Chapter 8 #2
We walked. We walked out of the clubhouse lot and down the gravel road that ran along the back of the property and out into the field beyond, the long flat hayfield Knox kept mowed because his daddy had kept it mowed, and we walked the perimeter of that field the way two grown men walk when one of them is trying not to throw a punch and the other is trying to give the first one room.
Cade said, "Six years."
I said, "Six years."
"You knew."
"I knew."
"You came to Christmas at our house. You came to Mama's funeral. You stood next to me at Mama's funeral. You ate at our table. You let me put your name in my will as my emergency contact when Daddy had the heart attack. You did all of that, Boone, with your eyes on my sister."
"I did not put my eyes on your sister, Cade. I kept my eyes off your sister for six years. That was the whole point."
"Don't get cute."
"I am not getting cute. I am telling you.
Listen to me. I am going to tell you what happened and I am not going to skip the hard parts.
Six years ago at your mama's barbecue Harper handed me a plate of brisket and I looked at her and I knew.
I knew that day. I knew that day what she was going to be to me, and I knew that day I was not going to do anything about it, because you were my best friend, and she was your sister, and that was a line I was not going to cross, and I drew it for myself and I held it.
I held it six years, Cade. Six. I did not date her.
I did not touch her. I did not, in six years, allow myself to be alone in a room with her for longer than ten minutes if I could help it.
Christmas. The funeral. The wedding when Knox got married.
I was a brother to her. I was nothing else to her.
I was nothing else to her until she came home, and even then, even then I tried — I held it three weeks.
I held it three weeks after she came home and I lost the line on a Wednesday in a storm because the line, Cade, the line was killing me, and it was killing her, and there is — there is no version of this story where I tell you I am proud of how it happened, because I am not proud of how it happened, but there is also no version of this story where I tell you I am sorry it happened, because I am not sorry it happened, and I am going to give you both of those things and you can take them and do what you want. "
He did not say anything for maybe a quarter mile. The hay was up to our shins. The sun was coming hot over the trees and a hawk wheeled high over the far end of the field.
He said, "Did Harper know."
"Yes."
"For six years."
"For six years."
"You both knew."
"We both knew."
"And neither of you said anything to me."
"No."
He stopped walking. He stopped in the middle of the hayfield and put his hands on his hips and looked at the dirt at his boots.
"I feel like an idiot," he said. "I feel like an idiot, Boone, and I do not want to feel like an idiot about my sister and my best friend, and I am going to need a minute."
"Take it."
"I am hurt. I am hurt that you did not tell me.
I am hurt that she did not tell me. I am hurt that I sat on a deck with you six years ago and asked you if you were dating anybody and you said no and let me ramble at you about how Harper wasn't for the brothers and how some nice regular-hours guy in Nashville was right for her, and you let me say all of that knowing what you knew, and I am hurt about that one in particular, brother, because I have replayed that conversation in my head about six times in the last forty minutes and I want to put my own boot through my own teeth about it. I am hurt about it."
"I know."
"And I am hurt because I love my sister and I love you, and I trusted both of you, and I am sitting with the fact that you have both been carrying something around me for six years and not given me the chance to grow into being okay with it.
You did not let me have that growth, Boone.
You held it from me. You decided for me.
You decided what I could handle. You decided. And that is not yours to decide."
I stood there. I felt every word of that.
I said, "You are right."
"I know I am right."
"You are completely right. And I owe you an apology for that, and Harper owes you an apology for that, and we are going to give you those apologies, and I am going to ask you to take some time and decide what kind of brother you want to be on the other side of those apologies, because Cade — I love your sister.
I love her. I have loved her for six years.
I am going to love her for the next sixty, God willing.
I am not asking you to be happy about us today.
I am not asking you to be happy about us next week.
I am asking you to be willing, eventually, to be in a room with both of us, because I am not letting her go, and she is not letting me go, and you and I have been friends too long to lose this over a thing that was, even at its worst, only ever about loving her too much to do it any other way. "
He looked at me.
He looked at me a long time.
He said, "I need three days."
"Take three days."
"I am not — I am not telling you what is going to happen at the end of those three days, Boone. I am telling you I need three days to sit with this, and I do not want to talk to you in those three days, and I do not want you to come find me, and I will come find you on Saturday."
"Saturday."
"Saturday. I will come to your farm. And we will talk."
"Okay."
He turned and walked back across the field toward the clubhouse, and I let him.
I watched him go. I stood in the middle of the hayfield for about a minute after he was out of sight, and I felt twenty-seven years of friendship sitting in my chest like a stone, and I felt twenty-six years of being a Dalton sitting in my chest right next to it, and I made myself take both stones and put them down side by side and look at them, and I knew, the way you know things on the wrong side of a hard morning, that the stones would still be there on Saturday, and that whatever happened on Saturday would either lift one of them or it would not.
Saturday took three days to get to. They were three of the longest days of my life.
I worked the farm. I did not go to the bakery.
Harper called me Wednesday night and Thursday morning and Friday afternoon and we talked on the phone like people who had not just had the worst morning of their lives, because the only way to get through three days like that is to keep talking, and to keep talking like the future is real, and we did.
Knox called me Thursday morning. He said, Cade is at the clubhouse, he is not okay, he is also not breaking anything, I am keeping eyes on him.
I said, thank you, brother . Knox said, Boone.
He's gonna come around. I know him. I said, I hope you're right.
He was right.
Cade came to my farm Saturday afternoon at four. He rode up alone on his bike. He stopped at the foot of my porch and took his helmet off and looked up at me where I was sitting in the rocker. He did not get off the bike for about ten seconds.
Then he got off the bike. He came up the porch. He sat down in the second rocker. We did not say anything for maybe two minutes.
He said, "How is she."
"She is good. She is worried about you."
"Yeah."
"She loves you, Cade."
"Yeah."
He looked at the porch boards.
He said, "I have been thinking a lot. Mostly I have been thinking about Mama.
I have been thinking what Mama would say.
And Mama would say — Mama would say, boy, if a good man loves your sister, you sit down and you eat the cake.
That is what Mama would say. Mama would not say guard your sister .
Mama would say guard your sister from men who do not love her , and then she would say, but Everett Dalton loves your sister and Everett Dalton has been like a third son to me since he was nine years old, so you sit down at my table and you eat the cake.
And I have been hearing my mama in my head for three days, Boone. "
"Yeah."
"I am still mad."
"I know."
"I am going to be mad for a while. I am gonna give myself permission to be mad for a while because I think I earned the right to be mad about this for at least a couple of months."
"Take a couple of months."
"But Boone."
"Yeah."
He looked at me.
"If you hurt her — and I mean if you hurt her, in any way, ever, in any version of the future where you and my sister are still a thing — I am going to kill you.
That is not a metaphor. That is not a brother saying I'd kill him.
That is me telling you, friend to friend, that there will be a reckoning, and you and I will both go down for it, and I will be okay with both of us going down for it. You understand me."
"If I hurt her," I said, "I will let you."
He nodded.
"That's what I needed to hear."
He held his hand out across the gap between the rockers.
I took it. We shook hands the way two men shake hands who have known each other twenty-seven years and have just walked a hayfield over a thing and come back to the porch on the other side.
We were not done. He was not done being mad.
I was not done being sorry. But we were sitting on a porch shaking hands and that was — that was enough for a Saturday.
He stood up.
He said, "Go to her. She has been waiting on me for three days."
"You don't want to come with me."