Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Every Day’s a Day for Half Cat
EMILY
T he next week was hard.
Like all holidays since Jake’s death, this one crept up miserably, serving mostly to remind me that he was gone. I wasn’t sure how my parents were doing—I’d left soon after dinner Tuesday, and hadn’t spoken to them since. I suspected they were probably doing better, it seemed to me that we all needed a little time. I knew I did.
Time to process all that I’d finally said to them and all that I felt.
Time to lick my wounds and let my mind and heart settle on the reality that Archie Kasper was not going to be part of my life.
Time to decide what I was going to do next.
But that time crept by so slowly it was laughable.
Wednesday, I received a call from Wheeler, the editor at the travel magazine that had sent me to Kasper Ridge to get the story of the hunt. They’d been quiet, and I’d figured that either things were busy and they hadn’t had time to go through what I’d sent, or that it was disappointing somehow and wouldn’t make the cover.
I answered the phone bracing for the latter, hoping for the former.
“Hello?”
“Hi Emily, how are you?”
“I’m okay, Wheeler. How are things there?”
“Really good, thanks. Listen, we’re really excited about the story you sent. I’m pushing it to a first of the year cover.”
I’d done it. I’d gotten the cover. Excitement zoomed through me. “Really?”
“Really. I honestly didn’t know what to expect from this, but you managed to make it an adventure with a really human edge—it’s incredible.”
“That’s pretty much what the whole place is,” I told him, smiling into the phone as pride lifted me. “It’s this incredible travel opportunity, but it’s laced with so much history and love.” I had a fleeting thought that I couldn’t wait to tell Archie the good news, then my mood plummeted as I realized I couldn’t.
“You got all that into the story, and the pictures are great too. I’d planned to send a photographer after you if we decided to run it, but I wanted to ask if I could buy these from you instead?”
Surprise straightened my spine as I stood in front of the window in my living room, looking out at the street with its holiday decorations gently swaying in the wind. Magazines usually appreciated photos with a story, but I’d only had a photo run with my words once before, and that was online. I wasn’t a photographer by any stretch of the imagination.
“Yeah,” I said, unsure if I was supposed to negotiate, play hardball on the price.
Wheeler told me what they’d give me per photo, which was far more than I thought a few snaps from my phone were worth, and I agreed.
“When does it run then?” I asked him, hoping it was soon.
“The online version will be up next week,” he said. “The glossy will be the January issue. The cover. We’ll send payment for both as soon as the accounting department gets it processed.”
I was shifting my weight and pacing the small living room of my apartment, happiness doing its best to claw through the other emotions that had been bogging me down since leaving Colorado. “That’s amazing. Thank you.”
“Thanks for the great work,” he said. “Interested in another assignment?”
“Yeah, of course.” My mood lifted even more. Maybe I didn’t have to figure out what was next, maybe Wheeler would just tell me. I crossed my fingers, hoping for something far away.
“I’ve got some information about a place down in Costa Rica,” he began, and I squeezed my eyes shut to keep from squealing with excitement. I was a travel writer who was finally going to travel! I listened as he explained the rest. “It’s part nature conservancy, part adventure resort. Kind of a luxury-meets-hard work situation, I think. The guy who runs it is a bit of a free spirit, I guess—aging hippie, ex-pat.”
“That sounds amazing,” I said. “Do you have an angle in mind?”
“Based on what you turned in for Kasper Ridge, I think I’d rather just send you and let you tell me.”
“Wow. Okay.”
“Any chance you could go between Thanksgiving and Christmas? I’d love to have it in hand to run sometime after the new year. February or March, probably.”
“Sure, yeah.” My mind flashed on Kasper Ridge as I spoke. I saw the resort in the snow, decorated for the holidays, and had a fleeting burst of sadness over the knowledge that I’d probably never see it again. Never see Archie again. What an amazing place it would be to spend the holidays...
“And you might look into investing in some photo gear? Nothing extravagant—the newest iPhones have really incredible quality.”
“Oh, sure, okay.” I ripped my mind back to the conversation, to the fact that this was exactly what I’d always wanted.
“Take a look at the calendar,” he said. “I’ll forward the details over email and put you in touch with Roger so you can set things up—he’s the owner.”
“Great.”
“Thanks, Emily. Happy Thanksgiving, by the way.”
I blinked, pulling myself firmly back to the conversation, the opportunity. “Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks, Wheeler. I’m really excited.”
We hung up and I spent a few minutes letting it all sink in. I was finally getting what I’d wanted—an opportunity to use my work to see the world, to explore and have adventures other people rarely got to have.
Traffic on the street below was busy—people making last-minute grocery runs for the holiday, I figured. Even so, San Diego felt suddenly dull and monochromatic to me. Nothing really changed here, except people pulled out different decorations at different times of year. The temperature dipped in the winter months, but that just meant sometimes I took a hoodie if I was going for a run outside. The temperate, steady nature of the city where I’d grown up suddenly felt blah and uninspired to me.
And now that the initial excitement of my new assignment had sunk in a bit, my heart had begun aching again. I wanted to tell someone. I wanted to tell Archie.
Instead, I called Christine.
“You’re back?” she asked, her voice breathy.
I slid open my patio door and sank into one of the chairs, kicking my feet up onto the railing overlooking the street. “I’m back. Have been for a couple days.”
“So tell me everything. Did you tell him? What happened?” I hadn’t talked to her since she left the conference.
I sighed and then let it all out. I told Christine about the hunt and the cover story (she squealed with excitement for me), and then I told her everything I hadn’t been able to tell my parents. Archie. The way he’d reacted to my identity. My misery and heartache.
“Oh honey,” she said, offering the sympathy I needed. “I’m so sorry. That’s really hard.”
“It is,” I moaned. “And I know it’s my fault, but I just keep going back through everything in my head and I think of a million ways I could have done it differently. But if I’d told him right off the bat, I would never have been able to get close enough.”
“For the story? Or to fall in love with the guy?”
“Either. Both.”
“Yeah, probably true. But Em? You did the right thing. You told him, and you said that you forgive him.”
“So stupid, right? I think he’s the one who needs to forgive me.” I dropped my head back onto the chair, cringing at the things I couldn’t take back, the things I couldn’t do over the right way. I didn’t know what the right way was.
“I’m not sure about that,” she said. “You may never get to know it, but I bet hearing you forgive him meant something to him. Based on what you’ve said, he’s a guy who’s been raking himself over the coals daily since the accident. Part of that has to have been thoughts of you—of Jake’s family—and of what you went through as a result of the accident.”
“I’d never really thought about that.”
“So you did have a reason to offer forgiveness, and I bet it was the most meaningful thing he’s heard since it happened. Only you and your family can offer that to him.”
“He was just so . . . angry and hurt.”
“Do you think maybe it will just take him a little time to move through angry and hurt and realize there were other feelings there too?”
I felt heavy, tired even though it was early in the day. “I doubt it.”
“I’m so sorry, Em. That’s so hard.”
It was nice to hear someone agree, even if it didn’t help.
“Thanks.”
“Now tell me about this next assignment. And if you need a sidekick or an assistant, I could see myself setting a book in Costa Rica. It would be research!”
I laughed and told her what little I knew about my next adventure. And when we hung up, I did feel a little bit better. The ache inside me was still there, but there was a glimmer on the horizon beyond it—adventure and promise.
I tried to focus on that.
On Thursday, the sun shone fiercely, and the temperature was high, even for Southern California. I went for a run along the harbor in the morning, and then showered and dressed to head to Mom and Dad’s for Thanksgiving. I’d have to tell them I was about to travel again, but I had a feeling this time I’d be leaving a stronger family behind. Maybe they were finally going to be able to move on.
Mom had insisted she would do all the cooking, so I picked up a bottle of wine for her and some Scotch for Dad. In the liquor store I spotted a bottle of Half Cat Whiskey, but thought better of it. I might be looking for connections to Kasper Ridge, but I was pretty sure my parents were not.
I pulled up to the house and got out, realizing with dismay that I was bracing myself internally. I’d been doing that since my brother’s death—shoring myself up to face my parents, to weather their reality. I was just glad I didn’t live in this house anymore. The pain was tangible inside.
At the front door, I heard something strange. Voices drifted around through the screen door—light laughter. I paused for a moment, listening. I could hear my father’s low timbre and Mom’s lighter pitch. But there was someone else here. And whoever it was had gotten Dad out of the chair in front of the football game. That was a feat.
My brain ran through a list of potential relatives, but most were distant cousins we didn’t usually share the holidays with. My parents were both only children, and family holidays since my grandparents had died had always been just us.
I pulled open the door and stepped in, taking the bottles to the kitchen and placing them on the counter. “Mom! Dad?” I turned to the back door.
Mom and Dad sat side by side on the outdoor couch, and there was a man in the chair opposite them, his back to the door.
My stomach clenched as the sun caught burnished gold in the deep, dark red of his hair. God, that hair—it could practically be Archie Kasper sitting right here on our patio, except that I knew it wasn’t.
“Honey,” Mom said, rising. She moved toward the door where I was standing, motioning me out, but I was frozen to the spot. Because as my mother had stood, the man with the red hair turned to look at me. I watched him, everything happening in slow motion suddenly as his profile was revealed, and then he turned all the way around so I could see his face.
If I’d still been holding the bottles, I’d have dropped them.
“Archie?”
“Emily,” he said. “Hi.”
If things had moved in slow motion a second before, now they accelerated to a confusing pace. My brain stuttered, trying to catch up, and my heart was beating so quickly I actually felt breathless.
“Don’t just stand there, honey,” Mom said, stepping up to pull the door open. “Come out here.”
I followed directions, still unable to process what was going on in front of me on my parents’ now totally unfamiliar patio.
Dad sat with a beer in his hand looking slightly uneasy, but not angry.
“What’s going on?” I asked, moving out slowly to face Archie. Emotions were searing through me so quickly I couldn’t track just one. Shock. Excitement. Love. Regret. Fear...
“Archie’s just been here a little while,” Mom said. “And we’ve been talking.”
I sank into the chair across from Dad, pushing down the sudden surge of hope I felt bubbling up inside me. “Talking?”
“I’m sorry to surprise you like this,” Archie said, clearly to me.
I turned to meet his gaze and braced myself as those deep blue eyes pierced my soul yet again.
“I just...I’m so confused,” I told him. And I turned to my Dad. “You’ve been talking?” This was so hard to process. “But why are you here?” I asked Archie.
“I didn’t like how we left things.” It was a simple answer, but it didn’t really tell me anything.
“Archie came to talk about Jake,” Dad said, breaking his silence and pulling our attention to him. “To talk about what happened that day, how it impacted all of us—him, our family, your relationship.”
“Our relationship,” I repeated like a parrot, swinging my gaze to the man I loved, who looked slightly amused at my inability to form coherent sentences.
“You made me realize that nothing gets better when you hide from it,” Archie said. “And for years, I think that’s what I was doing, using the resort as a kind of shield, a distraction. But then you showed up, and pulled everything together for me—the reasons I was at the resort, and the things I’d been avoiding. And I guess I realized that I couldn’t really be whole—whole enough to be the man you deserve—if I didn’t face my greatest fear.” He paused, swallowing visibly. “And it was just convenient that my greatest fear is pretty closely intertwined with the woman I’m in love with.”
Mom let out a little “awww.”
I swung my gaze between them all, then reached for Mom’s wine, which she’d placed on the table between us. I sipped, and then guzzled the glass, putting it back down and taking a deep breath.
“Okay,” I said, wishing for the alcohol to give me a tiny bit of courage to just say what was on my mind. “So Archie shows up here, and you’re willing to talk to him suddenly?” I asked my dad. “When you wouldn’t even talk to us about Jake? For years?”
Dad dropped his eyes to his lap for a second, and then straightened up. “I’m not proud of the way I’ve behaved,” he said in a soft voice. “I didn’t know how to process what happened. He was...” Dad’s voice broke. “Jake was our son. It was just...”
Mom reached for his hand. “It was so hard.”
I wasn’t proud to have made my father break down again, but it was refreshing to see real emotion from him after years of silent denial. My father seemed to take strength from Mom’s touch, and he went on. “I wouldn’t have been able to talk to Archie a few weeks ago. Honestly, I was too angry. But you made me see how misplaced all that anger was, Em. You forgave, and you forced me to see that holding onto all the pain was eating me alive. Eating us. You saved us, basically.”
My father scanned my face, and I felt his regret as heavy as my own. All those years wasted in anger. But Dad wasn’t finished talking. “When Archie showed up here, telling us he’s in love with our daughter and asking if there was any way we could ever forgive him, it wasn’t really very hard to do.”
I wiped at the tears running down my face, my heart surging inside me both at the idea that Archie had said those words, and also at the changed appearance of my father. It was like letting go of all the hate had lightened him, straightened his spine, brought back the happier version of the man Jake and I grew up with.
“I hope it’s okay with you,” Archie said. “Me showing up like this.”
“Isn’t there a big Thanksgiving dinner at the resort?” I asked, remembering the plans that were being made while I was there.
Archie smiled, the dimple appearing at one side of his beautiful mouth. “The thing I’m starting to see is that the resort runs just fine without me. They don’t need me there to run it, and I know the people I love will be there when I go back.”
“Oh. Okay.” I wished for better words to say, but none were coming to mind. I sat there, between the three people I loved most in the world, wondering what was going to happen next and feeling like the whole thing might possibly be a dream.
“I got the cover story,” I said, realizing it wasn’t the right thing but desperate to find some kind of normal rhythm in this bizarre situation.
“Em, that’s great,” Archie said, his eyes shining as I met them again.
I felt it then—the connection we shared. It was still there, and I knew as soon as he spoke that somehow, everything would be all right. I wanted to talk to him, really talk to him...alone.
“Tell me how you came to join the navy,” Dad said, crossing a leg over his knee and leaning back into the couch as if chatting about my brother and his life was just the most natural thing in the world.
“Ah, I’m going to get a drink,” I said. “Get anyone anything?”
“Archie brought this amazing whiskey,” Mom said. “I might have just a little taste of that.”
I smiled at Archie. The Half Cat had made its way here after all. “Want some?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said. “That sounds amazing. But then I’ll get out of your hair. I know it’s a big night.”
My mom shook her head. “You’re not going anywhere.” But then she looked contrite. “Oh, or. Of course you probably have plans. Is someone else expecting you?”
Archie smiled, his eyes warm, “No,” he said. “I didn’t do a lot of planning for this beyond showing up here and begging Emily to give us another chance.”
I froze in the doorway as he uttered these words, my heart bursting inside me. Could I really be this lucky?
Still, the détente in my family was new enough I wasn’t sure how our first holiday on the other side of it might go, and I didn’t know if my parents were really okay having Archie drop in like this. I could always eat quickly and go find him after.
But as I stepped up into the kitchen, I heard my father’s voice. “Archie, any friend of Jake’s is welcome here any time. Please join us for Thanksgiving. My wife makes enough for eighteen people anyway, and it’s just the three of us.”
Inside, I sagged against the counter, and the tears came. I couldn’t piece through all the emotion inside me. Joy at Archie’s appearance and declaration of love; some misplaced sadness at the idea that we were finally going to move on from the accident—did that mean leaving Jake behind somehow? I also felt the adrenaline and confusion of finding them here like this finally washing out of me, and it left my limbs feeling heavy, my body tired suddenly. I drank a big glass of water, wiped underneath my eyes, and took a deep breath. This was going to be a very different Thanksgiving from what I’d arrived anticipating.