Hayley
Over the churning of excitement coursing through her, Hayley decided the subway ride to Brooklyn gave her too much time to think. As the tunnels and lights flashed, she had to mash her lips together to keep from being the smiling weirdo on the rush hour train.
And failed often.
She was finally doing something, Hayley thought as the ride finally ended. It didn't matter what this experiment turned in to, she was doing it. She had committed. So much so, that she wasn't at her shift at the bar like she always was on a Monday night. After she had seen Cole on Friday she discussed some schedule adjusting with her boss under they came up with a solution that suited them both. Hayley would go from working their thirty hours a week down to fifteen. A decision her budget would scream from, but not her mind.
This was a part of it, Hayley reassured herself. Finding how much you could sacrifice of one thing to attain another would make earning this story all the sweeter. And she would earn it. Glancing at the directions on her phone she barely kept herself from rushing up the stairs.
Cole lived in a three bedroom, but made mention of only one roommate, whom he assured Hayley would not be home. She wasn't sure if he had wanted to make her more comfortable about traveling to a practical stranger's apartment, or that they wouldn't be disturbed.
She shook her head as the lecture about doing this at his place whirled through her mind again. Not that she was uneasy about her safety, though her upbringing made her always carry mace and an alarm on her keychain. No she was nervous about not being on her own turf when she felt her own control was already slipping.
This was a professional arraignment. She had a professional interest in these people. But yet, why had she clicked so far and so fast to a man she'd seen on occasion for a year? And worse yet, why was there a tug at the small peak she'd glimpsed of his friends world. Of the single photograph? It didn't compute, and that made Hayley's nerves dance along with her excitement.
Rounding another corner she saw him sitting on a short stoop. Well that wasn't accurate. She saw a shadow of a person sitting on the stoop of a building that she hadn't even checked the number of yet. But she knew. She felt the moment he knew she was there as well, even as his head tilted in her direction. And the nerves took a backseat.
"You made it." Cole called out as he stood. "I'll give you the dime tour and then we'll set up. I don't want to keep you late."
"I'm used to it. I'll get spoiled before I have to change my shifts back."
"I know what you mean. I have more shoots in the spring and hope, it throws me off in the winter." Cole led her up to the third floor. "This is it." He gestured to a door with chipped green paint before opening it.
Like most borough apartments, it opened to a narrow hallway that after a few steps split from the kitchen on one side and the living space on another. Two more doors littered further down the narrow walkway on each side.
"The living room, such as it is. The bathroom is all the way down on the left, same side as Keith's, but he's at his boyfriends most nights. My room and the guest room are on the right."
"A guest room." Hayley didn't bother to hide her surprise. "That's right up there with the dining room myth. What a concept."
"Part of the agreement." Cole half smiled. "I've lived in Brooklyn since college, but moved here after. It started as Ethan wanting a place to crash when need be and keep some things, rather than keep it all at his mother's. He travels so much for work he doesn't have his own place. But he and the rest of the family made it clear if I was gonna be on the other side of the country there was gonna be room for visits. So the rich boy rents it, but they all use it. It's come in handy for Keith too."
"Do you have a large family?"
Cole hesitated. "Open to interpretation." He jerked his head toward the living room. "We'll be in here."
Hayley took the desk chair she assumed Cole had dragged out from his room, and pulled her notebook out of her bag as he sat on the sofa. An album lay on the storage tub that was doubling as a table.
"I got some pictures I already had and printed others I thought would be useful. I figured we'd start with us as kids, though I'll give you background info on each of us before we'd met." He handed the album to her. "I don't know how you wanted to do this."
"I have some questions I mapped out that I might prompt when needed. But this is a good start to help see." Hayley flipped over the first page and smiled. "You have one from that first day?"
"Lucky shot. The ice cream parlor we went to after school had their anniversary sale going on. They gave out paper crowns to the kids there. The owner mailed this to Ethan's mother, she gave it to me when I got interested in photography."
The glossy picture reflected three children at a mint green plastic table. Cole looked much the same, his hair a shaggy sun streaked brown and his green eyes dominating a thin face. He sat in the middle, his smile was hesitant but he looked comfortable with the other two. To his right golden haired Ethan had the air of "cool kid" with the somewhat cocky raise of his chin, which revealed the smudge of hot fudge. Anna waved out, her spoon a blur, the motion likely the reason for the rainbow jimmies suspended halfway to the table. She looked the least conventional with her intense steel grey eyes and wavy brown hair exploding from a ponytail at nearly the top of her head. Hayley told herself anyone would have been able to see what she did looking at the three children. The sense of something starting.
"The eyes are pretty shocking." She said, staring at Ethan's bold blue. "That you each have different colors, that is."
"Something we'd play up from time to time if we were reading too much Harry Potter or something magic related." Cole grinned. "The one below it I printed from over the weekend."
So this was them now, Hayley thought. She took in Ethan first. The tallest, his arm was stretched to capture the three of them. He was smirking; his hair darker than when he was a child and his eyes had crinkles at the edges. Still the protector from his stance and broad shoulders. But the rich boy as Cole termed wasn't apparent, nor that cool kid edge. Cole however had clearly blossomed from the shy child in the picture above, to a man that looked on top of the world just from being in the presence of his friends. His smile beamed like none she'd seen from him in person. His hair danced in an unfelt breeze and one arm hooked Ethan closer, the other was low around Anna, boosting her into frame. Her smile suggested she was laughing, her hair hadn't quite tamed with age though now it reached the top of her chest rather than the bottom of her back. Hayley envied the curling waves a moment, but noticed a deeper change from the girl above, or even the one Hayley had first seen perched on a bar. Something about Anna's eyes, had Hayley suppressing a shudder.
"Ethan is the oldest, July of 90." Cole started, and Hayley replaced the album with her notebook. "He was born and raised in Forks. His parents met when his mom was on a vacation in Europe after graduating college. His father is a musician and had been on tour there. They fell for each other pretty quick. Ethan was born a couple years after that. Cecelia, that's his mother, is a homebody. She had inherited an old Victorian from her family when she'd still been in school. Cecelia comes from old money as they say around town. And Johnnie's band has always done well. Hence the rich boy." Cole grinned. "But none of them ever acted like it. Never treated anyone else as less. You wouldn't know it from any of them. Well unless you saw the house. Cecelia herself is very old world class, the house reflects that. Anyway, she preferred to be involved in a town. To have that home and I guess a legacy with tradition. John though, he doesn't really sit still. But he was always involved, always came back on a schedule to have time with them both. And when we came along he included us. And I don't even know how Cecelia balanced all she did. To this day they're the most stable people I know. Well, apart from Anna Jane."
Cole grinned as if at an old joke. "She's from the other side of that coin. A whole different environment. Anna came on the scene in late August of 90 in Louisiana. Her mother and generations of their family had lived there since the Simone's came over from France. A lot of the Simone's have itchy feet, Anna's mother and grandparents included. It was just Anna and her mother Elizabeth most of the time. They didn't live anywhere much longer than a few months." Cole paused and sighed. "When Anna was six, Elizabeth died. She doesn't say much about that either. If this comes to you talking to her, I'm sure she could tell you more about it. But essentially, she ended up with her grandfather Phillip. He's." Cole hesitated, tilting his head from side to side to get the right words. "A character. He loved her, loved all of us, that was never a doubt. But his wife took off when Elizabeth was a baby and losing Elizabeth probably pushed him further into his eccentricities. Anna was along for that ride. He was an actor and a lot of his bookings came from a small theatre in Forks, so Anna spent a few weeks here and there but mostly staying in the hotel next door. Until something clicked with him that he could lose Anna too if he didn't at least try at a somewhat normal home life, even if she was the Eloise of Forks. There were still trips but by the time she met us, she didn't always get dragged off. Cecelia and my mom got together on that."
Hayley looked back up at Cole when he stopped. "And you? Tell me about you."
Cole sat back with his ankle over his knee. "I was born in 91, in Seattle. My parents Patrick and Nora, were teenagers when they got together and had me. The second they turned eighteen and saved enough we ended up in Forks. My mother hated the city, wanted to be somewhere quaint." He stopped to smile. "They were decent people. Simple. She worked at a grocery store and he at a gas station, so we didn't have much. They had ambitions but they wanted to make it independently more, so they did what needed doing and we were happy. But things were busy so they didn't notice I was different until I was well into elementary school. I hid it well too. I knew I was already odd man out with my upbringing at school, I didn't want to add geek to that. But eventually they saw, and it was recommended I skip a grade, maybe two. You know where that ended up." His glance landed on the album.
"You were an only child?"
"We all are. Funny isn't it?"
"Fitting, more like." Hayley smiled.
"Our families found it both. My parents enjoyed us most. That's not to say Ethan's or Anna's didn't. We were all loved. But Ethan's house was full of lessons, Anna's was chaos. Mine was." He paused. "Mine was the fun. My parents clearly wanted a house full of kids and this was their way to go about it. They did everything they could with us, all the way to high school."
Something in Hayley clutched, this time not with excitement. But a knowing. Cole's jaw clenched as he met her eyes. "Not all of this is going to be a particularly happy story."
"Whose is?"
He stared at me while.
"The spring of our sophomore year they left on a Friday to travel to a housewarming party for old high school friends of theirs in Seattle. I was staying at Ethan's. I didn't think anything of it when I didn't hear from them Friday night."
Coles eyes grew distant as he looked back at what Hayley couldn't see. "There had been reports about murders in Seattle but they weren't supposed to be in town, they were going to someone's home. And really, no one ever thinks it will be them. But it was. They had never made it to the friends they were staying with Friday night. They were found the next morning in their car in the parking lot of a mall plaza two miles away. Cecelia got the call that afternoon."
He took a breath and looked at Hayley. "Have you lost anyone?"
"Not how you mean, no." Hayley resisted the urge to shift in her seat. Something about the frank way he looked at her made her want to be as open with him as he had been with her.
"It's not quite as they say. Or at least not in my experience. I don't remember every detail crystal clear. I don't remember Cecelia even saying the words. I remember Ethan was out with his girlfriend but that didn't matter. We were all at home at each other's places. I was sprawled out in his room, pouring over the black and white shots I had just learned to develop the month before. And she opened the door."
His eyes shifted down. "Cecelia always calls for us. And if our mischief was up and we didn't answer, she'd still knock. Manners through and through. And she knew we could hear her heals on the wood, and that was our warning siren." He laughed but it was without humor. "I can't remember looking up at her, or what she said, but I can remember how cold I felt when she just opened the door. Next thing I remember was running over to the hotel. To Anna. Ethan showed up not even a half hour later."
There was nothing Hayley could imagine saying. All the words of comfort he'd had to of heard over the last thirteen years didn't matter. But in the breath that escaped him and the fall of his shoulders, Hayley saw all she needed to do was listen.
"Which one did you end up living with?"
Cole's lips quirked. "Ethan. Unlike most thirty one year olds, my parents had a will. I had assumed my mother's parents would be listed, and I imagine they were at one point. Cecelia told me they discussed it with her, just as Anna's grandfather did. It was changed when we were in junior high."
Hayley marveled a moment and then going with impulse, leaned forward to take his hand. "That's part of the magic you know. For all of you. It's one thing these days for three children to grow together rather than apart. Let alone term one another soul mates. Yet for their parents to see their child that clearly, to understand and act on what they see, what a wonderful gift that is. It's terrible that they didn't get more years with you or you with them, but what they gave you is incredible."
Cole nodded and squeezed Hayley's hand, saying nothing for a few moments but staring at her fingers. Then he looked up and tilted his head. "I don't know anything about you do I? Don't get your back up." He added with a grin when she pulled free. "It's not about you yet, but I saw how you took in the pictures. As someone who sees not just looks, this is going to be about you too eventually."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Further, Hayley didn't know how it made her feel.
"Who the hell knows? Anna and Ethan's gears are spinning over it but I haven't made up my mind. Neither have you."
"I want to tell a story. I want a story I tell to mean something to me."
"That's part of it."
"What's the other part, know it all?"
"You want to connect. That part is clear as day. The three of us wanted to connect to something." He pointed at the album. "And the universe found a way to bring us together. Like recognizes like in that respect."
"I connect to your story, true enough. That's why I'm here. It isn't to connect to you." Hayley met his eyes to fight what she realized was a lie.
Cole seemed unoffended, but something kindled in that deep green before it was guarded. "You know a bit about where we came from. I'll start with a few stories from those early years. You can get a vibe for who we were then. Does that work?"
Hayley nodded, and despite what she had said, found herself lulled into a calm as Cole's words took them both back.
