Appalling Rustic
LILA
Ilook at my husband for a long moment. At the photographs still spread across the table behind us.
All those months. All those ordinary moments he thought to document. Whether he realized it or not, carrying on his mother’s photographic tradition: that amid the big milestone occasions are also so many of those ordinary moments, the small and beautiful ones that make up the fabric of a life.
Slade wraps his arms around me before carefully putting everything away. We both ignore the Sherwoods as they file out, but to my surprise, they’re waiting in the hallway when we come out.
On second thought, I don’t know why that surprises me. My father has never left a room without having the last word and apparently a judicial ruling doesn’t change that.
He straightens when he sees us. My mother is beside him, Birkin over her wrist, expression composed. Peter slightly behind them, arms crossed, still not looking at me. Celia at the end, sunglasses already on indoors, which means she’s tired or hungover or both.
My father speaks first.
“Lila. The judge’s ruling notwithstanding, I want you to understand that our concerns came from a place of genuine concern. Your mother and I came all the way here personally to ensure you weren’t be coerced.”
“More like ensure I wasn’t doing something that was going to embarrass you,” I interject.
“We didn’t know what to think,” my mother sniffs. “You could have joined a cult, for all we knew. You’d moved to the middle of nowhere, given away five million dollars—”
“To charity,” I say.
“Not the correct ones.” Meaning, the Sherwood-approved ones. “You stopped returning calls. Married an appalling rustic—one who is evidently obsessed with impregnating you… I’m sorry, did I say something amusing?”
Beside me I feel Slade’s shoulders move. He’s laughing. Silently, contained, but laughing. And I start laughing too. Breathlessly, I manage, “Oh, you have no idea. An appalling rustic, though. I love it.”
“Got a certain ring to it,” Slade says. “Think I ought to have it engraved on a belt buckle.”
“Mom,” I say, getting serious, “I know I was always your least favorite kid—”
She waves a bejeweled hand. “I love all my children equally.” Her upper lip curls in contempt as she glances at my brother. “Even Peter. I don’t care for him, but technically I still love him.”
Celia, mid-sip from silver flask, barks out a laugh that turns into a cough.
Peter rears back and gives our mother a look like, what the hell?
As my mother pats Celia’s back with an annoyed look on her face until the coughing fit passes, my father checks his watch.
Just another Tuesday with the Sherwoods. Why do I even try to mend fences with these people?
My father straightens his jacket and looks past me at Slade. “Mr. Rhodes. I think you and I should speak privately. As men.”
Slade raises an eyebrow. “As men,” he drawls coolly.
“Yes.” My father’s voice is measured and reasonable now, the voice he uses in boardroom meetings. He’s finally recognized Slade as a worthy opponent, every bit as cutthroat as he himself is.
The whole bespoke suit thing doesn’t hurt either, I’m sure. My family has always been all about appearances.
My father continues, “I think there are things better discussed between a father and his daughter’s husband in private.”
I grit my teeth. That’s how it’s always worked in this world. Never just Lila. Always Lila in relation to someone else: whose daughter I am, whose sister. Now whose wife. Always filtered through the nearest man in the room.
“Anything you have to say to me,” Slade says, “you can say in front of Lila.” He looks at me, brief and certain. “We tell each other everything. We’re partners.”
Squeezing his hand in gratitude, I take one step forward. It’s time to put this to rest with my family once and for all.
I look at all of them: my parents, my siblings. People who I wish could love me for me but never have. I gave up trying to earn that love a long time ago.
Now I’m finally, truly done even wanting it.
“I am proud of the life I’ve built,” I tell them.
“I am proud of my business and the home I’ve made and the people I’ve chosen to build it with.
I know it’s not what you wanted for me. I know it doesn’t look the way you thought it would look or fit the shape you had in mind.
” I take a deep breath. “And I’m genuinely sorry that you can’t see it for what it is.
I’m sorry that your world is small enough that this—” I gesture at the mountains beyond the window, the man beside me, everything beneath this big sky “—doesn’t make sense to you.
Because the world out here is big and messy and imperfect and completely extraordinary, and I wish you could see that. I really do.”
I look at all of them in turn. “I love all of you,” I say. “I do. But I know you don’t like me, and I will never change myself in the hopes that you will. And if one day you can accept me as I am, I hope we can rekindle some kind of relationship.”
My mother shakes her head. “You always did insist on marching to the beat of your own drum. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised.” A pitying look. “We only want what’s was best for you.”
I return the pitying look with a cool smile. “Fortunately, I’m the one who knows what’s best for me.”
Peter finally looks at me. His jaw is tight and his eyes are flat and he is so certain, so completely and stubbornly certain.
I look at my little brother and feel something sad move through me.
Once upon a time, he shared his hot chocolate with me when I spilled mine on the floor.
Once upon a time he held my hand as we toddled along the grass together, chasing bubbles and butterflies.
I don’t recognize that boy inside this man.
“It was fraud,” he says. Low, almost private, like he’s saying it for the record. “I don’t care what he ruled. I know what this is.”
“Peter,” my father says.
“I know what it is,” Peter shouts, desperate and sharp. And then he turns and walks toward the elevator and doesn’t look back.
My mother touches my arm briefly. “We’ll talk soon,” she says, which means we won’t. Then she follows my father down the hall.
I watch them go.
Celia is the last one. She pushes her sunglasses up on her head and looks at me for a moment. And then she crosses the hallway and puts her arms around me.
I stand there for a second, surprised. Then I hug her back. She smells like expensive perfume and spearmint gum and a whiff of alcohol underneath it all.
“You should leave your no-good, cheating husband,” I tell her impulsively. “Get a divorce. Free yourself. You don’t have to live like this.”
She gives me a tired smile. “I’d rather be rich and dead inside than divorced and working for a living.”
“Working for a living isn’t so bad,” I say, lips twitching.
“Easy for you to say.” Her eyes trail appreciatively over Slade. “You get to have the full package.” She takes a sip from her flask and tips it towards me. “No wonder you galloped off into the sunset without a second glance. Enjoy the ride, darling.”
She puts her sunglasses back down and walks toward the elevator.
I watch until the doors close.
Then I stand in the empty hallway of the Topaz Peak County Courthouse and take one long slow breath.
That was more than enough of that for the next several lifetimes.
Slade holds my hand all the way to his truck. And then he wraps me in his arms and gives me tight hug and we just hold on to each other for a moment. As he kisses me softly, I let myself melt into him.
“I feel guilty,” I murmur, when we pull back.
A kiss on my forehead. “Guilty for what?”
“Because Peter was right. Because we got away with it. This started as an arrangement to get that trust fund money. Even if it was just to give it away, the original intention wasn’t pure.”
Slade just smiles. “Your dumbass brother isn’t right about anything. Real estate deals or otherwise.” He cups my jaw. “You want to know the truth? The trust fund gave me an excuse. That’s all it was. An excuse to do what I already wanted to do, which was be with you..”
I smile through my tears at his fierce sincerity. “You barely knew me then.”
“I was crazy about you already,” he says.
“From the very start. If I’m being honest…
” His thumb moves across my cheekbone, wiping the tear away.
“I would have found something else if the trust fund hadn’t existed.
I would have found some reason to keep you close because I couldn’t stand the alternative. ”
“Which was what?” I manage.
“A life without you in it.”