Chapter 3 #2
It was not until Aurora was walking back down the front steps of the estate forty minutes later, the portfolio tucked under her arm, the keys to her car in her hand, that she realized she had walked into the house barefoot in her mind and walked out of it in stilettos.
Whatever had just happened in that breakfast room, she had won at least three rounds of it.
She also realized, halfway down the live oak drive, with the bay flashing through the trees on her right, that some part of her was furious.
Not at him.
At herself.
For how easy it had been to slip back into the rhythm of him.
*****
She remembered other things on the drive home. They came at her in order, in sequence, like she had pressed play on a tape she had not been able to find.
She remembered being eight years old, barefoot on the dock of the boathouse, Halston nine, both of them with their arms hanging off the edge over the bay.
No, no, like this. You hold it flat. Flat like a pancake.
The shape of a smooth gray stone in her palm.
The exact angle his wrist had snapped through when he flicked the stone across the water.
Three. Three skips. Did you see that? His mouth open in a delighted nine-year-old grin.
Her own laughter loud across the bay because Halston, the only friend she had on the whole property, the boy her mother had told her to be polite to, had just looked at her like she was the best thing on this earth.
She remembered being thirteen, eighth-grade graduation at the prep school the Iversons had been quietly paying her tuition at for two years, a thing she had not realized until her mother told her many years later.
There had been a boy, an oil heir's son named something she had long since forgotten, who had said something under his breath to a friend in the courtyard as Aurora walked past in her white graduation dress.
A short, ugly word. Halston, fourteen years old and built like a sapling, had crossed twenty feet of brick courtyard and put the boy on his back with one punch.
He had taken the suspension and the lecture from his father.
And he had not, for the rest of high school, let another boy speak to Aurora the wrong way.
She remembered the boathouse and the night before he left for Stanford.
She was eighteen. They had snuck out of the estate's annual end-of-summer party, both of them barefoot, both of them slightly drunk on champagne, neither of them was technically allowed to drink, and they had ended up on the dock of the boathouse with the moon over the bay.
He had kissed her. She remembered the taste of champagne and salt. She remembered the way his hands had shaken when he tried to hold her face and his voice, low and unsteady, saying, Aurora, I am so in love with you I do not know what to do with it.
She remembered him sliding his great-grandmother's gold ring off his own little finger and onto her thumb because it was too big for any other finger she had. Hold on to it. I'll come back for you. Aurora, I promise.
She remembered, the next morning, walking up the long driveway in a sundress with bare feet because she had not wanted to wake the house by clattering up the gravel in her sandals, finding him at the bottom of the steps. The same cream limestone steps she had just walked back down.
She remembered, perfectly, the look on his face.
He had not been the boy from the dock. He had been wearing a polo shirt she had never seen before.
His hair was wet from a shower and his eyes had been cold.
Aurora, he had said. Not Rory. Aurora. Look.
Last night was a mistake. I got engaged last week to a girl in Palo Alto.
Eugenie. Her father knows my father. I should have told you before the boathouse.
I should have told you a lot of things. I'm sorry.
She had stood there and listened but did not cry.
She took his great-grandmother's ring off her thumb and set it down on the gravel of the driveway.
She had turned around and walked down the coast road with her sandals in her hand and the morning sun climbing up the back of her neck.
She never wore jewelry on her left hand since.
*****
That evening Aurora sat at the small kitchen table in her parents' house, her father across from her, a mug of cocoa sweating between her palms. Ayanna was at her sister's house in Sugar Land. Errol had asked her to come over alone.
The kitchen was the same kitchen Aurora had eaten breakfast in for eighteen years.
The same yellow walls. The same cabinets her father had refinished himself.
The same braided rug under the table. There was a half-finished crossword on the corner of the table next to the salt and pepper, in her father's handwriting, four down still empty.
Errol had stripped down to a white undershirt and his work pants. His forearms were brown and corded with thirty-five years of carpentry. He had not touched the mug of cocoa Aurora had poured for him.
“You sure about this, baby?” he asked. Quiet. Not pushing. Just asking. “You don't have to do anything. We can fight this. I have savings.”
“Daddy.”
“I have a lot of savings, Aurora. The Wexler dining table alone is sixty thousand.
I'm working on three more commissions after that one.
We can do this. We can put a lawyer in a Houston courtroom and we can fight that boy in front of a judge and a jury both.
We have grounds. I do not believe for one second a Texas family court is going to make my granddaughter live in a strange man's house.”
Aurora reached across the table and put her hand over her father's.
“Daddy,” she said gently, “your savings won't outlast Iverson lawyers.
You know that. I know that. And it's not just about the money.
It's about Imari. They will drag this out for two years.
They will let Geraldine have visitation while it's pending.
I have to take the offer that gets her out of that woman's reach by next month. There is no other version.”
Errol looked down at the table. His mouth worked for a second.
“You loved that boy once,” he said. His voice was very low.
“I watched what it did to you when he left, baby. I watched you for a year. You stop sleeping, stopped drawing. You lost ten pounds you did not have to lose. You did not date anyone for two years and when you finally did, you picked a man who looked nothing like him on purpose. I am watching you walk back into it and I need you to know that I see you. I am not going to stop you. But I see you.”
The tears came up so fast Aurora did not have time to stop them. She did not stop them. She let them roll down her face into the collar of her t-shirt.
“Daddy.”
“You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“I love you, baby.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
He turned his hand over under hers and held on.
They sat like that, the two of them, in the kitchen Aurora had grown up in, until the streetlight outside the window came on and a cicada started up in the front yard, and neither of them said anything else.
She would think later that her father had said in that small kitchen, in five minutes of total honesty, every single thing Halston had not been able to say.
She had not signed the portfolio yet.
She had read every page of it before she had gotten out of her car at her parents place.
There was something in there she had not asked about.
The contingency for Folake Adeleke had been drafted, and dated, three weeks ago.
Three weeks. Before the plane went down over Lake Como. Before anyone had any reason to think Imari was going to need a guardian.
Halston had known something Aurora did not.
She did not know yet what it was.
She was going to find out.