Things We Never Said: A Hart’s Boardwalk Novel Read online

His partner shrugged. “It takes time.”

  “It’d be easier if you wouldn’t stop every five seconds for a pinwheel or a tonic.” The man was addicted to goddamn Pepsi.

  “You know, I think you’d benefit from a fuckin’ pinwheel now and then. You moody little fucker.”

  Michael smirked.

  “Where do you think this asshole is?” Davis asked after a few seconds of quiet eating.

  “Back to the girlfriend in Chelsea. My bet is she called him after we dropped by. He might think her place has the all clear for the night.”

  Davis nodded.

  They finished up as the rain calmed. “You’re already wet.” Michael shoved his garbage at Davis. “You can put this in the trash.”

  “I had to get a neat freak, healthy-eating, gym-going motherfucker like you for a partner, huh,” Davis muttered under his breath as he got out of the car with the garbage. Michael knew some cops let shit collect in the back and on the floor of their vehicles. He wasn’t one of them. It sent a message you were a lazy cop, and Michael was anything but lazy.

  “Bang a Uey,” Davis advised as he got back in the car. “Road’s quiet.”

  Michael attempted to shove everything else out of his head (and by everything else, he meant Dahlia) and pulled out onto the quiet street to do a U-turn. He needed her out of his head so he could do his job.

  Then he’d go home and probably have another dream about her.

  Thing of it was, there was a part of Michael, an element he despised, that anticipated the dream. A part of him that whispered from down deep inside that he looked forward to the fantasy.

  During the next ten days, I not only attempted to cram as much family time in with Darragh, Krista and the kids, and Davina and Astrid, I shadowed my dad. Worrying about him distracted me from the fact that Dermot was nowhere near ready to forgive me. Dad still wouldn’t talk about his divorce with Mom, and I knew him well enough to know he was inside his own head.

  After all, I was my father’s daughter. We shared a very similar nature, and I knew he was silently stewing. There was nothing I could do but spend time with him and hope he’d eventually open up. The one thing I knew was that I was not leaving Boston until I was one hundred percent certain Dad would be okay.

  As for talking to my mom, Dermot had put a pin in that. I was already nervous about doing it, but after his phone call, I decided to be uncharacteristically cautious. It turned out, in the end, it wasn’t me that forced our reunion.

  It was Monday, late afternoon, Dad had left for work, and I was trying to keep my thoughts on the events of the day before, and not on anything else (say, Michael, who liked to intrude on my thoughts every five seconds!). Dad had invited Darragh, Krista, Leo and Levi, Davina, and Astrid over for dinner and to watch the Sunday game.

  We’d laughed a lot and ate a lot, and it had been a great time. The boys always seemed to laugh when Darragh used a slang word, which led to us educating them in the language of our neighborhood growing up. There were words I’d forgotten, having lost them while I was living in Delaware. Like “bubbla” instead of a water fountain. That was adorable. How could I have forgotten that?

  I’d also dared to ask about Dermot. Dad had kept me up to date on my siblings’ lives throughout the years, but I didn’t know much about Dermot’s life at the moment.

  Last I’d heard he’d been dating a girl Davina not so fondly referred to as a “Masshole”—a slang word Darragh did not want his kids picking up on. She apologized but not for the sentiment. Apparently, this girl came from money, kind of a blueblood, and Dermot tired of her trying to hide him from her family. After nine months together, he broke it off. He was single again, living in a shitty apartment (my sister’s words) near Mom’s new place, and screwing everything that moved when he wasn’t working.

  While Michael moved up the ranks, my brother, who had never been very ambitious, seemed content to remain a police officer. It sounded like my brother wasn’t having the greatest time in his personal life. When we were younger, I was the one he came to talk to about girls and relationships. Once again, I hadn’t been there when he needed me.

  Music blared in the living room as I sat on the end of the couch near the lamp on the side table in the corner. I was working on a ring design for Davina and Astrid. They hadn’t asked for it, but after taking a thorough inventory of their likes and dislikes as seen in their apartment, I had some ideas for the rings. Just in case.

  Unfortunately, I liked my music loud, so I didn’t hear the front door opening until Dermot and my mom strode inside.

  Adrenaline flooded me when I saw my mother, and I fumbled for my phone to cut the music. I hurried to my feet, noting the intensity of my mom’s expression.

  Dermot closed the front door behind him.

  Oh, shit.

  My stomach flipped unpleasantly.

  Apart from dark circles under her eyes, my mom looked good. She was tall and slender and looked young in her skinny jeans, Blondie T-shirt, and suede jacket. There was no gray in her dark, shoulder-length hair so I knew she dyed it because I’d started getting gray in mine when I was twenty-nine.

  Her hazel eyes met my blue ones and fear held me frozen in place by the couch.

  That look in her eyes, the one she’d had when she’d spoken to me last, was still there. All these years and it had never faded.

  “What are you doing here?” My eyes flicked to Dermot.

  “How dare you?” Mom seethed. “How dare you stand in my house and ask that?”

  “Mom.” Dermot put his hand on her shoulder. “You said it was time to talk to her. So let’s talk.”

  “Your father came to see me the other day.” Mom took a few steps farther into the room, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “You turned him against me.”

  “What?” I shook my head, confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play stupid, Dahlia. You’re the reason our marriage fell apart. You’re the reason my life turned to shit!”

  Suddenly, I was twenty-two again, hurtling back in time. “You still blame me for Dillon?”

  “No one is saying that.” Dermot stepped between us. “But you left when we needed to stick together, and it fucked us all up. You need to take responsibility for that.”

  I agreed. “I do. I have. That’s why I’m here. But that’s not why she’s here.” I looked past him to my mom. “Dad confronted you about what you said and did to me before I left, didn’t he?”

  That’s what he’d been stewing over for days.

  “What?” Dermot looked at Mom. “What did you say? What did you do?”

  She didn’t take her eyes off me. “The truth.”

  I flinched like she’d slapped me. Again. “I’m sorry that he’s mad about that, but I needed them to know why I didn’t just leave.”

  “You should have stayed gone.”

  “Wait … I’m confused.” Dermot frowned. “What is she talking about?”

  Mom’s gaze softened on him. “What we’ve always talked about. That’s she to blame, and she’s manipulative, and she should have stayed gone.”

  Dermot shook his head. “That’s not what we talked about.” He turned, glaring at me. “What the fuck are you talking about? What did you tell Dad? More lies?”

  I narrowed my eyes on my gullible brother who ran to take Mom’s side in every family argument growing up. Just like Dillon had. “I started to drink after Dillon … after Dillon died.”

  He curled his lip. “We’re fully aware of how badly you handled Dillon’s death.”

  I glared at him. “I didn’t start drinking just because of Dillon.”

  “Oh, here we go.” Mom pushed past Dermot. “You’re going to lay that fuckin’ mistake at my feet too?”

  Staring up at her in horror, I wondered how it was possible that this was my mother. How the woman who had given birth to me, raised me, comforted me when I was hurt, could hate me this much? Tears filled my eyes, and I despised myself for the weakness. “
Everyone was out. It was just you and me in the house, and you found me in the bedroom. You attacked me.” The memory flashed over me, and I could still feel the burn of her slaps. “You started slapping me.”

  Dermot pulled in a breath behind Mom.

  “You kept telling me I was selfish. That it should have been me.” The tears scalded my cheeks. “It should have been me, you said. Why did God take the wrong kid, you said.”

  “Jesus fuck,” my brother whispered.

  I swiped angrily at my tears as I saw my mother’s eyes brighten with her own. “I didn’t know how to deal with that … to have my mom hate me so much … So yeah, I drank to cope. I’m not proud of myself. I’m not proud that Dad had to send me away from everything that happened here. And I’m not proud that I stayed away because I was so afraid to face you again. Not because of you”—I shook my head at her as I realized I would never get the reassurance I needed from her—“but because I hurt them. The family that still loved me.” I looked past her shoulder to Dermot, who had gone chalk white. “I’m sorry I abandoned you,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  A deathly silence filled the room.

  Dermot stared at Mom in accusation.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Mom whispered.

  “Is it true?” he grunted, like he could hardly get the words out. “Did you do that to her?”

  My mom was quiet for a while and then she whispered tearfully, “She ruined your sister’s life.”

  “Mom, you know that’s not true.”

  “You all can’t see it, but it’s true. And Dill—” Mom sobbed. “She was my little girl. God took my little girl.”

  “And what about Dahlia?” Dermot retorted. “She’s your kid too, Mom.”

  “No. She was never mine. She was always his. God would take mine, wouldn’t he? Story of my fuckin’ life.”

  “I can’t …”

  I turned to see my brother glaring incredulously at her.

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You made it seem like you were angry at her for leaving. Not for coming back!”

  “Don’t.” Mom hurried over to him, cupping his face. “My whole life has fallen apart, and it’s her fault. Don’t let her take you too.”

  Dermot shook his head, yanking her hands from his face. “Mom,” he said, “that’s so fucked up. That’s so fucked up. You need to see someone. You need to talk to someone about this because this is …” His voice trailed off. My thirty-three-year-old brother looked like a lost little boy, and I wanted to comfort him.

  “That’s what Cian said.” Mom stepped back, wiping at her tears.

  “Then maybe you should listen to us.”

  Mom looked just as lost. “You don’t understand.”

  He shook his head again. “It’s not rational, Mom. It’s fucked.”

  She choked on a sob and then rushed past him, dodging his hands as he tried to stop her. The front door slammed shut behind her.

  Seeing her now, and not through the grief-shrouded fog of the messed-up young woman I’d been, I realized with a sick feeling in my gut that Sorcha McGuire was not mentally well. She’d twisted everything up inside her and saw what she wanted to see. As I’d gotten older, hitting my teens, I realized that was a part of my mom’s personality. But it had been in smaller, less significant ways back then. If she didn’t like an idea, like when I’d first said I wanted to go to art school, she pretended like it wasn’t true. She would talk to me about law school and business school like I hadn’t repeatedly told her they were a no-go.

  However, what she’d convinced herself—that I’d ruined her life—had done nothing but destroy her life, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. No wonder Dad had gone to see her to tell her she needed therapy.

  My mom needed therapy.

  Knowing that didn’t remove the ball of ugly that sat in my gut. My own mom hated me.

  There weren’t any magic words in the world that could take away that kind of pain.

  “Dahlia,” Dermot said my name quietly, drawing my attention from the door to his. His expression turned pleading. “I didn’t know.”

  I nodded.

  “She’s…” His gaze darted to the door. “I’ve never seen her like that … She’s … she’s not … that’s fucked up.”

  My brother looked crushed. Alone, sad, and totally crushed.

  Without thinking about it, I crossed the room and drew him into my arms.

  Dermot didn’t hesitate. He buried his head in my neck and held on for dear life.

  Before he had to leave for work, Dermot asked me to tell him everything from my side of the story. When I was done, he’d looked at me in weary defeat. “I still think you should have come home. But I get it now why you didn’t.”

  I’d hesitated over my own question. “She never … In all these years, she never talked about how she blamed me for Dillon’s death? How she felt about it?”

  Dermot had shaken his head. “She never talked about you at all. When we tried, she would walk out of the room. I thought it was because you left and would only tell Dad where you were. I didn’t realize it was because she’d poisoned her own fuckin’ mind against you.”

  “Maybe if I had come home sooner, it wouldn’t have gotten this bad. She would have had to deal with her grief rather than letting it fester like this.”

  “Maybe.” He’d agreed impatiently as he stood up to leave. “You don’t actually blame yourself for Dillon’s death, do you?”

  “I changed the course of her future, Dermot. There’s no getting around that fact.”

  “Jesus fuck,” he’d sneered. “One’s crazy, and the other’s a martyr. I can’t … I can’t deal with this shit right now. I’ve got work.”

  He’d taken off without saying goodbye, and it left me unsure of where I stood with him.

  For a while, I’d sat in silence going over the last hour in my head. Every part of me seemed to ache. “Well, this trip home has been super fun,” I muttered.

  The urge to pack my bags and leave was strong. Back home in Hartwell, I didn’t have to deal with all this stuff. My life was simple and peaceful.

  However, I couldn’t leave Dad. Especially not now, knowing how bad Mom had gotten. Hands shaking, I crossed the room to where I’d left my phone on the side table and swiped left, bringing up my main contacts. My finger hovered over the B button. I didn’t want to keep calling Bailey when I was feeling lousy because then she’d worry. However, she was my person now.

  Before Hartwell, it had been Michael. I sighed, slumping down on the couch, remembering the first time I ever went to him because of my mom. It was before he dated Dillon. It was before I suspected Gary of cheating …

  Stepping out of my bedroom, I caught sight of Dermot preening in the bathroom mirror as he reached for his bottle of cologne.

  “Don’t,” I warned him.

  He whipped around. “Don’t what?”

  “Put more cologne on.”

  Dermot gestured with the bottle. “Too much?”

  “Yes. Unless you want to suffocate the poor girl.”

  He flashed me a wide grin. “I like this one so that would be a no.”

  “You like them all,” I teased.

  “But this one is spicy. I like her smart mouth.” He stepped out of the bathroom. “She reminds me of you, without the icky sister factor.”

  “It’s still icky,” I grumbled, even though I thought it was kind of sweet. “Also, I think the police academy would frown on you using the word icky at your age. You ever going to grow up, Derm?” I followed him downstairs.

  Darragh and Davina had both moved out, but Dermot couldn’t afford to yet. As a scholarship student at MassArt (Massachusetts College of Art & Design), I couldn’t afford student housing, and as a student at a beauty academy in the city, my nineteen-year-old sister Dillon definitely still lived at home too.

  “It’s all relative,” Dermot answered breezily. “I’ll be mature as a cop.”

  I snickered. “But not ou
t of the uniform?”

  “Now where would the fun in that be?”

  “In what?” Davina asked from the couch. She’d come over for dinner, and Dillon had talked her into being a guinea pig for the night. She had one eye entirely made up with makeup and the other not. It was very Clockwork Orange.

  “Nothing.” Dermot grabbed his jacket and keys. “Mom, I’m out!” he yelled through to the kitchen.

  She called back to him to wait, but he darted out the door and was gone by the time she walked into the sitting room. Mom frowned. “Where did he go?”

  “Date,” I answered succinctly. “Speaking of …” I pulled my cell out of the back pocket of my jeans and checked it.

  Nothing.

  Gary was supposed to be picking me up in five minutes for date night, and he usually texted to let me know he was on his way.

  “He owes your dad and me grocery money,” Mom grumbled. “Who is he spending it on this time?”

  “Abigail,” Dillon answered. “I think.”

  “Addison,” I corrected. “Her name is Addison.”

  Mom curled her lip. “She sounds stuck-up.”

  I grunted, used to her judging my brother’s girlfriends before she’d even met them. Mom was the total cliché who believed no girl deserved her sons. My phone beeped, and I flipped it open, only for my heart to sink.

  Sorry, doll. Gotta cancel. Workin’ late. Call you later.

  “Great.” I sat down on the stairs with a heavy sigh.

  “What is it?” Mom asked.

  She was frowning down at me in concern, so I made the stupid mistake of giving her the truth. “Gary canceled our date for tonight.”

  She shook her head. “I told you he was a loser.”

  Indignation rushed through me. “He’s working late.”

  “So he says.”

  “Mom,” Davina warned from the couch.

  Mom ignored her, glaring down at me. “What is this guy doing with his life, huh? A mechanic in his uncle’s garage. Oh, there’s a career.”

  “He’s still young,” I argued through gritted teeth. “He’s got time to decide.”

  “In the meantime, he gets you knocked up, and your dad and I are lumbered with two kids raising a kid because one’s a mechanic who doesn’t make a lot of money, and the other is smart-assing around a fuckin’ art college.”