Chapter 15
T he ride out to the compound took forever, but for once, I didn’t mind the drive.
Even if we didn’t get to take my bike. The idea of having Grace behind me, holding on tight…
fuck. I would have been hard the entire time.
Then it decided to start spitting rain and while that might not have been a deterrent for me, I wouldn’t take the risk of slick roads with Grace.
But the second the tires hit the gravel of the long drive that leads to the compound, she jerks awake, swiping at the moisture on her cheek before she anxiously checks the door where her head was plastered.
There’s drool there too and I fight my chuckle as she furiously wipes it away with the sleeve of her shirt. “Wow, that’s super classy.”
Now I can’t stop the small laugh as it flees my lungs.
“Hey, don’t judge,” she snaps when she hears it. “You loaded me with sugary carbs after a night of no sleep. What did you think would happen?”
I throw a hand up in surrender, trying to rein in my amusement. “I didn’t say anything. You’re cute when you sleep.”
She rolls her eyes at me as I pull the car to a stop, throwing my Mercedes S-Class convertible in park.
“You talk in your sleep too.”
Her jaw unhinges as she stares indignantly into the side of my face. “I do not.”
I shrug with an if you say so expression.
“Jerk, I do not talk in my sleep. I would have known by now. Tony never said anything to me. Neither has Oliver. Or my college roommate.” She points at me as if that last one seals the deal on it, only to retract it equally as fast. “But wait. There was that one time she said I had an entire conversation with her when she came home late from a party one night that I don’t remember at all.
And now that I think on it, Tony has mentioned me whimpering or mumbling, but that’s not the same as talking in my sleep. ”
“Agree to disagree.”
She shakes her head wildly, her still damp hair from the shower she took before we left flying all over the place. “No, now you have to tell me what I supposedly said, or I’ll presume you a liar.”
“Presume away, I know the truth and if you weren’t worried about it, you wouldn’t be freaking out the way you are. Concerned you said something you shouldn’t have?” I bounce my eyebrows suggestively at her and then hop out of the car before my little minx can lash back at me.
In a second, I’m opening her door for her, offering my hand and showing off my permanently ingrained Fritz manners. She smacks it away, making me laugh.
“Just tell me what I said,” she demands, stalling beside my car.
“Come on.” I beckon her, walking backward toward the house while crooking my fingers at her. “My parents are waiting and it’s still raining. I’d rather not get wet right this second.”
“I hate you.”
“That’s not what you said in your sleep.”
“Ugh!”
She doesn’t actually talk in her sleep, but as she said, she does mumble and some of the mumbling does sound like words. I turned the music all the way down in the car so I could try to catch a few, but there wasn’t much. Still, messing with her like this is impossible to resist.
The front door opens, and my dad steps out onto the porch to greet us with a smile and a wave. “What a wonderful surprise you brought with you, Carter. Your mother will be delighted beyond words.”
“That’s the point.”
I ascend the few steps up but before I can even make it to the landing, he has Grace wrapped up in a hug. “Hi Dr. F. How’s Mrs. F?” she whispers into him.
“She’s having a good day,” he replies, releasing her to hug me. “It’ll be an even better day now that you’re both here. Oliver and Amelia, or your other siblings coming too or just you two?”
“Just us as far as I know,” I tell him, slapping his shoulder.
My father is tall and broad and dark, like me.
But my mom’s illness is weighing on him, streaking his hair with a few more grays than it used to have and staining the skin beneath his eyes purple.
He looks older, tired, and it’s gutting to see.
“Stella was here riding this morning,” he explains. “Your mom spent over two hours with her in the stables, so she’s exhausted. Just fair warning. I have Mr. Fairchild and Raven packing everything up for us to leave tomorrow.”
“Raven is here?” My eyebrows hit my hairline.
My father glances around as if he’s expecting Luca to jump out of a bush. “You can’t say anything to Luca. She made me promise not to mention a thing to him though knowing him, he already knows.”
“Jesus. How long is she home for?”
“Just until your mother and I leave on Thursday, because she has to fly back to London to perform with the London Symphony Orchestra. First chair cello,” he finishes with pride because Raven Fairchild, daughter of Morgan Fairchild, our house manager and chief of security, is like yet another daughter to him.
A daughter who had her heart shattered by his son.
“After that, she’s moving back home having accepted a position with The Boston Symphony Orchestra as well as The Pops, also first chair.
Luca does not know about that either, nor can he.
She starts her contract with them this fall. ”
“This could get interesting,” I quip, following after him as we head into the house.
“Let’s hope not. For both their sakes,” Grace says warily.
Except Luca has never gotten over Raven or the way he hurt her. I have no doubt he’ll be all over her moving back to Boston now that she’s finished studying at The Conservatory.
We follow my father all the way back through the house to the solarium, my mother’s favorite room, and find her on her chaise reading a book.
If my father looks older, my mother looks frailer.
Bone-thin she sits with a blanket over her lower half.
Her hair is gone, has been for several weeks, and she has an Hermes scarf wrapped around her bald head.
Still, she’s as immaculately put together as she always is.
Ever the Abbot-Fritz.
Her eyes lift, locking on Grace first, and a smile blooms across her lips.
“My girl,” she says, holding her arms out wide. Grace doesn’t hesitate, she practically sprints over to her, cocooning herself in my mother’s embrace. I’m thunderstruck by the moment. Electrocuted from within.
The two of them immediately start whispering and within seconds, both are in tears.
What the hell? Then they’re laughing and crying some more and Jesus.
I knew they were close, but clearly it’s been a while since I saw my mother with Grace one on one.
It stirs something unexpected in me. Something soul quenching.
Something that whispers, home , directly into my ear.
I lost my cool with Grace last night. But fuck, can you blame me? Margot was mouthing off about flings and other men and Grace went and said nothing was ever going to happen between us. I went mad. If another man so much as touches her, I will not be responsible for my actions.
No one can touch her.
No one else can have her.
But seeing her with my mother, the way my family embraces her as one of their own, loves her as theirs? It fills the sweetest spot in my heart, not just for her, but for me.
“Hi Mom,” I call out. Nothing. “Good to see you, Mom.” Nada. “Love you too, Mom.”
She throws her hand up and waves at me. That’s it.
“I’m thinking maybe it’s best if we leave them?” my father asks in a low tone so as not to disturb them, also lost in a state of confused bliss as he watches them.
Grace is holding my mother’s hands now, nodding her head that is angled, nearly touching my mother’s. “Yeah. I’m thinking we’re superfluous at the moment.”
“But look at that,” he whispers and all I can do is nod because I am looking.
“I haven’t seen her this happy in so long. I think she needed this more than I realized.”
“Any time she’s with her family, she’s like this. She lights up. It’s what keeps her going. Keeps her strong and motivated to beat it.”
My father is talking about my mother. I was talking about Grace.
“Come on.” He throws his arm over my shoulder. “Let’s go open a bottle of something we shouldn’t and drink it on the patio.”
By patio, he means the stone structure off his office.
There are three patios and those are just the ones attached to the back of the main house.
This one is his own sanctuary, cut away from the main gardens and outdoor space, my father hides here frequently.
His office is in the farthest reaches of the compound, and he uses it wisely.
We claim chairs, tucked away, hidden behind evergreens, arborvitae, and flowering hydrangea while protected from the misting rain by the overhang.
“L’Chaim,” he says, lifting his glass to mine, and I nearly choke on a sputtered laugh.
“When did we convert to Judaism?”
“We didn’t, but the sentiment is powerful. To life. Can you think of anything better to toast to? With your mother being sick, I’ve been searching through many religions, taking in the pieces that mean something to me.”
“L’Chaim,” I repeat, clicking my crystal with his and taking a sip of the insanely smooth bourbon. It’s like butter down my throat and I lick my lips, immediately taking another drag.
“You must be wrecked after your shifts last night. Still, we’re so happy you came.”
“Unfortunately, we won’t stay long. I promised Grace an early departure so she could get some rest and maintain her balance or whatever she calls it that keeps her neurologically in line.”
“Are Grace’s seizures becoming a problem again?”
“No. And that’s how we’re trying to keep it.”
“ We’re ?”
“I’m her boss.”
“You’re more than that, Carter,” my father states with assurance, his eyes on his glass as he swirls the liquid around.
“Or at least, she’s more than that to you.
It’s written all over you. The way you look at her.
The way you’ve looked at her over the last year, even when we’re all together and you think no one notices you watching her.
Your mother and I have both noticed it.”
Great.
“She’s single now, correct? And temporarily staying with you? Seems the perfect ingredients for something more to happen.”
“Nothing more can happen between us, Dad. She can’t be anything to me other than what she currently is.”
“Except she already is, so you can quit lying to your old man. But if you’d rather not discuss this with me yet, I understand.
Timing is everything. I was in love with another woman, the wrong woman, before I married your mother.
I know Oliver told you of this.” His eyes meet mine and I incline my head that yes, Oliver has told me with our father’s permission.
“I thought that woman was right for me, my one, when she was anything but. Sort of like Grace with Tony?”
He cocks an eyebrow at me and I just chuckle, sipping my drink, and throwing my ankle up on my opposite knee.
“Tony was definitely wrong for Grace, but that doesn’t mean I’m right for her.
” Though as the words tumble from my lips, they feel like a lie, and I know he sees that in me.
“In any event, she’s been single a little over a week.
Besides, it’s… complicated. For too many reasons. ”
“But you love her.”
It’s not a question and I freeze. I haven’t allowed myself to think that way. To use that word as directly as he did. “I…” I lick my lips. Do I love her? Does it matter? “Grace is not someone I should be in love with.”
He stares at his glass as he speaks. “Sometimes love comes from places you least expect it. Places you shouldn’t even go searching for it.
But the funny thing about love is that it doesn’t care.
About your plans. Your expectations. Your wants or desires.
You can scheme. You can pretend. You can imagine and think and maybe even believe.
But love, it knows better. And in the end, it always wins out. ”
I gulp down my drink in two hard swallows, holding the glass out for a refill. He lifts the bottle from between us and obliges, hitting me up with another two fingers.
“She’s not there with me, Dad.”
“No,” he agrees. “Maybe not yet. But that’s where patience and persistence come into play.”