The Truth of Letting Go Page 18

  “It was also Lilah,” Cece says, turning to me. “She helped me. She believed me when she didn’t have to.”

  I’m not sure if this is forgiveness, but it feels like it. The time we lost will never be found again. But even if it takes five years to do the right thing, at least you did it, right? At least I did it.

  “So spill it, you jerk,” Cece says, leaning back a little. She’s still sitting on her hands, probably so she won’t unleash more punches. “Who are you and why did you leave?”

  Thomas laces his fingers together on the table then pulls them apart, moving his hands to his lap. “When I was six years old, I was told I could never say my real name again. So, I didn’t. Not until just now.”

  “Man, you need to explain a little quicker,” Ezra says. “I’m freaking out over here.”

  Thomas nods, then pulls his teeth under his bottom lip. “Cece,” he says, reaching out a hand across the table. She doesn’t take it. He exhales slowly. “What’s the earliest memory you have of me? Lilah? What’s yours?”

  I shrug. “How would I know? We’ve known each other our whole lives.”

  He shakes his head, an ominous movement more than a disagreement. “You’ve both known me since you were four. That’s when Mom and Dad took me in, and later they adopted me.”

  I think back, flipping through memories of every Christmas and birthday party and all the days Aunt Summer babysat me at Cece’s house. When is my first memory of Thomas? In my mind, he’s always been there. Just like my parents and my grandparents and Mr. McMann next door. The older people in my life have always been there, like oxygen and sleep and the sun rising in the morning.

  “You were at Big Brother Camp,” Cece says after a long moment. “Mom and Dad told me my big brother was at camp and he was coming home. I remember thinking that was weird.”

  I don’t remember any of that, but Thomas nods. “You had just turned four. I was really happy when they took me home with them,” he says. “They had a nice house and it seemed like nothing bad ever happened there.” He smiles at the memory. “And nothing bad ever did happen, until the car wreck. It was a good family.”

  “I don’t understand,” Cece says. “Why wouldn’t they have just told me that? Why adopt a child and make up a lie that you’d been at a fake summer camp so I’d think you were my brother all along?”

  “It’s not as easy as that,” he says, tracing the etchings in the picnic table. Over the years, a lot of couples have used this table to declare their affection with a pocket knife. Some who weren’t as lucky in love as others simply drew designs, while others carved out the names of people who “sux”.

  Thomas gives us that warning look again. “What I’m about to tell you can never be spoken about, ever. Not for the rest of your life.”

  “What about my—” I begin, but he cuts me off with a sharp glare. “Not your parents. No one. Promise me.”

  “I promise,” I say, because the desire to know the secret is more overpowering than the guilt of keeping something else from my parents.

  “Promise,” Ezra says beside me. Thomas turns to Cece.

  “Why would I share your secret?” she says. “You should know me better than that.”

  He swallows. “I was born to bad people. They weren’t just shit parents, they were also a part of the mafia. Not the glamorous stuff you see on TV, but the part that wasn’t doing so well with the heroin turf wars in the Bronx.”

  My eyes nearly bug out of my head. That kind of thing is something you hear about on a special edition news broadcast, or see sensationalized in a movie. It is not real life. Not my life, anyway.

  Thomas continues, “One day my dad gave me a package and told me to take it to school and hide it where no one would find it. It wasn’t a bunch of clear bags of white stuff like his usual packages. It was a black box, velvety on the outside, and inside it had a ton of diamonds. I found out later they were stolen from the five families as retribution for some deal gone wrong years ago. They knew my dad took it. They killed my mother, and then they killed him, but not before getting him to confess that he gave the diamonds to me.”

  Thomas is a Texan through and through. He raised rabbits for 4-H in sixth grade, and he went camping with the boy scouts every year. I can’t imagine him living in the bustling big city of New York, not even as a kid. All of this is a little hard to take in. Beside me Cece shifts on the wooden seat.

  “So what happened?” she says.

  “A nosy landlord overheard the whole thing. Apparently, he was in the next apartment fixing the plumbing or something, and the walls were thin. Usually people didn’t snitch on stuff like that, but he went to the cops. These FBI agents came to my school and yanked me out of class, and put me in a black SUV. They asked where I hid the diamonds before they even told me my parents were dead. But I wasn’t a snitch, so I didn’t tell them. I pretended I had no clue what they were talking about.”

  “Shit, man,” Ezra says under his breath.

  Thomas gives a little shrug. “My parents weren’t good people. They were always drunk. They left me at home alone constantly. I’d seen my mother having sex with multiple men long before I even knew what sex was. When the police took me, they saved my life and they gave me a new one. Witness Protection.”

  His lips quirk to the side. “You think therapy with Aunt Carol is bad? Try being six years old and going through the witness protection program’s therapists. I was practically threatened to be killed if I ever told anyone who I was. They let me pick my new first name. I chose Thomas because it was the first name of my favorite teacher, Mr. Marcum. When they decided I was finally brainwashed enough to never tell anyone about my past, I was taken in by a foster family—your parents,” he says to Cece.

  “But they quickly adopted me and I became your big brother. I loved my new family so much that most of the time, I forgot I even had a past. It was just me, Mom and Dad, and my cute little sister. I loved the life I had with you guys.”

  Cece’s lips waver, and a tear rolls down her cheek. “They never acted like you weren’t their own. You’d think there would be some kind of hint, something that made this make sense.”

  He nods. “I know. They were the best surrogate parents ever, Cece. I miss them every day.”

  “So why did you leave?” Ezra’s clearly not as impressed with Thomas’s story of his horrific past. “Why’d you let us all think you were dead? Do you know how hard that was on us?”

  “I’m sorry, man. I am. You have no idea how many times I wanted to reach out to you guys. But after Mom and Dad died—” He stops and takes in a deep breath, letting it out sharply. “After I lost my second set of parents—my face was all over the news, man. It was everywhere. People were setting up fundraisers for the two kids who lost their parents. We were on the internet and the local news. It was hell. Even though I had adapted to my new life and mostly forgot about the old one, seeing my face the day it made the national news was the last straw. If the mob was still looking for me, they’d know it was me. You can change your name and cut your hair and move to the bottom of the country, but birthmarks don’t lie.”

  “So you faked your own death,” I say.

  He turns his palms up. “I faked my own death.”

  “You shot yourself?” Cece’s eyes widen. “Where?”

  He grins and lays out his arm on the table, pointing to a jagged scar across his bicep. “I cut myself with a pocketknife and let the blood drip everywhere. I was hoping it’d look like I got stabbed and thrown over the bridge.”

  “But there was a bullet casing on the scene,” Ezra says, lifting a brow.

  Thomas shrugs. “Happy coincidence.”

  “How the hell did you pull this off?” My voice doesn’t sound like me because I’m so stunned I’m surprised I’m still breathing. This entire story is so surreal; the last five years of thinking my cousin is dead, it’s all a little too much to process.

  “I had two hundred dollars in birthday money. I went straigh
t to New York City, found my diamonds, and sold some to get the hell away from there. I didn’t know where to go, and Texas was all I knew, so I thought I’d hang low for a while and figure it out. I bought my Jeep, and then I found an apartment in the ghetto with this old man landlord who didn’t verify how old I was, so long as I could pay the rent on time.”

  Overhead, that bird calls out to its bird friends. There’s a few of them fluttering around in the tree now.

  “I went to Florida for a little while, but that place is stupid hot. Ultimately I kept coming back to Texas because I wanted to be near you guys. I’ve dyed my hair a million different shades just to seem like a different person. Then I met Robin. She’s in school to be a professional makeup artist. I told her I’m embarrassed of this thing,” he says, pointing to axe shaped birthmark on his temple. “So she covers it up with makeup when we go out.”

  “Does she know?” Cece says softly.

  He shakes his head. “She doesn’t know a thing. It would implicate her. It’s implicating you guys, too. You can’t know about this at all. Just forget all about it when you leave, okay?”

  “So that’s it?” Cece says, slapping her palms down on the table. “You tell us about your secret life and then we have to go back home and pretend it never happened? I have to march through each shitty day of my life acting like my brother is dead?”

  “You have no idea how badly I wanted to see you again,” he says. The corner of his eyes crinkle in pain. “But I stayed away to protect you.”

  “So now you get to live with a pretty girlfriend having a fun life and I get to stay at home having experiences that make me cry at night because I think my brother is dead and he’ll never know about them? I have to wrap presents for people on Christmas knowing I can’t get you anything? That’s how this is going to be?” Her voice cracks and Thomas’s shoulders fall.

  “Cece…I’m so sorry. I don’t know any other way to do this.”

  It’s a miracle that Thomas is alive and breathing and right in front of me, but I find myself looking at Cece most of the time. I can feel her pain, sense the betrayal she can’t seem to shake. She watches her brother with a look of pain, love, and regret. Then she pushes off the picnic table and runs back to the Jeep.

  “You okay?” Ezra calls out and Cece nods. She grabs her backpack from the cargo area of the Jeep and produces that pink notebook she’s had with her this whole time.

  “I want you to have this,” she says, presenting the sparkly, slightly beat up spiral notebook to Thomas. “It’s everything you missed. Good things, bad things that happened. All the stuff I wished I could have told you but couldn’t because you were gone. I kept track of it for when I found you again.”

  Thomas’ lips press together, making his smile look more like a frown. He takes the notebook, running his fingers down the cover. “Thank you.”

  “So this is it?” Cece says, one hand on her elbow, her eyes watery. “We have to leave now?”

  “This is it,” Thomas says with a nod. “Look, I—” He rubs his forehead so hard the skin crinkles up. “I’ll find a way to keep in contact, okay? Something secret and untraceable. We just have to be careful.”

  Cece grins. “All of my contact info is in that notebook.”

  “Great.” Thomas stands and comes over to our side of the table. He holds out his arms for a hug, and for a small moment I’m afraid Cece might stop herself from going to him. The pain is slicing through all of us, after all.

  But even if he’s not her brother, he’s still her brother, and she knows it as much as I do.

  I let them hug and then I join in, wrapping my arms around both of them. Ezra does the same, and we all laugh at this spectacularly awkward embrace. None of us are supposed to be here right now because life isn’t supposed to be this way. It shouldn’t be filled with horrors and secrets and loved ones taken too soon. But it is. So we hug.

  But we don’t let go for a long time.

  The bus ride home goes by too fast. There’s not enough time to process the last few hours, the mind-blowing story of my fake cousin faking his death. I keep feeling like I should cry and be sad, or cry and be happy, or maybe just cry. What I do know, is that I’m not ready to end this adventure and go back to a life that was missing a very important person. I worry that once I walk through our front door, unpack my stuff and fall asleep for the night, I’ll wake up and it’ll be like none of this ever happened.

  Ezra holds my hand in the back seat of his friend Rolando’s old pickup truck. We arrived in Telico just after the park’s landscaping crew got off work, so he came to the bus stop to give us a ride home. Rolando doesn’t talk much besides an occasional head nod and “si,” but that doesn’t stop Cece from holding a conversation with him. She’s full of energy, that one. Talking about the mall at The Woodlands, the Bill Bosom Band, and how every time someone left the Greyhound bus bathroom, an automatic spray of air freshener filled the cabin. “It’s so wasteful,” she says. “What if they were just peeing?”

  She has the distinct talent of talking about every single thing we did, but leaving out any details pertaining to finding her brother. To an outsider, we’re just three friends who went on a random road trip. And that’s all it can ever be, for the rest of our lives.

  I hope I can be that smooth when recalling my memories of this week. The bombshell of Thomas not only being alive, but being not Thomas is so mind blowing that it’s hard to think of anything else.

  Cece does a great job, though. I’ve never seen her so brightly lit up, like she doesn’t have a care in the world. And maybe, at least for the moment, she doesn’t. I snuggle against Ezra’s shoulder, enjoying the moment. I’m not ready to ask what we are yet, if I’m his girlfriend or if we’re still figuring things out. Kit’s going to have a heart attack when I tell her I’m sort of dating my dead cousin’s old best friend.

  Rolando pulls into our driveway. I’d expected the house to look the same as always, with Dad’s car still gone and no surprise fires consuming the roof or shattered windows from a burglar. But it’s still a relief to see it in real life. There are two UPS packages on the front porch and everything is fine.

  We got away with it.

  I squeeze Ezra’s hand. “Will you be okay going home? You could stay here a while if you want.”

  He brushes my hair behind my ear, his fingers soft on my cheek. “I don’t think we should push the rule breaking any more than we have already. If Mrs. Monroe came home early and saw me, she’d have me shot.”

  “That’s not really an exaggeration,” Cece says from the front seat. She turns to Rolando. “Gracias, por el… ride…to mi casa?”

  He chuckles. “De nada, seniorita.”

  “What about your dad?” I ask Ezra.

  He shrugs the hair out of his eyes. “He’ll get over it. He has no idea I took the RV and it’s probably been delivered back to him already.”

  “You sure?” I ask, grabbing his arm. I don’t know what kinds of things go on in his household, but I want him to be safe.

  “You don’t need to worry about me,” Ezra says, placing his hand on top of mine. “My dad can keep the RV. I’ll find another way to move out. Come on, I’ll walk you to the door.”

  “That’s okay,” I say, stopping him. Cece gets out and heads to the back of the truck where we’ve tossed our backpacks. I glance at her as I unbuckle my seatbelt. “I think I need to spend some time with my cousin.”

  Ezra nods. “I understand.”

  I lean into him, wrapping my arms around his neck. His skin smells like the free soap from the gym. It’s hard to believe that shower was just earlier this morning when so much has happened since then. I lift my chin and Ezra is there, waiting for a kiss just like I’d hoped. Our lips are warm, and tentative. We’re not exactly experienced in this kissing thing and it’s weird doing it in the back of someone’s truck. I pull away quickly, heat rising to my cheeks.

  He kisses the top of my head. “I’ll call you later.”

>   “Good luck with your dad.”

  Outside, Cece taps on the window. “Wrap it up, lovebirds. I have to pee!”

  “She can’t get inside without me,” I explain as I throw open my door. It’s for the best if I’m in a rush to get inside, because leaving Ezra and that adorable grin of his is almost as hard as keeping the secret for Thomas.

  “Well, there’s some good news,” Cece says as we get inside and I lock the door behind us, leaving the house alarm off.

  “What’s that?”

  “Ezra already knows your parents, so you won’t have to suffer through any of the awkward meeting-the-parents phases now that you’ve got yourself an official boyfriend.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’ll still be awkward.” I roll my eyes. “And he is not my official boyfriend.”

  “No worries,” Cece sing-songs as she dashes off to the bathroom. “I’m sure we’ll get to talk all about it in therapy!”

  In the morning, we make quick work of turning the house into something that looks lived in. Cece and I grab shirts and sleep clothes, ruffle them up, and then toss them in the laundry basket. I chug a few cans of soda and toss them into the recycling bin in the garage. Cece lobs a couch pillow on the floor and changes out the hand towels in the kitchen.

  We have six meals of frozen casserole dinners, lasagnas and lunches. Mom will expect them to all be eaten and there’s no way we can go through that much food in the one day we have left before they get home. Since they’re all in disposable aluminum containers, I suggest just tossing them in the trash because trash day is tomorrow and our parents will never find out. But Cece’s face crinkles up at the idea of wasting so much food. We call the local soup kitchen, and not only are they thrilled to get a donation of frozen homemade meals, they send someone to come pick them up from our house.

  We spend all of Friday on the task of making sure the house looks believable. It might seem a little insane as I pull off half a roll of toilet paper and throw it away, but my mom has the innate ability to tell when something’s not quite right, and neither one of us wants to deal with her suspicion after the week we’ve just had. We both know it’ll be the task of a lifetime to keep Thomas’s secret a secret, so all of this hard work is completely worth it.