Chapter 42
YOU HAVE A FACE.
DARCY
“So this is the real deal, huh?” Leo hands me another plate and I load it into the dishwasher.
“Definitely,” I answer, not needing to ask what he means. He means Beth, being in love with her, knowing this is forever.
“And how does it feel?”
I shut the dishwasher and straighten, the smile on my face so wide it hurts. “You know exactly how it feels, brother.”
Leo chuckles, nodding. “And you’re doing okay? Otherwise, I mean?”
It’s the elephant in the room. The thing he knows I’ve been withholding, waiting for the right time to open up about.
“I am now, yeah. Therapy is helping, and so is the medication.” His expression doesn’t falter.
He simply listens, willing to hear whatever I’m ready to share.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I started having panic attacks.
I didn’t know what was happening, why it was happening.
It felt like I needed to have a better grip on things before I could…
I don’t know. I needed to process. But I am sorry I shut you out of that part of my life. I don’t want to do that anymore.”
My best friend reaches for me, brawny arms wrapping around me in a tight hug.
“I’m proud of you, Darce. So fucking proud of you.” He steps back, clocking the confusion on my face. “You’re telling me now, and something tells me you’ve already shared this with Billie. You’re doing the work; you’re taking care of yourself. And you’re happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”
I blink back my tears, because I know he’ll join me if I start. And then we’ll relentlessly make fun of each other until the end of time. “Thank you.”
“I love you, Peter.”
“I love you too, Leo.”
The weight of hiding something from my best friend is lifted. One more piece of my puzzle clicks into place, and it feels really fucking good.
Mom corners me in the kitchen while I’m making coffee.
At first, she doesn’t say anything, just stands next to me and watches me measure the grounds with the careful attention of a woman who has something to say and is choosing her moment. Dana Darcy is many things, but subtle has never been one of them, so her restraint is almost alarming.
“Just say it, Mom.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You have a face.”
“I always have a face. It came with the rest of me.” She picks up a dish towel and folds it, then unfolds it, then folds it again. “She’s wonderful, Peter.”
“I know.”
“I mean it. She’s hardworking, obviously adores Leo and Neve. And the way she looks at you when she thinks no one’s watching—”
“Mom.”
“Don’t Mom me. I’ve earned this.” She sets the dish towel down and turns to face me.
“I watched you disappear. For years, I watched my son become someone I didn’t recognize—someone who worked until he couldn’t breathe and smiled through all of it because that’s what Darcys do.
And now I’m standing in this kitchen, in this beautiful house in Nova Scotia, and my son is back.
The real one. The one who laughs loudly and cares too much and falls in love like it’s the most natural thing in the world. ”
My throat tightens. “Mom—”
“Don’t let this go.” She says it simply, without drama, as if he’s telling me to grab a jacket on a cold day. Essential information, delivered without fuss. “Whatever you have to figure out in Toronto with work and all of that—figure it out. But don’t let her go.”
“I’m not planning on it.”
“Good. That coffee is going to be way too strong, by the way.” She pats my arm, takes the tray of mugs next to me, and walks back to the living room like this conversation never happened.
Dad finds me later.
Everyone has migrated to the back deck. Neve and Mom are deep in a conversation about white paint shades that shows no signs of ending.
But they both look happy, so I don’t butt in.
Leo and Beth are at the railing. She’s pointing across the water, explaining something about the marina—the pilings, the tide line, the buildings she wants to save.
Leo is nodding along with the focused attention of a craftsman who understands what it means to care about the bones of a thing.
They’re good together, these two. Not in a threatening way—in a way that makes me feel like the people I love most are building something between themselves that is independent of me, and that’s its own kind of gift.
Dad leans against the railing next to me, mug in hand, and we watch the water for a while. This is how we’ve always communicated—in parallel, looking at the same thing, letting the silence do the work.
“Nice spot you’ve got here,” he says eventually.
“It is.”
“Good people, too.”
“The best.”
More silence. A sip of coffee. The sound of Beth laughing at something Leo says.
“So, when are you going back to Toronto?”
There it is. Not an ambush. Dad doesn’t do ambushes. It’s a question, delivered with the same neutral curiosity he’d use to ask about the weather. But it lands like a stone dropped into still water, and the ripples go wide.
“I don’t know,” I reply. And it’s the most honest answer I’ve got.
Dad nods. Takes another sip. “Martin called.”
“He what?”
“Called the house. Last week. Your mother answered.” A ghost of a smile. “She told him you were busy building a life, that he should try back in September.”
“She didn’t.”
“She absolutely did. In those exact words.” He’s smiling for real now. The quiet, warm smile I’ve spent my whole life trying to earn, one he’s always given freely. “He took it well. Martin’s a smart man. He knows what he’s offering, and he knows it’s not the only option anymore.”
I stare at the water. At the marina in the distance, half-hidden by the fading light.
At Beth, who is now demonstrating something to Leo with her hands—big, sweeping gestures that make her whole body move.
Leo is laughing, and my mother has abandoned the paint conversation to watch them with an expression I recognize because I’ve witnessed it my whole life.
Neve has the same look, her head resting on her hand as she practically swoons at the scene.
These are my people. This is where I belong.
“Your mother and I have spent over three decades in the same city,” Dad says.
“Raised you there. Built a life there. And it was a good life. But you know what I’ve learned from all this traveling we’ve been doing?
” He turns to look at me, and his eyes—the same brown as mine, the same brown I see every morning in my bathroom mirror—are steady and kind.
“Home isn’t a city. It’s not a house or a job or a street you grew up on.
Home is the people who make you feel like yourself.
” He tilts his mug toward the deck, where Beth has given up on whatever she was explaining and is now arm-wrestling Leo, while Neve referees and my mother cheers.
“Seems like you’ve got a lot of that right here. ”
I don’t trust myself to speak, so I nod. Dad pats my shoulder once—firm, solid, the Rob Darcy equivalent of a ten-minute speech—and goes to join the others.
I stay at the railing for another minute.
Beth looks up, catches my eye, and grins—flushed, happy, and totally unaware she’s arm-wrestling in front of the parents of the man who is so in love with her it borders on clinical.
She mouths, I’m winning, and Leo mouths, she’s cheating, and Mom is filming the whole thing on her phone, and this—all of this—is not what I thought my life would look like.
It’s better.
But the question hangs. When are you coming back to Toronto? Not because Dad needs an answer, but because I do. Twenty-eight days isn’t a long time. Martin isn’t a patient man. And somewhere between this deck and that corner office, there’s a choice I’m not ready to make.
Not yet. But soon.