Chapter 41
I open the sleeping porch early the next summer.
Stewart likes to open all the windows in his room to create this effect, but it’s not the same.
He’s too high above the frogs and the crickets.
He doesn’t have any neighbors with polka music.
On the first night after I’ve replaced the windows with screens, he sneaks in at midnight and wraps himself around me.
We whisper about South Carolina, where he’s revitalizing an old theater district.
We whisper about Gus, who we think might have a girlfriend, and Patsy, who finally reached out and had an unsatisfying text conversation with our mom.
So much life happening around us and between us. So much is ahead of us.
Stewart and Grant, with help from the management consultant, have restructured Whitfield Industries.
Grant is running the traditional business, heavy on the strip malls, and Stewart is running a smaller preservation arm from Whitfield.
He’s abandoned his dad’s office for the little library off the living room and is often waiting outside the fish house at four.
On the first of June we celebrate with lobster tails.
A big order was delivered in the morning and Christopher worked with my dad all day, joined by Gus after school.
I was behind the bakery counter until we sold out of Maud’s blueberry-peach pie at two, and now I’m sitting on my porch, watching my family roll in.
“Dolly!” Christopher sings, and sits next to me on the steps.
He looks tired but it’s the good kind, like he earned it.
I feel bad that he’s spent so much time not thriving when this kind of life was available to him, but I never saw this possibility.
I have spent my life trying to make sure nothing happened to him, and nothing happened at all.
Gus follows him up the stairs and drops his backpack by the door.
“I’m going to the beach for a bit,” he says, and places a hand on my head.
It’s new, this casual touch. He’s fifteen, a solid B student, with an interest in sailing and oceanography.
He has friends and a light in his eyes when he talks to you.
I do not know how life could get better than this.
“Hey, Doll,” my dad says, and heads straight to the barbecue. “Lobster tonight!”
“Great,” I say. “So, buddy, how was the day?”
“Good,” Christopher says. “We unloaded all the fish, gross. And then I cleaned out the back fridge.” He’s looking out onto the street as if he’s seeing the whole day replay in front of his eyes.
“It was cloudy at lunch and Dad and I had turkey sandwiches from the deli. We ate them outside and I had a sweater. Gus came and it was cold out on the boat but he had cookies and hot tea.”
“What?” He’s been doing so well, but I haven’t had him back to the doctor in eight months. My back goes rigid at the thought that he’s having delusions again.
“Chocolate, with white icing. What are those called?”
“Who had cookies?”
“Stewart. Oh, never mind.” Christopher pops another butterscotch into his mouth and presses his lips together tight.
“You went on the boat with Stewart today? Come on, buddy, tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s a surprise. You’ll find out. And I’m not going to tell you because he said I couldn’t.”
“And Dad and Gus know too?”
“Yes, he asked our permission.”
Oh my God.
“For what?” I ask.
“I promised not to tell. He’s just going to ask you something. No big deal, sis.” He bumps me with his shoulder just like any brother would do. I rest my head on his shoulder and let the life that Christopher might have had go. This is just right, the way things are now.
“Did everyone say yes?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says.
Twenty minutes later, I’m spooning potato salad onto my mom’s chipped ivy platter when Stewart walks through the kitchen door.
He’s gotten a little sun on his face since I snuck out of Eight Oaks this morning.
He’s holding a bouquet of spray roses and snapdragons from the Eight Oaks garden, and he’s smiling at me like he has a secret.
And I’m smiling back like I hope he does.
“Those are beautiful,” I say. “Why are you sunburned?”
“Am I?”
“You are,” I say.
“I did a bunch of stuff today. Inside, outside.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Work stuff. Planning.”
“What are you planning?” I ask.
He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear and looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. “A really happy life,” he says. “I think I’ve got it figured out.” And he kisses me there by the platter my mother thought might bring her a better life.
“Okay,” I say. “Anything I can do to help, just let me know.” I smile and kiss him again. This is forever, I was right about it all along.
“You cannot help,” he says. “Your job is to act surprised, like you never saw it coming.”
I laugh. “Trust me, Stewart, I never saw any of this coming.”
The next morning Naomi sends an all-caps crisis text that the corner store is out of basil and she’s making pesto.
I bike to Eight Oaks to pick some—I’ve been granted full access to all produce and flowers—and stop at the archway, teeming with tomatoes.
I pop one into my mouth and taste that memory, two years ago, on the precipice of falling for Stewart.
I’m wiping tomato juice from my chin when I see him sitting there on the herb bed.
“Stewart!” I say, and run over to him. He pulls me onto his lap and kisses me. It hits me like a ghost pepper all over again, still. “What are you doing here?” I look at the surrounding vegetable garden and I feel it all again. The total saturation of my senses in smell and color.
“I love you,” he says.
I smile and say, “I love you too,” just as my phone trills with the first few notes of the song “Brick House.”
“I was going somewhere with that,” he says, and runs a hand through his hair as I answer.
“Brick Fish Express, you’re on a recorded line, how can I help you?” I look into his eyes as the caller tells me that her grocery store doesn’t carry the fresh thyme called for on the recipe card we included with her striped bass. Stewart takes my hand and silently connects us—hands, minds, hearts.
“Yes, dried thyme is perfectly fine, just use a little extra. And get the grill really hot first,” I tell the customer as Stewart traces my palm with his fingers, just the way I did for him that evening.
He’s in the blue shirt I modeled my duvet after, even before I could admit to myself that I wanted to be surrounded by him forever.
Our eyes meet, and this is forever. I can feel it.
Forever is happening right now inside this garden, sweet notes of basil mixing with the earthy scent of thyme.
Stewart traces my ring finger, over and over, holding my eyes until I realize what’s happening.
“Dried thyme. Rosemary. Anything’s fine.
I have to go.” I put my phone down and it drops into the dirt.
I don’t move. “Sorry, I—” I take both of his hands in mine. “What’s happening here?”
Stewart smiles that smile that seemed rusty when I met him. It’s always at the ready now. More often than not, he looks at me like he just got the best news, like he finally bought Fenway Park. “What are you smiling about?” I ask now, like I always do.
“You,” he says, like he always does. “So I was saying I love you. And then your phone rang.”
“Yes, sorry about that.”
“And then I had a lot of other stuff I was going to say. I really prepared.” He looks down at our entwined hands and gives them a squeeze. “It was about how you changed my life and somehow you changed my family. How even my dad seems lighter every time you walk into a room.”
“That’s good stuff,” I say, smiling. I really have folded into the Whitfield family like meringue into cake batter. Last night I let Busy pluck my eyebrows and then prepped a week’s worth of piecrusts in the kitchen with Gladys.
“But now that we’re here, I realize it’s just about you.
I love the way you give yourself over to the things you love.
Gus, me, cake. I love the way you close your eyes every time you hug Christopher, like something sacred’s happening.
You’re the only person I know whose bedtime routine includes leaving butter out to soften for the morning.
I think you were put on this earth to make everything better. ”
He’s not done talking, but I lean in and kiss him. “I love you too,” I say against his lips.
I place a hand on his heart and feel it beating, just a little faster than usual.
“I have something,” he says. He reaches into the rosemary bush and pulls out a black velvet box. The smile on my face. The explosion in my heart. “I was hoping you would marry me.”
Inside is a round diamond set flat in an antique setting. “Yes,” I say, over and over again. He slides it on my finger and I throw my arms around him. He squeezes me so tight and we dissolve into each other.
When we’ve kissed and smiled so much our faces hurt, I kiss him again and say, “I don’t know when I’ll ever get used to being this happy.”
“Maybe we’ll just keep getting happier,” he says.
“You’re going to be so handsome when you’re old,” I say. “I’m going to feed you and change the tires on your walker.”
He laughs. “Will you be Mrs. Whitfield?”
“I don’t think so,” I say, looking at my ring. “Is that okay with you?”
“Sure, I’d hold on to Brick too,” he says. “This ring was my great-grandmother’s.”
“It’s so beautiful,” I say.
“Maybe one day you can give it to our granddaughter.”
“Stewart.” I look at him and don’t have to say a word. We’ve talked this to death over the past year. In bed, out of bed. I don’t want to have another baby, and he has to be okay with that.
“I was just thinking Gus might have a daughter,” he says.
“Oh wow. Okay.” I feel a whole new layer of forever, Stewart and me as grandparents. Stewart here for Gus and his children.
“Which brings me to the other thing,” he says. “And this is up to you first, and then him. But I was wondering if you’d be open to me adopting Gus. I would like to be his father.”
I am speechless. This is not something I’d considered before.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he says, and pulls me close.
I rest my head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat.
All of this is real. “If that’s not something you guys want, I can still be who I’ve been to him.
I’ve seen a lawyer about it. It’s easy to set up a trust for him even if he’s not mine. ”
I don’t have the right words to say, but I do have tears in my eyes. “Gus doesn’t need a trust,” I say finally.
“No one does.” He laughs. “No one needs a sailboat either, but I’m getting him one for his birthday.”
I look up at him and he sees my wet eyes. “Don’t you dare,” I say, and kiss him.
“A little boat? Nothing fancy. He’s gotten to be a good sailor.”
“He has.” I’m thinking about the camping trip Gus is planning for next week, everything he needs in his backpack and still so much wonder in his heart. He has everything but a father. “Maybe a little boat,” I say. “And yes, please ask him about adoption. He deserves to have a father like you.”
“Really?” Stewart is smiling like he’s already planning a trip to Disney World. “Thank you,” he says inexplicably. He trails his fingers down my arm in that way he has of making me feel like I’m fashioned out of silk.
He looks around the garden. “I started to fall in love with you here,” he says. “I’ve never been the same.”
I smile at him. “Me too,” I say. I look up at Eight Oaks, the princess chapel in the distance.
I’m going to marry this gentle man in that chapel and I’ll somehow involve a horse, just to get a laugh out of Patsy.
We’ll eat crabcakes from the fish house under the giant oak trees, with acorns scattered at our feet, tiny little seeds of hope.
Loving Stewart has given me new eyes toward what’s possible—to be put first, to be backed up.
That it’s worth moving through the chest-pinching vulnerability of asking for help.
That it’s an act of generosity to share something as precious as your life with someone.
Love’s taught me that, and I’m at home with myself now, Dolly all the time.