Seclusion Read online

  She had finished her degree in history. For no particular reason she had chosen it as her major. She didn’t know where she was taking her studies; she only knew there was something in her that loved it. She never missed a class. She graduated with a four point oh, and it had been no great strain on her to do so. Simply, she excelled at what she loved to do. She’d turned around and entered graduate school the following September and was now only a few credits shy of getting her graduate degree in history.

  And from there, she had intended to get a doctorate in history. And key to the plan was she had never intended to come back to Seaclusion. But now? Everything felt stopped. Totally and completely stopped, ruined, and changed forever. Leaving her immobile, with no idea what to do now.

  Except come home.

  Sarah reached across the table, and held Angie’s hand as she squeezed it. “Whatever, I’m glad you’re here. No matter what the reason is.”

  “Can I stay for a while?”

  “Yes. Of course. Of course, I love when you stay. But what about school?”

  “I’m working on my thesis. So the time here, the quiet, will be good for me.”

  “What about work?”

  “I took a leave of absence. To work on my thesis. Really, this is a good thing for me career wise. I need to get my thesis done, and do it well.”

  “All right, you’re an adult and entitled to your privacy, but if you ever want to talk to me, you can.”

  “I know that.”

  Sarah nodded, and drank her own tea. “So have you seen your mother yet?”

  “No. She doesn’t know I’m here. I’m just not ready for Vanessa Peters quite yet.”

  Sarah smiled sympathetically. She knew more than anyone how complicated, how awful her mother could be. But still, Vanessa was her mother, and because of that fluke of biology, she would never totally be able to turn her back on Vanessa. After all, no matter what, she was her mother.

  “Don’t tell Uncle Scott I freaked out.”

  “I won’t say anything. But you know, if you can’t tell me, you can always tell him. You know what you are to him. You literally could do anything, need anything, and he’d be the first to help you, defend you, and the first to stand behind you. No matter what.”

  Angie nodded. “I do know that. But really. I’m all right.”

  It wasn’t long before the kitchen was suddenly over run with the noise of Sarah’s three little girls. The two youngest had been napping, the oldest playing in her room. They were all thrilled to see Angie. They were all pretty girls, looking so much a combination of Sarah and Sean, it was startling. Which, of course, was hard for Angie. Not only did she and Sean always have the specter of Amy between them, but they shared these girls as well. For Angie was considered their aunt, as much as Sean was their uncle, and so they shared the Delano girls as their nieces.

  The oldest, Samantha, was now six, then came Stella, age four, and the baby, Sheila, now one. Angie had pushed them to name the last baby something different, something wild, something that didn’t start with an S, but the whole S-thing fit Sarah’s linear mind. The girls surrounded Angie for the next hour, delighting her, and taking her mind off of all her troubles.

  Scott came into the kitchen, into the mess of girls, with his warm and welcoming smiles and kisses, until he spotted Angie.

  “Angie?” He blinked and straightened to his full height. “When did you get here? Are you okay?”

  Sarah shook her head with a laugh. “Why don’t you start by saying hello to her?”

  Scott grinned chagrinned. “Why don’t I start by hugging her.”

  He grabbed Angie in a bear hug and spun her around. She was five eleven. It should have been impossible for him to lift her feet off the ground, but at six-foot-five, Scott made her seem small. He grinned happily.

  “How long do we get you for?”

  She couldn’t help but laugh in response to his greetings. He always made her feel like this. By a simple smile her uncle seemed to say, Angie, you’re home. You. Are. Home. If only she could describe how that felt to someone like her.

  “You get me for a while…if that’s all right with you.”

  He scrunched his brow up. “Of course, it’s okay, and you know that. You never have to ask for permission to be here. This is your home.”

  Home? Seaclusion? It made her stomach cramp up to contemplate. She wished home wasn’t in Seaclusion. Seaclusion that held her past, her mistakes, her mother and her daughter. And where she feared no matter how hard she tried to escape, to change, Seaclusion would also determine her future.

  Later after dinner, Angie settled into the guest room, which was pretty much considered her room. She pulled her cell phone out, there were five messages, four from him. One from his wife. They being the reason she’d run. She thought about not answering him. But in the end, she text messaged back, with a brief; she was fine, she’d gone home to work on her thesis. No more. Just a settle, she was gone, leave her alone.

  If only it would all be that easy. He text back within moments; Love u. Miss u. Please, let me see u.

  Tears stung her eyelids. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t face him. It was time to change her number, so that her boyfriend’s wife would quit calling her, and quit calling her the names she spent most of her time calling herself.

  Angie pressed a finger to her forehead. The pressure again. Damn it. She got out of bed, and walked quietly down the hallway, careful to not wake any of the Delanos. She went out the back door, over the deck, and sat on the top step of the stairs. The yard was dark, the sky clear and full of stars. There was the splash and roar of the ocean down on the beach. An echo into her childhood. Hadn’t that always been the noise that was the backdrop of her life? And it still drove her crazy; the repetitiveness of it, the way it never stopped, never started, just was. Ocean surf seemed to soothe everyone else. It had always left her feeling sad, alone, small to a universe that didn’t really need or want her.

  Angie glanced over toward Scott’s shop, surprised to see the lights on. It looked like a trailer was parked alongside of the shop, lights on inside and out. Trailer, but not like trailer trash. It was new, big and shiny. There was a small deck built up to its door. Who lived there? Sarah’s parents?

  That seemed a stretch, considering Sarah’s mother was agoraphobic, and hadn’t left their child hood home in something like two decades. Wouldn’t Sarah have mentioned if her mother had suddenly left the house to live with them?

  Curiosity won out over her bout of self-pity, she got up, and headed across the grass toward the shop. The blinds were pulled over the windows, so there was no way to see inside. She couldn’t imagine picky, pristine Sarah allowing just anyone to rent a spot off their land. Who then lived there?

  There was laughter, a woman’s pretty tickling laugh. Not wanting to be caught staring at the trailer, she started to back up toward the deck. But she stopped dead when the door opened, and the light from the inside arced over the grass, and spot-lighted her.

  Out came a woman. She looked pretty enough, generically pretty, and vaguely familiar. A name from high school flashed through her brain, it was Rachel something. That made no sense, why would Rachel of high school be on the Delano’s land?

  A tall silhouette filled the doorway and it all suddenly became clear who lived there and who Rachel was visiting: Sean Langston. Angie stood there rooted. Frozen. Holy shit. Sean now lived here? In a trailer? Why? Why hadn’t anyone mentioned it to her? She sure as hell wouldn’t have run here to share a house with him.

  Sean wore jeans, shirt un-tucked, and unbuttoned. The couple walked to a little blue sports coupe parked in front of the trailer. There Sean leaned down, kissed her quickly, and then helped her into the car, and shut the door. The woman waved as she backed up and pulled off toward the road, using the shop’s driveway, which as it turned out was Sean’s driveway.

  Sean glanced toward where Angie stood in the middle of the yard. There was no way he hadn’t noticed her
standing there. He walked across the small gravel driveway, closer to her. He stopped on the edge of the grass, and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Evening, Angie. What is it you’re doing?”

  “Me? What are you doing here?”

  “I live here.”

  “Since when? And why?”

  “Why not? Rent’s cheap, I get privacy, nice yard, space.”

  “But a trailer?”

  He sneered at her. “Yeah, a trailer. Screw you, Angie, you can judge me all you want. You always have. Always found me lacking. Fine. Whatever. My sister is helping me out.”

  “Why, you run up debt? Get kicked out of your apartment?”

  “None of your business, now is it? Like you’re so much better than me. Because why? Because you’ve spent the last six years in school? Like you could have so much more than I do? At least I don’t have to run from who and what I am to live my life.”

  “Oh right, I should settle like you? Never once leave Seaclusion.”

  “Leave for what? Whatever sent you running back here?”

  “I’m not running back here. I’m just visiting.”

  “Right. Sure. You came back to visit. Bullshit.”

  She clenched her fist. “I can visit, they are my family too.”

  “When you need something. Isn’t that always the way with you?”

  “I doubt I’d have come if I realized you lived here.”

  “I don’t live with them. I live here. We respect boundaries.”

  “Boundaries? You’re a hundred feet from their kitchen.”

  He stepped closer. “What are you so worried about? That you won’t be able to resist me? Too close for comfort?”

  Angie rolled her eyes. “Too close because I can’t stand you.”

  “There’s news. So…why are you wondering around the yard in your nightgown at one in the morning?”

  “I was curious what your trailer was all about. I didn’t know you were in it. So your girlfriend is Rachel what’s her name?”

  “Winters. Rachel Winters. She was in your class. And she’s a friend, that’s all.”

  “Right. I get it.”

  He shrugged. “No. You’ve never gotten me. Not since we were kids have you gotten me.”

  She was surprised by his tone. Serious. His tone was serious. Since when was Sean serious? Joking, rude, glib, sarcastic, that was Sean. Serious? Caring of what she in particular thought of him? Never. He seemed to never care what she thought and was only interested in antagonizing her. He exerted effort to be off putting. Suddenly, he cared what she thought of him? Which admittedly wasn’t much. But that was the thing; he had never cared before.

  “Look, I’ll stay out of your way if you stay out of mine. No reason to upset Sarah. She hates when we can’t get along. So in front of them, we’re nice. Otherwise, whatever.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll stay out of your way. What do you think I’ve been doing for the last eight years?”

  Sean turned on his heel and walked away. She stared after him perplexed by the sudden anger that radiated off him. What was that? She headed back to her room, surprised that for a few moments, she had forgotten the reality that sent her running outside.

  A reality that included a long running affair with one of her professors, a man twenty years her senior, who she had been desperately in love with before she found out he was married. He was married and the father to two daughters who were twenty and sixteen, and all of this had exploded when the oldest daughter had found out who and what Angie was to her father. The daughter had not only publicly announced it all, but told her mother. The wife had found Angie and nearly physically assaulted her, illustrating completely what Angie’s actions had done: she’d broken up a family.

  But the worst was still to come; because no one yet knew she was pregnant.

  Sean slammed the aluminum door of his fifth wheel. Almost snidely informing her highness, Angela Peters it wasn’t a damn trailer, but specifically a fifth wheel. A twenty-four foot, thirty thousand dollar fifth wheel that was probably nicer than any little apartment she’d had in her pursuit of higher education. He threw his long frame into the recliner, that faced his flat screen TV. He drank from the beer already open and warm on the table beside his chair.

  Angie was in town only because something had to be going on with her. More than the usual. She never came to town. And certainly not unexpected. Never. It was years in between visits. Usually the Delanos made their yearly trip to visit her. She called a lot. Scott mentioned everything Angie was up to, more than he wanted to hear, but even he knew her showing up like this was an indicator that something big was wrong.

  Angie had high-tailed it out of Seaclusion before the ink on her high school diploma was dry. She had left that summer, getting a job working at Starbucks in Seattle where in the fall she had started at the University of Washington. She only visited a handful of times in the following years, usually only around something concerning the Delanos.

  Sean had known Angie their entire lives, being a year apart in school, they started to become friendly the summer before his freshman year, when she’d been a sophomore. They shared crappy parent stories, getting about each other what it felt like to not want to go home. Or to not feel loved by your own parent. He’d been able to talk to her about things he hadn’t talked about with anyone, even Sarah. Over the course of weeks, they’d started to hold hands, eventually they kissed, and then kissed some more, until they’d had sex.

  It had all been almost innocent. Their making a baby had come about slowly, a progression of furthering what they did together each time. By the time they had sex, he’d been in love with her. Or at least as in love as a fifteen-year-old, hormone raging boy, could be. For he now knew, they’d been dumb, little kids with no business having sex. But they did have sex. And as far as first times went, in his estimation, it hadn’t been terrible. It hadn’t been fumbling, or pain filled or embarrassing. It had been slow, inexperienced, sweet almost.

  But immediately, Angie quit talking to him. Completely quit looking at him. They’d pass in the hallway and she’d refuse to make eye contact with him. He took the hint. He had taken to ignoring her as she had him. At the time he had no idea, their one time having sex, had resulted in Angie being pregnant. She didn’t tell him, or anyone until she was almost six months along. He had found out from two girls who were gossiping about her at school. It had sent him skipping class, going off alone for hours, completely stunned. Completely freaked out. There had been no one to go to. No one to talk with. Even Angie. He’d felt utter guilt that he’d done this to her, but had no idea what to do about it.

  It wasn’t until she was nine months along that she admitted he was the father. Scott and Sarah had called him, and his father demanding they meet with them. He’d confronted Angie for the first time with all of their family looking on. He’d frozen up and hardly glanced at her, only once in a while staring at the belly that was now huge. He hadn’t known what to do. He could barely fathom he’d created a baby.

  To this day it astounded him that at fifteen his deepest feelings about Angie being pregnant, was how embarrassed he was by the whole thing.

  He hadn’t known what to say or do, so he’d done nothing, and said nothing. He had let everyone else decide what to do with the baby. He had shown up at the hospital when Sarah said he should. He saw the baby after she was born. He made bumbling attempts to hold the small infant, but he hadn’t understood the magnitude of what was going on.

  He’d created a child with Angie. But Amy had never felt like his child. He didn’t long for Amy, and he didn’t even think of her as his. He saw her around town, with the Tylers. Hell, he and Luke even grabbed beers together once in a while, no big deal, but none of it had anything to do with his biological connection to Amy. She simply wasn’t his.

  She was, however, Angie’s. He knew it on a level probably no one else did. He witnessed her grief over the years, while she watched, observed, and longed for Amy. Her expre
ssions always reflected her guilt. The greatest driving factor that drove her out of Seaclusion, and made her hate him, was their daughter. She would never forgive him for being at peace they’d given their child up for adoption.

  At sixteen Angie had been unlike other girls. She had been quiet, serious, and lacked the giggling factor that so many other teenage girls had. She had been struggling then, as she struggled now, with her mother, and with her lack of acceptance. He had found in her someone he could be himself with, without censoring what he said. Their brief, young affair had never been about using her. He had genuinely cared about her.

  While pregnant, Angie had been overweight, hid behind her long hair, lack of make-up, and acne, until she’d had Amy. By junior year, Angie had shed her weight, grown several inches, and become a tall, long, leggy blond. She, to this day, never wore make-up, didn’t primp in the traditional way other girls did. She was totally natural, everything about her, from her long, straight blond hair, to her blue eyes. Even her clothes matched her natural athletic ease and grace. There was something about her, stunning in her naturalness, in the way she didn’t seem to try or want to be beautiful, but she just was.

  He was the walking reminder of every mistake she had ever made. He was the main reason she hated it here. He reminded her of what she’d lost. They rarely got along. He rarely bothered to try. She’d judged him at the age of fifteen and never seemed to give him the benefit of the doubt that he just might have grown up since then.

  And he had grown up. He had changed. He looked back and cringed how he’d handled Angie and Amy when he’d been fifteen. But most of it was due to the fact that he’d been fifteen.