Chapter 19
I don’t move for a long time after she walks out.
I’m standing in the middle of the living room of the guesthouse with my hand still half-raised from where I reached for her, and she was no longer there. The lamp is on.
I sit down on the couch slowly.
I run through it.
I paid her mother so that she would stop calling. I punched Brandt because he deserved it. I kept the relationship quiet because that is what we agreed. I have been handling the hard things so she did not have to.
That is what I have been doing.
I sit with the thought for ten minutes. I turn it from different angles. I try to make it hold.
It does not hold.
I get up and walk out of the cottage.
I start walking, trying to clear my head. Somehow I end up at the main house.
The kitchen light is on. Vivienne is at the stove with the kettle. She has two tea cups set on the counter. I wonder who the second cup is for.
She looks up and does not look surprised to see me.
"Sit."
I sit at the counter.
She pours and slides a cup across to me. She does not pour one for herself yet. She rests both her palms on the marble of the counter and looks at me like I’m a ten year old.
"Mom."
"Drink."
I drink.
She is quiet for a moment.
"Your father was not a bad man."
I don’t answer.
"He was not, Cade. I know what he was to you. I know what he failed at. I’m not going to argue with any of it. But the man I married at twenty-three was not a bad man. He was going through a rough time he could not get out from under, and he let that run his life. There is a difference."
"Mom."
"You are not him. You are not anything like him. You’ve spent twenty years making sure of it." She breathes out. "What I don’t want is for you to spend the next twenty making sure of it so hard that you do the thing he did anyway."
"What did he do?"
"He let a hard time keep him from being happy."
I look at the cup.
"He had the chance to come back, you know."
I look up. "What?"
"After he left, he wrote to me twice. He asked if he could see you. I told him he could. I told him you were ten years old, waiting for him at the door every weekend, and that if he was going to come, he had to stay. He did not write again."
"You never told me."
"You were too young. By the time I thought you might be ready to know, you had taken my name, built the company, and decided who he was. I didn’t want to give you a complication you had not asked for."
I drop my head.
"He was a coward, Cade. He was a coward and a sad man, and he was your father. None of that is the same thing as the other things. I’m telling you because today is the day you should know it.
Not because it changes anything. Because you have been telling yourself a story about who he chose not to be. "
I don’t answer.
She does not say anything for a long minute.
"I watched a young woman this afternoon try very hard to compose her face while her boyfriend introduced her as his artist."
"I’m not…"
"I’m not telling you what to do, Cade."
She comes around the counter and puts her hand on top of mine. The hand is small, dry, and warm.
"Whatever you have been holding back from letting this person in, you need to stop. I know you love her."
My head comes up, and I find her looking back at me.
"I can see it in how you look at her. You don’t bring people here. You didn’t even bring Theo until you were nineteen. You brought her on the second-worst day of your life because the thought of doing it without her was worse than the thought of doing it with her. I know what that looks like."
I look at the cup.
I don’t say anything for a long time.
"You don’t have to keep the whole thing in your hand, Cade.
You are allowed to put it down. You are allowed to let her see it.
You are allowed to be a man who has something to lose.
Open your heart all the way. You have been protecting it for a long time, and I'm proud of you for every way you have. But you don't have to anymore."
She squeezes my hand and lets it go.
"I love you."
She turns back to the stove.
I sit at the counter and let it all sink in.
Taking a deep breath, I let it out. "Thank you."
I stand.
"Go find her."
Beau is on the front porch.
He has a beer that is mostly full and the small, unsurprised face of a man who has been waiting for the next round of his own usefulness.
"You took your time."
"Mom held me up."
"She would."
He gestures with the beer at the rocking chair next to him. I don’t sit. He does not push.
"I like her."
"I know."
"I’m rooting for you."
"Thank you."
"Also, the artist cover story today was the worst lie I have ever heard you tell. I’m embarrassed on your behalf."
I almost laugh. I don’t, but it is close.
"Why are you out here?"
"Air. The wine auction is in two weeks. I’m avoiding the spreadsheet by pretending to take a meditative time in the dark on a porch. We can talk about it tomorrow." He nods toward the lawn. "Go find your girl."
I go.
I find her at the stone wall by the pond.
She is sitting with her back to the path. She is looking at the dark water. Her hair has come down from the clip, and her hands are flat on the stone on either side of her hips.
She doesn’t turn around when she hears me.
She doesn’t move.
I stop 6 ft. from her. "Suzanne."
I take one breath.
"I'm sorry."
She still does not turn.
"You were right. I should have told you about your mother. I should have told you about Brandt. I have been telling myself I was protecting you, and that is partly true, and it is not the whole truth."
She keeps her eyes fixed on the water, never turning around.
"The truth is that I've spent my adult life building something nothing could get through."
The water laps once at the bank.
"My father didn’t love my mother by the time he left, and I don’t think he loved me ever.
Not the way it is supposed to mean. He was in the house for the first ten years, and he was not in any room I was ever in.
I learned, very young, that wanting a thing from a person who has decided not to give it to you is a thing that rots you from the inside, and I learned, by the time I was twelve, not to want. "
I take another breath.
"I got to a place where nothing I cared about could be used against me. I got there by being very careful about what I cared about."
She is very still.
"I didn’t know what to do when I started caring about you."
The wind moves through the trees behind us.
"I introduced you as an artist this afternoon because I didn’t trust myself with what my family would see when they saw you for what you actually are.
I was afraid of being seen wanting someone.
I have been afraid of that since I was ten years old.
That was my failure today. It had nothing to do with you. It was not fair to you."
She doesn't budge.
"I’m going to try to do this differently."
I wait.
It is the longest wait of my adult life.
After a while she breathes out, slow, and her shoulders drop a quarter inch.
"What happens next?"
"Whatever you want."
"Cade."
"I want you to move in."
She doesn’t say anything.
"I know how that sounds, but I’m asking anyway. I would sleep better. I would think better. I would be better, Suzanne, with you in the same place I am at the end of the day. That’s what I want. You don’t have to."
She is quiet for a long time.
"I have to move out of the apartment anyway. So…fine. But you cannot decide for me. You cannot make a single decision about my life without talking to me first."
"Yes."
"Anything that happens, Cade. Anything. We talk about it. Always."
"Yes."
"I mean it."
"I know."
She turns her head.
She looks at me for the first time.
Her face is not closed. Her eyes are tired and dark, and the place at her throat that will, in two days, hold my mother's locket is still bare.
"I’m going to trust you to do this differently. Don't make me regret it."
"I won't."
I sit down on the wall beside her.
The water laps. The pond darkens. Somewhere on the far side of the property, a bird calls twice and stops.
After a long minute, she leans her shoulder against mine.
I close my eyes.
We walk back up to the main house together. Her hand in mine. Her palm is cold against my warm one, and the gravel crunches beneath our feet.
Vivienne is in the doorway. Henry has come out to stand beside her. He has put his jacket on.
Beau is on the porch.
I walk Suzanne up the steps and stop in front of them.
I take a breath. "I want to introduce you to someone."
Beau sits up. Vivienne's eyes go to me and stay.
"This is Suzanne."
I look at Suzanne, then at my mother. I look at Beau and at Henry and back at my mother.
"She is my girlfriend."
Vivienne's face lights up like she has waited for this for a long time, and it finally just happened in front of her.
She doesn’t cry.
She steps forward and takes Suzanne's hand in both of hers.
"I'm so glad to meet you. Properly."
"I — "
"And I hope you will forgive my son's poor manners earlier. I have raised him better than that." She smiles at me without letting go of Suzanne's hand. "You would not know it. I assure you it is true."
Beau makes a sound that is half a laugh and half a cheer.
He crosses the porch in two strides and pulls Suzanne into a one-armed hug that swings her a quarter-turn and ends with her laughing into his shoulder.
I watch my brother hug my girlfriend in the doorway of my mother's house.
My chest loosens in a way it has not loosened in years.
Henry steps forward last and shakes Suzanne's hand.
"I'm glad you're here."
"Thank you."
He nods once at me.
I owe him a conversation, but not tonight.
Suzanne looks up at me.
Her eyes are bright. She is biting the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. She is smiling around the bite.
I squeeze her hand.
Standing on my mother's porch with my girlfriend, my brother, my stepfather, and the woman who raised me, on a day I have spent weeks dreading and have, somehow, survived…
Everything is right with the world.
I don’t say it out loud.
I don’t have to.
She squeezes my hand back.
Vivienne opens the door.
We go inside.