Chapter Nineteen. Temperance
On the built-in bookshelves across from the bed in the Primrose room, there were three new framed photos since the last time Temperance had stayed there. It brought the total count to eleven, and Duncan’s face was in nearly every one of them.
Gia definitely did it on purpose.
Temperance had come to think of the Primrose room as hers, though she’d probably never get to stay in it once the place officially opened as a bed-and-breakfast. It had satiny wood floors that always seemed warm underfoot. A fleecy cream-colored area rug brightened the room, and the ceiling was painted a soft robin’s-egg blue. The floor vents brought kitchen smells and muffled voices from directly below. You could almost set a clock by the volume and energy of conversation, and the scent of whatever was being baked or cooked.
Temperance had a nasty bruise in the crook of her arm from the IV during her overnight hospital stay. With her history of a blood platelet disorder, she’d needed to stay for observation to ensure there hadn’t been any internal bleeding.
There hadn’t.
Another Technicolor bruise in the shape of the tree limb darkened her belly. Her left wrist was badly sprained from where she’d tried to break her fall, her tailbone hurt like hell, and she had a mild concussion from where her head had connected with the ground. Most of yesterday, she’d felt buzzy in the brain and nauseous in the guts, but now, the worst part of it all was a bad case of positional vertigo.
Earlier that morning, she’d tried a solo trip to the bathroom to pee, and had barely made it to the toilet to throw up from the spinning behind her eyes. On the way back to bed, she’d crunched her pinkie toe against a side table and sobbed for ten minutes face-down on the mattress, even though the pain of it faded after five.
Three brisk but quiet knocks sounded at the door.
“I’m awake,” Temperance said.
That morning, Rowan and Gia were busy packing last-minute for a week in Spain, so she knew it probably wasn’t either of them. The knock was distinctly not-Harry and not-Frankie. Maren was on an overnight camping trip with Alice’s Girl Scout Troop, so there were only a few people it could be. But even after Temperance did the brief mental math, when the door cracked slowly open, it revealed the absolute last person she would have expected to pay her a sickbed visit.
Malcolm Brady ducked his head as he entered the room, like he was trying to make himself smaller. Sinewy and stiff-legged, he didn’t have his cane. A crescent of dark hair was loose from the short ponytail at the back of his neck, curved along the edge of a sharp jaw. Tucking it back, Mal exhaled and squared his shoulders, as if he had to brace for conversation.
“Do you need anything?” he said.
Temperance blinked. She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d belted show tunes. “I’m okay. Just can’t move my head to the side too fast. Got anything for that?”
Mal shook his head once but stayed silent. He’d always been a little unsettling to be around. Taller and leaner than all his brothers, heavy brows pulled into a perpetual scowl. His wardrobe consisted exclusively of fitted black T-shirts and slim black jeans, and he had one of those deep baritone voices that made whatever he said seem more intense and edgy than it actually was. By the time Temperance had started staying with the Bradys in the summers, Mal was already off doing adult things in New York City, so she’d never gotten to know him the same way she knew Duncan and Harry.
But in the past year, she’d seen him more than she had the entire time she’d known the Bradys. Watching him with his daughter, Charlotte, had softened her a bit. The pediatrician in her recognized an objectively good parent and a physiologically, mentally, and emotionally thriving child when she saw one.
Temperance felt the need to fill the silence. “Thank you, though.”
For someone who made a lucrative living by arranging words in compelling ways, Malcolm Brady certainly had a hard time verbalizing them. He cleared his throat, moved back to the doorway, and hesitated. He leaned on the doorjamb, subtly shifting his weight off his weaker leg.
“I know what it’s like,” he finally said. “To feel out of control of your own body.”
Temperance pinched her lips between her teeth and raised her eyebrows. If she opened her mouth to speak, there was a fifty-fifty chance that a sob would burst free instead.
For several awkward seconds, they looked at each other across the room.
“That’s it.” Another long exhale, like the effort had cost him something. “I just wanted to say that it sucks, and it’s okay to feel mad about it. I wish someone had said that to me. After my accident.”
“Thank you.”
He flexed two fists, then splayed open his fingers. “And even if you’re not ready to ask for help, just—ah, try to accept it when it’s offered. It makes it suck less.” Mal nodded once. When he turned to leave, he plowed full-bodied into Frankie. He grunted with an explosive unf and wavered backward, catching himself with hands flung outward to grip the doorjamb.
Frankie chirped in surprise.
Temperance sat up so fast it made her vision swim.
The warm amber spice of Frankie’s perfume preceded her into the room. Malcolm’s nostrils flared, his chest rose in a big inhale, and Temperance was positive she saw his eyes glaze over. He froze with his back to the jamb to let her pass, but Frankie stood her ground and looked him straight in the face. “You shouldn’t lurk in doorways,” she said.
Mal stepped sideways into the hall and stalked away, muttering under his breath.
Rowan slid past Frankie into the room. She wore a remarkably clean sundress decorated with watercolor oranges. “Yikes.” She glanced over her shoulder.
“Wow, what’s his problem?” Temperance said.
Frankie closed the door behind them and came over to the bed. She dropped a pale floral canvas tote at Temperance’s feet. Casually, she said, “I kissed him at the Honey Moon. Now he hates me even more.”
“Oh my god. Why?”
“I felt like it.” Frankie shrugged. “He’s an incredible kisser. Smooth as hell. Made this low growly sound, pulled my hair a little. Total tingler.”
“Frances,”Rowan groaned.
Temperance massaged the middle of her forehead. “My brain is breaking right now.”
“Shhh. It’s fine.” From the tote, Frankie withdrew a pillow covered in a cream satin pillowcase, Temperance’s favorite slippers, a plush lavender sleep mask, and a brand-new tube of her favorite buttercream lip balm. “I thought you might want some comforts from home. This was all I could find in the moving boxes.”
Temperance gathered the pillow to her chest and propped her chin on it. “I love you.”
“I know.” Frankie smiled. She’d also brought a few theater-sized boxes of Hot Tamales candy and several paperback historical romances. Their spines were well-lined, the corners of the covers frayed with age.
“You have to promise us you’ll rest.” Rowan climbed onto the bed and sat at Temperance’s feet.
“I’m going to be okay.”
“Says the queen of performative okayness,” Frankie said.
“I’m just tired.”
Rowan persisted. “You don’t have to pretend—”
“I don’t pretend anything,” Temperance said.
Frankie gave her a long look. “What about that time you got the world’s worst case of food poisoning from Barrett’s Chicken Shack, and you still took that—that whatever exam in med school—”
Temperance groaned and put a hand over her face. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“T.J.,” Frankie said. “You wore a diaper to the exam in case you—you know.”
“She what—” Rowan cut in.
“I never should have told you.” Temperance closed her eyes and sank into the pillows.
Frankie pressed on. “There’s nothing virtuous about pushing yourself until you collapse. Or poop your pants.”
“Let the record show”—Temperance held up a finger—“I did not poop my pants that day.”
“That day?”Rowan chimed in again.
Frankie’s tone was still serious. “The fact that you even felt compelled to do that when you were so sick—god, honey.”
“You’ve been burning your candle at both ends for so long, you’re basically a lump of melted wax and burnt hair,” Rowan said.
“You’re both gross, you know that?” Temperance took off her glasses and rubbed her closed eyes.
“You love us.” Rowan hopped up from the bed and gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Gotta run. I’m way behind on packing.”
After Rowan left, Frankie said, “Did you ever think there’d be a reality where Rowan McKinnon would be packing to go to Spain with her future mother-in-law?” She tidied the bedside table and opened the blinds. “Always thought you’d be the only one of us to put a ring on it.”
Temperance sighed. “Don’t start, Frank.”
From the bookshelf built into the adjacent wall, Frankie picked up one of the framed photos. “Duncan is giving early-2000s Josh Hartnett vibes here.” She bobbed her eyebrows.
Temperance cracked her eyes open, just enough to see which photo Frankie held.
Harry and Duncan were both young and lanky and messy-haired, their skin gilded golden by early-summer sunshine. They smiled the same open-mouthed sideways smile with arms slung around each other’s shoulders. Duncan was clean-shaven, and his features were a gentler iteration of what they were now. There was a deep dimple in his left cheek and a shallower dimple in his chin.
Until two days ago, Temperance hadn’t seen those dimples in at least seven years.
The photo was old, from the evening of Harry’s undergrad graduation party. That day had been the first time she and Duncan had been in the same space after they’d broken up. They hadn’t spoken a word to each other, but anytime Duncan had been in her periphery, she’d felt his attention on her. On the drive back to Philadelphia that night, she’d felt him all over her skin, as if his gaze had been a palpable thing.
Frankie picked up another photo, this one a professional shot of Malcolm, Harry, and Duncan at the reception for Harry’s first marriage, to Nicola Baldwin. All three men stood with hands in the pockets of sleek black tuxedos. They smoldered at the camera. During one of her trips to the bathroom yesterday, Temperance had stuck an oval produce sticker on the glass to cover Duncan’s face.
Frankie peeled it off and held it out on the end of her finger. “You do this?” She side-eyed the bunch of bananas on the bedside table.
Temperance closed her eyes again and sank further down in the pillows. “I made some poor choices that night. I don’t want the reminder staring back at me.”
By then, they’d hooked up a few times in the years since they’d ended, but it was always fast and soulless. That night had been different. Equipped with a handful of condoms from the hotel front desk and an ironclad set of rules, she’d showed up at Duncan’s hotel room door. No conversation, no expectations, no implications. Duncan had been frozen in place, wearing only a pair of navy-blue boxers, with one arm high on the jamb and the other holding the door open. His cheeks flushed fast and hot when she made her proposition, and for a horrifying moment Temperance realized he might already have someone in the room with him. But his hesitation had been short-lived. He’d hauled her into the room by her waist, hungry hands shearing off some of the tiny beadwork on the bodice of her dress. They hadn’t even made it to the bed the first time—he’d flipped her around and taken her against the hotel room door. They’d always had incredibly short fuses with each other, but what they lacked in stamina had always been doubly compensated for with volume.
Duncan Brady had a remarkable refractory period.
Sometime around hour three of wall-banging, soul-bruising sex, dawn came bloodred through a crack in the curtains. With his face against her neck, he told her he still loved her. Temperance had felt the heat of his tears on her skin.
Then she cried, too.
He’d lifted her against him, frantically skimming his hands over her legs and arms, terrified he’d hurt her, even though, that night, he was the one who’d been marked. Streaky welts where her fingernails had scored his shoulders, love bites blooming wicked pink up the sides of his neck. She’d even bitten his lip.
Frankie’s voice broke through the memory. “T.J.”
“Sorry. I’m just tired.”
Frankie put the frame back. “You’ll need his help over the next few days. It’s either him, or Big Will. I can’t come back until Monday. Apparently, I have bats living in the ceiling at the new studio, and I’ve got a furniture delivery to the apartment on Saturday morning.”
“I’ll be fine, honey.”
Frankie lifted a photo of Duncan and Mal on the day after Charlotte was born. She was swaddled in a blanket covered in pastel elephants, tucked into the crook of Duncan’s arm. He wore an incandescent grin, and the outer edge of his forearm was still tattoo-free. A blank canvas.
Mal looked genuinely happy in that one, too.
“I guess Malcolm could help…” Frankie said. The hazy softness in her big brown eyes when she looked down at the photo was alarming.
“Frances,” Temperance said. “He probably has the bedside manner of Annie Wilkes.”
“Disagree.” Frankie tapped a manicured nail against the frame. “He’s a crème br?lée. Crackly outside, gooey inside.”
“Gross,” Temperance said.
Frankie held the frame to her chest. “You don’t like crème br?lée?”
“Crème br?lée is fine. I’m trying not to think about Malcolm Brady’s creamy center.”
“Gross,” said Frankie.
“See?”
“I said gooey, though. Not creamy.”
“Crème br?lée is inherently creamy,” Temperance said.
“I don’t care what anyone says.” Frankie replaced the photo on the shelf. “It’s the worst word.”
“Malcolm isn’t a project for you, honey. Those red flags are so complex, they’ve become self-aware and started waving themselves.”
“You’re insufferable, and I love you.” Frankie pulled a few envelopes out of her purse. “I almost forgot—you had some mail. Want me to open it?”
“Please.”
Two of the envelopes were junk. The third was a letter from one of the banks where she’d applied for a loan for the clinic. Frankie began to read. “Dear Dr. Madigan. Regretfully—”
Temperance snatched the paper out of Frankie’s hands and crumpled it into a tight ball. She chucked it across the room and put her arm over her eyes. “Damn it.”
Strike five.
“I’m sorry, T.J.” Frankie put her hand on her knee.
She hadn’t felt this helpless since she was eighteen. Her whole body felt like an old seashell. Hollow and brittle.
This one had been for a medical practice acquisition loan from a healthcare-specific lender, and it had been the one she’d held out the most hope for. Two of the others had approved her, but one had an interest rate too high to even consider, and the other only approved her for ten thousand dollars, which was laughable.
God, she needed to run until she blacked out. But she couldn’t even make it to the bathroom to pee without barfing in the sink.
Frankie curled up on the bed next to her and stayed for a while. After an hour, she slipped out to leave Temperance to doze.
This place was usually filled with sound. Music, laughter, conversation. The thump of old pipes in the walls and the creaky floors. Now, it was silent.
God, she hated this stupid room.
She hated all four hundred and fifty-one beads in the stupid crown molding on the wall opposite the bed, and she hated the stupid robin’s-egg-blue ceiling. She hated how the air blowing through the floor vent somehow carried the same comforting smells the Brady household had always had, even though this wasn’t the same stupid house she’d spent all those summers in.
And she hated Duncan Brady’s gorgeous face staring back at her from all the photos across the room.
Temperance threw back the sheets and lurched over to the bookshelves. She clung to the edge of the bed for balance, then the footboard, then the shelves themselves. One by one, she laid the frames face-down.
Her and Harry, hugging belly to belly, both of them fresh-faced with the rangy awkwardness of youth. Duncan stood a bit off to the side, leaning toward them but closed-off in every other way. His smile was tight, his arms were crossed. That was the first year Harry’d stayed at Brown for summer break, but he’d come home for the Brady family vacation. They’d gone to Virginia Beach, and on the five-hour drive back home, she’d fallen asleep on Duncan in the back seat of the Bradys’ old minivan. To this day, she could swear he’d kissed her forehead as she drifted off.
Another. This one was a group shot of the Bradys and eighteen-year-old Temperance. They all smiled in front of a confectionery-colored sunset over Lake Erie. Everyone was windblown and sunburned, clustered together in a row. Arms slung around waists and heads tipped against shoulders. Bright smiles and tired eyes. Other than the photo booth strip Duncan had saved, it was the only photo that still existed of them when they’d been together together, even though the image didn’t explicitly reveal it. Behind their backs, their hands clasped tight where nobody else could see. He’d slipped a silly little souvenir shop mood ring on her finger the day before, and she’d worn it the rest of the summer.
Duncan had used it to measure the size of her ring finger, for something far more permanent.
The knot in her throat was impossibly heavy, aching all the way down to her collarbones. But she couldn’t cry to dislodge it. This family had always treated her like one of their own, even though she’d always tried to hold herself to the emotional periphery. They were Maren’s people, not really hers. She’d always felt like she existed in a state of half-belonging—not really a Brady, but not not part of the family, either. A little like a stray.
Now here she was, in her thirties, once again stuck between the family whose validation she couldn’t manage to stop craving and the one who loved her without reservation even though she’d never given them any real reason to.
She’d never fully belong here, because she and Duncan would never be able to peacefully coexist.
Temperance laid down the last photo. Dizziness spun her like a top when she turned away too quickly, and she had to hold on to the bookshelves to lower herself to the rug. She cried until she fell asleep.
THEroom was dark and still when she awakened in the bed. Someone had lifted her from the floor and tucked her in. She knew it had been Duncan, because he’d kissed her on the forehead before quietly leaving.