My chest grew heavy at the thought of my military life being taken away as well. The team I’d embedded myself in was gone, and my commander wasn’t sure I belonged on any team anymore. I could feel it in his eyes when he’d agreed with the therapist and put me on leave. Between Mac and Tristan, I’d had the truth handed to me more times than I cared to acknowledge since I’d seen Dr. Inez: I had some things to work out.
When I stopped at the gates to put in the security code, Dani looked up. Her family’s home in Wilmington had gates with a huge W emblazoned on it for Whittaker. It also had a paved drive leading up to a home that looked like a mini-me of The White House. The gates here also had scrollwork along the top, these announcing Wellsley Place.
When the wrought iron swung open, we drove over a stone driveway toward a house on an estate worked by enslaved people in a time the family regretted and abhorred. The inhumanity of it was a wound we couldn’t heal with a mere apology. Our family’s philanthropic efforts could never undo the wrong, regardless of the effort. There was no pride in knowing we’d been one of the first families to free the enslaved people on our land. Only a sick feeling of shame that was rightfully ours to shoulder for eternity. It was something that shadowed the land with its tall trees lining the driveway and the manicured gardens which hid the crops beyond them. A tint that wouldn’t quite ever fade.
The scent of lemon was already invading the vents as Dani took it all in with a look of surprise. When we turned the corner in the long driveway, the manor house finally came into view, and her eyes grew wider. The brick, black, and white facade was classic Georgian architecture built by predecessors who’d survived for decades on a wealth which had come with them from England.
“Is this really where you grew up?” Dani asked.
I could only nod.
“You lived here?” she repeated, as if she wasn’t sure I’d understood her question.
“Live might not be the right word,” I told her. “But, yes, it’s my family’s home.”
“Well, thanks for nothing, because now I’m terrified of being sick in your family’s eighteenth-century museum.”
“You’re not going to be sick, but if it makes you feel better, I once puked all the way down the stairs, causing Carson to call both a carpet cleaner and a tapestry repair expert.”
I had returned my eyes to the house, but I could still feel hers on me, trying to read the secrets I’d kept for so long it felt like they belonged to someone who wasn’t even me. As if the person who’d grown up in this house, running through the fields and hunting in the hills, was a completely separate individual. Someone whose story I knew but could no longer feel.
“Who’s Carson?” she asked.
“My uncle.”
She was shaking her head at the impossibility of it. “You said it last night, but it’s hard to imagine you with a family.”
I couldn’t help a smirk. “I didn’t spawn from the devil, much to everyone’s dismay.”
“You never, ever talk about them.”
I was quiet, because I didn’t—for many reasons I still had no desire to discuss.
“Your uncle lives here. Do your parents live here as well?” she asked, watching me.
I didn’t flinch outwardly, but inside, my entire chest seized up. “No.”
“Just no? You’re not going to explain that further?”
I wanted to say no again, but I wasn’t sure I could deny her answers when I was the one who’d opened the door to begin with.
“Not now,” I told her because it was the best I could do at the moment while I battled my emotions of regret and disquiet at my homecoming.
I parked in a line of spots to the left of the house normally reserved for visitors and staff. Turning the rental off, I looked at her before getting out. Her blue eyes were so clear and bright they could have been the waves off the wake of a naval carrier. Her normally glimmering skin was pale from the day before with shadows clinging to her eyes, but she was still heart-stoppingly stunning. I realized, with a quiet shock, that she looked like some of my ancestors. She could easily switch places with many of the women whose paintings lined the stairs, their hooped skirts, parasols, and lace gloves standing out amongst the purple fields of lavender. Except, Dani was more beautiful than any one of them. Her features softer, and yet, at the same time, stronger than theirs.
I turned away from the look of almost worry hanging from her face and got out. I grabbed both our bags from the trunk and refused to hand her suitcase to her when she tried to take it. I made my way to the door just as it was opened by Maribelle. Her skin was so light it almost blended with her halo of white hair, making her look like an apparition.
She didn’t say hello. She just wrapped her arms around me and hugged me as tightly as her ancient arms could. Her body felt frailer than ever before. I dropped the bags and hugged her back. I always allowed myself to forget her never-ceasing love when I was gone, choosing instead to concentrate on the disappointments that flew through all of us when I was here. But as I held her tiny body, I doubted I would have forgiven myself if she’d passed away without my hugging her one more time.
When we let each other go, she took two steps back and put her wrinkled, blue-veined hand to my cheek, assessing me as if she could see through me as she always had. Past
