Chapter 7
Charlie saw Liam in the kitchen, the morning he was flying back to the Hamptons. Liam looked serious, and was happy to see his dad. He had gotten back from Aspen a few days before.
“How did it go with your mom?” Charlie asked him.
“About the way you’d expect. She said I’ll never be more than a glorified gardener if I don’t go to graduate school. She was not happy with my plans, and she told me to get my ass back to Yale and study architecture the way I was going to, and forget about gardens.”
“At least you know where she stands. She sounds like my father sometimes,” Charlie said with a wry grin. “So what are you going to do? It’s up to you.”
Liam hesitated and then smiled at his father. He knew Charlie would back him. “Go to France. I have to give it a try to see if I like it as much as I think I will.”
“I think that’s a good idea, or you’ll always wonder. Who knows? Maybe you’ll end up doing something completely different, and neither one. When do you leave?”
“In two weeks. The doctor says my ankle is healing. He’s going to take the pin out before I go. Are you done in the Hamptons, Dad?” He was surprised. Charlie usually stayed until after the Labor Day weekend.
“I’m going back tonight. I had a crisis in the office last week and I had to come back.
We worked it out. I’m going back for what’s left of August. I’ll be back after Labor Day.
” He had two more weeks left in his rental in East Hampton, and he wanted to spend them with Devon, if she’d see him.
It didn’t sound like it so far. He hadn’t realized the damage he would do by disappearing for a week.
He had needed to take some space. He had been so overwhelmed by her it had frightened him afterward.
She had a powerful effect on him. But she was more fragile than he had thought.
He had fallen in love with her, but he didn’t know if he was equal to what she needed from him.
And the intensity of their feelings had frightened him.
He was afraid to get too attached. He’d been running scared all week.
He wasn’t sure if he was able to be as consistent as she expected.
He had done what he wanted until now. Faye was much sturdier than Devon, and tougher, but she’d had an easy life, parents who adored her and spoiled her, a stable base growing up.
Her parents expected a lot of her academically, but she had never been through the traumas Devon had, losing her parents, her husband, and her grandmother.
But Devon’s vulnerability and tenderness were also part of what he loved about her.
He felt bad now that he had upset her so much.
He had thought she would take it in stride the way Faye had, but she hadn’t.
He didn’t know if she would see him again.
Charlie and Liam had breakfast together, and then Charlie left for the office. He was leaving from there at noon, and would get back to the house in the Hamptons between eleven o’clock and midnight.
—
He thought of Devon again on the flight.
He never admitted it, but he knew there was a part of him that never really attached to anyone.
He hadn’t fully attached to Faye and had gotten away with it.
She had never called him on it, or even noticed, but he was well aware that part of the reason their marriage had failed was because he had never really opened up to her, or gotten close to her.
Being too close terrified him. And he was already dangerously close to Devon.
A marriage counselor he and Faye had seen a few times had recognized his fear of closeness, and he had denied it.
Straying with women he didn’t care about was easier than seriously committing to his wife.
They had been ill-suited, but he had never given the marriage a chance.
He’d been cavalier about it and too young to care.
And Devon was neither his wife nor some random girl he’d picked up at a party or at a bar.
She was a serious woman of value and depth, and she’d paid her dues in life.
He wondered if he should just let her go, out of respect for her, or try again.
He wasn’t sure he was able to open up and make himself truly vulnerable to her, or if he even wanted to.
He had no desire to get hurt, or risk immeasurable pain if she hurt him or left him.
He had played it safe all his life and protected himself.
His mother dying when he was thirteen had left a wound in him that had never healed.
The handicaps he had hidden were not so different from Devon’s.
He was just as scared as she was of it happening again.
But he understood now that if Devon saw him again, he had to be real.
They had Wi-Fi on the plane and he wrote her an email, asking her one last time to see him, and walk on the beach with him so they could talk. He promised to leave her alone if she refused again.
She found his email when she came back from a run.
She had been thinking about him, and his email sounded more serious than his pleading texts had been.
He didn’t make excuses for the past week, and he sounded more sincere than he had before.
She didn’t answer and decided to sleep on it and respond the next day.
She didn’t want to make a hasty decision, or expose herself to falling for him again and having him repeat the experience that had caused her immeasurable pain.
She went to bed early that night, and Charlie was still thinking of her when he got back to the house.
Everything was in order and waiting for him.
He found Devon’s response when he woke up in the morning.
She had given him a meeting place on the beach, neither at his house nor hers.
She was willing to meet him on neutral ground at four o’clock.
His hopes soared when he read it. He wanted to be brave with her.
—
She was sitting on the sand when he got there.
She was wearing shorts and a white sweatshirt—it was another gray day, which suited her mood.
He looked serious as he approached her and she stood up and met his eyes.
She was trying to forget the night she had spent with him, and the wave of love for him he had inspired.
What he had done afterward, disappearing for a week, was just as hurtful as their night of lovemaking had been sweet.
They didn’t say anything at first, they just walked down the miles of white sandy beach. He was the first to speak after they had walked for a while.
“I’m sorry, Devon. I realize now what I did.
I didn’t understand how hard it would hit you.
I’ve been coming and going for years without answering to anyone.
It’s a lousy excuse, and it wasn’t nice.
Faye never cared if she heard from me or not.
That’s not a reason to do it to you. I was busy and thoughtless.
I probably won’t be perfect, but I’ll try not to do anything like it again.
You’ve had a lot of loss in your life. That’s different.
Faye is hard as a rock, she’s actually tougher than I am.
I don’t hear from her either. We had kind of a bond of mutual carelessness about each other.
I don’t want a relationship like that again either.
And thank you for worrying about me when I was being a jerk.
” She smiled when he said it. “Not everyone dies. Some of us are just stupid and inconsiderate.” And scared, but he didn’t admit that to her.
He would rather she think him careless than cowardly.
“You probably have issues too, losing your mother at the age you did, and your father sending you away to school.” She had put her finger right on the wound that was still bleeding though he didn’t admit it.
It was too frightening to him to even say the words.
And even more so because she had understood it without him acknowledging it to her.
“And I have one loss you don’t know about,” she said so softly that he almost didn’t hear her in the wind.
He turned to look at her, and there was so much pain in her eyes it brought tears to his.
“What don’t I know about?” he asked her, afraid of what he’d hear. All the anger had gone out of her, and all he could see was the pain he had caused her for the past week, and something else. He felt deeply remorseful. He wasn’t a monster, or unfeeling, even though he had behaved badly for a week.
“You asked me if I have children, and I said no. I had a son, Axel. He was the love of my life, even more than his father. He was a golden child, a wonderful little boy. Two years after my husband died, Axel got meningitis. He was five. He woke up with a high fever and had febrile seizures. I ran to the hospital with him as fast as I could. There was nothing they could do to save him. He died that night. I came to the States after that, because I’d lost him, and I couldn’t stay in Paris without him.
It was too hard.” Charlie was so shocked, he put his arms around her and held her, and she let him.
There was nothing he could say to console her.
They sat down on the sand, and she looked out to sea, thinking of Axel.
It made Charlie realize the burdens she carried deep within her.
That was the fragility he sensed more than saw, a wound so deep that nothing could touch it.
She had truly been abandoned by everyone she loved, and robbed of their presence in her life.
She was a brave woman, even braver than he had known before.
They sat there for a long time, and they walked back slowly to where they had left their cars. He stood looking at her seriously as she got into hers, and spoke solemnly. His respect for her was greater than ever.