CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
(Matthew)
My mother was finishing up her breakfast—and her Bloody Mary—when I found her in the conservatory.
“Good morning, darling,” she said when I leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Have a seat.”
“You need to talk to me alone before I leave,” I said, swallowing to keep stomach acid from creeping up my throat and into my mouth. My first thought when Alan gave me the message was that she would tell me she was dying. I sat down heavily and leaned my cane against the table. “Bad news?”
“Bad news? Oh no, not at all. I wanted to talk to you about—would you like a drink?” she asked, gesturing to her little bell.
“Mom.” It took so much effort not to display my frustration. “What do you want to talk to me about? Also, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning.”
She raised her brows and pursed her lips, pushing her glass back before answering. “I wanted to talk to you about Charlotte.”
“Ah. Maybe I’ll take that drink, after all.” I was only half-joking.
“Stop,” mom said with a chuckle. “I like her, Matthew.”
“Oh.” That made things a lot simpler. I wasn’t willing to give her up due to familial objections, but it would be easier to move forward in the relationship if at least my mother liked Charlotte.
“She’s younger than you,” Mom went on.
“She is.” There was no point in tossing out creepy and tired arguments men always made when they had younger partners. I wasn’t going to claim I was so immature that I couldn’t make a relationship work with someone my own age. My mother already knew that. And I wouldn’t claim that Charlotte was wise beyond her years. She wasn’t. There was only one reason I was with her. “But I love her, Mom. I know it looks clichéd and pathetic. I’m a forty-year-old man with a woman in her twenties.”
“Your father was a fifty-four-year-old man with an eighteen-year-old bride,” she reminded me.
“And that’s disgusting. And people called you a gold digger.” Those kinds of rumors weren’t scandalous or unusual, but Charlotte would be humiliated by them.
“I was a gold digger,” Mom said.
“Not everyone is as comfortable with that as you are,” I pointed out.
“That’s something you need to be mindful of, then. For her sake.” Mom reached for her cigarettes.
“Will you stop with those, Princess Margaret?” I snatched the lighter off the table and held it away from her. She simply waited until I acquiesced and offered her a light.
“You have a bad habit—”
“Oh, I have a bad habit, do I?”
“Of assuming,” she continued, raising her voice, “that everyone is cut out for this life. For society.”
I looked away and tried to swallow my bitter feelings. “Maybe I don’t want someone who’s ‘cut out’ for society, Mother. I’m sorry I keep bringing people home who aren’t suitable.”
“That’s not what I said.” She reached over and placed a firm hand on my arm. “She’s rough around the edges, but so are you. You’re suitable for each other. That should be all that matters. But she’s young, and young women are fragile. You have no trouble brushing aside cruel remarks because none of this matters to you. Charlotte will have to struggle to belong in your way of life, and those things will matter to her.”
“Your way of life,” I argued. “Not mine.”
“Yes, even yours. I know you think of yourself as a man of the people. Most of your close friends are new money. But even the new money live differently than she ever has.” Mom sighed. “Darling, I’m not suggesting you rid yourself of her. She clearly makes you happy. But can she be happy with you?”
“I can make her happy.” Wow, that statement sounded a bit desperate and creepy. “What I mean is, I’ll defend her. I’m not going to throw her to the wolves and blame her for getting bitten. I’m not Dad.”
Mom’s face fell, and I knew I’d fucked up. The hurt in her expression ricocheted back to me. I cursed under my breath. “I’m sorry. That was a messed-up thing to say.”
“It was the truth.” She shrugged off the pain as if I could possibly believe that she was fine with what I’d said. “You’re right. Your father did let a lot of people get away with disrespecting me.”
“And look at you now. A whole weekend of people fawning over you. The same families that rejected you back when you and Dad were first married are dying to be seen with you. It’s possible.” I wanted it to be possible. I needed it to be possible, because I needed Charlotte.
At the same time, did I truly need my mother’s social circle to give a damn about Charlotte? Couldn’t we be happy together, without worrying about either of them?
That aspect of my life had always felt like a prison. One that everyone constantly told me they would love to be locked up in. I had everything, and I was ungrateful for it. I would never know how the real world worked.
I’d heard all of that for as long as I’d known how to express my feelings. No one, not even my mother, had ever understood that I was aware of my extreme good fortune. I didn’t bemoan being able to indulge my every whim and never think about how much was in my bank account because it would always, no matter what I wanted, be enough.
That wasn’t the part of my life that I detested. It was the lack of connection, the constant fear that someone only liked me for my name and the zeroes that came attached. It was the way generational wealth destroyed a person’s ability to understand a world beyond ballrooms and boardrooms, to not view other people as a means to an end.
I didn’t hate my wealth because I thought there was some nobility in being poor; there wasn’t any nobility in being rich either. The thing I hated was being born into a world where money was expected to buy happiness, and if it couldn’t, that was a you problem.
“I’m saying these things because I know how much you care about her,” Mom said gently. “And I don’t think you’re truly aware of all the ways she could get hurt. If you’re not happy in your life, how is she supposed to be happy in it?”
I didn’t have an answer.
“Let’s not keep her waiting,” Mom said, effectively closing the conversation. “Just think about what I’ve said. Not that I’ve ever been able to dissuade you from anything.”
I rose and leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Happy birthday, Mom.”
“Thank you, dear.” She caught my hand and squeezed it. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
The walk back to the foyer was interminable. I wanted to race to Charlotte, snatch her up in my arms, and kiss her until she couldn’t breathe, until I could believe that the conversation with my mother hadn’t bothered me. Instead, when I saw Charlotte, I gestured at the doors and said, “Ready?”
“Yup.” She shot to her feet and practically raced me outside.
“You’re eager to leave. Did you finally see the ghost?” I teased. Being near her loosened the iron bands that had clamped around my chest. Somehow, sitting in that conservatory, I’d felt like I’d lost her.
She didn’t laugh or admonish me for making another joke about it. She dropped into her seat and put on her belt in silence.
“Everything okay?” I asked as I hit the ignition switch.
She nodded and gave me a smile that might have convinced someone else. “A little tired. Ready to get back to New York.”
I pulled away from the house, my feeling of unease deepening. I blurted, “My mom likes you a lot.”
“Oh?” That perked Charlotte up a bit. “Were you talking about me?”
“We were.” I mentally edited everything Mom had said. “She thinks you and I are a good match.”
Not a lie; she’d said we were “suitable.”
“Oh.” Charlotte gave a small, relieved laugh. “I was worried you were in there getting scolded for my bad behavior.”
“The only bad behavior you engaged in, I initiated,” I reminded her. “And I very much enjoyed it.”
“I was worried about…you know. Seeming like I belonged.” She turned to look out the window as we passed one of the meadows. “I never felt like I did, but no one threw me out, so I guess that’s a win.”
I considered her statement. It might become the way I evaluated the success of my social interactions from then on.
“I’m a little peopled out,” she said, repositioning the back of her seat. “Will you mind if I zone out on the way back?”
“Zone away. As long as you don’t mind some music?” The weekend had exhausted me too.
“Go for it.” She closed her eyes, and I slowed the car to fiddle with the touch screen.
It was a normal car ride. Why couldn’t I shake the awful feeling I’d had leaving the conservatory?
Maybe it would be better once I got on the highway.
* * * *
It did not.
In fact, it didn’t even get better when we arrived at the apartment. We weren’t in bad moods, at least, speaking for myself. And Charlotte was chatty at dinner—about anything other than the visit to my mom’s. If that got brought up, she deflected and moved on to something else.
Maybe it was just me, noticing things that weren’t really happening. Building up catastrophe in my mind. I’d done it before.
We were in the den, curled up under a cashmere throw while we smoked and half-watched a baking show when I finally couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Hey, did somebody do something to upset you at the house today?” I asked.
She went very still.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” I took the nearly burned roach and stubbed it out. “Who was it?”
“What, are you going to beat up the kids who were mean to me?” She gave me a playful sidelong look.
“No. Like I said, I’ll buy whatever they love.” I’d done it before. “I came very close to buying the Rangers just to ruin them for my ex.”
“Okay, I don’t know what that is—”
“A hockey team.”
“—but nobody was mean to me. I overheard something…” Her face scrunched up. “Fuck, this is difficult to tell you.”
“You can tell me anything.” She could tell me she was a serial killer, and I’d rationalize it away somehow.
Probably wasn’t healthy, but I would deal with that later.
“No, I can’t because you’re going to be as angry as I was. More angry, probably.” She paused. “Yeah. You’re definitely going to be angrier than I was. I have to tell you this thing that’s going to create so many problems, and I have to do it because we want to be honest with each other, right?”
“Yeah, dishonesty is a deal breaker. Kinda concerned that you had to check…”
She rolled her eyes. “What I’m saying is, things would be so much easier for us if I didn’t tell you what I overheard.”
“I think things would be easier for us if I wasn’t walking around with this mystery in my head for the rest of our lives.” In fact, I would probably spiral to the worst possible conclusion within the next half hour. “Is it something that’s going to make me love you less?”
“I hope not,” she said.
“Is it something that will prevent us from being together?” A cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck. “Fuck, you didn’t find out we’re related, did you?”
“No, nothing like that. But… It might affect our relationship, yeah.” Her eyes glazed with tears. “And I don’t want that to happen.”
I swallowed the lump of fear in my throat. “I don’t want that to happen either. So, let’s make sure it doesn’t.”
She nodded glumly, took a deep breath, and said, “Remember how we were trying to figure out who your sister is cheating on her husband with?”
“Yes?” I couldn’t imagine that the answer would have anything to do with my relationship to Charlotte.
“It’s Scott.”
Okay, maybe that.
But it couldn’t be Scott. That didn’t make any sense. “Wait, he was with me the whole time you were in the bathroom. It couldn’t have been. Unless he teleported.”
“That’s exactly what I thought.” She wrinkled her nose. “There’s that sexually transmitted nerdiness again “
“What, what are we talking about then?” I couldn’t put it together. It couldn’t have been Scott.
“I overheard them in the driveway. Well, they weren’t in the driveway, I was in the driveway. They were behind some bushes—”
Relief flooded through me. Of course, it was a misunderstanding. “My sister would never have sex in a bush.”
But good for Scott for grabbing a pick-me-up on his way out.
“They weren’t having sex. They were breaking up.” Charlotte’s brows came together and she looked close to crying. “Just listen to me, okay? I get it, you don’t want to hear any of this, but you have to.”
“I’m listening.” This was quickly becoming a conversation I couldn’t lean back and relax for. I sat up and braced my elbows on my knees, hands hanging between them. “What did you overhear?”
“Scott was mad. Hurt because of what we told him. He was confronting her about sleeping with someone else. And he…” Her voice trembled. “He sounds like he loves her. It sounded like it had been going on for a long time.”
I wanted to tell Charlotte that she must have misunderstood what she’d heard. Or that maybe it hadn’t been Catherine with Scott. But Charlotte had been there. She knew exactly what she’d heard. I couldn’t argue with her because the truth was inconvenient for me.
“I need a second to think,” I said, and got to my feet. Pacing would be so much more satisfying if I didn’t have to do it with a cane.
She sat on the sofa, hands clasped in her lap, knuckles white.
“I suppose it makes sense that he wouldn’t want us to be together, if he thought there was a chance of being with Catherine later,” I muttered, mostly to myself.
“It sounded like she’d promised to leave her husband for him,” Charlotte said. “Or at least, he thought that was going to happen.”
“Never.” That was fully out of the question. How could Scott not have seen that?
“Catherine said she wanted to believe that she could walk away from everything to be with him, but she couldn’t.” Charlotte looked down at her fingers twisting in the throw.
“She has a lot more to lose,” I noted.
Charlotte flinched.
Before I could question her reaction, she went on. “She didn’t want to endanger her stability. And he accused her of not loving him enough.”
“It sounds like she doesn’t love him at all.” I couldn’t fathom the idea of Catherine having a human emotion like love in the first place.
“He said he would give up billions if it meant he could be with her,” Charlotte said quietly.
I scoffed at that. Scott? The guy who obsessed over interest rates and read nonstop self-help books about growing wealth? I couldn’t imagine him walking away from a million dollars, let alone a billion, and definitely not for someone like Catherine.
“That doesn’t sound realistic. Poetic, I’ll give him that. Not realistic.” None of this made any sense. On the few occasions that Scott and Catherine had been in the same room together, I couldn’t recall them ever saying more than a few polite words to each other. When could this have happened? And why on earth would someone like Scott be interested in my sister? Sure, she was beautiful. But she was also cold and materialistic.
And apparently she cheated on the guys she was cheating with.
A tear streaked down Charlotte’s cheek and I went to her side, sitting to take her into my arms. “Don’t cry. This isn’t an emergency or anything, I promise. Whatever is going on with your brother and my sister? Those things don’t involve us. It’s not going to impact our relationship.”
“Yeah,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But I’m angry at him. He gave us so much crap about being together.”
“Some of the crap, I could see where he was coming from. He was worried about our age gap and our dating histories more than the fact that you’re his sister, I think.” Although he had been concerned about it affecting our friendship. I chalked that up to his guilty conscience.
“I want to go to his place and punch him in his stupid face,” she muttered.
I chuckled. “Don’t think that he and I won’t be discussing this. He gave me so much grief about dating you, but he was helping my sister cheat on her husband? Not cool. But also, not worth losing either of you over.”
“Right.” She let out a long breath. “I guess I was worried over nothing.”
“Not nothing. It’s weird.” I didn’t want to diminish her feelings, but at the moment, I wasn’t even sure exactly how I felt about this development. “But I’m not going to break up with you over it. Are you going to break up with me?”
“No. I think it would be foolish to walk away from the one relationship I can actually see working.” She sniffed and half-laughed. “But I’m angry. I’m angry that he tried to stop us from being together while he was doing the same thing we were doing.”
I mock gasped. “You’re married?”
She gave me a little shove. “Shut up. You know what I mean. He did the protective big brother thing without hesitation. And he knew the whole time how hypocritical he was being.”
“Scott is good at rationalizing stuff like that.” I didn’t want to make excuses for him. “I’m going to talk to him. When I’m not so blindsided.”
“I want to talk to him right now. I want to pinch his arm superhard.” She paused. “Sorry. That was childish.”
“I think it’s warranted. If sleeping with your best friend’s sister, then chastising your best friend for sleeping with your sister, isn’t childish, I don’t know what to call it.” And I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to enjoy my time with Charlotte.
She leaned against me, and I reclined, letting her nestle her head against my chest. “You’re really chill about this. About a lot of things.”
“I don’t find that getting apocalyptically upset about everything makes life all that much easier.” Some of my past partners had called it immaturity or apathy. But I couldn’t force myself to get worked up about things I couldn’t control in the moment, any more than someone with a bad temper could keep it down all the time.
“But buying the Rangers is?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe last season. They’re going to win the Stanley Cup this year. I’ll get priced out.”
She pinched my arm. But not superhard.