9. The Watered-Down Version #3
"That ain't your problem to hold, Madeline.
I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that to you of all people.
" I shook my head, kept my eyes on the water because looking at her felt like something I hadn't earned the right to do anymore.
"I made a mess. Hurt you like this, dragged you into something you never signed up for and never deserved to be a part of. "
I looked at her then, needing to face her.
"This ain't the kind of man I truly am. Or it is. I don't know anymore, and that's the worst part. I can't apologize enough for you seeing the worst of me."
She reached up and held my face, her hands so soft against my jaw, soft in a way that told its own story – a lifetime of never once having to fight for anything.
"I heard what you said." Her voice didn't rise.
"And I'm going to answer it, but understand something first. I'm not doing it because you're owed the comfort.
You're not. I'm doing it because I decide what leaves this porch with dignity intact, mine and yours both, and I'd rather leave you with one true thing than let you walk away carrying nothing but the wreckage you made. "
Her thumb moved once along my cheekbone, as she continued.
"A man willing to risk everything he was building with someone else, the way you did, for her.
A man who can't see anyone else in a room, can't hear anyone else when she's near. Even if it’s Madeline DuBois.” She dropped her hand as she smiled, her usual confident ask back on. "She'd be a fool not to choose you."
She stepped back and put space between us on purpose.
"Now I'm going inside. We won't speak of this again, and we won't be in touch. Not a call, not a text, not a reservation or even a drink at your restaurant. I'm closing this door myself. Goodbye, Chef."
Madeline gave me a smile with sadness folded up small inside it. Then she reached over and hit the doorbell herself, before I could offer, and the sound of it disappeared somewhere deep in that massive home like it was swallowing the last of us whole.
"I'll get your bags," I said, and turned back toward the car before I had to watch that door open.
I carried both bags up the walk as gulls worked the shoreline behind the house.
Her mother filled the doorframe first. Tall, Madeline's same eyes, a robe worn like a rank.
She looked at her daughter's face, then at me, then back, and whatever she read there made her own expression go careful and unreadable.
"Madeline, are you alright? I wasn't expecting you back so soon."
"I'm fine, Mother." Madeline's voice had that easy composure back in it, the same one I'd first heard at the bar, like she'd folded the last twelve hours up small enough to fit in a pocket and put it away for later, and I felt something in my chest twist watching her do it, watching her hide the wreckage that fast for a woman who loved her.
"Chef Duckworth was just dropping me back.
Feeling a little under the weather. Wanted some TLC from you. "
Her mother's eyes cut to me again, longer this time, running the kind of math mothers run without ever writing a number down. I set the bags just inside the door and didn’t offer my hand, because I didn’t feel like I’d earned the right to.
"Mrs. Dubois." I smiled.
She gave me a nod with exactly as much warmth in it as she'd decided I'd earned, which is to say not much, and turned back inside to leave us the last of it.
"Go on and get out of here, Dillion." Madeline softly instructed me.
"Madeline —"
"I mean it. Go."
I nodded, accepting that she was done with this conversation and me, rightfully so.
Didn't argue it. Didn't reach for her hand the way every part of me wanted to, because reaching for her now would've just been cruel, would've been me taking something else off her plate she never should've had to give up in the first place.
"Take care of yourself."
"You too." A real smile, finally, the first one all morning, and it near about broke me clean in half.
Then it faded and she pulled her sunglasses down.
"And Dillon…now that you've got her, don't mess it up.
Friendship's a good foundation. But you're walking into new country now, and new country don't run on the old rules.
She's the one. Make sure she knows it everyday.”
I huffed something that was almost a laugh, warm and worn out at the same time.
"Yes, ma'am."
She smiled once more, pushed the glasses back up, and turned for the door her mother had left cracked for her. I stood there on the shell path a second longer than I needed to, watching a good woman walk into a house that would take care of her.
I walked back to the car without looking behind me then got in the car.
I started the engine, and for half a second my hands found the wheel the exact way they'd found it that February night, knuckles gone hard and pale, holding on like the leather itself might tell me something if I gripped it hard enough.
Same car. Different woman on the porch behind me.
And both times I drove off with a version of myself riding shotgun, asking the only question that ever actually mattered: had I done right, or just done the thing a man can live with come morning.