Forever, With You Read online

  Once Sheila’s sobs had subsided, Daniel released her.

  “I’ll take you to the bus stop,” he said.

  Sheila nodded. She had been defeated by the sight of her terrified daughter. As Daniel guided her to the pickup truck, she looked over her shoulder at the girl.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” she slurred. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do better for you.”

  But Chantelle didn’t say a word. She just clung even more tightly to Emily in response. They stood there, both shaking, as they watched Daniel drive away, Sheila gazing out the window the whole way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  The sound of the pickup truck had only just faded when Chantelle turned and ran up the stairs. Emily followed, concerned about what kind of effect Sheila’s impromptu appearance would have on her. She wanted to reassure Chantelle but also knew she needed to let the child deal with whatever emotions she was feeling in whatever way she needed to.

  Chantelle ran into her room and slammed the door behind her. Emily took a deep breath to calm herself, then opened the door. Chantelle was standing the other side of the room pummeling her fists against the wardrobe, kicking it over and over.

  Emily watched helplessly. “Chantelle,” she said, but it was like the child was possessed and couldn’t hear her.

  Chantelle bashed the wardrobe to the point where the wood caved in. Emily gasped. But the broken wardrobe didn’t break the spell Chantelle was under. She grabbed her desk stool and flung it against the wall. One of the legs snapped off and went flying. Emily ducked.

  Chantelle had already found the next inanimate victim of her rage, her desk lamp. She threw it against the ground. It immediately shattered.

  Emily didn’t know what to do. She stood there, one hand covering her mouth, watching as Chantelle trashed her bedroom. The girl was in a passionate rage and nothing could coax her out of it. Her stuffed toys went flying. She ripped the posters from her wall. Nothing was spared.

  Finally, Emily heard the slam of the front door and breathed a sigh of relief. Daniel was home. She listened to his footsteps coming up the stairs. Then he appeared at Chantelle’s bedroom door. The second Chantelle saw him, and saw that he was alone, she stopped.

  “What’s going on?” Daniel said, surveying the damage with a shocked expression on his face.

  Emily sighed heavily. “She went berserk. I couldn’t do anything to stop her.”

  Chantelle stood in the detritus of her bedroom, panting. She seemed suddenly shocked to realize where she was and what she’d done.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Daniel soothed.

  At last, Chantelle crumbled. She fell onto her bed and curled up. Emily perched on the bed beside her. She reached out and touched her gently. The girl was hot to the touch, almost like she had a fever.

  “Come on, let’s get you into bed,” she said soothingly to the little girl.

  She tugged the covers up over the child. Daniel slid a pillow beneath her head. Chantelle accepted their help but didn’t say a word. She was clearly exhausted and quickly fell asleep. Emily and Daniel stayed with her, sitting on the bed in silence, as the sky outside turned black.

  *

  “Coffee?” Emily asked when she and Daniel went down to the kitchen.

  It felt like a million years had passed since they’d been sitting in the living room together relaxing. All it had taken was Sheila’s appearance to turn everything upside down for them.

  “I think I need something stronger,” Daniel said wearily, sinking down into a chair. “Do we have any beer?” He let his head drop into his hands.

  Emily took a bottle of beer for each of them from the fridge. She set Daniel’s in front of him then sat in the opposite chair.

  Daniel took a sip of his beer. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “That was terrible.”

  Emily patted his hand. “You don’t need to apologize. It’s not your fault.”

  “But it’s my baggage,” Daniel said. “And you shouldn’t have to deal with it.”

  “I signed up for it,” Emily said with a shrug. She didn’t like seeing Daniel in such a mood, so downtrodden and weary. She tried to shift the conversation. “Did you manage to put Sheila on a bus out of town?”

  Daniel nodded and took another swig of his beer. He seemed lost in his thoughts. Emily wanted him to open up to her.

  “Are you okay?” she asked gently.

  Daniel looked up at her, frowning. “Me? I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about!”

  Emily gave him a reassuring look. “You don’t need to worry about me. I’m stronger than I look.”

  “I swear things will be more stable going forward,” Daniel said. “You know, we can get married and—”

  “Oh, not this again,” Emily said, suddenly withdrawing her hand from his. She turned her face away. “Not after the night we’ve just had.”

  For Daniel to bring it up when she was feeling so shaken about Sheila seemed like terrible timing, and yet more evidence that he only wanted to marry her because of Chantelle. Emily couldn’t help but let these experiences color her overall feelings. She wanted to settle down with Daniel but she couldn’t remove that sense of uncertainty that shrouded her every time he suggested it. Could it really only be because he always approached the subject in such an unromantic way, or was there more to it, a deeper uncertainty? She could project her mind so easily into the future, with Chantelle the big sister to their own growing brood of kids, everyone happy and healthy in the inn. But something about Daniel bringing it up shattered that image and turned it into something else entirely, a life of drudgery and domesticity, a life she signed up for without thought and for all the wrong reasons.

  Daniel sighed. “Why do you always act so weird when I talk about it?” he challenged her.

  “I don’t want to discuss this.”

  “Why?” he pressed.

  “Because it’s not the right time,” she snapped. “Can’t you see that?”

  Daniel’s shoulders slouched. He seemed defeated. “I don’t want us bickering,” he said. “I don’t want Sheila ruining what we have.”

  Emily couldn’t quite process the meaning of Daniel’s words. Did he mean he was worried that Sheila might take Chantelle back? Or was it something else? Did he mean that Sheila might somehow have the power to tear them apart, to make them break up?

  But before either of them could speak further, they were interrupted by the shrill, terrified scream of Chantelle.

  All previous thoughts left Emily’s mind in an instant. She immediately snapped into maternal, protective mode. Daniel was clearly on the same wavelength. He knocked his beer over in his haste to run to his daughter.

  Chantelle screamed again. With her heart pounding, Emily ran.

  “Chantelle?” Daniel shouted, his voice booming.

  It sounded like Chantelle’s scream was coming from the basement. Emily and Daniel raced down the stairs into the basement to find that it was pitch-black.

  “The lights have blown,” Daniel said, flicking the switch to no avail. “It must be the fuse.” He handed Emily a flashlight. “You find Chantelle, I’ll sort out the fuse.”

  Emily could hear the girl sniveling from somewhere in the labyrinthine basement. She flicked the flashlight on.

  “Chantelle, honey, where are you?” she called out into the darkness.

  “I’m here,” came Chantelle’s wailing response.

  Emily followed the noises, illuminating the creepy basement walls with the beam of her flashlight. It was a good thing Chantelle wasn’t scared of spiders because Emily saw plenty on her journey further into the rabbit warren of the basement.

  At last her light picked up the sight she’d been desperate to see ever since hearing Chantelle’s shrill scream. The little girl was standing in her nightgown in the midst of one of the small cellar rooms looking lost and terrified.

  “What are you doing down here?” Emily said, reaching for her and pulling her into an embrace.

  Chantelle trembl
ed in her grasp and wound her hands through Emily’s hair for reassurance. “I came to the basement to hide, like we did in the storm.”

  “But why, sweetie?” Emily said, hugging her tightly and rocking her for comfort.

  “In case she came back.”

  Emily realized then that it was Sheila that Chantelle was hiding from. She’d snuck down in the middle of the night to shelter from the storm that was her mother. Then the lights had blown, plunging her suddenly into darkness at a time when she’d so needed the light.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Emily whispered, rocking her. She wished she could tell Chantelle that Sheila was never coming back, but it just wasn’t a promise she could keep.

  Daniel must have fixed the fuse because at that moment the lights all came back on. In Emily’s arms, Chantelle began to calm.

  “I didn’t know you were scared of the dark,” Emily teased the girl gently. “I didn’t think you were scared of anything.”

  Chantelle smiled timidly, but Emily realized the poignancy of her words as soon as she’d uttered them. Chantelle hadn’t been scared of anything. It was the return of Sheila and the instability it had brought into her life that had caused the girl to freak out when the lights blew.

  Daniel appeared in the doorway. “Is everything okay?” he asked with concern.

  Chantelle looked up at him and then disentangled herself from Emily. She raced toward her dad. He scooped her up in his arms.

  “Shall we get you back to bed?” he said.

  Chantelle nodded. Daniel, still clearly shaken by the whole episode, carried Chantelle out of the room, heading back in the direction of the stairs. But as Emily went to flick off the light switch to the small wine room, she noticed that one of the vaults was standing open.

  “Chantelle,” she called out of the door. “Did you manage to get one of the vaults open down here?”

  “Yes,” came Chantelle’s timid reply. “Me, Bailey, and Toby did during the storm when we were looking for the treasure. But there were only letters inside.”

  Emily froze on the spot, her heart skipping a beat. She’d spent so long trying to break into all her father’s secret hiding places and the kids had managed to do so by accident! She rushed back into the room and flung herself onto her knees, then yanked the vault door all the way open and grasped inside. Her hand fell against a stack of letters. She pulled them out with trembling fingers.

  There were at least twenty letters, all stacked on top of one another and tied together with string into a bundle. Emily could see they were addressed to her father at this very property. She studied the postmark on the first one. It was from twenty years earlier.

  Emily quickly untied the bundle and turned the first envelope over in her hands. It had been opened and the letter returned to it. She took it out now and unfolded it. She could tell from the grubby finger marks at the edges and the amount of crinkles and creases that the letter had been read over and over again. The first letter was short.

  Dearest Roy,

  I wish I could see you again. It’s hard to believe a year has passed since you disappeared. It is torture not being able to search for you properly. All I can do is trawl the woods with Persephone. But you won’t be there, will you? I know you too well, Roy.

  Toni

  PS - I’ve enclosed a photo of happier times. I will always cherish these memories.

  Emily’s heart raced as the photograph fell into her lap. It was immediately familiar and she realized with astonishment that it had been taken at the same time as one of their forlorn Thanksgiving dinners. Her father must have only kept the photos where this Toni woman wasn’t present and had stashed away any of the ones that featured her.

  So there it was, the evidence that her father had been having an affair. Persephone was the dog she’d remembered in her flashback. Toni was the woman who’d been out of frame in all of those photos, the “floozy” her mother suspected her father was running off to Sunset Harbor to be with.

  But there was more to this story then Emily was expecting. Toni, too, had lost Roy. He had walked out on his mistress just as he had walked out on his family. He hadn’t left Emily because he loved another woman more than his daughter; he had left everyone.

  For the first time, the very real possibility that her father was dead hit Emily like a ton of bricks. She’d always clung to the hope that he was out there somewhere, living a happy life, living the life he desired, even if that meant he’d selfishly run off into the sunset with another woman. But here was the proof that that hadn’t happened. Perhaps something terrible had happened to him. Murder. Suicide. Emily’s mind spiraled.

  She picked up the next envelope. But before she had even taken the letter out, a new, sudden thought hit her with such force she was almost knocked sideways. A small giggle escaped her lips as the new reality dawned on her. Then suddenly she was laughing maniacally.

  Her dad wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. Because he had read these letters! He’d tied them into a bundle! He’d stored them away in one of his hidden vaults and locked it up with a padlock and code!

  Laughing with a strange, frantic desperation, Emily began studying the postmarks on each of the letters. There was one per year. Each year Toni had written another letter to her father. Fifteen years ago. Ten years ago. Emily leafed through them all until she found the most recent one from just five years ago. Her heart soared. She couldn’t believe it. Here was proof, actual, solid proof, that not only had her father been alive and well five years ago but that he had been here in this very house.

  Dear Roy,

  I miss you terribly. And the girls. I wish I could have gotten to know them better. Emily was such a sweet girl. If you had been brave enough to let me into her life I could have been a good mother to her, I could have comforted her after you left just as I comforted her after Charlotte’s death. Is that why you ran, Roy? Guilt? Fear? You must know what happened that night was not your fault. If it was anyone’s, it was mine. I was the one who demanded to see you. I was the reason you left the girls alone.

  Emily let the letter fall from her hands into her lap. She could hardly believe what she was reading. After years of thinking Charlotte’s death had been her fault, for letting go of her hand during a storm down at the harbor, it had only been a few months ago that her mom had corrected that memory, telling her that Charlotte had actually drowned in the new swimming pool because Roy had been drunk and not supervising them properly. But here now was a new piece to the puzzle. Roy had left them in the house alone that night, sneaking off to see his mistress at her insistence. Could that be why he’d run away? Not just because of the guilt over Charlotte’s death but because of his fear of retribution from the law, of being charged with negligence and sent to prison?

  Emily scanned each letter searching for clues, but all she learned from her father’s mistress was that she was as stumped by his disappearance as everyone else. Every year she’d sent another lonely love letter, agonizing over the details of their affair, of Charlotte’s death and the profound effect it had had upon him, of her longing to know Emily more. It almost broke Emily’s heart reading Toni’s words. She knew she should be angry with the woman who’d been committing adultery with her father, but instead she felt pity for her. She, too, knew what it felt like to be the mother of someone else’s child, to show them the love and care their own mother was unable to, and yet her father had kept Toni at arm’s length, had never allowed her to fully bond with Emily. No wonder she had next to no memory of the woman.

  More photographs fell from the bundle, familiar but not at the same time. Emily glanced down upon them, grief-stricken by the way Toni had been completely erased from her memory. Could she have been the mother figure she’d always craved? Why would her father have kept her away from that?

  Emily noticed just then a photograph had fallen into her lap. Staring up at her was a picture of her father’s favorite lighthouse, the one she and Daniel had found on an island just a short boat ride from the harbor. On
the back, Toni had written: Our favorite place. I will always love it. And here, I will always think of you. Toni.

  Emily was hit by another bolt of clarity. Could Toni be Antonia Westerley, the artist of all those paintings? She’d suspected an affair between them, there had been plenty of clues, but had her father really been so brazen as to hang a picture painted by his mistress in his wife’s home?

  Emily remembered when she had met Catherine Westerly, the daughter of the artist, by chance at the end of the summer. Catherine had told her that Antonia had died of cancer after a long battle. If the author of these letters was indeed the artist of those paintings—and it seemed likely that she was—then she was now dead and gone. Emily would find no answers by following this lead. There was no mother figure waiting for her with open arms. The sensation of grief hit her powerfully.

  But Emily clung onto the positives, to the fact that her father had read these letters and stored them in his vault. She could picture him now, twenty years older than the last time she’d seen him, sneaking in through the back door of the house, finding the letters piled there, slipped through the cat flap by someone familiar with the property, or left in a secret hiding place the lovers had discovered together—the gnarl of an oak tree, beneath the birdbath—there were a million possibilities. Had he returned year after year, collecting each precious letter, reading it and rereading it, stashing it in one of his impenetrable vaults with the rest, before running off into the night, back to his secret life? Or had he just come back one time and discovered the entire bundle?

  Her mind spun with questions. All Emily knew for certain was that her father had found these letters, he had read them—not once, but over and over, just as she was doing now—and he had hidden them, as he was wont to do. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, her father had been back to the house. She was certain. And that meant that his disappearance had nothing to do with his affair. Something else had driven him into hiding.