Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
Well, fuck.
Here he was again.
Theo slung his bag over his shoulder and slammed the door of the Thunderbird shut before facing the enormous white colonial manor looming in front of him.
Great.
It was time for the quarterly family dinner—only one obligation among many. Another inviolable Redmond tradition, and part of their legacy.
Legacy. There was that damn concept again, clinging to him like an itching second skin he wanted nothing more than to tear away.
Once every few months, and generally for the holidays, he was required to come up to Albany to spend time with his mother and his uncle. And lately, every visit had begun weighing more and more on him, grating and insufferable and stifling. He scratched absently at his neck.
But there was nothing for it: he was here now, so he might as well get it over with. Rip the Band-Aid off. He was about to take a step forward with a resigned slump to his shoulders when there was a rap on the car window behind him.
Theo closed his eyes and sighed.
The goddamn door must not have latched properly. Again.
What a piece of junk.
He turned to find his father leaning across the front seat, tapping at the glass with a single gnarled knuckle, his white hair gleaming in the setting sunlight.
Theo reopened the door with an exasperated look.
“What, Dad? Sorry, I’ll make sure to shut it properly this time.
” He narrowed his eyes. “Why haven’t you fixed that latch yet?
It’s been like that for years.” Either it caught too hard and wouldn’t open, or it wouldn’t latch at all, and nothing in between.
“The charms of old cars, kid.” Henry flashed him a crooked smile and patted the dashboard lovingly. “She’s got as many quirks as I do. This old girl and I have been through a lot together, so go easy on her. She’ll be yours one day.”
“ ‘Quirks’ is one way to put it. I might call it ‘well past its prime.’ ”
“Hey—watch it, you.” Dark blue eyes glared back at him. “We’ve both still got it.”
Theo surveyed the old bucket of bolts warily.
His dad loved that damn car, and he was constantly tinkering with it, forever searching for just the right vintage parts to replace, just the proper fix for this or that, but he’d never quite managed to make it all the way perfect.
The Thunderbird ran fine for something from the sixties, sure, but he could’ve just gotten something more fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly—like a hybrid.
Would definitely guzzle a whole helluva lot less gas, and might save the old man a pretty penny.
Henry already had little else but debt to his name. The hot-rod shop wasn’t doing so well these days; turned out people in the city didn’t have a ton of money to blow on restoring vintage cars, especially when they didn’t drive, and especially not in Brooklyn anymore.
But it was blasphemy to even suggest trading such a classic piece of Americana for a Prius. He’d learned that a long time ago.
So Theo kept his mouth shut.
His father pointed at him. “And be nice to your mother when you get inside. You haven’t seen her for a few months and I know she’s excited to have you here. She misses you.”
“Mom misses me? What, have the two of you actually been communicating again?” Theo scoffed.
“Was I asleep in the car when hell froze over?” Normally, he might have simply taken his motorcycle on the three-hour trip up to Albany for the weekend, but it had been pouring down rain in the city this morning—and his dad was already headed up here to see his best friend, Jack, anyway. It made sense to ride together.
It also let Theo take a nap. He’d been up late last night working on a new Lightm4st3r piece, and riding a motorcycle on three hours of shitty, tumultuous sleep definitely wasn’t advisable, particularly in the rain, and particularly on the slick, winding back roads he usually favored.
If he was actually going to leave the city, why would he want to stare at the freeway and bumper-to-bumper traffic for all that time?
If he had to come out here, at least he should see trees.
Henry shot him another dark look, but Theo only adjusted his bag over his shoulder again and straightened his leather jacket with a sigh.
Why did it feel so tight across his back and shoulders?
Was it just him, or was the collar suddenly wrong around his neck?
It had always fit like a glove before. He didn’t think he’d bulked out that much lately.
When his father still didn’t say anything, Theo shifted uncomfortably on his feet.
“When have I not been nice to Mom? It’s Uncle Lloyd I’m worried about.”
There was a reason Theo hadn’t been coming around as often.
Two of them even, both with Yale law degrees and probably sitting on ancient, heirloom armchairs, sipping at something that cost an ungodly amount of money while they waited for Theo to come inside and for the cooks to make the three of them an unnecessarily large and complex five-course meal.
God forbid either his mother or his uncle actually meet him and his dad outside for once.
God forbid they order Chinese food and let their employees go home to their families at a decent hour.
But it was true that one of them gave him far more anxiety than the other.
He’d learned to be wary.
His uncle had a sharp tongue and even sharper opinions.
Henry snorted. “Just ignore him. You know he’s got his notions, but they don’t matter.
And always remember that they’re coming from a good place—he cares about you.
I promise.” He sat back in his seat and gripped the steering wheel.
“I’ll be right next door, just one obnoxious compound over. See you in the morning, all right?”
“Can’t come fast enough. I’d have rather stayed in the city. I have work to do and I’m on a deadline.” He set his own deadlines, but that was true enough. He had goals. There was a charity benefit in three weeks he wanted to slip a piece into.
His father grunted and shook his head. “It’s one night. Just enjoy the time with your family, okay? I’ll see you later, kid. Love you.”
“Love you too, Dad.”
Theo shut the door, harder and with just enough of a hitch to get the latch to catch this time, and watched as the car rounded the long gravel driveway leading away from his mother’s house, its shiny turquoise paint flashing in the fading light of sunset.
Once he couldn’t see the glow of the taillights anymore, he ran a hand through his hair, turned on his heel, and made his way slowly up the drive to climb the old redbrick stairs to the house.
With every step, something twisted tighter in his chest.
The massive colonial manor was less a house than it was an estate, passed down through the Redmond line from generation to generation.
Classic whitewashed columns framed the pristine, red-painted double doors and bordered a sprawling porch decked out with picture-perfect bench swings no one ever used.
Theo’s hand stilled when he wrapped his fingers around the silver doorknob embossed with an antique R, and he drew in a deep breath, steeling himself before he entered.
There was no avoiding it.
He hated this place.
This was just one of several houses his family collectively owned, but it was the oldest. And while he’d mostly grown up splitting his time between his parents’ vastly different apartments in Manhattan and Brooklyn, he’d also been forced to spend most of his childhood summers here, all of them lonely and miserable.
The historic house was at once gigantic and also too small, filled with old, inherited things that shouldn’t be touched or played with by inquisitive, maladroit hands not yet grown and honed with the dexterity he possessed now.
Everything was breakable. Everything was irreplaceable.
Nothing was his, not even the bedroom designated for his use and outfitted to his mother’s tastes.
He was only a temporary occupant, a transitory traveler through the rooms of a house that had seen many more lives than his pass under its roof, and would see many more to come.
It might as well have been a hotel, not a home.
And it had always felt just as impersonal as one.
As soon as he twisted the knob, his skin began to crawl, and Theo gritted his teeth and gripped the strap of his bag tighter, wrenching his fingers around the leather.
Already the walls felt like they were closing in around him.
It was the unfortunate side effect of having grown up—and having grown up to be rather large—that every room in this house, built over two hundred years ago, felt like it was trying to suffocate him. Why were all the ceilings so low? Did the old wooden beams want to give him a concussion?
He shook his head, suppressing a shudder, and wandered toward the library.
That’s where they’d be waiting.
The whole house was an odd mishmash of traditional and modern, renovated over and over again throughout the years by its occupants, each of them making changes according to their own tastes.
When his nana died, the ancestral seat of the Redmond family fell into his mother’s possession while her brother took some of the other properties in the Hamptons, and she wasted no time in making her own fair share of updates.
She favored a clean, classical style, a mix of bright, blinding whites and more traditional period-appropriate woods and leathers.
Everything was crisp, neat, orderly. Everything had its place.
Perhaps it was why Theo felt so very out of place.
He’d never belonged there.
Though he did love the library.