Seclusion Read online

  Since graduating high school, he’d bumbled around, drank too much, partied too much, and gotten into some minor trouble with the law. He’d been lost. No direction, no real goals. He’d never been like Sarah, who had always known what she wanted and worked to get it. Sarah was focused, career driven, straight A type with all the trimmings of extracurricular activities. He’d been the opposite, barely made D’s to graduate high school, he had never been particularly good at anything or motivated to do anything much. He’d spent high school playing video games, cruising around, or playing pranks. Nothing bad. Nothing good.

  So finally, after the DUI, Scott had gotten hold of him, and told him to shape up before he ended up in jail. Sean’s parents hardly ever said anything to him, either way. Never seemed to care much what he did. Scott was the first man to have it out with him.

  After the DUI, Scott had shown up at his house, dragged Sean into his truck, driven him to the shop, given him a small square of sand paper and said start sanding. Pissed off, Sean had started sanding the quarter panel on some old piece of metal shit that Scott was restoring. Scott told him he’d better be there tomorrow, seven sharp. No more bullshit.

  And that was it. Sean now had a job, expectations, responsibility, and also, it meant someone cared. He’d shown up the next day and never stopped working. Eventually learning all about the craft Scott had to teach him. And four years later they made awesome cars together, with a solid reputation, and Sean loved it. Loved working with his hands, learning the different mechanics and details that went into each project. Loved more, the final product.

  So screw Angie’s disdain toward him. Who was she to judge him? Like she even knew what she was judging. Still, it sat hard on his chest that she so clearly, easily, thought he was such a loser.

  Chapter 3

  Sean came into Sarah’s kitchen and found Angie there. She barely looked at him before she scrambled to her feet, collected the text book in front of her and headed down the hallway. Sarah turned from the fridge and smiled at Sean.

  “Morning, Sean.”

  He walked over and poured some coffee. His sister’s only culinary talent was coffee or tea. “What’s Angie’s deal? Why is she here acting so tragic?”

  Sarah sighed, and set her cup down. “I’m not sure yet. She won’t say. But it’s something. Something big. But until she’s ready to talk about it, I’m trying to let her be.”

  “Letting something be, so not your best quality.”

  “So not,” Sarah said smiling. She knew she was a complete control freak and worked hard to contain it. “So, where you headed?”

  “Got some parts to pick up for Scott, new paint color. Thought I’d get an early start.”

  Sarah nodded. She was dressed in a tan suit to get to her shop. She ran her clothing shop part time, raised three girls, kept her house always perfect and seemed in a good mood about it most of the time. Sean got exhausted watching her. She expertly dealt with it all.

  Sometimes he wondered at what expense to her sanity.

  “Hey, Sean?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you take it easy on Angie this trip? Please? I know you two have an awkward relationship at best, but she seems really fragile right now. Maybe just be conscious of that.”

  Sean shrugged. “It’s not me. She hates me, thinks I’m a loser, ask her, she’ll tell you. But I’ll do my best to not annoy her, even though I don’t usually try to.”

  Sarah studied him, silent for a moment before she spoke. “You know, don’t you? You’re not a loser? Mom and dad, their issues, none of it is you.”

  He smiled at his older sister, ten years his senior, she sometimes took him on as one of her own kids to worry over. “I know.”

  She hesitated, studying him. She didn’t believe him.

  But the thing was Sarah wasn’t the child who had resulted from the night their mother had been brutally raped. Sarah wasn’t the one, that their father didn’t know for sure was his or not. Sarah wasn’t the Langston family’s walking reminder of what had destroyed their mother’s life twenty-five years ago. The Langstons had become frozen, broken, forever ruined by the abduction and rape of Tina Langston, his mother. He had showed up nine months after the rape.

  So as much as Sarah wanted to believe it wasn’t him that had destroyed their parents, he knew differently. It was. It really was him.

  And that was the one thing Angie Peters, at sixteen, had understood about him, that to this day, no one else had; simply he was born already broken.

  He left the kitchen, got in his truck to try and forget memories that so easily plagued him.

  Later, Sean was seated in the high backed booth, hidden from the crowd of the diner, as he ate his dinner. He hadn’t been in the mood for anyone, so he’d staked out a corner booth, hoping no one would find him. He liked Seaclusion, but sometimes he got tired of knowing someone everywhere he went.

  He was about to ask for the check when he recognized Angie’s voice. He froze. Put his hand back down. She was a few steps back from his booth, obviously she hadn’t seen him. She had just said hello to her mother. Vanessa Peters was the cook for the diner. Vanessa was now, standing behind the opening to the kitchen counter.

  “So what? You’re back, huh? Heard you were out at Scott’s,” Vanessa said, her tone frigid, Vanessa hated Sarah, and resented that Angie chose to stay with Sarah and Scott.

  “It was a spur of the moment visit, I didn’t call anyone.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Do? Nothing. I’m visiting. You. Scott. The kids.”

  “You aren’t ‘just’ visiting. You’re running. You want to pretend Sarah’s your damn mother, but she’s not. I am. I know you, Angie, even if you don’t want to think I do. What is it you’ve done you can’t tell her highness Sarah?”

  “Nothing, Vanessa. I’m finishing up my final project for my master’s degree. It’s going well. I should graduate by June.”

  “Great. So…what, Angie? You finally going to work? Or waste more time?”

  “I’m not wasting time.”

  “You sure as hell aren’t gaining it.”

  “I’ve been in school, Mom. Most people think that’s a positive thing.”

  “Most people who don’t have to work to pay their rent maybe. What business do you have spending that kind of money? How much are you at now?”

  “It’s about more than that. It’s about a future. A job, a career. It’s—”

  “It’s so you’re not me. I’m not stupid.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “So what did you do that drove you here like this? He married?”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever you’re screwing that’s got you running back here all scared. Figured he must be married.”

  “It’s not exactly—”

  “I’m not Sarah. I can handle it. What is it?”

  Angie finally sighed. “One of my professors. He’s older, has kids, and they, his wife and kids found out about me. Things got nasty.”

  Instead of sympathy, Vanessa snorted. “Apple didn’t stray as far as I thought it did. What are you thinking? You think this fancy-ass professor is going to leave his wife? For you? Check his record, he probably has a student like you a year. This one just happened to get him caught. God, you’re embarrassingly naive.”

  “That’s not what this is. He loves me.”

  “Yes, it is. The mistress never makes over the wife. You’re the affair, the mistake, the thing he and his wife will work out in expensive counseling. You’re the loser here, Angie.”

  “I didn’t know he was married.”

  “Yes, you did. You knew. You always thought you were above such things, didn’t you? That only I would do things like that, not you. Turns out, yeah, you too.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Let me ask you this; did it stop once you found out?”

  Angie didn’t answer, Vanessa snorted and shook her head. “Just as I thought. You’re not so sp
ecial.

  Maybe now you can come off your moral high horse.”

  “Please keep it to yourself.”

  “Don’t you mean keep it from Sarah? What’s her highness going to do when she finds this out? Finds out you are someone’s home wrecker? She’s married, whose side do you think she’ll take, Angie? Yours or the wife?”

  “She’ll be disappointed in me.”

  “Exactly. I’m just smart enough to not be surprised.”

  “That’s the difference, you never thought anything of me, at least Scott and Sarah want the best out of me, and for me. Why can’t you?”

  “Funny, how I’m the one you can tell the complete truth to though, isn’t it? At least you don’t have to pretend to be different than you are with me.”

  “But I am different. I mean, this was all a mistake. I didn’t mean any of it.”

  “And yet, the situation is what it is. Doesn’t matter if you knew before or after you started sleeping with him, you’re still the home wrecker. Maybe now you’ll quit running so hard from me, from yourself, from exactly who we are.”

  “I’m not like you, Vanessa. I am not you.”

  Vanessa laughed, a hollow dry sound. “No, you want to think you’re not. You trim your life up a little fancier than me, but come on, you’re me. You were pregnant at sixteen, so was I. I ruined a couple of marriages, so have you. You run fast and hard from me, you ever wonder why you have to work so hard to get away from me?”

  “Because I don’t want to be you.”

  “Because pretending to be Scott and Sarah’s perfect little daughter is better, huh? When you’re not even their daughter. You’re the relative they can’t get rid of. They got their own family to deal with now; you really think they want you now?”

  She shut her eyes and gritted her teeth. “They do want me.”

  “Keep telling yourself that. Keep repeating it and maybe it’ll be true. Ask yourself this though, how come you aren’t running to Sarah with what you’ve done? I think you and I both know why.”

  Angie’s voice faltered. “I wanted to let you know I was in town. See how you are. I didn’t come here to fight about Scott and Sarah, or bring up old resentments. I just wondered how you are.”

  “I’m the same. Working my fingers to the bone to pay for a crappy apartment now that Scott sold my house out from under me.”

  “It was his childhood home! His house. He had every right to sell it,” Angie said her voice inflamed. Angie had grown up in that house. A house that Scott’s family had owned and left to him. After Scott met Sarah, they had let Angie and Vanessa stay in the house. To Sean’s knowledge they hadn’t even charged her rent. She never had a leg to stand on in Sean’s opinion, but it didn’t stop her from whining or throwing her temper tantrums. Nothing made Vanessa Peters happy. Especially not her daughter’s need to move up in the world.

  “It was my house.”

  “He paid for you to live there for years after he found out you were responsible for someone stalking Sarah. Scott’s always been fair to you.”

  “I didn’t know he’d end up stalking Sarah. You know that.”

  Sean remembered the story. A man Vanessa had dated spent a summer stalking Sarah, as a result of what Vanessa started as a joke. It wasn’t until Sarah was in danger did they finally figure out it all stemmed from Vanessa. And still Scott had let Vanessa keep his house all so Angie was able to remain in her childhood home to graduate high school.

  “Look, I have to get back to work. Unless you want to order something.”

  Sean imagined Angie’s silence was disappointment. Finally, she said, “No, Vanessa. I’ll let you get back to work. See you around.”

  “Yeah, see you.”

  He got up after Angie left. Vanessa straightened when she glimpsed him.

  “Spying now?”

  “No, unwilling victim. What the hell is wrong with you? Why do you have to be such a bitch to her? She’s your daughter. Your own flesh and blood.”

  “Yeah, well she’s always thought she was so much better than me. Turns out, she’s not.”

  “She didn’t start out thinking she was better than you, you were always so damn mean to her. Still are.”

  Vanessa snorted. “Listen to you. Aren’t you ever going to learn, Sean? She thinks she’s too good for you, you’re never going to be any different to her. You and me, we’re the same in her eyes. Don’t you get it? When she looks at you, she sees every mistake she’s ever made, and that I’ve ever made. I know how you sniff after her, Sean Langston. I’ve always known. She doesn’t know, does she? She doesn’t even see you. She looks right through you with those cold stares of disdain. Don’t think you’re anything more to her than I am. Once you finally admit that to yourself, come talk to me about how you want to treat her.”

  “Difference is you’re supposed to be her mother.”

  Vanessa shrugged. “She hasn’t needed me in a decade. She pretends I don’t exist. Don’t think I don’t know. What am I supposed to do about that? Let it be? I don’t need that kind of disdain from that girl.”

  Sean shook his head. Vanessa was a miserable person. She was only forty, but looked sixty. She wore her make-up too thick, her skin had wrinkled from too much tanning, too much booze, too much disappointment and anger in life. She was small framed, tiny, almost pretty in a used up kind of way.

  She leaned across the counter and put a red tipped nail on his hand. “What are you up to tonight?”

  Sean’s stomach dropped at her insinuation. “Nothing with you.”

  She stood up, a small smile crossing her face. “That wasn’t always the case now, was it? Just what would your long lost love think of that, huh, Sean? Imagine how that would go over with her.”

  Sean shrugged Vanessa off, and grabbed his jacket. “Don’t threaten things you can’t back up. You don’t want her to know any more than I do. And you had better let things stay in the past. I swear to God, Vanessa, if you tell her, you’ll regret it.”

  Vanessa smiled an evil little smile. “Who are you most worried about? Your stuck up sister or the girl who won’t even look at you?”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Vanessa.”

  “Listen to you. Such language from the boy. I must have you really sweating. Maybe you’ll think twice about treating me as if you couldn’t be bothered. When we both know, you can be.”

  Sean turned his back on her, walked out of the café, to the street. The cool, salty air felt good to his inflamed skin. Damn that woman. She got to him like no one else did. He hated her in ways he hated no other woman, yet it hadn’t stopped him either, from sleeping with her on occasion. A sort of punishment he always felt dirtier for after it was done. Yet, he did it.

  Why? He could never totally articulate why. It certainly wasn’t out of like, or out of attraction. It was out of a sort of strange need to punish himself, punish Angie, and punish his parents, his sister even. When the pressure of acting okay got to be too much, he’d at some point run into Vanessa Peters, and end up thumbing his nose at everything he worked for to keep good in his life.

  Chapter 4

  Angie left the café where her mother worked, and stepped onto the main street of Seaclusion. It was a small, pretty, picturesque, ocean-side town. The beach, of course, was the primary attraction. It was the only claim to fame that Seaclusion had; most of the tourists came and went with the summer season.

  Why anyone would choose this small town as a destination-away spot was a mystery to Angie. She didn’t understand the draw of the beach. She turned down an access point that had a dozen cars driving to the beach. The beach ran forever each way, an endless horizon of wide, brown, sandy beach, to white-washed surf splashing, running, streaming over the beach. Along the beach were rolling sand dunes covered in bent over grasses that eventually trailed off into the dark green scrub pines that were farther inland.

  It was landscape that Angie had gazed on her entire life. Her entire childhood was spent in this small town. And always the be
ach had felt desolate, the way it ran off forever into the horizon, the way the waves came in and out, in and out, forever and ever. Her entire life the beach had looked just like this, sounded just like this, and smelled just like this. It never changed. While a river ran into a lake, or into an ocean, you could see across it, and see in it; the ocean was endless, fathomless, too big, too deep, too much for her to enjoy.

  It made her feel hollow and empty. Much as her encounter with Vanessa left her.

  Angie crossed her arms over her chest, and rubbed her arms for warmth against the breeze that constantly blew along the beach.

  Vanessa had always been the main force in her life. No matter how much she tried to concentrate on Scott, on the good in her life, it had always been her mother’s influence in her life that won out. That left her as a child, feeling inept, inadequate, and lonely. She’d been tall and gawky at every age. She’d had long, straight, lifeless hair that in her opinion and Vanessa’s, matched her personality; simply she was lifeless, flat, boring. She couldn’t help it. She’d never been giggly, flirty, or charming. Not like Vanessa when she so chose. Vanessa could get any man into bed if she tried hard enough. She hid the nastiness, the moodiness, the meanness for her daughter.

  Angie was the daughter Vanessa never wanted. At sixteen, Vanessa had already been kicked out of her own house, when she hooked up with Scott’s older brother, Brody Delano, and they had mistakenly made her. Vanessa kept her and moved in with Brody’s family; his brother Scott, and father Jasper. Before she’d been born, Brody had run off. Never to come back. Angie had never met her father. Never even heard from him. But Jasper, Angie’s grandfather, had let Vanessa stay. Angie vaguely remembered her grandfather. He was a mean, big man. She remembered him sitting in his red recliner growling for her to hush up. Grab him a beer. For God’s sake, quit leaving all her shit where he was going to fall over it and break his neck.

  The kindness, the love, the attention had always come from Scott. As long as she could remember, her Uncle Scott had loved her. He’d been ten years old when she was born. For years they had been more siblings than anything. Then suddenly, Jasper died, and Scott became everything to Angie. Her entire stability depended on the then twenty-year-old Scott. He’d done it too; he’d stayed with her and taken care of her.