Filed to story: The Lingering Kiss of Farewell Novel
he asked curiously.
“Where, in New York or Virginia?”
“Does it matter, Calvin, and yes I asked that she be present, so I could speak with her myself.”
Wil answered him
“I guess not at this point in time.”
He murmured. He wasn’t allowed to go near the woman, kind of didn’t want to either at the moment, see her injured and know it was all his fault. That weighed on him in more ways than one, kind of kept him in line and away from her.
“You could have told me Wil.”
He stated,
“I would have handled it fine.”
Though a part of him doubted himself even as he heard Wil speak, because as much as he didn’t want to look at her injured, another part of him was also annoyed that he’d not gotten to be there himself. Understood he couldn’t be with that restraining order, but a part of him wanted to be, and he knew it. The woman conflicted him completely.
Maybe it really was just best if Wil dealt with everything to do with her. He’d likely have yelled at her or lost it even, because he was unhappy about the fact that Marilyn, had just up and vanished away from him, when he was just trying to do the right thing for her. It was just like what Marrin had done to him. She’d moved in the shadows and not told him anything at all, and for what? Just to get away from him and nothing more, they had some of the same tendencies were alike even if they didn’t know each other.
Including her using a local company in her state. All she had to do was put the samples in the bag, and send them to the company when she was ready
Liam had advised her, as her lawyer, to do the test, and then they’d go from there. Though he’d also told her it was his opinion that they were Calvin’s children, something she’d also agreed with, and this was just a formality that would give beyond a doubt proof that was all.
Manlyn put that envelope in her bedroom. She would fill out the forms after the boys went to bed; Liam had already written the boys’ names on the sample bags. She’d just get it over and done with, and have them collected by courier and delivered to the DNA testing lab tomorrow.
She helped the boys with their homework while making dinner, and she knew things were finally getting back to normal with them as well. She could only hope it would stay that way after the truth was out.
She sat and filled out those two forms after the boys were in bed and sleeping, because she didn’t want to risk them seeing what she was doing. They would, she knew, ask a million questions about whom the man was and why now
Then she sat with the USB William had given her in her hand and stopped putting off the inevitable. The DNA would be back in two or three days, so this, seeing what was on that USB, was going to have to be done. She plugged it into her laptop and clicked on the first file.
She watched with fascination as Marrin, or as she now knew the woman to be her younger self, got out of a car at the airport. As she stood there before one Calvin Reeves, it was all visual. There was no audio to go with the recording, but she could clearly see that she was upset standing there before him, the camera angel was actually good, they weren’t that far from the entry doors to the airport.
She watched him finally kiss her, after some sort of words were had, and how Marrin or herself reacted to him. She looked unhappy about it, and then just turned to leave, only to have him yank her around and kiss the hell out of her, pulling her entire body into his, and holding her to him, before she could walk away.
Marilyn saw herself kiss him back, her hands all curled into his shirt, before she yanked herself from him, and dashed at her own tears as she did, then turned and strode away from him.
She watched him as he watched her younger self leave him there outside the front of the airport. She saw him make a phone call. Saw William turn up a few minutes later and give Calvin his luggage. They had a brief conversation, and then Calvin was gone, into the airport himself. That video captured him moving through the airport all the way to his own private jet out there waiting at the ready for him to arrive.
There was even footage of him getting on it, and it was taxiing and taking off. She thought that was about her seeing that Calvin hadn’t gotten off the plane; that William had told the truth to her about Calvin going to Italy.
The next file footage was of Marrin at the gate where she was to board her own plane. The time stamp was several hours later. She saw herself standing there looking down the gangway to the plane and watched, what Marilyn thought, was the beginning of a panic attack. The way Marrin touched her chest and tried not to look at the small gangway that would lead her to the enclosed aircraft she was to get on.
She understood that, Marilyn herself still couldn’t get on a plane even now, knew she was going to be enclosed in a confined space and couldn’t deal with it. Her heart would race and her breathing would quicken, and she would feel suffocated just thinking about where she was going to be. Everything she saw in Marrin was exactly how Marilyn reacted herself to that very thing.
Then Marin was just gone off to the bathroom for many minutes before coming out. She’d not gone brok to to get on it, she walked back through the airport, didn’t even once hesitate or look back just walked out the front doors and got into a cab. That was where that footage ended,
It was clear to Marilyn, that Marrin, her younger self, wasn’t going to get on that plane at all. It was more than weird to see herself do these things but not have any memory of it happening. She’d kind of thought it might actually jog her memory and she was certain that was one of the very reasons William had given this to her.
To try and help her remember her past, she didn’t know if it would work or not, though a part of her did want to recall if there were going to be good memories, but another part of her was almost terrified that everything she’d seen of Calvin Reeves was going to be just the beginning of a new nightmare, and she’d see she’d left him because he wasn’t a nice person.
She wanted him to be a good man for the twins’ sake, more than her own. They were such happy little boys, and she didn’t want that to change in any way, just because they had a father that was a brute and would want to be part of their lives the moment he found out about them. She didn’t want them to have to fear their own father. That was her biggest concern due to how she herself felt about Calvin Reeves.
Calvin
He sat in his home office staring at an email from one of his tech guys, Andrew Who he’d had dig up everything he could on one Marilyn Riddley from the state of Virginia. He’d given Andrew everything that he knew about her to make it easier for the man to hunt her down and track her information.
He’d done this because, after his conversation with Wil in the bar, he’d realised Wil was out there moving around him, where Marilyn Riddley was concerned without telling him, and he’d come to the decision, he didn’t like it. That Wil knew something that he didn’t and wasn’t willing to part with it, and Calvin wanted to know what it was for himself.
The information he’d just received from Andrew showed him that everything about Marilyn Riddley also aligned with her being Marrin, just like he’d suspected. This woman just appeared out of nowhere eight years ago. She’d been an author before that, but Marilyn, In the flesh and blood, just didn’t exist until eight years ago.
She’d never had a driver’s license until the day after Marrin got on that plane. Never owned anything at all until just a week prior to their divorce being finalised. The first time she’d bought a phone in her name was the day after Marrin was supposed to get on that flight. After everything in Marrin’s world had been shut down that very day as well. Then Marilyn Riddley had just appeared out of thin air.
Andrew was good, and he was glad that he worked for him. Andrew had hacked everything on the woman in the past two days and found out many things about her, including that she lived in a town called Bedford, Virginia. That her two sons. They were twins who were seven years old. He knew what kind of car she drove, or would be once she got the all??lear. A Toyota Rav4 Hybrid 2024 model.
What he was sitting here just staring at now was her twin sons’ names, Callum and Vincent Riddley, and although there were no pictures of them. Because Marilyn had no social media that wasn’t related to her writing career, and his guy had dug into that and had underlined for Calvin, that even that account wasn’t managed by Marilyn, but by her agent, Lisa Stevens.
Calvin had been on that site many times himself. He recalled that there were no pictures of Marilyn or her children on there, just book covers, blurbs, and release dates, all career??elated things, Bar the incident between him and her. Although, as he checked it now, there was a picture of Marilyn up on that sight, one of her which showed her sitting in what was stated to be her writing studio; she was sitting at her writing desk.
It looked neat and tidy, and she had framed prints of her book covers on the wall behind her. Calvin sighed softly to himself. She looked so much like Marrin as she smiled up at the camera, and he was trying to let it all go, but as his eyes moved from his phone, back to the email and to the children’s names and their age. Callum, Vincent and they were seven. He couldn’t un??ee it, Calvin in the first three letters of their names. when they joined together. Was that why she’d never allowed her lawyer to bring them up? Specifically withheld that information, he could recall seeing them in the ICU ward pressed up against the glass door watching their mother, waiting to be allowed in, to see her.
Those two boys both had black hair. He now realised, what if she really was Marrin? And those boys were his and hers? They’d had s*x just once when she was not on birth control, so it was entirely possible she could have gotten pregnant that one time. If Marilyn was Marrin and those boys were their children, then he and
Marrin had a family. Something he knew she wanted.
Something that he himself had wanted, and he’d ruined everything. If she was Marrin, she’d raised them. without him, on her own and he’d missed everything. He had to know now, and as much as he’d told Wil he was going to leave it alone, and he had tried to do just that, it had been over a month, and he’d stayed away.
Stayed away and left it alone until Wil himself had pricked his curiosity and now Calvin couldn’t ignore what was before him. A woman who looked exactly like Marrin, not just in appearance, but in her mannerisms and handwriting, the age of the twin sons, and their names as well.
There was one thing that was still bothering him as he sat there thinking about what he was going to do, and It was that Marilyn had been diagnosed years ago with amnesia. Wil had told him that himself. He’d gotten angry at hearing the words and ended the call to him over it. Hadn’t wanted to hear those words at all. Hated that excuse.
