I can only hope being around will help.”
We hadn’t talked about my mom, or her issues, but I’m sure he’d heard about it through the grapevine. It was a small town, after all, and word had got around that my mom had arrived at Cedarwood and stayed barely an hour, vowing never to return.
“What is it with parents?” Hurt crossed his face. “Before I left Australia, I found out I was adopted. Imagine, at the grand old age of thirty-one, your parents suddenly announce they’re not your parents.”
Shock rendered me mute. I couldn’t imagine being told such a thing. Surreptitiously, I surveyed Kai, pain etched firmly on his face. Silence engulfed us. I was hesitant to say the wrong thing. In all the time he’d stayed at Cedarwood, he hadn’t alluded to any problems back home, and I wondered if that had cost him, keeping it bottled up, and now it was finally spilling out. What had changed to bring it back to the fire now?
I’d pegged Kai for some kind of nomad, a drifter searching for adventure, but really he had been running from his past, from a secret. It reminded me of my mom and the baby in the black and white photographs. There was a momentary flash of anger toward these people, our parents, whether biological or not, keeping things from us – in Kai’s case, something so major that it had caused him to flee.
“Why did they suddenly tell you now?”
Kai’s face darkened. “My father had a close call in a car accident. He was fine but it scared him and I guess he wanted to right his wrongs. He called me over and they sat me down and blurted it out. It was tough, knowing my life was essentially built on a lie, but deep down I could sort of understand it. I mean, you hear these kinds of stories all the time.”
I weighed up what to say that wouldn’t sound like platitudes. “Do you know who your biological parents are?”
“That’s the thing. I just packed up and left. Thought I’d worry about all of that later, come to terms with it first, see a bit of the world, and make sense of who I am now that I’m not Kai Davis, not really. Unbeknownst to me, my father did some investigating and phoned me last week to tell me my biological parents died, years ago. Substance-abuse issues… So now I don’t even get to make the decision about whether I want to meet them. It’s another choice taken out of my hands and I feel cheated. Like I’m adrift…”
For all his easy-going calm, Kai had been hiding his own pain. That’s the thing about pain – it rises to the surface eventually and you have to deal with it. He’d obviously tried to forget, to keep busy, to run from it, but it caught up to him.
“I guess they did what they thought was best at the time, even though it doesn’t make it right. I can’t imagine any parent wanting to hurt their child, no matter how old he grew.”
“Yeah, I would be able to see that if it was anyone else’s story, but because it’s mine and I’m living it… Sometimes their audacity takes my breath away. They should have told me. I should have got to meet my biological parents, or at least had the choice.”
What if my mom had a secret like this? The child in the pictures… how would I feel? Probably the same way Kai did. I shuddered at the thought and once again weighed up whether some secrets should stay buried.
We sat in silence, pondering it all.
“I’m glad you told me, Kai.”
He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Saying it out loud makes it real, you know? For some reason I feel like a failure, like I wasn’t good enough to hold on to. I know it’s stupid, but that’s how I feel, and I can’t shake it. Sorry, what a downer I am. But that’s sort of where I’m at. I don’t know what to do, whether to go home, or what…”
I gave his hand a squeeze.
He stared into my eyes, and my heart just about tore in two.
***
Back at the lodge, Kai headed out, so I told Amory I was going upstairs to do some paperwork, and took my laptop into my room. The phone rang just as I puffed my way up the stairs. I dashed to answer the extension next to my bed.
“Cedarwood Lodge, Clio speaking.”
“You went through my things, Clio?”
I gulped. How did she know? “No, Mom, I would never do that. I was trying to fix the coffee machine.”
“You saw the photographs.” Her voice was heavy with sadness.
Did I put them back in the wrong drawer? Mom’s fastidiousness was likely to blame.
“I honestly wasn’t searching for them, truly Mom.” This would set us back, I just knew it. My toes curled just thinking of the progress we’d made which would now be lost.
“Why won’t you leave it alone? It’s like you’re obsessed with dredging up the past.”
I sighed. “I was simply looking for the instruction booklet. The album was underneath.”
“And your library visit?”
Damn it.
“Mom, how would you feel being me? I just know this mystery, this secret, is the key to us being a real mother and daughter. You can’t pretend you’ve been there for me. I’ve never asked anything of you, but I’m asking you now: what happened at Cedarwood that stops you visiting?”
“Clio, Jesus. You just don’t get it. I ruined their lives. Their family, their business. All of it. As surely as if I pulled the pin on a grenade, it exploded in an instant.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault, whatever it was.”
“It was, Clio. It was all my fault.”
“Well…” Words vanished. What could I say without knowing what she meant?
“I tried this with your father, confiding in him, loving him, and then I lost him too. And now you’re back at that place, and it feels like a punishment I deserve. Like God is reminding me of what I’ve done and what I have to live with.”
“What did you do?”
There was a silence and then her voice came back distraught. “Something horrible that I’ll live with until the day I die. And you just won’t let it go. I’m asking you to forget it, please.”
“Would you? If this was reversed?”
She sighed. “I don’t know any more, Clio.”
“Why don’t you visit? Take me to the maze, explain what happened.”
“I just don’t understand why you don’t listen, Clio.” With that she hung up, but not before I heard a gut-wrenching sob.
I crept downstairs and made coffee and searched the fridge for the leftover donuts I knew were hidden somewhere in its depths. It wasn’t long before Amory joined me, our early-morning coffee and chat being a routine as regular as sunrise and a time we
