Chapter 57
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
SEVEN VIRTUES, NORTH CAROLINA
Every year, on the anniversary of my grandmother’s passing, my grandfather and I drive to his cabin in Maine. We sit beneath the stars and look for the brightest one we’ve never seen with the naked eye.
We claim that is her reaching through to us from the celestial barrier that separates us from our loved ones after their passing. Grief and the bittersweet recriminations that are associated with it never truly disappear.
Much like new stars.
—StellaNova
Two Weeks Later
A warm arm wraps around my shoulder as I stand, looking down at my mother’s urn and the picture Austyn and Paige helped me pick to display next to it. It’s from my Seven Virtues graduation and we’re both beaming, laughing and sharing a secret in our eyes and with the quirk of our lips.
It was the way I grew up, always knowing she’d be there for me.
“How am I supposed to go on without her?” I ask Paige, knowing she’s the one who came up to stand by my side.
“By embracing every moment, darling.” Austyn’s mother turns me to face her until she can cup my face. I want to flinch when Ethan’s green eyes bore into mine but I control the impulse. “You heard her say that the other night.”
I did. It was a few days before Mama succumbed to her cancer. Paige, Austyn, and I were camped out in Mama’s hospice room like it was Austyn’s and my freshman year at UT. Since we never knew when she’d be cognizant, we made certain one of us was always with her. Also, we transformed the room to resemble her living room as much as possible, bringing in Mama’s favorite afghans, framed photographs, and munchies and drinks.
At one point, Mama—in one of her more lucid moments—asked Paige, “Will you look out for her?”
Paige leaned over and kissed my mother’s cheek. “Helen, you don’t even have to ask.”
Mama’s eyes welled up with tears. She shot a furtive glance at me before sharing, “She’s in love…”
I jumped in at that point. “There’s no need to go into that.”
Mama frowned. “All I was going to ask is—should something come of it—if Paige would walk you down the aisle.”
Christ, that moment. I ran a hand over my heart, trying to stop the bleeding that wouldn’t stem. Austyn leaped up from her chair and guided me away from our mothers. My sobs couldn’t be controlled.
In such a short period, I had everything, and it all blew away like dandelion seeds in the wind. Nothing more than wishes and dashed hope. A before and after.
That’s all my life’s come down to lately.
I push myself into Paige’s arms. Even as the tears overwhelm me, I feel Austyn wrap her arms around my back in an effort to hold me together as we get through this short memorial before I figure out a way for my life to move on.
To embrace the after.
I’m uncertain how long we’re standing there when there’s a knock on the frame. “Ms. Brookes?”
I pull back and go to swipe beneath my eyes but Paige is at the ready with tissues. “Yes?”
“Guests are beginning to arrive.”
I dab at my eyes as Austyn and Paige do the same. Uncaring if it might be selfish, I take one more moment, lean down, and press my lips against my mother’s urn. If I close my eyes hard enough, maybe I can will myself back to before.
Later that evening, we’re sitting at Mama’s where we held the post service reception for her few coworkers and mine who came. Having long kicked off our shoes, I tuck my feet under my rear when Paige comes out of the kitchen with a bottle of wine and three wineglasses. After filling them, she passes one to Austyn and me, then lifts her glass and toasts, “To Helen. For never giving up.”
I tap my glass against hers and Austyn’s before I take a long pull of my drink.
It’s then Paige asks me, “Are you ready to tell me why you didn’t come to us the moment you knew she was ill?”
With a sigh, I relay my mother’s wishes. Paige doesn’t get irate. Instead, her lips quirk. “If I didn’t have my husband or family, I’d likely feel the same. I’m not upset, Fallon. I just wanted to understand. Now, what about bills?”
Austyn slants me a furtive glance. I scoff and jerk my head in her direction but address Paige. “You mean the little prodigy didn’t tell you?”
“She hinted at something unorthodox, but I’m not quite certain what that means.”
Taking another drink, I tell Paige about Devil’s Lair, how the proprietress was one of my former customers at the bar I used to work at. Her jaw drops. “You’re kidding. They paid for your mother’s medical treatment?”
“I never received a dime. In fact, they let me go from my contract early when…when…” I take another drink of wine.
“When they learned your mother wasn’t going to make it?” Paige says as gently as possible.
Tears burn my eyes, but I manage to say, “Yes.”
Paige takes a sip of her own drink. “Unorthodox, yes. But honest work, Fallon. You didn’t commit any felonies. You had a job, and you worked hard in addition to maintaining your curator position and caring for an ailing mother. That just further demonstrates your incomparable strength as a woman.”
Austyn’s hand comes down flat against the wood coffee table before she hisses, “That’s not what Uncle E. said.”
“Austyn, don’t,” I plead.
“Ethan? What on earth does he have to…” Her eyes dart between her daughter and me. I can practically see the wheels turn in her mind, and when they stop on the correct combination, all the secrets are exposed like a slot machine spilling its coins. Her eyes widen in shock before she takes a longer drink of wine. “I see.”
Resigned to explaining it to her, I shoot Austyn a filthy look. “We started out as friends.”
“Most good relationships do,” Paige remarks.
“What about the shitty ones?” Austyn mumbles, earning a stink eye from me.
Mentally giving her the finger, I explain to Paige the high and low points of my relationship with Ethan. “It changed for both of us after Austyn’s accident. We were each other’s rocks.”
I take her through the different stages over the years—Ethan’s jealousy, my own hurt he hadn’t shared our friendship. “I told him he made me feel like his dirty little secret.”
Austyn mutters something rude about her uncle beneath her breath. Her mother snaps, “Austyn!”
“We haven’t got to the worst part yet, Mama,” she warns her.
Paige guzzles some more wine and refills her glass, topping off both of ours. “Keep going.”
I catch Paige up on how our relationship shifted—how we evolved. Despite her being okay with this, she still lifts her hands to her ears and chants, “La la la, I do not want to hear about my brother sexting.”
“Deal with it, Mama. Once I figured it out, I had to,” Austyn offers her no quarter.
“How long did you know, my darling daughter?”
Austyn chews on her lip before answering. “About her crush? Years. Fallon’s always had a thing for older men.”
I bob my head. “Truth.”
Paige shoots a grin in my direction. “At least you have good taste.”
The wine in my mouth turns bitter. “I had good taste, Paige.”
“Fair enough. When did it become more between you two?”
“Truth?”
“Always.”
“I think things changed the night of our graduation party.” At their combined gasp, I hold up my hand. “Nothing happened. It was just Ethan who started looking at me differently.”
Austyn pretends to hurl even as her mother tosses a pillow at her head. Austyn gasps. “Mama. For shame. You could have knocked over the wine.”
Paige narrows her green eyes thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it, Fallon, I recall the shift. There was this look he’d get when your name was mentioned.”
“Oh, wait. Let me demonstrate!” Austyn declares gleefully. She proceeds to imitate a basset hound. Just the sight of her yanking her chiseled cheeks down and her overly exaggerated pout causes me and Paige to snicker. Austyn winks at me before pointing out to her mother, “I wouldn’t be laughing too hard there, Mama. You and Dad wore the same expression on your faces when you were falling for one another. Discreet you were not.”
Rolling her eyes at her oldest child, Paige probes delicately, “So, there was an emotional…connection…”
“Intimacy,” I supply helpfully, taking a sip of wine.
Paige scrunches her nose but soldiers on. “Yes, that. You two had that before there was…uh…” Her head tips back, and she asks my mother plaintively, “God, Helen. You didn’t leave me these instructions. How did you handle this?”
“He wasn’t her brother?” Austyn offers helpfully.
Paige glares at her oldest child. I roll my lips inward to gather my control before I relieve Paige of her discomfort. “If it helps, Mama was as shocked as you were at first.”
Paige’s hand rests on top of mine. “What did she say after that?”
“That Ethan is a fine example that God’s a woman because looking at him could cause an orgasm.” The words leap from my mouth without me censoring them.
Both Kensington women stare at me like I’ve lost my marbles before they flop back, screeching with laughter. Paige regains control first and blows a kiss skyward. “Bless you, Helen. Your answer was perfect.”
“She trusted me to take care of myself and to protect my heart.”
Austyn rests her hand against my leg. “And right now, you’re wishing she hadn’t?”
It all comes pouring out of me, all the pain and agony I’ve been subject to in addition to losing Mama. “Everything was perfect even after graduation. There I was, finally happy with Ethan. Then, I found out Mama was sick.”
Paige puts the pieces together quickly. “And she refused to allow you to tell us.”
“Yes.”
“Charles Dickens said, ‘There is something in sickness that breaks down the pride of manhood.’”
“Not in Mama.”
“No. Yet, maybe your mother was trying to teach you a final life lesson amid her agony.”
“What’s that?”
Paige reaches over and clasps my hand. “It’s one she and I discussed at length, one which Austyn knows as well.”
I wait, knowing I’ll finally get the answer I’ve been seeking after so long.
“Your mother wanted you to appreciate that you, Fallon Brookes, are a strong woman with or without a man in your life. You’re determined to do what’s right and damn the path you have to travel. You’ll do anything for those you love. She didn’t have time to teach you that herself, so she used the only thing left in this world to give you that lesson—as painful and cruel as it may have been at that moment.”
“You really think so?” My voice is small when I question my mother’s motives.
“Darling, if I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be sitting right here. Regardless, you have a tribe of people at your back. You don’t have to fear what lies ahead of you. You’re not alone.”
Except I don’t have Ethan. Not anymore.
A tear drops into my wineglass, causing a tiny ripple. Squeezing her fingers relentlessly, I tell her about how I cut off communication with Ethan. “I just couldn’t handle more…words. Not when his actions showed me I meant so little to him.”
“Understandable.”
“Do you think I did the right thing?”
“I do. And Fallon?” Paige’s expression is pure evil. “I hope every moment he’s trying to reach you makes my brother suffer.”
“All I did was block him. I know eventually I’ll have to end things between us like a mature adult, but with facing losing Mama and then having him ambush me the last night I worked for Devil’s Lair at the same time? All that time together, and he didn’t trust me.”
I swipe at my eyes before admitting, “I haven’t told you both the things he said. Needless to say, he gutted me.”
Paige looks at Austyn. “Are you speaking with your uncle?”
To my shock, Austyn shakes her head. “I refuse, Mama. With everything they went through before they were intimate, he didn’t stop to think, ‘This is my friend. Let me find out what’s happened to drive her to do something like this?’ They weren’t some one-night stand at a club. He knew her.”
“Yes, he did. And he should have known better.”
“I’m sorry, Paige.” I feel like I need to apologize for causing this strife in her family.
“Don’t be. It’s obvious to me Ethan just stopped emotionally maturing before he needed to.” She lets out a heartfelt sigh of displeasure that causes Austyn to crack up. “On the other hand, it will make it completely understandable to people why he would be in love with someone at his same level of emotional maturity at such a young age.”
Austyn somehow manages to hold her wine upright as she rolls back and forth on the floor, laughing. I’m not quite as amused as my soul feels like it has gaping wounds. I challenge Paige. “You’re assuming I’m ever going to want him back.”
“After I’m done kicking his ass, you might.”
Dear lord, Ethan will have no idea what hit him.
Paige beams at me before holding out the wine. “More wine?”
I exchange my glass for the bottle. “Thank you.”
I need to forget my heart’s been shattered just for a night.
Tomorrow’s soon enough to begin to locate the slivers of pieces.