CHAPTER 31
The little Thai place was nice, walking distance from the parking garage where he’d stowed the truck and also near the Space Needle and stuff. Most importantly, it was close to Amanda’s law office.
“Thanks for meeting me,” she said. She was wearing a suit-type thing—a deep-purple jacket and skinny skirt with a pale-gray top. Her hair was pulled up, making her expression tight, and she was wearing glasses. Those were new. “I know you don’t come over to Seattle if you don’t have to, and I’m sure you’ve got plenty to do.”
“No problem, I was going off island anyway,” he said with a shrug.
She sighed, poking at her green curry. He looked at the remains of the dish in front of him: khao soi. He’d never tried it before, usually sticking to pad thai on his few forays into the cuisine (usually when eating lunch with Amanda). But Willa’s passion for food had made him curious, and he had to admit, the coconut-rich broth, with the fried crispy noodles on top, made the whole thing pretty tasty.
She sighed again, deeper this time, then pushed her bowl away. “It’s about the kids.”
He suppressed his own sigh. Of course it was about the kids. He braced himself.
“What’s the problem?” he said, then winced. “Sorry,” he tacked on. “That came out harsher than I meant it to.”
She still grimaced in response before drinking the last of her iced tea. “Jeremy quit his job,” she said. “Or at least, that’s what he said on Instagram.”
“I know.”
“And you were okay with it?”
Hudson shrugged. “He’s twenty-three. Doesn’t matter if I’m okay with it or not, does it?”
She pursed her lips. “Do you know why?”
“He wasn’t happy, from what he’s said,” Hudson said. “The job sucked, and he wasn’t going to go anywhere with it, so I don’t blame him.”
“Did the last two jobs suck too?” she pressed, her eyes filled with worry. “He was only at the big electronics store for, what, a few months? And the ones before that ... that dinky little computer repair place in Shoreline, I think. Or working for the college’s video tech department.”
“Where are we going with this?” Hudson said, finishing his lunch in a few last bites.
“I’m concerned,” she said. “It seems like he broke up with his girlfriend too.”
“Yeah, the writing was on the wall with that one for ages, though,” Hudson said, glad that she at least seemed to agree with that. “They lasted way longer than they should have, but he was really stubborn about making it work.”
Amanda sent him a teasing grin. “Like his dad, huh?”
At least they could joke about it now. After twenty years, the statute of limitations was up. “Hopefully he’ll learn better next time.”
“Hopefully you’ll learn better next time,” she said. It was nice that they could be friendly, even as they disagreed. “You dating now?”
“Are we talking about dating lives?” he replied, surprised. “Are you dating?”
Her eyes widened. “Would you be upset if I were?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” he said, and truly felt it. “I would be shocked, though. When would you have the time ?”
She laughed, looking for a second like the lively, carefree girl he’d known in high school. “Yeah, no. Dating’s not on my agenda. I’m closing in on partner, which I would have had already if I wasn’t a woman ... but I’m not going to carp on that now. I wanted to talk to you about Jeremy, remember?”
“Still don’t see what the problem is.”
She pursed her lips. “Did you let him move home?”
Ah. “Yeah. When they broke up, he needed to move out. Deciding to quit was all part of it. So I told him he could have his room back.” He paused when he saw the judgment in her eyes. “You know that I’ve told the kids they can move home any time they want, Amanda. Hell, if you needed a place, I’d offer it.”
She huffed out a breath, regret crossing her expression. “I’m just worried. He seems so lost.”
“You could talk to him about it.” Hudson felt tension building between his shoulders, drawing the blades together like a vise.
“Yeah, like that’s easy, with either of them.” Her laugh was bitter. “I’m lucky I can get them to respond to texts.”
He didn’t say anything, trying not to blurt out Whose fault is that? Knowing that was too shitty a response, but there had to have been something in his face that showed. She looked wounded, and defensive, and defeated, which for Amanda was a rare and unpleasant expression.
“I know. I know ,” she repeated, a note of pleading in her voice. “You probably don’t feel like I have any right to worry about the kids because I abandoned them.”
His sigh was deep. “It’s not the choice I would’ve made,” he said carefully. Obviously. It wasn’t the choice he’d made. “But you did the best you could, and I tried to make sure the kids didn’t hate you.”
“You think I don’t know?” Her voice, while low, was impassioned. “I love them just as much as you. But I never should’ve been a mother . I don’t know how to make those two facts balance out, you know?”
They’d had variations of this talk too many times in the past, once they’d started talking again. When she’d first asked for the divorce, the twins were two and a half. They were barely making ends meet, and they had lived with his parents. Her parents had been furious that she’d managed to get herself pregnant and had cut off contact with her, so there was no support from that side—they’d gone so far as to move away, too ashamed and angry to stay on the island. The rest of the island, on the other hand, had been completely supportive, probably because the Clarks had been such a big part of island society for so long.
After a quickie court wedding and a Clark family barbecue, the kids had been born, burning them both out. She’d withdrawn, barely speaking to him or anyone. He’d find her crying behind the barn, or in the meadow by a copse of pine trees. After a while, she seemed to float through the farmhouse like a ghost.
He’d thought it was just postpartum depression.
Turned out it was more than that.
“You know if I stayed,” she said, bringing him back to the present, “we would’ve been miserable. They would’ve been miserable. They would’ve known. And it would’ve been worse.”
She said the words confidently, but he saw the persistent question in her eyes: I made the right choice ... Didn’t I? Did I?
“I actually do know that,” he said, giving her hand a quick squeeze. “After almost twenty years. I’m a slow learner, but I got that much.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t play dumb,” she said, scowling at him. “You’re a smart man, and you know it.”
“Eh. I’m okay.” He thought of Willa, with her degree, all her life experience. Not that it should matter that they were different. He was happy with his life on the island.
Now who’s questioning things?
Amanda kept pushing, though. “We both know the kids are smart. Really, really smart.”
“They are,” he agreed.
“So what are they doing with that?” Her voice got strident, and she looked around, noticing that some other lunch diners were staring. She collected herself. “Kimber’s got a degree in agriculture from U Dub, and she’s just ... just playing with goats on your parents’ retirement-hobby farm. Making soap and jam like it’s just one big, pretty Instagram account. And Jeremy’s just popping between retail jobs and playing at God knows what, video games and making silly shorts. I don’t even know what his associate’s degree is in, but whatever it is, I don’t know why he bothered. I don’t even know what he wants!”
“What does this have to do with you ?” Hudson shot back in a low voice. “And what the hell do you want me to do about it?”
“They’re stalled out, Hud!” she hissed. “They just think that they can float around through life, and if anything goes wrong, they can always go crash at Gram and Gramps’s, and it’ll be fine. What happens if they don’t have that?”
He huffed out a breath.
“They’ll always have me, unless I’m dead,” he said. “I will always be there for the kids. You know that.”
“I do,” she said, rubbing her temples. She looked woeful.
“Maybe they’d like to know they have you too,” he said.
“I don’t want them to have to need either of us,” she growled back. “Are we really helping them if they do need us forever? Or are we kneecapping them?”
He clenched his teeth, slowing his breathing. This was a familiar fight, one he didn’t want to dive into.
“I don’t have an answer,” he finally said in a low voice. “I think that they’re strong enough to figure out what they want, and I think they’re more capable than you’re giving them credit for. I also think that they’ll figure it out, one way or another.”
She started to protest, but he cut across it.
“But if they need time and a soft place to land while they do figure it out, I am going to fucking be there for them,” he said. “While I get what you’re saying ... you can’t complain to me about feeling like a shitty mom, and that they won’t talk to you, if they know you’re not someone they can turn to when they’re in trouble. No matter what your reasons are.”
She flinched like he’d slapped her, and remorse punched him back.
Still, he also knew that the twins harbored a grudge against the mother who’d left, who didn’t share custody, who paid for things as she went higher on the career ladder but hadn’t been there—not for recitals or 4-H shows or power outages that left them scared in lightning storms. By the time they were old enough that she felt she could relate to or talk to them, they were distinctly cold. Both had gotten scholarships, turning down her offers to help with any college stuff. They certainly hadn’t consulted with her before deciding their courses of study.
They’d moved on, and none of them knew how to reconcile that.
“You made the best choice you could,” he said. “Even thought it was a hard choice. But they’re making the best choices for them. You can’t expect them to accept your choices if you don’t accept theirs, even if you don’t like them.”
“I really do love them,” Amanda rasped, her eyes glassy with the tears she was fighting.
“I know that. I do.”
“But I don’t want them to get stuck in a life they don’t like. You gave up on your dreams. You can tell me you like living on the island and being a handyman all you like. But you told me you wanted to travel, a long time ago. You wanted to restore things. You even had that crazy clock idea.” She smiled softly. “And you just ... stayed on the island.”
When she put it that way, yeah, it did sound defeatist. He hadn’t dwelled on the things he’d put aside, figuring they were just dreams.
Then he thought about what Willa had done. What she was still doing.
Being a freelance cookbook writer, not holding down a nine-to-five job, wasn’t stable by any stretch. Sometimes, he wondered if she was even happy. But she had a fire about her that he hadn’t felt in ... he couldn’t remember how long.
“Do you want the kids to do the same?” she asked. “I know I screwed up. They think I’m so ambitious that I didn’t even love them. They think that being passionate and driven about something means you turn your back on the people you care about, and that’s my fault. I just ... I don’t know how to fix that.”
He sighed. “I don’t know that I can either,” he said. “But ... I promise. I’ll try.”