Winter (Four Seasons #1) (3 page)

“
None of that
should have been a problem.”

I just stare
at her. If the tables were turned, Morgan would be rolling her eyes
right now, but my mother forbade that particular trait when I was
younger. I haven’t been able to do it ever since, despite how much
I may want to. “Well it would have been pretty difficult. And
illegal. And besides, I was a mess. My dad…”

A horrified
expression develops on Morgan’s face. “Ahhh crap, Ave. This guy
didn’t…was he on the force when your dad, um…”

Finally. Some
quick thinking on her part. I focus out of the window, trying to
shut out the memory of Luke Reid on my doorstep, telling my mom
that my dad was dead. “He and his partner were the first officers
on the scene. He’d only been on the job four days. Nothing like
that had ever really happened in Break before. He puked in my mom’s
rose bushes.”

“
Man, I’m
sorry, Avery. I’m hopeless sometimes. There just seemed to be
something there, so I thought…”

“
There
is
something there.
Luke’s always felt sorry for me. I suppose being the one to find my
dad and the others imprinted itself onto his brain and now he can’t
shake it. We used to meet up whenever he was back in town. Mostly
we’d grab a coffee and he’d just talk at me.”

Our
conversation stops when the waitress arrives with our food. I stare
glumly down at my waffles wishing I’d ordered something different.
Pushing the plate away, I go back to staring out the
window.

Sam O’Brady.
Jefferson Kyle. Adam Bright.
Sam O’Brady.
Jefferson Kyle. Adam Bright.

“
That other
cop said he was in a band, right? I wonder where they play. Hey, if
you want me to answer your phone later, I can ask him if you don’t
wanna seem too eager?” She clearly didn’t just hear a word I
said—that for the past five years I have associated Luke Reid with
finding out my dad was dead. The girl has selective hearing. I
shoot daggers at her and she shrinks back into her seat. “Or I can
tell him you have avian bird flu and you can never see him again.
It’s no problem. I am a master of deception.”

I allow myself
a small laugh and kick her under the table. “It’s all right. I can
handle it.”

But I honestly
don’t know if I can. Having Luke in my life here is like bringing a
piece of Breakwater into the relatively safe, happy world I’ve
built for myself at Columbia. It could ruin everything. When I
speak to him later, I know what I am going to do. I’m going tell
him the truth. He’ll have to understand that I want to put my past
behind me. Surely no one in the world could begrudge me
that.

******

My last class
of the day is Media Law and Ethics, one of my favorite subjects,
but I bolt out of the building as soon as Professor Lang excuses
us. Usually I hang back to catch him after class. He doesn’t seem
to mind that I have an exhaustive list of questions that always
needs answering. Today, though, all I want to do is get back to my
place and check my phone to see if Luke has called. I need to get
this over with. The calm that I’ve found in being utterly
inconspicuous here is going to be ruined until I tell him I don’t
want to meet with him anymore.

I take the low
steps outside my building at a jog and race up the four flights of
stairs to my apartment, hoping Leslie won’t be there. She spends a
lot of time studying in the library, especially after class, so
there’s a possibility that I’m going to have some privacy. When I
burst through the door, my heart sinks in my chest. Leslie sits on
the sofa with her headphones in, tapping her bare foot on the worn
leather as she types on her laptop. She glances up at me, cropped
brunette hair all over the place as usual, and gives me a half
smile, pulling out one of the earphones.

“
Good run this
morning?”

I wasn’t the
only person Morgan had woken up by banging on the apartment door at
five-thirty this morning. I pull a sour face and throw my bag on
the table. “Sorry about that. She’s incredibly pushy
sometimes.”

Leslie shrugs
a shoulder. “S’okay. I got up right after you left and squeezed
some study in. Everything worked out for the best.”

Leslie is a
New Yorker through and through. Her parents are internet business
gurus who set up a dot com company back in the early nineties. They
sold up about five years ago and have been comfortably living off
the interest of their amassed fortune ever since. Leslie’s studying
business in the hope that one day she’ll have a fortune of her own,
but in the meantime she’s okay with accepting the healthy amounts
of cash her mom and dad throws at her. She’s like me in some ways;
her bank account is always full but her parents barely know who she
is. At least she
has
two parents. And one of them isn’t Max Breslin.

I kick off my
sneakers and flop back onto the sofa, reaching my cell on the
coffee table where I’d left it earlier before classes started. I
normally take it with me, but I knew I’d be looking at it every
five minutes if I had it on me today. I didn’t need that kind of
distraction.

My heart
speeds up as I hit the start button. Nothing. No texts. No missed
calls.
Nothing.
I
blow out the breath I’ve been holding and toss my phone back onto
my pillow.

“
Expecting a
call?” Leslie asks.

I stare up at
the ceiling. There are sticky marks dotted all over it where
glow-in-the-dark stars were tacked to it when we moved in. I knew I
was going to get along with Leslie the moment she suggested we pull
them down. “Dreading one, more like,” I mutter.

She
hmm
s and goes back to her
studies. I set myself up at my desk, placing my phone beside the
keyboard so I can answer it straight away if Luke does call. He
probably knew I had classes all day and he’s waiting until this
evening. That thought makes my stomach roll. I spend half an hour
trying to type up the vague notes I scribbled in class, but they
are less than useless. I give up in the end, and I type in my email
account details and decide to clear out my inbox instead. Two new
messages wait for me.

The first is
from Amanda St. French. My mom. She filed the paperwork to go back
to her maiden name before they’d even finished shoveling the soil
into my dad’s yawning grave. She didn’t go to the funeral. It was
just Brandon and I. The priest banged on for twenty minutes about
the grievous sins committed by people in this life, and how we
needed to beg for repentance if we were ever to be accepted into
heaven. That had scared the crap out of me when I was younger. My
dad hadn’t been religious, and I was haunted for years by the idea
that he was burning up in hell because he hadn’t had the
opportunity to repent. After that, I spent a long time angry,
hoping that he really was burning in hell. Now…now I just don’t
know what I think anymore.

The subject
bar on mom’s email is blank as usual. Her message will be the same
script she sends me at the beginning of each month, detailing that
she’s deposited my allowance in my account. She always manages to
make it sound like I’m not grateful—not grateful that she is paying
my way at college, not grateful that she finally helped me escape
Breakwater once and for all, when she was the person who abandoned
me there in the first place.

Aviary,

Find attached
a copy of the remit for your allowance. Remember to keep hold of
these for your records. I have increased the amount this month in
light of the approaching holidays. You might like to do something
with your friends at Christmas. I am headed to Hawaii with my
sister. She’s had some troubles with her new husband and wants to
go snorkeling to take her mind off things. I assume you’ll be
headed back to Brandon’s for Thanksgiving?

Hope you are
well,

Amanda.

Aviary? I
choke back a dry laugh. She can’t even spell my new name. That
error could be forgiven by the fact that it’s new and she is still
learning to use it, but the other things, the other hurtful aspects
of the email, make my blood boil. She’s heading to Hawaii with her
sister for Christmas? Oh, I wasn’t under any illusion that I’d be
spending Christmas with my mother despite the fact that we live in
the same city now. No, I am more stunned by the way she said
my sister
instead of your
Aunt Clare. And going to Brandon’s for Thanksgiving? The real piece
de resistance is her sign off, though.
Amanda.
At least she used to admit to
being my mother. Now it appears that her sister is no longer my
aunt, and she is going to be Amanda from here on out. Tears prick
at my eyes as I stare at the screen, refusing to blink until the
text starts swimming.

I clear my
throat and screw my eyes shut for a moment. When I open them, I hit
the delete button. I am stronger than this now. I can’t let her
affect me anymore. The next email is from Brandon. I open it
wearily, and my temper spikes. Mom blind-copied Brandon into the
email she’d sent me. That was obviously her way of letting him know
that I was being foisted off on him for yet another
holiday.

Brandon had
been my dad’s best friend since elementary school. They’d played
football together through college and they’d fallen in love with
and married sisters. Brandon’s wife, Mom’s younger sister Melanie,
died from cancer when I was two, and Mom hasn’t been able to handle
Brandon ever since. She says he reminds her of Aunt Mel, so she
keeps him at a distance. Apparently it’s a repeating pattern of
hers, neatly bundling together all the things she wishes she could
forget.

Hi
Avery,

Looks like
your mom’s going to be busy this holiday. Want to come and join me
in my non-celebrations? You know how I don’t go in for that sort of
thing anymore, but it would be great to see you. We can burn some
pumpkin pie and smoke some crack just like the good old days. Let
me know if you need anything, kid. I’m only on the other end of a
telephone.

Love
Brandon

I’ve never
smoked crack in my life, let alone with my Uncle Brandon, but he
has a wicked sense of humor and he’s convinced the college monitors
our emails. He thinks it’s funny to set off some ‘red flags’ every
now and then. I have no idea if the college does monitor our
emails, or if smoking crack would actually even be a red flag, but
it still makes me smile. I miss him. But not enough to ever head
back to Breakwater. I am never going back there again.

I’m shutting
down my computer, promising myself that I’ll reply to Brandon
tomorrow, when the door knocks. Morgan’s too lazy to walk up to my
apartment usually, and so any visitors we get are usually for
Leslie. My roommate’s headphones block out the interruption,
though, so it’s left to me to answer. I’m really not expecting the
person on the other side of the door.

“
Luke? What
are you doing here?”

Luke’s out of
uniform and wearing a plain black t-shirt and faded-out jeans. His
look still carries a little of the skater style he used to rep in
high school, although there’s a rocky, harder edge to him now. It’s
always a surprise to see him in his casual clothes. Right now I’m
surprised to see him period. He shoves his hands in his pockets,
drawing my attention to the fact that he’s gotten some fresh ink.
Black swirling lines peek out from below his shirtsleeves. Nowhere
near low enough to ever be visible in his uniform, but still low
enough for me to see them when he hunches his shoulders.

“
Sorry, I know
I should have called but I got this feeling yesterday that you were
gonna blow me off, and—”

Leslie yanks
the door open wider behind me, tugging her headphones out of her
ears. “Hi!” she says, her voice all easy breezy. “Are you a friend
of Avery’s?”

Luke smiles
back cautiously—a rueful expression. “Yeah, I’m a friend of
Avery’s.”

This is only
second time he’s ever said my name. It sounds strained coming out
of his mouth. I stare at him, trying to figure out what the hell he
is doing here. What he is doing
inside my
apartment building
.

“
Are you going
to invite your friend in, Avery?” Leslie asks. I can hear the
suggestion in her voice:
I can leave if
you need me to
. I sigh and give Luke a look
I hope isn’t too difficult to read. Morgan always says I’m pretty
transparent with my emotions, so there’s a good chance he’ll be
able to tell I am seriously pissed.

“
No. We’re
going out for coffee.” I head into my room to collect my jacket and
my purse and when I return to the living room, Leslie is still
standing by the doorway, twirling her short hair around her finger.
It’s embarrassing to watch her devour him with her eyes. I’m used
to it, though. Unlike Luke, who, despite how often this happens,
never seems to get over the embarrassment factor of being the cause
of such predatory looks in women.

I storm past
him into the hallway and set off walking without checking to see if
he’s following me. After all the times I’ve met with him and all
the weirdly awkward conversations we’ve shared, I still don’t know
him well enough to be openly mad at him. He must sense the fact
that I need some space because it isn’t until we get to the exit of
the building that he says anything.