Misconception (Finnegan Brothers Book 1) (2 page)

Dad came to stand behind my mom, but he didn't put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her. Her slightly teary eyes had now become sobs shaking out of her body like secrets escaping her perfect form. She didn't speak, just cried with her head in her hands, unable to make eye contact with my sister or myself.

Instead my father said in a quiet gravelly voice, “Girls, your mother and I have decided to go our separate ways. This has nothing to do with either of you, and we won't love you any less just because we aren't together anymore, but this is what's best for our family.”

He said it with no emotion. Like a Public Service Announcement or something.

I felt my sister's hand slip out of mine and I turned to watch her mouth open as she gasped for air. I felt like it was too hot in the kitchen, as if my skin was on fire.

I pushed back my chair and shook my head, we had been such a happy family such a short time ago. What had changed so suddenly? Why was my family falling apart?

“What happened? Things were fine at Thanksgiving!”

I kicked my chair back from under me and stood up, giving my father a condemning glare. Somehow I knew that this was his fault, but he didn't respond to my accusation. Instead my mother did.

“Things weren’t fine at Thanksgiving! Things haven’t been fine in months. Your father and I… Your father and I just don't love each other anymore.” She tried to slow her breathing as her sobs overtook her words but I knew when I heard her last sentence that I had been right to believe my father was to blame. “Your father doesn't love me anymore,” was what she meant.

My body was shaking with anger. How could he do this to us? How could he split up our perfectly happy family?

“Kenz go upstairs.” She didn’t move. It was like her body was frozen in time. I wasn't even sure if she was breathing. “Mackenzie, I said go upstairs,
now
.”

My forceful tone got her moving. She nodded as she moved gracefully away from the table. She looked only down at the floor; it was like she was a skeleton of my former vibrant, beautiful, younger sister.

I shook my head at them, like I was going to have to parent these two insolent young children. “Why the hell did you have to break the news to us like this? And what did you do?” I said turning on my father. “Why does Mom think you don’t love her anymore?”

My father turned away from me, refusing to react to my assault.

“What the fuck is her name? Mom deserves to know, and I deserve to know!”

His head popped up at the curse word, but he still didn’t respond.

I waited, my chest rising and falling with the pain of anger coursing through my veins. Everything was so hot: my breath, my skin, there was even a heat spreading in my belly. He turned away from us and leaned on the kitchen island. For a moment I wished my father was dead. Before anyone could stop me I lunged at his back and wrapped my arm around his throat. My mother stood up and quickly pulled me off of him but I kept clawing my way back to him, screaming. “How could you do this? Who is she? Why? Why us?”

My mother wrapped her arms around me and we slowly sunk down to the floor. She held me as I sobbed against her chest. I had lost something so precious and I didn't even know why. My whole life was falling apart.

My father began to leave the room but he turned around to look at me just once and said, “Charity. Her name is Charity.”

“Get out,” my mother growled. “And don’t you dare come back.”

But it wasn't my father who didn't come back, it was us. My mother packed us up and moved to Florida only a week later. We bought a townhome and lived near the beach. It was everything she had ever wanted. After some time had passed, I realized that it probably wasn't just my father’s fault that they gotten divorced. For a long time it was easier to blame him then the wonderful woman that had been my rock my whole life. But deep down I knew she hadn't been happy in a long time. It had been one of the reasons that I had chosen a college so far from home. I didn't want to come home very often, even though I should have for Kenz. But she had her friends and I knew she'd be okay without me. I had Blake to consider as well, but he would come visit me at school sometimes. He loved getting away from our little New England town and visiting me in the big city. But it was never really his scene. When we left my father in Fayette, I left Blake too. And his brother Slade. I let them both go with the heart ache and pain of the divorce, but maybe I also did that to protect my own heart.

There was a secret between the three of us. A secret no one knew but me.

3

June, 2014

As I picked up the dark blue jeans lying on the white carpet, I was accosted by a crop top hitting me right in the face.

“Hey, can you watch where you’re throwing your crap?”

Mackenzie was kneeling on the floor in front of an open suitcase and tearing through it like a wild animal eating its prey. I had no idea what she was looking for, but she seemed determined to find it. She turned her head for only a moment, her beautiful long blonde straight hair flowing behind her like silk as she twisted her head back and forth and frantically searched the suitcase.

“I can’t find it anywhere!” She threw her hands up to the sky in frustration.

I began walking towards her collecting items as I passed them. Another shirt on her bed, a skirt lying on the floor, a sweater stuck on a lampshade… God my sister was a mess.

“And what is it that you’re looking for?”

She sat back on her heels and looked up at me, her beautiful dark brown eyes reflecting her exasperation. “I need that freaking dress for the rehearsal dinner. Mom made me promise I would wear it because Charity sent it. But I have no freaking idea where it is!”

I sat down next to her crosslegged and started to fold the clothes I had been collecting from around the room. “Well, did you wear it anywhere? Though I don’t know how you find anything in this hellhole.”

“Are you kidding me? Of course I didn’t wear it anywhere. It’s that also that ugly lilac color. I mean how old is she really think I am? In all our phone conversations she just talks down to me like I’m a baby. I’m eighteen! A legal adult and everything.”

And everything… right. Like own a house, or even pay her own cell phone bill… as close as my sister and I were, she had become a little bit of a spoiled brat since the divorce. I guess my parents felt bad for the way things went down and coddled her more. But for me, I had been an adult, and I could take care of myself. I continued to fold her clothes and place them neatly back in her suitcase, where I assumed they had run away from. “What did mom say when she gave you the address?”

Kenz stopped her temper tantrum for a second and looked at me as if she was finally realizing I was there. “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I mean, I guess she seemed kind of sad. But she’s seemed like that ever since we moved here, so nothing new.”

It was true that my mom had been depressed since we had moved from Fayette. She liked it here in Florida as far away from my father as possible; however, she had grown up and built her life there. I had to admit that sometimes I missed it too. It had been years since I’d seen my friends. Elle, Zoe, and I had been like the Three Musketeers for as long as I could remember, but then… sometimes you just grow apart.

Kenz had only been fourteen when we left three years ago and had fit in nicely here in Florida. She was made for the beach with her sun-kissed skin and her shimmering blonde hair. She had every guy within a five mile radius in the palm of her hand. When we visited Fayette, she would just be that awkward kid whose parents split up in a messy divorce. It had been at least a year since she had seen Dad; he had come to college to visit with me a few times, but she didn’t make much of an effort to be near him. I think it just hurt her too much, knowing that he had built an entirely new family without us. Charity couldn’t wait to have their first child together. We heard about it all the time. And in a way I guess Mackenzie felt like we were being replaced, but I got it. It wasn’t that he was trading his girls for a new shiny blonde model. They loved each other wanted to start a family. It made sense, but it didn’t mean it was any easier for us.

As I clasped the suitcase shut, Kenz crossed the room and started searching through her closet for the famed rehearsal dress. She emerged a moment later victorious, with the pretty lilac dress still wrapped in plastic it came in. “I knew I had it somewhere!”

“You can ask them to put in the front of the plane. They will hang it for you and everything.”

“Well aren’t you worldly?” She laughed at her own sarcasm.

She held up the dress against her body in front of her full-length mirror, assessing its beauty. “Yeah, it’s not really that bad,” she said as she cocked her head to the side. “I mean it could totally be worse. What are you wearing to the rehearsal dinner?” She turned to face me still holding the dress against her body.

“I packed a couple different dresses; you know, whatever fits.” I certainly wasn’t as petite as my sister was. Somehow she hadn’t inherited all of my mom’s curvy genes. I stood up slowly from my spot on the rug and walked over to my little sister, placing my hands on her shoulders. “Promise me you’ll be cool for this trip okay?”

She pulled away from me. “As long as she promises to stop acting like we’re her kids.”

I nodded slightly, I understood the feeling of instant family that Charity wanted to create with us and I wasn’t all about either. Especially because I wasn’t a kid anymore— neither of us were. Charity was only maybe fifteen years older than me, so it didn’t seem appropriate for her to think of me as her child.

“No, I got it. But that doesn’t mean you can pull all teenager tantrum on her either. Got me?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mom.”

I chuckled at her before leaving the room and shutting the door behind me. She always treated me like I was her mom and her best friend. I guess after the divorce my mom became kind of a mess, and I really did take care of Kenz. Being four years older did that to you. No one saw it coming; the divorce was everywhere all at one time. All of our tiny town newsletters brought it up because we were members of local clubs. Sometimes you just want to hide under a pillow and wish that the local gossipers would get the hell off your lawn, but they don’t. They think everyone has a right to know every deepest darkest secret about your life and why the breakup occurred. I was just lucky that they looked at me as an angsty college student and left me alone. Because if they had found out why we really left Fayette, the neighbors would’ve had a field day, and my life would’ve been ruined.

I walked down the carpeted steps to the kitchen of our small town house and saw my mom sitting at the counter playing on her iPad.

“Hey Mom, whatcha doin?” I always felt the need to seem extra bubbly around her. Maybe Kenz was right, and her depression had taken a toll on us in a way that our personalities had become molded to each other’s.

She turned around, a large smile playing on her soft features. The past four years had aged her dramatically. When we lived in New England she’d always seemed so young and vibrant, but now I could see the wrinkles outlining her dark brown eyes that had seemed to fade from all the tears. “Hi hon, are you all packed?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I think so. Besides school I’ve never packed so much. But we’re going to be gone so long. I’m glad that Dad paid for our boxes to ship separately, that really helped.”

“Well, you can never have too many shoes,” she said as she picked up her coffee mug and walked around the island. She moved slowly over to the sink and placed it in daintily for the maid to clean up later. There were some things from our previous life that my mother just couldn’t give up, and honestly Kelly, our maid, was more like family than just an employee. I knew Mom was overjoyed when she agreed to move here with us.

I sat down on one of the barstools next to the breakfast table and watched her carefully thinking to herself about how she might manage without us for the next month. “So what are you going to do while we’re gone? Anything fun?”

She bit her lower lip before answering, “I might take up some tennis lessons at the club. But besides that, no. I have work to do.”

Mom took a job at a nearby nursing home when we first moved here, as the lead Activities Coordinator. But since then the nursing home had become a huge company and she now managed all the activities for five different locations. She had always done a lot of philanthropy and events management when we lived up in New England so I knew it was something she really enjoyed; however, it took up a lot of her weekend time and as a result she hadn’t made many friends besides her coworkers. I worried now that my dad was getting remarried that she might feel left out because she hadn’t been dating yet. She mourned the loss of my father and their relationship like he was dead rather than living with some skinny pain in my ass in our old house. I didn’t really understand why she felt like that, like she had to put him up on this pedestal, but that was her choice, not mine. I got Dad for who he really was, a nice guy with poor follow through. I didn’t judge him for his choices anymore but I knew that Kenz and Mom did.

“Mom?”  She nodded but continued to scroll on whatever she was looking at. “Mom, can I ask you something?”

She set down the iPad and looked at me for a moment, removing her glasses because she could see me better without them on. “What is it honey? You never get serious like this.”