What I Never Knew Read online

  What I Never Knew

  Book 1

  CL Collier

  Copyright © 2018 by CL Collier

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or publisher.

  Cover Design by Amy Queau, Q Designs

  Editing by Editing4Indies

  Created with Vellum

  For all my friends and family who have supported me along the way. Thank you.

  Contents

  What I Never Knew

  Prologue

  1. Amanda

  2. Amanda

  3. Amanda

  4. Amanda

  5. Amanda

  6. Amanda

  7. Amanda

  8. Amanda

  9. Amanda

  10. Amanda

  11. Amanda

  12. Dax

  13. Amanda

  14. Dax

  15. Amanda

  16. Amanda

  17. Amanda

  18. Amanda

  19. Dax

  20. Amanda

  21. Amanda

  22. Amanda

  23. Amanda

  24. Amanda

  25. Amanda

  26. Dax

  27. Amanda

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by CL Collier

  What I Never Knew

  Book 1

  By: CL Collier

  Prologue

  Dax

  Do you ever wake up in the morning and just know something extraordinary is going to happen today? You have no idea why or where that feeling even comes from, but you just know it’s not going to be an average day. An energy is in the air, or maybe it’s a premonition of some kind. Whatever it is, that’s how I felt when I woke up this morning.

  It started out just like any other day. I got out of bed, showered, and got ready to go to work. My roommate, Chris, and I ate cereal together at the kitchen table as we did most mornings before work. We didn’t talk about anything in particular; we just enjoyed each other’s company. I’m a mechanic at my family’s auto shop, and Chris works as an engineer at the local dam. Since he got divorced and moved in with me, I admit it’s been nice to have someone around to talk to once in a while.

  I spent the morning doing an easy fix on a car, but now I have to work on a truck I’ve been dreading. I’m expecting that to change my day from mundane to fucking frustrating as hell. I still can’t seem to shake the feeling that something out of the ordinary is going to happen today, though, and I hope it doesn’t have to do with this beat-up truck.

  After an hour into the job, I’ve confirmed my suspicions. This truck is pissing me off. It probably should’ve been scrapped a decade ago, but for some reason, the owner still wants it running. Currently, the transmission is giving me a headache, and I think I need Dad’s expertise. I don’t often ask him for help anymore, but I’m at my fucking wit’s end with this.

  Suddenly, I see Dad come out of his office and practically run to the waiting room. Huh. I wonder what’s going on? I’ve never seen him move so quickly to get out there before. Maybe I should be more concerned, but I figure if it was something serious, our receptionist would have paged me on the intercom.

  I look back at the transmission, thinking Dad should come back through the shop any minute and I’ll ask him to help me then, but he doesn’t come back. I don’t want to bother any of the other guys and pull them away from the cars they’re working on. My curiosity about what Dad’s doing gets the better of me, and I decide to wash the grease off my hands and go see what’s up.

  When I walk through the door to the waiting room, I see Dad talking to three women. What the hell is this? They all look my age, but I don’t know any of them. They must be passing through town and had their car break down or something. But why was Dad in such a hurry to come out here, and why is he talking to them like they’re old friends instead of customers?

  I walk over, and they all look up at me. Dad introduces me as his son to the women, but he doesn’t tell me their names or why they’re here. This just confuses me even more. Who are they?

  The one sitting closest to Dad catches my eye. She’s beautiful. Long, golden brown hair with subtle waves, hazel eyes, and her skin is so creamy smooth and flawless except for a few freckles dotting her nose and cheeks, which are probably the result of the sun. She has makeup on, but it’s not overdone; it just accentuates her best features. She’s not from around here, that’s for sure. I would have noticed her before. And the way she’s looking at me makes me even more interested in her.

  Though it’s difficult, I try not to let her distract me and remember why I came out here in the first place. I need Dad’s help. “Hey,” I say to the women after Dad introduces me, but I only look at her. God, she’s pretty. I could look at her all day. I turn my attention back to Dad because I came out here for a reason. I glance back at her again briefly, and she’s looking at me still, but then she quickly turns away. “Can you come give me a hand for a second? I’m having an issue with the truck I’m working on.”

  Dad shakes his head and chuckles. “I’ll be right there.”

  I can’t leave the room without looking at her again. I realize the way I was so short with them probably came off as me being a dick, but it’s been a hell of a day, and I just need Dad’s help to finish fixing that damn truck. I didn’t expect to find him in here having a conversation with these ladies, one of whom has really grabbed my attention. I’ll have to ask Dad later who they are. Glancing at them again before I go back to the shop, I smile. “It was nice to meet you,” I say to them although my eyes don’t leave hers. They can’t. I’m just drawn to her. I really need to go back to work and get this truck finished, though, so I walk out the door to the shop.

  The minute I walk out of the waiting room, my body burns with regret.

  Chapter One

  Amanda

  Although I had a year to adjust to the fact I would lose my mom, the day she died was still incredibly difficult for me. I don’t think anyone can really prepare themselves for losing a parent. At her bedside in the hospital room, I held the same familiar hand I had held so many times in my life, crying as she took her last breath after fighting stage 4 cancer. The mix of emotions I felt were all contradictory, to say the least: grief for losing her, relief she was no longer suffering, regret for not doing more with her over the years, and most of all, thankful we had the close relationship we did.

  Her funeral was exactly what she wanted, and I managed to keep my eyes dry through most of it. I don’t think it’s really possible for a person to run out of tears, but I am finding myself crying less and less. I suppose it’s a good thing, but I also feel guilty about it. Like I should shed more tears because it’s too soon for me to stop crying or something.

  And now, here I am, a few days after her funeral, waiting at a restaurant for her best friend, Marla. Marla has been a huge help and support for me, so I wasn’t surprised when she said she wanted to have lunch with me. I’ve known Marla my whole life. She was my mom’s best friend, though we haven’t always kept in touch. We’ve seen more of each other this past year with my mom being sick, of course, because she helped my mom with various things like taking her to appointments when I couldn’t and offering her general support. What did surprise me
was when she called me the day after the funeral to arrange a lunch date. She was very insistent that it be sooner rather than later, so I agreed, and here I am.

  I look at my clasped hands, resting on top of the menu on the table. I notice my pink nail polish is starting to chip, so I make a mental note to repaint those tonight. It was my mom’s favorite color.

  Bored from sitting here alone while I wait, I sit up a little straighter and sweep my golden-brown hair off my shoulders. I take a deep, cleansing breath and look around at the other customers sitting near me in the crowded restaurant. Entertaining myself with a little game of people watching, I try to see if I can recognize if anyone else around me is also grieving. Am I the only one in the room who has just lost a loved one? Can I recognize the emotions permeating off a fellow griever? I know it sounds silly and ridiculous, but it makes me feel normal for the moment. Maybe it’s just the feeling that I’m not alone.

  I’m really not alone, though. Thank God for all my family and friends. I’ve had a lot of support—not only over the past week but also ever since Mom’s diagnosis. Even though my mom and dad divorced when I was eight, my dad and stepmom have been here for me through this whole ordeal. As an only child, I don’t have any siblings to lean on; my half-brother is much younger than I am, and we’ve never been close. However, I do have two of the best friends I could ever ask for. Krista and Laura have been with me through thick and thin. We may not be related by blood, but they are my sisters.

  Krista and I have known each other since junior high. We’ve been through so much together over the past twenty-five years, and I can’t imagine my life without her. Laura and I met in college. Although Krista did not go to college with us, the two of them became good friends through me. Coincidentally, Laura grew up only miles away from us in the Seattle area, so after we had graduated with teaching degrees from Western Washington University, we moved back to Seattle. Laura and I got an apartment together and lucked out by landing our first teaching jobs in the same school district. By that time, Krista was engaged and working for her family’s restaurant.

  The three of us still live in the Seattle area, although Laura and I are no longer roommates. She got married ten years ago and now has an eight-year-old son. She still teaches elementary school and married a high school English teacher.

  Krista is still married and now has three kids; ages twelve, nine, and seven. After the two older boys, she finally had her girl. She still works at her family’s restaurant while her husband works for Boeing.

  Unlike my friends, I have no husband or kids. I just haven’t met the right man yet; although I’ve dated a lot of the wrong ones. I’m okay with it, though. I am an independent woman. I never really imagined myself having kids of my own anyway. My kids are my students at the school. I teach fifth grade, and I am devoted to helping those kids of mine learn to be successful in life. You could say I have hundreds of kids.

  Also a teacher, my mom retired after thirty-three years when she learned of her cancer diagnosis. The timing couldn’t have been better for her. She found out she had cancer in July, and when she learned how intense her treatments would be, she decided to retire before the new school year started. Then, as if she planned to make everything a little less stressful for me and all her teacher friends, she passed away two weeks into summer break the following year. It sounds selfish of me to say this, but I’m so grateful things happened the way they did. I can’t imagine all the extra stress if I was trying to wrap up the school year at the same time as grieving the loss of my mom. It’s almost as if my mom, a teacher herself, understood how hard that would’ve been for me and waited until summer break to let go. So now I have the next six weeks to mourn without a care in the world.

  Being her only child, I inherited everything. She was on top of things as soon as she got her diagnosis, though. She immediately sold her house and rented an apartment. She said she didn’t want to deal with any type of home maintenance while she was sick. With the grim stage 4 diagnosis, I think she realized the odds were stacked against her. She didn’t want to leave her house—my childhood home—for me to have to clean out and sell. So last August, just a few weeks after her diagnosis, we cleaned out her house and put it on the market. After selling it in just two weeks, she used the money to pay off all her debt as well as help pay for her medical expenses. Her retirement pension paid her rent and everyday expenses.

  Over the past week, Laura, Krista, and Marla helped me move everything out of Mom’s apartment and clean it. There wasn’t a whole lot there, though. She had already given me most of her meaningful possessions to either keep or put into a storage unit while she lived in her small apartment. We hung on to the hope that she would pull through and beat the cancer. She planned to buy herself a condo or at least move to a bigger apartment where she could have all her belongings again after she got better. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in the cards for her.

  I plan to keep her storage unit. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, or even when I’ll ever really go through it all, but I can’t get rid of it. It’s her furniture. Her antiques. Her favorite clothes (I did donate a lot of her clothes, but I kept some outfits). It’s all I have left of my mom.

  To keep her memory alive, I have a few things inside my house. A few special family heirlooms, her favorite chair, and some family photos are now part of my home’s decor. Her chair, a comfy recliner where she always sat to watch TV or read, is now the most comfortable seat in my house. Not to mention, an urn filled with her ashes now sits on my fireplace mantel.

  I look around the busy restaurant again, taking in the beautiful view through the window next to me. Salmon Bay is just outside and teeming with fishing boats. It’s a beautiful July day. Of course, now that it’s past the Fourth of July, the weather in Seattle is gorgeous and sunny. It’s a local joke that it won’t stop raining until after the Fourth. Mom’s funeral was on the fifth, and even though the day before had been gray and gloomy, her day was full of sunshine.

  I look at the entrance to the restaurant and see Marla walking in. I wave to her, so she sees where I’m sitting. She waves back and starts walking toward me.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she says as she pulls out the chair across from me to sit. “Traffic was horrible.” As usual, Marla’s dressed in high-end clothing with her hair and makeup done just right. For as long as I’ve known her, which is my whole life, Marla has always dressed to impress, no matter the occasion. This was in contrast to my mom, who always preferred to shop at JCPenney rather than Nordstrom. Marla grew up with money and then married into it. Even though she also taught for a few years when she was younger, she quit once she had her own kids and didn’t go back to work. Although Marla is definitely in a different class than my mom and I are, she never made us feel any less. She is one of the nicest people I know.

  “That’s okay. I haven’t been here long,” I say to her.

  She sets a book on the table and hangs her purse on the back of her chair. The brown leather-bound book in front of her has me curious. It looks like a journal. I wonder if it has anything to do with why she wanted to meet with me.

  “How have you been?” she asks, giving me that same sympathetic look everyone’s given me over the past couple of weeks. Actually, now that I think about it, it’s the same look I’ve gotten for almost a year now.

  “I’m doing okay,” I tell her. It’s my usual response. People don’t want to know how I’m really doing. They don’t want to hear how I’m having trouble sleeping at night, or how I can’t watch TV or listen to the radio without seeing a show or hearing a song that somehow reminds me of my mom. Life sucks right now.

  “Are you really?” Marla asks, looking skeptically at me. She’s the first person to actually call me on my bullshit.

  Looking down at my hands in my lap, I’m not exactly sure how to respond. I’ve gotten by with my okay response, so I wasn’t expecting this.

  I cross my hands in front of me on the table and smile at her. “No, I�
��m not,” I tell her honestly, “but it’s getting easier. I’ll be okay.”

  Marla reaches across the table, clasping my hand in hers. “I know how hard it is to lose your mom. I lost mine just a couple of years ago. But you’re younger, and your mom was so young …” Her gaze leaves mine, and she looks out the window, blinking back tears. Seeing her so emotional triggers my own feelings. My eyes start to water, so I wipe them with the back of my free hand. “It was too soon for her,” Marla says, shaking her head.

  I’m still trying to hold back my tears as Marla moves her hand off mine to wipe her own eyes. Then she looks back at me and smiles. “But the good Lord wanted her home for some reason. We should just be happy we had her for the time we did and remember all the good times we shared.”

  I nod my head in agreement. Dabbing my eyes, I refuse to cry here in a crowded restaurant.

  A waitress approaches our table, takes our drink order, then gives us a few minutes to peruse the menu. Marla and I don’t really say much as we decide what to eat except for commenting on what sounds good and what we finally decide on. After the waitress returns with our drinks, she takes our food order, then retreats to the kitchen again.

  Marla places her hand on the journal she brought with her. “I have something for you,” she says. “I had strict instructions from your mom, so you need to listen to my spiel before I hand it over.”