“I’ve missed you,” Claire tells Marc, and James relaxes slightly, even if only momentarily. She rains kisses on Marc’s forehead. “I have something for you. Julian, too.” She smiles at his older son.
Julian has managed to maneuver around James to hug Claire. Then his sons wait, anticipation making them fidget, as Claire dips her hand into a reusable shopping bag. She presents Marc with a watercolor paint set.
James almost falls back a step. A paint set, from the woman who made him return the very first set he’d received. It’d been a birthday gift from Aimee. She made it very clear during his adolescence that he needed to remain focused on studies and sports, not frivolous hobbies.
A memory lurches across the field of his mind. His thirteen-year-old self, sweaty T-shirt plastered to his chest, grass-stained football pants hugging his hips, scuffed helmet dangling from his fingertips, arriving at his bedroom after football practice to find Claire riffling through his drawers.
He had stopped in the doorway, heart pounding in his rib cage. “What’re you doing?”
“Miranda found paint on your shirt.” Claire slammed a bureau drawer, moved on to the next one.
The housekeeper. She must have seen the shirt in the laundry. Oil pigment stained, so he made sure that when he painted at the Tierneys’, he only wore ratty shirts—ones his mother wouldn’t miss should he have to throw them away.
Her hand disappeared into another drawer, pushing aside sock balls. One dropped to the floor. She wouldn’t find any more stained clothes, or paintbrushes, or pigment tubes, if that’s what she was looking for. He’d become quite the expert at keeping his frequent visits to the Tierneys’ a secret. His reason for spending so much time there was twofold. He really liked Aimee. She was cool and fun to hang out with. But he really loved to paint, and Mr. and Mrs. Tierney had given him a space in their home so he could do so. They even replenished his art supplies.
Why couldn’t his parents do the same? Why couldn’t his mother encourage him to pursue his passion like the Tierneys? His skill had flourished through their support.
Claire paused and leveled her gaze at him. “Are you painting?”
Why did she despise that he was?
He forced down that thick feeling in his throat and looked her in the eye. “No.” He’d also become skilled at lying.
“Then explain the paint on the shirt Miranda found.”
“It happened at school during a class project.” He wanted to retract the words as soon as they left his mouth. Like a fumbled handoff, he’d dropped the ball. He wore a uniform to school. “Sister Katherine gave us permission to take off our shirts if we had on an undershirt,” he embellished. “She didn’t have enough smocks for the whole class.”
She closed the drawer and approached him, unintentionally kicking aside the sock ball with the pointed toe of her designer heel. She cupped his dirt-crusted cheek. Her gaze pinged from his stringy hair to his chapped lips and back up to his eyes. Her lips parted on a resigned sigh.
“James, the shirt Miranda showed me is old and stretched out. Don’t wear clothes like that to school. You have a drawerful of clean, white undershirts.” Her nostrils flared slightly. “Go shower.” She patted his cheek and left.
James looked at his grass-stained, sweat-drenched socks, wishing she had as much interest in his art as she did in his attire and hygiene. At least the Tierneys framed his artwork. The most recent one he painted of a quarterback in the throwing stance right before the ball is released made him think he was better at wielding a paintbrush than passing a football.
James watches his son inspect the paint set. Marc doesn’t have any idea how monumental a gift this is.
“You’ll want this, too.” Claire shows him a pad of watercolor paper.
Marc makes grabby hands and takes the paper. “Gracias, Se?ora Carla.”
“You’re an excellent artist, just like your father.”
“What the—” James bites off the curse. He should be enjoying this moment with Marc. He should be happy Marc has an activity to keep him occupied as they get settled. Instead, anger and envy wrap their viselike grips around his chest.
He hates feeling this way. He’s read Carlos’s journals. He knows why his mother despised his painting.
It still hurts, though.
Claire ventures a glance up at James, but her eyes slide away when she registers his dark mood.
“This is for you, Julian.” Her generally steady voice wavers. She gives him a soccer ball.
“Cool.” He tucks the ball under his bent arm. His other soccer ball is packed up in a box somewhere in the garage.
“This, too.” Claire reaches inside the bag. “It’s a football.”
Julian snorts. “That’s not a fútbol.”
“An American football,” she clarifies with a quick smile. “Your father used to play. He once had a good passing arm. You’ll have to ask him to show you.”
Julian shrugs one shoulder. “Sure. Whatever.”
“Julian, go kick the ball around with your brother out back.”
“Why?” he asks, startled. “I haven’t seen Se?ora Carla in almost a year.”
“She and I need to talk.”
“I want to talk with her.”
“Julian,” he snaps, loud and sharp. The name bounces around the kitchen.
Julian pales. He looks from his father to Claire and back again. He swallows, and James knows he senses something is off. How does his dad know this woman if he can’t remember her? He shuffles his feet and angrily slams the soccer ball into the floor. He catches it after one bounce and tucks it against his waist. “Come on, Marc, let’s get out of here.” He clamps a hand around Marc’s nape and pushes his brother out of the kitchen.
When the French door to the backyard slams loudly, James swings around to glare at his mother. Claire twists her lips. She picks up the knife and slices into the egg sandwiches. “You would have sent me away had I told you the truth,” she explains about her time in Puerto Escondido. “I wanted . . .” The knife stills, hovering above the next sandwich.
James tightly folds his arms over his chest. “Do tell, Mother.” He sneers, any patience for his family long depleted. “What did you want?”
She raises her chin. “I wanted to meet my grandchildren.”
A troubling thought moves through him like a cold front. Gooseflesh bubbles the skin on his arms. Did she know from the outset Thomas faked his death?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Claire says, aligning sandwich halves on plates. “Thomas didn’t tell me about you or why he kept you hidden until after Aimee found you. He also told me what Phil did to Aimee, and that he thinks he tried to kill you in Mexico.” She pauses, wiping a mayonnaise drip from a plate edge with her fingertip. “Needless to say, your brothers and I aren’t on the best of terms.”
I had three sons. Once.