and I really appreciated it.
“It’s the least I can do, hell.” He gave me a rueful shrug.
The guilt he carried was substantial and I kept reassuring him none of it was his fault. To me all that mattered was knowing that if he had known about me, he would have taken me in. He still felt bad he hadn’t verified my grandmother’s story, but who the hell would think a grandmother would lie about her grandchild dying? Not anyone with a heart, that was for sure.
“It means a lot to me.” I reached over and gave him a hug. The more time I’d spent with him, and his wife Tamara, the more of myself I’d seen in his features, his mannerisms. We had the same eyes, the same short build, the same laugh.
He held me tightly. He and Tamara had a four-year-old boy, my little half-brother, Tyrell, who was a bundle of energy and a sass master. He’d been just as accepting of me as his parents and when I looked at him, my heart melted. I had a family, though not in the traditional way. But it was good enough for me. It was more than I had ever expected.
Living with Cat and Heath was working out, short term, and I was starting college in the fall. I couldn’t afford to live on my own, and while there was no market for rundown houses in Vinalhaven, I had managed to rent Gram’s house to the new ferryboat operator, a single guy who didn’t seem to care that it was a dump. He just liked the cheap rent. I liked the money in my pocket. Cat wasn’t charging me rent but I knew someday I would pay her back. I’d have my LPN in less than two years and my father had offered to help me with tuition.
I felt more optimistic than I had since I’d first arrived at Richfield last fall.
It had been a hard winter. I had missed Devin every second of every day, but I had stood by my decision. I needed to establish my own life. I needed to step away from the drama of his life. I still had Google alerts on him and I saw what he was doing, what his friends were up to.
Cassandra had come out of rehab healthy and was back in the studio, according to the gossip sites. Sapphire had embarked on a summer tour. Lizzie and Alex had split up and she was dating a professional UFC fighter and planning a year-long stint in Vegas. Kadence was dating one of the owners of the Knicks and when she was frequently photographed courtside, she did not look pregnant.
Devin’s divorce didn’t seem to be final. I found no official filing of it in public court records.
There were a few pictures of him at music industry events and a mention of a beach vacation in February, with Jay and Sapphire. Nothing about him being involved with a woman.
He hadn’t texted me. Not since the first week after I’d left him in the hallway outside the elevator.
And every day since I’d wondered if I’d done the right thing, while knowing that I had.
“Let’s get these out to the car,” Randy said.
I still couldn’t quite bring myself to call him “dad.” It felt forced. So for now I was calling him Randy. “Sounds good.”
We stepped outside and I breathed in deeply. The June air was clean and warm. The old raspberry bush by the corner of the house had young fruit growing on it and I could practically taste the sweetness on my tongue. Funny how I had fantasized about fitting in in New York, but Maine was home. It just was. It was in me, and I wanted to stay there.
“What’s that?” Randy asked, two boxes in his arms as we went down the steps to the gravel drive. “Looks like something is on fire over there.”
I glanced in the direction he was pointing and my heart almost stopped. That was almost exactly where Richfield was. I knew because I had used the Internet to map out exactly where in relation to me Richfield was. The house wasn’t visible from the island, but I had narrowed down the shoreline to the approximate location, and many a night had stood there, arms crossed, heart aching, staring across the ocean at it even though I’d known most likely Devin wasn’t even there.
“That’s a big fire,” I commented. Smoke was billowing up rapidly, an angry black cloud. It had to be Richfield. That wasn’t any other house in the area large enough to make a smoke cloud like that.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I called 911. I was sure someone else had reported it but I needed to know if I was right or wrong. I prayed I was wrong. “Yes, um, there’s a fire on the mainland, halfway between town and the point. I just wanted to make sure someone has called it in already and trucks are on their way.”
“Yes, we are aware of that fire, thank you.”
“Where is it exactly? Are any roads closed?”