24. The Grill
Chapter twenty-four
The Grill
Hannah had called it a casual dinner.
Ethan was not sure what casual meant to Hannah Walker exactly, because the farmhouse smelled like peach cobbler and fresh bread when they arrived and the table was set with the particular care of someone who had thought about it, and casual in Hannah's hands turned out to mean warm and deliberate and exactly right, which was how Hannah did most things.
Julie had been quiet in the car on the way out, not the uncomfortable quiet of someone who had something to manage but the easy quiet of someone who was simply content.
He had driven the familiar roads through the November afternoon and been aware of her in the passenger seat and thought that this was one of the better things about whatever they were becoming, the particular comfort of her quiet.
She had reached over and put her hand on his on the gearshift somewhere around the halfway point and left it there and he had turned his hand over and held hers and they had driven the rest of the way like that without saying anything about it.
Adam met them on the porch with the particular expression of a younger brother who had been told not to make a thing of this and was working very hard at it, which was actually making a thing of it anyway.
He shook Ethan's hand and hugged Julie and said come in and led them into the warmth of the farmhouse where Hannah came out of the kitchen and hugged Julie and looked at Ethan with the warm approval of a woman whose instincts had been correct and who was not going to say so directly.
They had drinks in the living room, the four of them, and the conversation moved easily through the ordinary things, the Herald and the farm and the Peterson children and what Pine Hollow was doing with itself and if this last snow was going to stick around.
It had snowed two more times since they had kissed during the first snowfall.
Ethan sat beside Julie on the couch and their hands found each other again without either of them deciding to, just the natural gravitational pull of two people who had gotten used to being close.
Hannah noticed. He could see her notice and watched as she mentally put it away with the quiet satisfaction of someone who easily could have arranged this particular seating setup and was quietly proud that it was working.
Adam announced he was going to start the steaks and looked at Ethan in the particular way that meant come outside with me.
Ethan kissed Julie's hand briefly and stood and followed his brother out to the porch where the grill was already going against the November cold.
Grilling was exactly the kind of thing Adam Walker would do, start a grill in November without commentary, because steaks needed grilling and the temperature was not a sufficient reason not to handle this duty the right way.
They stood at the grill in their jackets and Ethan handed Adam the tongs. Adam looked at the steaks with the focused attention he brought to everything and neither of them said anything for a moment.
"She looks happy," Adam said. "I haven't seen her this happy."
"I think she is," Ethan said. "I think it's new for her. Being happy in that particular way."
Adam turned a steak. "It's new for her, that's for sure," he said. "Since before Mark, maybe. Since you."
Ethan looked out at the farm in the November afternoon, the fields bare now, the tree line dark against the grey sky, and thought about that. Since before Mark. Since seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen.
"I need to talk to her," he said. "Really talk to her. About all of it."
Adam looked at him. "You told her you came back."
"I told her I came back and saw her and drove away.
That's the fact of it." He put his hands in his jacket pockets.
"I haven't told her why. Not the real why.
Not what I was thinking or what I felt or what it cost me to drive away or what the next eighteen years felt like.
" He paused. "I gave her the information without the truth underneath it. "
Adam was quiet for a moment, turning the second steak with the unhurried attention of a man who understood that the steaks and the conversation required the same quality of patience.
"She needs the truth underneath it," Adam said.
"I know."
"And you need hers," Adam said. "You've been very careful with her. Very patient. Which is right, I'm not saying it isn't right. But at some point careful becomes its own kind of avoidance."
Ethan looked at his brother. Nearly eight years younger and considerably wiser and standing at a grill in November in a farm jacket that had seen better days, and Ethan thought that Adam Walker was the best person he knew and that he had not told him that nearly enough.
"She's going to be angry," Ethan said. "When we get to all of it. When she has the whole picture."
"Probably," Adam said.
"I drove away," Ethan said. "I saw her and I made a decision for both of us without asking either of us if that was what we wanted. I was twenty one years old and I thought I was doing the right thing and I was wrong." He looked at the grill. "She has a right to be angry about that."
"She does," Adam said. "And you're going to have to let her be angry without running."
The word landed the way it was meant to land. Running. Ethan had been running for eighteen years and Adam had watched him do it from this farm and had never once said that word to him directly until now and the directness of it was its own kind of gift.
"I'm not running this time ," Ethan said.
"I know you're not," Adam said. "I'm telling you that you're going to have to prove that to her.
Not by telling her. By staying when it gets hard.
" He turned the last steak. "Because it's going to get hard, Ethan.
You can't get to the other side of eighteen years without going through the middle of them first."
Ethan stood at the grill in the November cold and looked at the bare fields and thought about the middle of eighteen years and what it looked like and what it was going to cost both of them to walk through it together and whether he was ready for that.
He was certain he was ready for that. He was more certain of that than he had been certain of anything in a very long time. He hoped that Julie would be willing to walk through it with him.
"How do you know all this?" he said. "You're thirty-three years old."
Adam looked at him with the expression of a man who had been waiting for that question. "I watched you leave," he said simply. "And I watched her after. And I stayed." He picked up his beer from the porch railing. "Staying teaches you things leaving doesn't."
Ethan was quiet for a moment.
"I'm staying," he said.
"I know," Adam said. "Tell her that. Before the hard part. Make sure she knows that before everything else."
The back door opened and Hannah leaned out and said five more minutes on the sides and Adam said perfect.
Hannah went back in and they stood at the grill in the November cold for another few minutes, the steaks doing what steaks did over a good fire, and Ethan thought about telling Julie he was staying before the hard part came, making sure she had that before anything else, and thought that his thirty-three year old younger brother who had never left this farm was the wisest person he knew.
He was going to tell her tonight.
Not all of it. Not the hard part yet. But that he was staying. That Pine Hollow was home and he was not going anywhere and whatever came next was going to come with him right here.
She deserved to know that before anything else.
Adam took the steaks off the grill and they went inside to the warmth of the farmhouse and the smell of bread and peach cobbler and Hannah's gravy.
Julie looked up from the kitchen counter where she had been helping Hannah and smiled at him, the real smile, the one that was not managed or composed, and he thought that Adam was right.
Staying taught you things leaving never could.
He was done learning the wrong lessons.