Chapter Forty-Eight

Beaufort, South Carolina

October 27

W hen Clara found Miles waiting on the sidewalk outside the movie theater, she said goodbye to Very, who was quick to disappear, and greeted him with a cautious smile.

“I thought we could walk around a bit,” he said.

After popping into a local cafe for a caffeine fix, Clara and Miles strolled through the quaint town, window shopping and sipping their coffees—Clara’s with cream and cinnamon, Miles’s black.

“I love Calliope and the other women, too.” Clara inhaled the fresh air. “It’s nice here.”

“Yeah, Tox did well.”

“He’s a trip. I can see how you two are twins,” she said.

“Really? Sure, there’s the resemblance, but we’re so different.”

“Yes, but it’s easy to see how you fit together. You’re the performer; Tox is the audience. But most of all, you’re the risk-taker, and Tox is the guardian.” The feeling of Miles’s hand at the small of her back reminded her Tox wasn’t the only brother who was a protector.

Miles guided her across the way to the park, and they settled on a bench looking out at the water. “When we were kids, I got us into all kinds of crazy shit, but he always had my back.”

“How old were you when you were separated?”

“Twelve. When we were eight, our parents died. We lived with our grandmother, but she passed away, and when we were twelve, we went into the system. Tox had a foster mom near where we grew up. I was adopted.”

Clara turned to look at him. Miles’s face was calm, but she sensed his pain beneath the surface.

“Papa told me about your adoptive family,” she said.

“Family,” he scoffed.

Miles ran a hand down his face. “It was just a fucked up situation. The couple didn’t want a kid. They needed a kid. The man got in trouble with some local mobsters and ratted them out to the feds to save his own skin. They were slated to go into Witness Protection, but The Man knew there was a mole in the Marshal’s office. So he and his wife escaped on their own.”

Clara guessed the rest. “And they figured no one would be looking for a couple with a child.”

“Exactly. The Man gave the Feds enough to get the guys who were after him indicted and then escaped to Europe.”

“You keep calling him ‘The Man.’”

“That’s all I ever called him. He certainly wasn’t a father. I don’t think he ever learned my name. He called me ‘The Kid.’”

“Oh, Miles.”

“It wasn’t so bad as long as I avoided him. I learned to be invisible. Just another part to play.”

“And if you didn’t avoid him?”

Miles tapped the scar over his right eye. “You want to know something crazy? When I found Tox two years ago, one of the first things I noticed was his scar. He has almost the same one over his left eye from a shrapnel injury in the SEALs.”

“Mirror images.”

“His is worse.”

“Our scars are our own Miles. It’s not about seeing whose is worse; it’s about healing.”

“What about you, Clara? Have your scars healed?”

“My childhood was the only reality I knew. Looking back, it was hard, but at the time, it was just life. Looking through trash was a treasure hunt. Begging was performance art. That’s just how it was.”

“I unfortunately had something to compare my situation to,” Miles said.

“I’ll listen if you want to tell me.”

Miles pulled her to her feet, and they continued walking, pausing at storefronts and pondering random purchases. He looked like he had a ten-ton steamer trunk weighing him down. He asked Clara if she thought Nathan’s twins were too young for bikes and if Steady would use a kayak. She began to think he wasn’t going to open up when, in the same bored tone, he said, “We moved constantly. The Man couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Wherever we went, he sought out the local wise guys, bragging about his connections, trying to insert himself, and, soon enough, we were running again. We ended up in Detroit.”

“That must have been hard, all that moving.”

“It wasn’t the moving. It was the silence. I was a prop. After a couple of years, I had outlived my usefulness; I’m sure word got back to the people after us that The Man was with a woman and a kid. If he thought he could have gotten away with it, he would have killed me.”

“Oh, Miles.”

“It was really bad in the beginning. I was a smart aleck with a big mouth. That first month, we lived in a village outside Milan. I was in the kitchen practicing Italian. The Man walked in, picked up a pan, and hit me in the back of the head. He stood over me and said, ‘Lesson one: shut the fuck up.’ If lesson one was not to be heard, lesson two was not to be seen. So I lived like a ghost, sneaking around, never leaving a trace.”

Clara thought back to all the times Miles straightened up after himself, the times she wondered if he’d actually even been in her apartment.

“But even with all my stealth, I couldn’t control my sleep.”

“What do you mean?”

“I would talk in my sleep. Calling for Miller or just crying out. I tried sleeping with a sock in my mouth, but I ended up spitting it out. One night, The Man hauled me out of bed, dragged me down the stairs, and shoved me in this mud room off the kitchen. That’s where I basically lived.”

No wonder he had responded so strangely to the mud room in their rental. Clara wanted to take Miles in her arms, comfort him, somehow convey that that neglected child was safe now; there were people in his life who loved him. But she didn’t want to risk it. Miles was talking, and she wanted him to expel this poison from his childhood.

Miles stopped walking. “You know the rest. The house blew up because of a faulty gas line. Really, his mob associates finally caught up with The Man and his wife. The police didn’t have the budget or desire to investigate—or they were paid off. So, when no one could find me, they assumed I was in the house as well. And just like that, I was free.”

Clara remembered the old shoe box in Miles’s dresser and the puzzling contents—the newspaper clippings, the gun. Her stomach roiled as she imagined what it all meant. She opted not to mention it. Miles was talking; that was enough for now.

“Where did you go?”

“I used to hang out at the local library. The best way to be invisible was not to be at the house. So, I’d bike over there after school and do my homework and fuck around on the computers until it closed. The Man’s wife, Angelina, would put a plate out for me every night at seven. The food had to be eaten and the dish washed and put away by seven-fifteen. So that was my routine: school, library, home, hide.”

“But you weren’t at home the night of the fire.”

Miles stopped walking, visibly tensing. He stared blindly through a pharmacy window. Clara thought he was deciding how much to share. When he turned to face her, Clara could tell by his guarded expression that she wouldn’t get the whole truth.

“Anita, the librarian, took me under her wing. I guess a teenage boy loitering in a library every day for four hours sent up a red flag.”

“Anita helped you,” Clara confirmed.

Miles guided Clara across a cobblestone street. “She became kind of a surrogate mother. I was at her house the night of the fire. Anita knew what was up with The Man—his real name was Paulie Marcone. I hid in her basement for two weeks while Anita gathered money and clothes for me. She didn’t want me to go, but I was determined. She drove me to a roadside bus stop a few towns away, and off I went.”

Clara took his hand. It was the wrong thing to do. The small act of intimacy jarred him from his confession.

“Hey, do you think Calliope would like a foot massager?”

Clara wanted to take Miles by the shoulders and shake him. She had looked in that box in his dresser; she knew there was more to the story. But she also knew that Miles Buchanan wasn’t going to share anything else today. He had told her more than he had ever shared before, and that was enough for now. Ever the optimist, Clara decided that was a step forward.

“I think she would love a foot massager.”

“Come.” Miles pulled her into the store.

Clara stopped him at the threshold. “When did you meet Papa?”

“You’re determined to get the whole saga, eh, Bluebird?”

“Quite determined.”

“About a year later.” Miles flagged down a salesperson. “I picked his pocket.”

“How did I not know this?” Clara laughed.

He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “I am a riddle wrapped in a mystery.”

She took his hand as he pulled away. “Just so you know. It doesn’t make me hate you any less.”

His smile was warm and genuine. “That’s my girl.”

Clara was surprised Miles continued the story. “I lifted Reynard’s wallet in Grand Central Station. As you can imagine, it was fat. I was about sixteen at the time. Young and dumb. I went straight into the terminal cafe and ordered half the menu. Two bites into my cheeseburger, Reynard slides into the booth.”

“What did you do?” Clara pulled a boxed foot massager from the shelf.

“I gave him back the wallet.”

They continued to browse as Miles talked. “Reynard pulled out three hundred dollar bills and set them on the table. Then he put his card on top of them. I picked it up and said, ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?’ He said, ‘If you can’t figure that out, then I have no use for you.’ And he left.”

They set their purchase on the counter, and the salesgirl rang them up.

“I started working for him the next day.”

“Doing what?”

“Whatever he wanted. That’s when I started developing characters. I didn’t want any of the sketchy fucks Reynard had me contacting to recognize me. So sometimes I was a kid in a hoodie. Sometimes, I was a low-level dealer. Sometimes, I wore a suit. It was a dream job for me. I could disappear into any role.”

Clara made a contemplative sound somewhere between a hmm and a scoff.

“What?”

“You know it’s funny to me that you think of all these personas you play as other people.”

“They are other people,” Miles said.

“Miles, they are all you. Sure, you may not be a mobster or a duke or a subway musician, or the heir to a diamond mine, but you are brave and sophisticated and talented. Roll them all together, and it’s you, Miles.”

“I didn’t realize your doctorate was in psychology, Bluebird.”

“I’m not a shrink, Miles. I just know you. I see you.”

“Glad it all makes sense.”

“Almost everything.” It was the perfect time to ask about the shoe box in his dresser, but when he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple, Clara couldn’t bring herself to shatter the moment.

T he little white house was quiet as Clara set their purchases on the kitchen table and put the kettle on. Miles moved beside her and turned off the burner.

“I know you looked in the box.”

Clara slid over and allowed him to cage her against the counter.

“Yes, I looked.”

“What did you see?”

“There were newspaper clippings about the house fire.”

Miles pinned her with his chocolate gaze. “And?”

“I saw an old handheld camcorder.”

He stepped closer and cupped her cheek. “And?”

She blew out a breath and whispered, “And a gun.”

Miles bent forward and murmured into her ear, “Ask me, Clara.”

“Did you kill those people who adopted you?”

When he wrapped her in his arms, she knew the answer didn’t matter.

“No, Bluebird. I didn’t kill them.”

Clara nodded into his chest, not wanting to leave the comfort of his embrace.

“But I saw who did.”

M iles didn’t know what had compelled him to tell Clara, but now she knew. He had laid himself bare, and while part of him felt relieved, the overwhelming part was shaken by his uncharacteristic behavior—so Miles did what came naturally: he withdrew. He straightened the kitchen and busied himself doing nothing.

Clara stood on the periphery, rearranging the refrigerator magnets, shifting from one foot to the other like an impatient child.

“Oh, for fuck sake, just ask,” he said.

“It’s not about the house fire.”

“Good.”

“It’s about Tox.”

Miles stiffened, but Clara continued. “You thought he was dead.”

He didn’t respond.

“Why?”

“Anita, the librarian, told me Miller had died. She gave up a child for adoption years earlier and spent years trying to unseal the records but was never able to find the child. I think in her mind she was sparing me that heartache—helping me get a fresh start.” Miles turned to the window to hide his shame. “The fact is, I could have easily discovered the truth. I always thought if Miller had died, I would know.” He tapped his chest. “Inside. He wasn’t hiding, wasn’t using a different name. Hell, he was a college football star. I could have found him.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked.

“Because I wasn’t me anymore, Clara. How could I have my brother when there was no me? We wouldn’t fit. There couldn’t be an us. I didn’t want to see that.” He pinched his eyes closed in pain. “It happened anyway.”

“What?”

This was a confession he dreaded more than the revelation about his past. It was the most soul-wrenching part of his childhood. “You don’t see it. His friends don’t see it, but I see it, and I sure as hell know Tox feels it. We aren’t connected. Every once in a while, that old connection appears, and it’s just a painful reminder of how much we’ve lost. I can’t find my way back, Clara. I’m trying.”

She surprised him when she said, “Well, stop.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’ll come, Miles. Let trust build. Let your mind remember what it was like to have people who care and love you.”

Miles pulled her close and kissed Clara until his body was on fire for her.

“Does that include you?” he asked, running his nose up her neck.

“Of course,” she answered in a breathy voice. “We’ve always trusted each other. Not the love part, though, because, you know, I hate you.”

That’s my girl. He smiled and kissed her again. “I hate you too, Bluebird.”

Miles scooped her up, carried Clara to the bedroom, and laid her on the quilt. Standing above her warm, welcoming body with those ocean-blue eyes filled with mischief and hope, Miles felt every ounce of resolve drain from his body, every brick in the wall crumble in a heap at his feet. He had no defenses against her. How could he? Clara was the water that filled the well inside him. He would die without her.

Peeling Clara’s jeans and panties down her mile-long legs, Miles didn’t waste another second and set to work showing Clara Gautreau that she was his.

T he minute Miles’s eyes found hers, Clara knew this was different. He drove into her with the same force, fucked her with the same passion, but he was present. He was Miles.

And he was making love to her.

As her orgasm hovered on the brink, Clara prayed she wasn’t imagining it. She lifted her hips to meet his rhythm as he continued to move. Faster, harder.

“Miles.”

“I’m here, Clara.” Miles ran his nose up and down the length of hers. Then he took her mouth, his lips matching the ferocity of his strokes. They came together, connected in every way.

When Miles fell to his back and pulled her into the nook under his arm, Clara didn’t speak. As earth-shattering as that had been for her, she knew it was a monumental shift for Miles. So she did the only thing she could and wrapped an arm around his waist and held him close. After several long minutes, Clara glanced up.

Miles Buchanan was asleep.