Torrid Exposure Read online

I look down at the menu. “Is it, uh, safe to order anything around here?” I ask her.

  “Yes, I usually order an omelet. Their omelets are actually quite good,” Spencer replies and looks up when she feels me staring. “I come here sometimes to think.”

  Spencer looks back down at the menu, leaving me unsure what to say. Come here to think? I can’t imagine coming here to think. The whole time I would be worried about being mugged or something.

  A different waitress comes by after a shift change. This one has thick grey hair piled on top of her head and her waitress outfit looks freshly pressed. She smiles brightly at Spencer.

  “Didn’t think I’d see you here! Been a while!”

  “Yes, I’ve been very busy,” Spencer says, smiling at the waitress. “I’ll have my usual, please.”

  “Alrighty! And you, Miss?” the waitress says, looking at me.

  I look down at the menu and order a stack of chocolate pancakes and some coffee. The waitress nods and heads off to the kitchen. I look back at Spencer.

  “You have a usual here?” I ask her.

  “Told you. I come here when I need some peace.”

  “Never would have pictured it,” I remark.

  Spencer smiles a little, “Exactly why I come here.”

  She looks down at the newspaper. I suddenly don’t know what to say. Blurting out that I know she has a kid seems strange. I suppose there isn’t any sort of rulebook for this sort of thing. I am about to speak when Spencer does first.

  “I was worried you wouldn’t come meet me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. How things went last time.”

  “Poorly, you mean,” I reply, “on both our parts. I got too angry. And you didn’t want to tell me anything.”

  “As usual,” Spencer says. “Both of us always talking but getting nowhere. I’ve been thinking…” her voice catches and she looks down at her coffee, “about Dad. About how he wouldn’t want us to fight like this.”

  “I understand. It’s hard,” I reply, thinking of Dad. I still haven’t been able to bring myself to open the box he gave me after his death. It’s still in my room, untouched, waiting for me to feel brave enough.

  “So I thought we could talk even if it’s risky.”

  “Why is it risky?” I ask her, leaning forward and lowering my voice. “Is it because of Kevin?”

  Spencer looks surprised at this, “How did you—”

  “Spence,” I say quietly, not wanting to upset her, “I know. I know about—” My throat goes dry and she looks at me.

  It is then that the waitress comes back with my coffee. She pours some out of a carafe and leaves it behind, winking at Spencer. I watch her go. My throat feels too tight to speak. Spencer is looking at me curiously.

  “What do you know about?” She gives a small shake of her head. “April, I wish you wouldn’t meddle. I know why you did it. I understand it. But still… it isn’t going to do you any favors. What’s going on behind the scenes – the things I couldn’t tell you about – they’re all… it’s…” She seems at a loss for words and clears her throat before going on, “It’s all very unbelievable.”

  “Spence…” I find my voice and suddenly grab one of her hands tightly. “Spence, I know.”

  “About what?”

  “I know you have a daughter,” I manage to whisper.

  The reaction from her is automatic. She pulls her hand away and pushes herself against the booth, as if she is trying to get as far away from me as possible. What little color Spencer has is now drained out of her.

  “What?!” she says loudly, causing the group of teenagers to look over.

  “You heard me,” I whisper, not wanting to attract more attention.

  “How did you—”

  “I saw her.”

  Her eyes widen and she lets out a long exhale, as if the energy is being sucked out of her body, “You saw her? You saw her?”

  I speak quickly now before Spencer can panic and leave. “This old lady saw me when I went out of town for Emily’s wedding.”

  “Emily’s wedding,” she echoes dully and I realize she doesn’t even know Emily has gotten married.

  “In Tusona. And she stopped me and thought that I was you and I went back and she told me – she asked how the child was doing,” I say in one breath.

  Spencer is clutching the side of the table so hard that I am afraid she is going to snap her fingers off, “Did you – you didn’t tell Kevin, did you?”

  “What?” I ask. “No. Emily knows. That’s it.”

  “Emily knows?” Her eyes almost pop out of her head. “Are you fucking serious?”

  “She was there with me,” I protest. “I had no idea you have a kid, Spencer, so excuse me!”

  Spencer buries her face in her hands now and makes a strange keening noise that I have never heard come out of her. More people glance over at her now and I have no idea what to do. I stand up and move to her side of the booth and gingerly wrap my arms around her.

  “Spence,” I whisper, “hey, it’s okay.”

  “It isn’t okay,” she mumbles into her hands. “It is not okay. None of it is okay.”

  “Kevin doesn’t know,” I tell her again. “He doesn’t know that I know.”

  “But he will,” she says and looks up at me now, her eyes looking wild. “He’s going to find out. He’s going to take her away.”

  “Whoa, Spence,” I reply, alarmed. “What are you talking about?”

  “You found out where she lived?”

  “Jessica said it was a red roof off Willow Drive or something. I went to look for it…”

  Spencer lets out another groan and curses before putting her face back in her hands. I say her name a couple of times but there is no response. The waitress comes by to give us our food but looks alarmed at the sight of Spencer.

  “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, just – going through a lot right now,” I say, unsure of how to word it.

  The waitress nods but still looks tentative before turning around and heading back to the kitchen. Finally, Spencer looks up at me. Her eyes look full of tears but she blinks them a couple of times before sitting up straighter and looking at her giant omelet.

  “I’m fine,” she says, her voice now sounding hollow. “Sorry. Come on. Let’s eat.”

  I sit back down across from her and watch Spencer as she puts some pepper on her omelet. I look down at my chocolate pancakes, suddenly no longer hungry.

  Spencer finally speaks. “Did she seem okay? Aria. Did Aria seem okay?”

  I realize she is asking me about her daughter and I nod, “Yeah. Some woman was holding her. When…Aria…” I say her name slowly, getting used to it, “turned around, I knew it was your daughter.”

  “That woman is Harmony. She and her husband adopted Aria. She has three other adopted children. She’s a good mother.”

  “You gave Aria up for adoption?”

  “I had to,” Spencer fires back. “It was the best choice for her. I couldn’t keep her. Kevin wouldn’t allow it and this way, she’s safe. Or she was. Now I have to rethink her security if you found out about her so easily. If Kevin finds out how easily it was to track Aria down…”

  I hold up my hand, “Wait. Wait. Kevin wouldn’t allow it? So, you’re saying Kevin is the father then?”

  “Yes,” Spencer says impatiently. “I thought you figured that out. What do you know then?”

  “I just hadn’t confirmed he was the father,” I retort. “Sorry I didn’t untangle your bizarre situation with ease.”

  Spencer rubs her forehead and I realize I am tense as well. The two of us are already getting ready to fight about it. But there are bigger things going on other than me and Spencer bickering. I cut a piece of one of my pancakes and shove it in my mouth so I don’t say anything else.

  Spencer and I eat in silence for a few minutes. I can tell she doesn’t want to fight either. Finally, she clears her throat.

  “Kevin and I were in
volved shortly after my eighteenth birthday.”

  “Gross,” I say, without thinking.

  Spencer scowls. It has been ages since I have seen her irritated scowl directed at me. It is oddly comforting. It shows that the old Spencer is still underneath there still.

  “Really?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “How did that happen, anyway?”

  “It was right around the time that we agreed Kevin should mentor me. I fell for him hard. He is so smart. He has a keen eye for everything. At the time, he was nothing but good to me. He had great ideas. I knew that I was going to learn a lot from him. And then for him to be interested in me! I was so flattered. I couldn’t believe my luck. We kept things quiet. Left no signs behind.”

  I am thinking back now. I am thinking back to the times I saw the two of them bickering. The bickering made more sense now. I also think about the photos I saw at the wedding back in Hawaii. How close they had been in the shots. How Kevin’s hand had been underneath the table. He was probably holding onto Spencer. Even the dream I had putting me directly at the wedding. It was as if my subconscious already knew and was trying to tell me to hurry up and notice already.

  “Things were great until I got pregnant,” Spencer says, carefully taking a bite of her toast.

  “Doesn’t seem like you.”

  “I was sick. Caught a bug and was on antibiotics for a while. I didn’t realize it affected how the pill worked.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Kevin changed. It was like night and day. All the traits of his that I was happy to ignore when it wasn’t directed at me – his controlling nature, his tendency to launch into rages – suddenly shifted to me. He told me that there was no way in hell that anyone could find out I was having his baby. We needed to get things organized and get Aria away from the family.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I protested at first, of course. I told him that there was no way I was just going to give up Aria. I wanted the ability to see her. I told him that we could make it work somehow. Sophia and Kevin are mostly on the rocks anyway. She is only with him to save face at this point, and his money. I thought – I thought maybe he’d leave her for me.”

  I can’t imagine Kevin leaving Sophia for Spencer. Not because I thought that my sister isn’t worth being with. But because with what I have learned about Kevin through Bennett, I know that he would never divorce at this point. His long marriage was something he touted almost as much as his business. Having a much younger girlfriend pregnant with his child would ruin him.

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “Yes. He told me I was acting like a child. He told me to get my shit together. That was when I went off to study abroad. I told everyone it was for college and I did do a semester there when I was pregnant. Then I took a leave of absence to get everything in order.”

  I thought of Spencer, halfway across the world, alone and pregnant, having to deal with this by herself. The thought pained me. Spencer deserved better. She didn’t deserve having to go through that alone.

  “I swear, by the end of things, Kevin loathed me. I refused to give up completely. I refused to just give Aria up and never see her again. I just couldn’t. The nights that I could feel her… kicking in my belly or moving around – I just knew I couldn’t just send her away somewhere and never know what happened to her.”

  I thought Spencer would be crying by now. But her face is like steel. There is nothing readable in her eyes. She looks as if she has thought about this so often that she is immune to the pain it causes.

  “I had Aria and then came back a month before I let anyone else know I had returned. We agreed to house Aria in Tusona. Close enough that I could see her but far enough that Kevin wasn’t so paranoid. Kevin found someone who was fine with an open adoption. She has two other open adoptions. Kevin never met her. He paid for everything through different accounts. I met her though. She was perfect. She understood what I was going through. I thought housing her there would be perfect.”

  “Jessica said Kevin came by the store one time.”

  “Yeah. Just once. I love that store. The toys for the kids are adorable but I really loved the dolls. I liked imagining which ones Aria would like and then I’d get them delivered. Kevin came along once but he wasn’t enchanted by Aria at all. He wasn’t enchanted by anything to do with me or her.”

  “Were you still together physically then?”

  “No. No, we are around each other now because he is still my mentor and because he holds Aria over my head,” Spencer says bitterly.

  “Why did you sell him the company then?” I ask her. “Now, he can never go away.”

  “I didn’t have a choice,” Spencer protests. “The company was in trouble and I wasn’t sure how to fix it. Kevin wanted to buy it. He had been eyeing another grocery chain before he had this chance. He was having Bennett date the owner’s daughter or something. But when he caught wind of our own trouble, he wanted to buy it. I resisted at first. I thought I could salvage things on my own. But then he said… he said he would move Aria and not tell me the location.”

  A sudden rage bubbles up inside of me. It is so strong that I have to close my eyes and count to ten. Kevin threatening my sister over her child’s whereabouts just to get my father’s company… how had my dad read Kevin so wrong? We had been around Kevin for years and not once had we thought that he could do something like this.

  “April, don’t stress out about it,” Spencer says. “I was furious too. I had to sell it. I couldn’t let him move Aria. He would. He would move her and not let me know where.”

  “How could he move her? They live there.”

  “April, he is worth billions and billions of dollars. He could do whatever he wants.”

  “That reminds me,” I say, “the night of the accident. Can you explain it to me now?”

  “You have to understand why I couldn’t tell you,” Spencer says, “even now – it’s such a huge risk. But I can’t do it anymore. Not after losing Dad. I just need to have you know. That night you called me, I was in town visiting Aria.”

  I think back to the sound of crying I had heard on the phone. It had been Aria.

  “You wanted me to come get you but Kevin was in such a rage that night. When I told him that I needed to get you, he was furious with me. He said I had planned it. That I was going to go back with you and take Aria away. So he said he’d follow us. I picked you up and Kevin trailed behind us in the car. I just didn’t want you to tell anyone about me being out of town. You don’t understand. Kevin didn’t want any trace left at all. Nothing linking us to being in Tusona.”

  “So he was behind us the entire time?”

  “Yes. He was convinced I was going to try to get Aria. He’s completely paranoid, April. He isn’t who we thought he is.” She shakes her head a little. “Anyway, when the car crashed, the highway was mostly deserted. You looked dead. I remember how pale you were. Your leg was stuck. I crawled out of the car. I got lucky that I wasn’t crushed by anything. Kevin was flipping out. I was screaming at him to call an ambulance.”

  “You okay now, dear?” The waitress has reappeared and is looking fondly at Spencer.

  “I am, thank you,” Spencer says with a smile so bright there is no way anyone could tell how upset she is. “Sorry about that.”

  “No worries, dear. I’m going to bring you some of that chocolate cake you like. My treat.”

  “Thank you so much,” Spencer says, actually looking excited at the prospect of cake.

  I’m still barely through my pancakes. I try to focus on them again but talking about the accident has made my stomach turn into knots.

  “Kevin said he was going to call the hospital director but not until I moved you. He said that he knew someone would see the wreck and call and was paranoid someone already had. He wanted to get ahold of the hospital director right away. I said I couldn’t move you because you were injured but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said I needed to move you. He sai
d he was friends with the director of the hospital and had his direct line. He said that he could stall them for hours if he wanted to. He said everything so matter of fact. I remember he told me that his money could get him anything he wanted and you wouldn’t get help until I moved you and we were out of there.” Spencer’s tone started to sound panicked.

  “He called the hospital director? I don’t… that’s so fucked up.”

  “He was stark raving mad by the car. He kept shrieking at me that I had done it on purpose. He said everything was going to come out now. Aria was going to be discovered because people would start asking questions about why I had been in town. He said I had taken first aid courses and I could move you. So I did.”

  “How did you move me, anyway?”

  “I fucked up your leg more. If you had lost it…” she trails off and shakes her head. “It was difficult moving you. Every second felt like forty years. I managed to move you. The problem was how you looked in the car. The car was flipped, after all. There was no way I was going to get you upside down. So Kevin helped me. He laid you down to make it look as if you hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt and were thrown against the windshield. I told him that would never work. But he told me not to worry about it.”

  “I never heard anyone not believing it.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure he paid off a bunch of people through his different sources. Covered it up. Some nurses working that night got fired a couple weeks later. Anyone who knew something was weird was fired or paid off. He just erased it.” Spencer leans forward now and her eyes look as large as saucers. “That’s what he can do, April. He can just erase things.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “So, Kevin had you move me, paid off everyone involved in the accident to make sure no one knew I was moved, just because he doesn’t want anyone to know about Aria?”

  Spencer nods.

  “That’s crazy,” I say, feeling as if the room is spinning. “Spence, that’s nuts.”

  “I know it is. But I don’t know what to do. I feel frozen. If I move against him, he might snatch Aria away from me. I feel as if I’m going to be stuck under his thumb.”