Chapter Twenty-Two
“You’ve never invited me to tea before. What a treat,” Tug said as he walked in, dressed in an absurdly formal dove-gray suit.
He set the tray down, then turned and walked back to the sunroom door he’d left open.
It closed on Jack, who was standing there with his hands in the back pockets of his bell bottoms, giving Willamena a significant look.
When Tug had brought her breakfast that morning, chatty as he always was, not wanting to talk about or even acknowledge that she was ill, he’d mentioned that Bailey was going to the Shadow Fair.
He said she would be back in time for tea, but Willamena told him to let Bailey know she could stay as long as she wanted, and she invited him instead.
“That’s because you don’t like tea. The only time you’ve ever willingly had it was in the form of ice cream. What is that?” She pointed suspiciously to the plate on the tray next to the teacups.
“Hors d’oeuvres,” he said, walking back from the door.
“Did you think I wouldn’t recognize something from those recipe cards?”
“The recipes aren’t that bad. They’re the reason this is the first time I’ve ever been able to cook anything.”
“That’s because they’re evil and they’ve bewitched you.”
He lifted the plate and balanced it back and forth, as if that would make it tempting. “Potato salad wrapped in salami slices, and sliced hot dog pickle sandwiches.”
“Not helping your cause,” she said.
“More for me, then.”
She smiled. He was Terrence made over, handsome, affable, and highly susceptible to stronger female personalities.
He loved everything. He loved fireplaces and dogwood trees and every stray that came sniffing around the house.
He even loved rain. Everything he touched, even inanimate objects, shivered slightly with delight.
The world was a better place with him in it, and Willamena would often torture herself by remembering she’d never intended to have him.
She and Terrence had separate bedrooms in the Wester House.
But years after their marriage, when she traveled with him to his mother’s funeral and afterward spent a few days at the beach, the first and only time she’d seen the ocean, she came back pregnant.
She’d been terrified that Jack would feel betrayed, that this would be the thing to finally make him go, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
In fact, for weeks after he found out, all her blue clothing would come flying out of her closet when she opened the door to dress in the mornings, causing her to shriek in surprise.
Jack thought he was being clever because the doctor had told her she was having a son.
Jack had loved Tug from the moment she brought him home from the hospital, and he’d strongly disagreed with her about telling Tug to make his own way in the world.
After Tug had left for college, it was the longest she and Jack had ever spent without talking.
It had been jarring. She’d missed his sense of humor, his ridiculous practical jokes.
She’d even missed feeling his sadness on rainy nights.
But what she’d missed most of all, what he’d been missing, too, was being a strange family all under this roof.
It was only after Tug had called her and told her he’d met a woman and that they were expecting a baby that Jack had finally come back up from the basement to talk to her again.
She had sunk to the floor after the call, terrified that the curse she’d inherited might be passed on to a granddaughter, after all.
“I’ll get right to it,” she said to Tug. “I invited you here because I need to tell you something. I had my will changed.”
He unbuttoned his jacket and sat. “Okay,” he said, crossing his legs and giving her his full attention.
“I did it years ago. It’s nothing involving the money. That’s still going to you and Bailey. But after I’m gone, I’ve left specific instructions for the house to be torn down.”
Tug pointed to the floor. “You want this house to be torn down.”
“Yes, this house. What other house do I have?”
“The one in France and the two in Italy come to mind.”
“You’re hilarious,” she said. “I want the basement filled in, and I want trees and roses planted over it. I also want my ashes spread here.”
“Are you talking about a memorial park?”
“Absolutely not. Just no more Wester House. I’ve kept the historical society from making it a landmark for years, just so I could make this happen.
” She stopped him before he could speak.
“Before you say some nonsense about the Wester legacy, we both know you and Bailey won’t stay here after I’m gone, nor would I want you to.
But it recently came to my attention that my decision might be …
misinterpreted later. So I’m letting you know now that the only reason I’m doing this is because the house is a monument to unfulfilled dreams, and my last wish is for everyone I love to be free of it. ”
“I’m sure you know that I’ll honor any of your wishes. But I have to admit, this is a surprise.” Tug shook his head. “I thought this house meant everything to you. Why did you stay here if you were so unhappy?”
“For the same reason you came back.”
He looked confused. “For your child?”
“Bailey was only a part of your reason.” Willamena stared at him. “I know there’s something you’ve always wanted to tell me. If you still don’t want to say it, that’s okay. I already know. But you’re pretending we have all the time in the world, Tug. And we don’t.”
“You know a lot of things you shouldn’t know,” he said. “But not everything.”
“Did I ever tell you about my great-uncle William?”
He shook his head.
“I only met him a few times as a child, but I was incredibly fond of him. He was the only one of my grandmother’s brothers who would still visit.
The rest cut her out of their lives, resentful that she’d inherited everything.
But William would drive in from the coast once a year and bring me saltwater taffy and let me ride in his convertible with the top down.
He was a wonderful man. And he was gay, too.
” She waited for Tug to say something, but it soon became clear she had rendered him speechless.
“I probably knew before you did, Tug. It was one of the reasons I told you that a life away from this house was my expectation after you graduated high school.”
She could see him immediately start to close down. “I see.”
“No, you don’t,” she said with a smile. “You don’t at all.
I wasn’t disappointed in you. I’ve never been disappointed in you.
I sent you away because I wanted you to be yourself, and you didn’t know how to here.
But you married Maria in college instead, and you were miserable.
Then Maria died, and you were even more miserable.
I know how close to the edge you were when you called me.
You needed a place to hide, where your secrets were safe.
And there is no safer place for secrets than this house. ”
Tug leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands.
He stared at the floor. Eventually, a single teardrop landed on the hardwood.
He quickly wiped his face with his hand and got up to walk away.
He stood at the windows overlooking the lawn, his back to her.
“You really know how to knock someone’s feet out from under them. ”
“So I’ve been told.”
His back still to her, he said, “I fell in love with a man named Ash when we were in Raleigh. Nothing happened. I wouldn’t have done that to Maria.
But she knew. I think she always knew, and she couldn’t take it anymore.
So I’m the one responsible for that wreck.
Bailey could have died that night, too.” He wiped his face again.
“Ash lives in Chapel Hill now, with his son. I feel so guilty for being happy with him.”
His grief pierced her, and she hated all of these emotions, the intensity of them.
She wished she’d known how to love openly so she could have taught him and Bailey.
But the only way she’d ever been able to give her family what they needed was in pieces, broken, like she was.
“The only person who thinks you’re not worthy is you.
I’ve never regretted having you, just as I know you’ve never regretted having Bailey, but we both lived our lives inauthentically. It’s not too late for you.”
He turned to her then, her sweet, handsome son with the nickname Jack had given him because he was always pulling on her skirt as a toddler, making her say to him, Stop tugging. “Why do you have to leave when we’ve finally gotten to this point?” he asked, tears still in his eyes.
She shook her finger at him. “Don’t you dare mourn me. I don’t want a reason to haunt you.”
He laughed and took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his nose.
“When you had surgery on your shoulder after Bailey left, I was going to move out when you’d recovered.
I didn’t think we could ever have this. It was Ash who told me to stay.
He said to try to figure out why you are the way you are, instead of resenting you for the rest of my life. ”
“And have you figured me out?”
“Of course not. But from what little I know about your grandmother, I understand now how hard you tried to make sure what you experienced wasn’t passed down.”
“I wasn’t entirely successful.”
“You did the best you could with what you knew.”
“So did you,” she said. “After things have settled down and the house is gone, tell Bailey. She’ll be happy you found someone.”
“Bailey.” He sighed as he pocketed his handkerchief. “I don’t understand why she’s so resistant to being happy. I want her to find someone, too.”
“She will. I’m working on it.” Willamena stood, waving Tug away when he walked over to help her. “Don’t try to sneak any more of those recipes to me.”
“Okay, you win,” he said.
She reached out and took his hand. When he gave it to her, she kissed it once and said, “Stop tugging.”
Then she left, that sudden burst of affection leaving him gobsmacked.
She found Jack waiting in her bedroom doorway. “Color me surprised,” he said. “I thought you would hide in the sunroom and pout all day because I made you tell him.”
“Says the man who spent years pouting in the basement after I sent Tug away.”
“We’ve had a good run in this house, haven’t we?”
“Yes,” she said. “We have.”
“Whatever happens, Wills, if I can be with you, I will.”
“I became aware of that fifty years ago,” she said. “You’re not exactly subtle.”
“Just for that, I’m going to pout in the basement.”
Willamena laughed and went into her bedroom, completely unaware that Tug was standing on the other side of the sunroom door, his hand on the doorknob, listening to her talk to herself.