It's One of Us(84)

He doesn’t want to know this. Lindsey is still talking, purging herself, expecting to be shriven by telling the truth at last, finally, but he tunes her out.

Everything makes sense now. He is up and across the room, pacing. His long legs eat up the space and he is more like a caged tiger, back and forth in front of the fireplace. He wants to run. He wants to get back on the plane and leave. He wants to hold Olivia and cry for what they’ve lost.

Lindsey is staring into her glass as if the Scotch can fix everything.

“Why wouldn’t she just tell me? I would have married her on the spot. Happily.”

“Because she didn’t want to hold you back, and she didn’t want to hold herself back. She was just a kid, for God’s sake. Neither one of you could have managed.”

“But she could have told me. Let me be there for her.”

“She was going to. She changed her mind when you didn’t come back for Christmas. And then, you know. Life. Dad died, she was there for Park, and they got back together. I shouldn’t have told you. She’ll never forgive me. I don’t suppose you could just forget I said anything?”

At his annoyed look, she smiles weakly. “Didn’t think so.”

He plops back down on the couch. “Why now?” he asks.

She swallows the rest of her drink. “Because I think Lucía’s right. This secret is eating me alive, and Olivia, too. It’s time. I leave it up to you whether you want to talk to her about it. I’ll tell her I told you, and—”

“No. Don’t. Please.”

She cocks her head to the side like a puppy.

“It doesn’t matter, Linds,” he says. “There’s nothing you or I can do to change what’s happened. The past is the past. If she wants me to know, she’ll tell me.” He hugs his sister, wipes the tears from her cheeks. “You’ve carried this long enough. Let it go. I can bear her secret now.”

She gives a shuddery sigh in his arms. “You’re a good guy, Perry.”

“Yeah, I know. I just have one question.”

“Shoot.”

“Does Park know?”

He feels her head move against his chest. “No. If he found out, I think that would be the end of them.”

What is he going to say? How is he going to approach this?

Perry is good at breaking a major project into pieces, establishing a checklist of all the things that need to get done. Wrapping his head around the way his life could have gone if the woman he loved had been honest with him about her pregnancy? Not so much. There isn’t a to-do list manager in the world powerful enough for this.

He takes Lindsey’s car and drives to the track attached to their former high school. It’s been upgraded recently, the chip seal dark and gleaming, the white lines freshly painted. It’s deserted. He jumps the fence and sets a leisurely pace. He loved track in high school. Middle distance, long distance, steeplechase, all of it. He wasn’t fast, but he could go for hours. He’s stuck with the discipline, uses a good run to clear his head. But here, now, watching the sun go down over the trees, he is assailed by memories.

Their whole lives, but especially as they grew older, Park was the star, Perry was the backup. He was always fine with that. Perry had never been interested in having a crowd around him. He loved his camera, he loved his time outdoors, he loved his brother’s girlfriend. It was enough. He didn’t feel like he fit in—hell, who did fit into the high school ecosystem, really?—but he was happy, liked his classes, his friends. He dreamed of the world and was ready to get out there as soon as he could. A child, then, would have changed his trajectory dramatically, and he understood why Olivia had made the choice she had. If it would have been an upheaval for him, it would have been sailing the Titanic straight into the iceberg for her. A catastrophe for a young girl who’d slept with a boy only to wound her boyfriend.

He thought it was more between them, but when she’d given up and gone back to Park, Perry just assumed he was wrong. Now he wonders if the guilt defined her path as clearly as a runway of lights. Olivia was—is—a loyal person. The whole time they were together, he knew she felt guilty. Park got her first. Perry was always going to be second place.

Slap, slap, slap. His feet find a steady, comfortable rhythm. His mind calms. His heart, albeit broken, is steady and strong.

He is three miles in when headlights shine across the lot. The sun is almost down. He should probably head back to Lindsey’s. Regroup. The run has given him some clarity, at least. He doesn’t belong here anymore. This situation is not of his making, and it is getting out of hand. He has a life, an established life. And he has work to do. Major prep work for the climb. It’s going to be a bear, and he needs to have his head on straight.

You should talk to Olivia before you go, his monologue chimes in. You really should. Maybe she’ll want to leave with you, his heart chimes in, at which his brain laughs. What could possibly be different now than it was then?

He shouldn’t be here. He doesn’t belong here, in their lives. They all know it.

He follows the fence line to the parking lot, hops over. A woman is standing by the car. It takes him a second to realize it’s the reporter who interviewed Park and Olivia. Erica Pearl. Her hair is in a ponytail; she’s wearing jeans and sneakers, a windbreaker. Street clothes. There are no cameras, no news truck, only an ancient Land Rover parked three slots away from Lindsey’s Tesla. Not even a purse, and he doesn’t see her cell phone, either. She has come empty-handed. Her eyes are swollen; she’s been crying.