21. Keaton Alone at Last
I graduated top of my class from college. I helped build one of the most successful companies in the country from the ground up. But never have I felt as proud of myself as I do right now, when I see that all the hard work I’ve put into my grandparents’ showplace of a house has paid off. It’s still a museum of the seventies, obviously. I didn’t change the decor. But it looks fantastic, maybe even Becks-worthy, as groups of people mill from room to room taking in the original molding, the floors repurposed from an eighteenth-century church that caught fire, and, of course, the appliances of yesteryear.
“War generals and presidents alike are rumored to have eaten at this very dining table,” I hear Betty saying from the room beside me. It is my cue that the next group is coming my way. Harris, who has begrudgingly joined me as co-docent in the library, looks exhaustedly at me and sighs. I can’t believe the ladies roped him into this. My brother being a docent for his grandparents’ house? I never thought I’d see the day.
“You’d better get the biggest offer and hugest chunk of commission ever on this place,” Harris whispers.
I smile that he would do this for me. As a fresh group of tourists and locals appear, Harris says, for at least the hundredth time today, “The bookshelves in my grandfather’s library are made from reclaimed wood from a ship that crashed right off the tip of the Rachel Carson Reserve in the early seventeen hundreds.”
“The bookshelves,” I add, “contain more than two thousand volumes from our grandparents’ collection, including an entire set of Hemingway books personalized to our grandfather.”
The crowd gasps. “They were old fishing buddies,” Harris adds.
I wonder if this is stretching the truth, but I guess if fishing together once makes people buddies, then so be it. Plus, as Harris pointed out, they could have fished together a hundred times—it wasn’t like our grandfather wrote in his journal every day. There is so much we don’t know. So much I want to know. And I plan to try to get as many answers as I possibly can tonight after this is all over, at the dinner party I will be hosting for the ladies and their spouses. And Bowen.
When the group exits, Harris says, “How’s the work situation?”
I have asked Allison for more time to make my decision, and she has agreed to give me until August, which means I can stay here a little longer, see if this thing with Bowen might be real. I can fix the house up, see the sale through. Then, if Bowen and I do work out… well, I don’t know what happens then. And I think that is why I am avoiding making a decision.
I’m mad at myself for not being mad at Allison. I’m mad at myself for even considering this. I’m mad at myself for knowing that, in spite of it all, I am still kind of excited by the idea of returning to the job I loved for so long. No matter what I choose, I will lose something.
It’s like Harris can hear my thoughts. “Keat, please don’t tell me you’re basing yet another career decision on some guy.”
“I didn’t say that.” I say it so defensively that I’m sure it affirms his fears. “Besides, he isn’t just some guy.”
“Neither was Jonathan,” Harris says.
I cross my arms. “Harris, you and Mom always do this. You’re so critical. You’ve dated the entire Victoria’s Secret catalog, and I don’t see anyone jumping all over you about it.” Just then, another group walks in.
Harris starts in on his docent commentary, seamlessly: “The leatherbound first editions were all acquired from the Vanderbilts’ personal library.”
I shoot him a look because that is a total lie, and, furthermore, Biltmore’s entire original library is intact. He grins at me devilishly. “Wow,” one tourist says. “Yup,” Harris agrees, pointing vaguely to the top shelf. “That’s the actual book George Vanderbilt was holding when he died.”
I give him a withering look as the group passes into the next room. Harris picks up as if our conversation was never interrupted. “At least I’m not rearranging my life around the women I date.”
“Which is just so healthy,” I say sarcastically.
“You could just come work for me,” he says. “Skip out on All Welcome and get your life in New York back.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to work for my brother.”
He throws his hands up in the air. “What if I need your help?”
“What if I don’t need yours?” He rolls his eyes. “Okay,” I say. “You have to admit that being the VP of All Welcome is an insane opportunity.”
Harris shakes his head. “I know. I know it is.”
“Only…”
“Only what.”
“Only sometimes I wonder if maybe it’s time for me to have something of my own. Maybe spend my life building something that’s mine, not breaking my neck for something that’s Allison’s.”
Harris leans against Townsend’s desk. “I don’t know. I mean, not that you have to do what I do, but I’ve spent my entire life building other people’s brands, making their movies happen and their protein powders sell, their egomaniacal memoirs hit bestseller lists. And I actually find it quite fulfilling.”
I shake my head. “But it’s fulfilling because while you’re doing that, you’re building your own company, your own reputation. It’s yours.”
He nods. “I guess you’re right. But if I’ve learned anything from Rebecca and Townsend Saint James, it’s that living a life that serves other people isn’t the worst thing. Look, Keat, I just want you to be happy. If going back to All Welcome makes you happy, fine. If staying in Beaufort is your North Star, great.” He pauses. “On a brother-worried-about-his-sister’s-feelings level, I have concerns about All Welcome. But, from a business standpoint, I know that if you go back there as VP, you’ll be every headhunter’s dream.” He shrugs. “You just have to ask yourself: Is what you’re getting worth what you’re giving up?”
It’s a question that echoes in my mind three hours later as I do one last fluff of the flowers on the table, as I breeze by Bowen and squeeze his arm as he pulls a baking dish of brown rice out of the oven. Not, like, the healthy kind of brown rice. A kind of brown rice from Becks’s notebook made with butter and French onion soup and beef consommé that smells so good my mouth is watering. I walk toward the sink, and he grabs my wrist. I turn, and he wraps his arms around me, kissing me. Not just in a passing way, but like he means it.
When I turn back toward the sink to start the dishes, a smile on my face, I see Anderson out the window, throwing the ball at Salt. I adore that child. There are no words. “How does someone just walk away from that sweet little boy?” I wonder out loud. I turn, putting my hand to my mouth. This isn’t really my business. “Sorry,” I whisper.
“Don’t be sorry,” Bowen says. “I’ll never totally understand why Kerry left, or how she could walk away from us so easily. But she did, and that’s that.”
“She was just gone, and you never heard from her again?”
“No, I heard from her,” he says. “She’d call a few times a year, send a present for Anderson’s birthday. When he was very young, she’d visit a couple times a year out of the blue…” He trails off. “Anderson doesn’t remember, but that was the worst part. I spent years thinking she would come back, that we would be a family. How pathetic is that?”
I squeeze his shoulder. “Not pathetic at all. Hope is the most courageous act there is. At least, I’ve always thought so.”
He looks out the window. “She showed up at his fifth birthday party saying that she wanted to come back, that she wanted to be back in our lives for good.” I can feel his anger rising. “I knew I couldn’t trust her, but I wanted a family for Anderson so badly.”
I can feel how much he wanted her to come back, for them to be a family, to raise their son together, maybe have more children. I feel it because I have wanted those very same things. And, sometimes, after a relationship is over, it feels impossible to keep the faith that it will happen one day. I imagine it must be a million times more painful to have that and then watch it slip through your fingers.
“She was here a month, maybe six weeks. Long enough for Anderson to get attached, to want her back in his life, to be devastated when she disappeared. I told her then that that was the last time, that she couldn’t keep doing this to him.” He shook his head. “And, for five years, she listened. But now she’s here again,” he says, shocking me so much I almost stab my finger with the knife I’m wiping.
“Wait. What? Here? What do you mean, here? Does Anderson know?”
He rolls his eyes, but I can tell it’s out of annoyance at her, not me. “She showed up a few days ago. She’s staying in Morehead City and she wants to see Anderson, to prove she’s changed, that she’s here to stay. But I just don’t know. I get that she wants to see him, that she wants to make up for the past, but I don’t think it’s fair to him to get jerked around by her.” He pauses. “I don’t love the idea of her being just a couple of miles over the bridge.”
My heart is racing uncomfortably at the idea of her being here, of wanting both Anderson and Bowen back. I stare at him, not knowing quite what to say.
“I’m sorry I haven’t told you,” he says. “You’ve just been so busy that I figured I’d wait until after the tour to tell you.”
I’m somewhat bothered that he hasn’t told me until now, but things are very new between us, and, well, this isn’t about me. It’s about Anderson. So I swallow my annoyance. “I get it, and I’m sure this has been impossible. But maybe she’s changed?”
“She has not changed,” he says, irritation rising in his voice.
“Well, not everyone has the mother gene,” I say, more matter-of-factly than I mean to.
Bowen raises his eyebrows. “From your tone I feel like maybe this is a sore subject?”
I try to laugh, but it doesn’t quite take. “I think we’re getting in a little too deep.” But I can’t help but think of my mom right now.
He opens the fridge, grabs a beer and a bottle of champagne and fills one of Becks’s crystal coupes, which are all ready and waiting. “We’ve got fresh drinks and nowhere to be. Hit me with it.” He hands me the glass.
I hesitate. “I don’t know. It’s just that my mom wasn’t really around much when we were kids. I mean, we lived in the same house. We ate dinner together a couple times a week.” I sigh. “I realize this sounds nothing like your situation with Kerry. By all accounts I had an idyllic childhood. My mom just wasn’t really interested in mothering. We were, like, the thing she did if it suited her, if a new family wasn’t coming into the domestic violence shelter she started. There’s an irony there because she was so interested in building families. Just not her own.”
Bowen takes a sip of beer and nods at me, but says nothing.
“But I’m fine, you know? And honestly, my mom and I are good too.” I pause. “I know she did the best she could. She taught us how to be independent, how not to need anyone else to get through life. And being here has given me so much insight into why she is the way she is. It must have been really difficult for her to get close to people after she lost her parents all at once like that.”
When Bowen doesn’t respond, I add, “So, I think that’s my long way of saying that sometimes we don’t always get the mothers we want, but maybe that’s okay.” I pause and squeeze his arm. “We can’t really know how Kerry’s presence is going to affect Anderson. But what I do know is that whatever decision you make about whether she’s in his life is going to be the right one.”
“Anderson is so lucky to have such a village around him taking Kerry’s place,” Bowen says. “Including you. But I still get the feeling that sometimes he feels what you feel. Neglected by his mom. And I hate that.”
“Then maybe this is your time to let her back into his life.” I shrug. “Maybe this is the time she stays. But, either way, Anderson is going to be fine because he has you.”
Bowen is quiet, fiddling with his beer label, and I decide to let him be alone with his thoughts. But as I step toward the sink, he turns toward me. “Don’t leave,” he says suddenly.
I smile at him. “What do you mean? I have to fill the water glasses eventually.”
“No,” he says, pulling me into him, kissing me again. “I know you got an amazing job offer, and I know I’m supposed to be supportive and smile and tell you to go, to live your best life. And I was going to. I was planning on it. But I’m selfish, and I don’t want you to go back to New York because I can’t go to New York. I have a ten-year-old in school, and I can’t just pick him up and move his life.”
“But there are all those great marine biology positions in New York,” I joke.
He smiles sadly then shakes his head. “Forgive me. It isn’t fair, and it’s way too soon. But I hate the idea of never knowing if there’s something real here. Anderson and I—”
The timer on the stove dings, and he turns it off. I am worried about my perfect roast chickens. Well, okay, Harris’s perfect roast chickens. But I helped. Kind of. “I’m coming!” Harris calls from upstairs. “Don’t touch my chickens!”
“I’m kind of shocked,” I say.
“That you didn’t ruin the chickens?”
“No, because that was the kind of honest conversation I’m not really used to. And when I’m with a guy I think is really honest, like Jonathan, he’s busy impregnating his ex.”
He laughs. “Well, I’m definitely not busy doing that. But I am being selfish. Because I have no idea what the future holds. But I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t at least ask you to stay.”
I don’t know what the future holds either. None of us do. But standing with Bowen in this kitchen in Beaufort, I can imagine a future in this quirky town with these warm, loving people. And that future, I have to admit, looks impossibly bright.