Chapter 47
FORTY-SEVEN
Blackwood Ridge
Friday Evening
Aubrey and Bennett sat on opposite ends of the couch, each with a glass of wine.
A phone buzzed across the coffee table.
Aubrey glanced down.
She groaned.
"Oh, no."
Bennett looked over the rim of his glass.
"Your mother?"
She nodded.
"I'm really not in the mood for more of Anne's drama."
The phone buzzed again.
Aubrey sighed and tapped Speaker.
"What?"
Anne didn't miss a beat.
"Well, hello to you too."
"What do you need, Anne?"
"I made dinner."
Silence.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Dinner," Anne repeated. "Chicken. Cornbread. Green beans. Peach cobbler."
Aubrey blinked.
"...Okay."
"I can't possibly eat all this myself, so you and Bennett are coming over."
Aubrey exchanged a look with Bennett.
"Anne..."
"Supper's at six-thirty."
"Anne—"
"Sharp."
Bennett hid a smile behind his glass.
Aubrey pinched the bridge of her nose.
"I really don't feel like fussing with you tonight."
Anne sounded genuinely confused.
"Fussing?"
"Yes."
"Who said anything about fussing? I said dinner."
Aubrey let out a slow breath.
"There are conditions."
"Oh, Lord."
"No talking about the winery."
A pause.
Then—
"Deal."
Aubrey frowned.
"Just like that?"
"I said deal."
She sounded almost offended.
"I can behave for one meal."
Aubrey looked at Bennett.
He lifted one shoulder.
"You heard her."
Aubrey sighed.
"Fine."
"Wonderful," Anne said brightly. "See you at six-thirty."
The line went dead.
Aubrey stared at the phone for several seconds before setting it on the coffee table.
Bennett smiled.
"Well..."
She looked at him.
"You think she's actually going to behave?"
"No."
She laughed despite herself.
"Neither do I."
The smile disappeared almost as quickly as it came.
He slipped his arms around her.
She rested her forehead against his chest.
"It's going to be okay."
She gave a snort.
"Is it?"
He looked down at her.
"You don't know Anne like I do."
She snuggled closer to him.
"There's always something underneath."
"A reason."
"A plan. An angle."
She closed her eyes.
"When Anne suddenly starts acting like Mother of the Year..."
She shook her head.
"...I start wondering what she wants."
Bennett rested his chin lightly against her hair.
"Then we'll have dinner."
"And if it turns into a disaster..."
He smiled.
"...I'll drive us home."
Blackwood Estate
Anne had set the table.
That was the first thing Aubrey noticed.
Not just plates on the counter. Not paper napkins. Not the careless half-effort Anne usually offered when she wanted credit for trying.
The table was set.
Blue plates. Cloth napkins. A chipped white pitcher full of hydrangeas from somewhere near the road.
The food was already out when they arrived.
Chicken browned in a cast-iron skillet. Cornbread. Green beans. Peach cobbler cooling on the stove.
For a moment, Aubrey couldn’t speak.
Anne stood near the sink, wearing a yellow blouse Aubrey remembered from years ago and an apron that looked too new to belong to her.
“Well,” Anne said, smoothing a hand over her hair. “Don’t just stand there.”
Bennett stepped forward first.
“Smells good.”
Anne smiled at him.
“Thank you, Bennett. That’s because I didn’t make anything complicated enough to ruin.”
He laughed softly.
Aubrey looked at him, then at Anne.
And for twenty minutes, it almost worked.
Anne was easy.
Funny.
She told Bennett about the summer Aubrey had decided she was going to be a veterinarian and brought home every injured creature within three blocks.
“A bird,” Anne said, lifting one finger. “Two stray kittens. A turtle with nothing wrong with it except an attitude problem.”
Bennett smiled across the table.
“That sounds about right.”
Aubrey looked down, but she was smiling too.
“I was eight.”
“You were determined,” Anne said.
For a little while, Aubrey let herself have it.
The table.
The food.
The sound of Anne’s laughter.
The strange, impossible feeling of being in the same room with her mother without having to brace for impact.
Anne surprised them both by asking thoughtful questions about the vineyard, and Bennett gradually relaxed as he answered.
Bennett spoke carefully at first.
Then more easily.
Aubrey watched him explain the land to Anne, his hands moving once or twice when words weren’t enough. There was something in his voice when he talked about Blackwood that softened the whole room.
And Anne noticed.
“Harold used to talk that way,” Anne said.
Aubrey looked at her mother.
Anne’s face had changed. The charm slipped. Something real moved beneath it.
“About the mountain,” Anne said. “About the vines. About what it could all become.”
No one spoke.
Then Anne smiled too quickly and reached for the green beans.
“But Harold also thought he could fix a tractor with a butter knife and a prayer, so there were limits to his genius.”
Bennett gave a small laugh.
Aubrey looked down at her plate.
For a moment, she had seen something.
Then Anne was Anne again, bright and restless and determined not to sit too long with anything that hurt.
It happened after the cobbler.
Small.
So small, Bennett might have missed it if he hadn’t been watching Aubrey.
Anne set her spoon down and smiled at him.
“You should have seen Aubrey at twelve. Lord, she was dramatic.”
Aubrey’s shoulders tightened.
Anne laughed, already warming to the story.
“She once locked herself in a bathroom at a wedding because I told her she couldn’t wear combat boots with a lavender dress.”
Aubrey looked at her.
“That’s not why I locked myself in the bathroom.”
Anne waved a hand.
“Oh, honey, it was absolutely about the boots.”
“No,” Aubrey said softly. “It wasn’t.”
Bennett’s gaze moved from Aubrey to Anne.
Anne blinked, still smiling.
“Well, that’s how I remember it.”
Aubrey set her spoon beside her bowl.
“You forgot to pick me up from school that day. I sat in the office for almost two hours. We were late to the wedding because of that, not because of the boots.”
The room went still.
Anne’s smile faltered.
Then returned, thinner.
“I’m sure I had a reason.”
Aubrey nodded.
“I’m sure you did.”
Bennett said nothing.
Anne looked away first.
“Well.” She stood too quickly and began gathering bowls. “Anybody want coffee?”
“No,” Aubrey said.
Anne stopped.
Aubrey pushed back from the table.
“Dinner was good.”
Anne turned, and for one second, her face looked almost wounded.
“Thank you for making it,” Aubrey added.
Anne’s expression softened.
Then she ruined it by smiling too brightly.
“Well, I can still manage chicken.”
Aubrey reached for her purse.
Bennett stood with her.
At the door, Anne touched Aubrey’s arm.
It was light.
Almost uncertain.
“I am glad you came.”
Aubrey looked at her mother’s hand.
Then at her face.
“Me too.”
And the painful thing was, she meant it.
At least partly.
They drove back to Bennett’s house in near silence.
Crickets had begun their steady call from the ditches, and the road wound dark and narrow through the trees.
Bennett kept both hands on the wheel.
He did not criticize Anne.
He did not ask Aubrey if she was all right.
He did not tell her what she should feel.
That, more than anything, loosened something in her.
Halfway up the mountain, he said, “Has it always been like that?”
Aubrey looked out the window.
“Like what?”
He glanced over.
“Good for a while. Then not.”
She closed her eyes.
The question was so simple.
So mercifully free of judgment.
“Yes,” she said.
Bennett waited.
Aubrey watched the trees blur past the glass.
“People think Anne abandoned me. She didn’t.”
Her throat tightened.
“She was there. Sometimes. She made dinner. She bought me clothes. The truck climbed higher.
Aubrey pressed her fingers together in her lap.
“She just…” She swallowed. “She loved being whoever she was dating more than she loved being anybody’s mother.”
Bennett's grip shifted on the wheel, but he still said nothing.
“That sounds cruel.”
“It sounds honest.”
Aubrey looked at him then.
His eyes stayed on the road.
“She moved us every time she fell in love,” Aubrey said. “New apartment. New school. New man. New version of herself. And every time, she’d tell me this one was different.”
She laughed softly, but there was no humor in it.
Bennett kept his eyes on the road.
"I got really good at packing," she said softly. "And really good at waiting."
"Waiting?"
"School offices. Dance recitals. Birthday parties. Outside movie theaters. Eventually, you stop wondering if they're coming...and start wondering how long you should pretend you aren't hurt."
Bennett looked over then.
Aubrey tried to smile.
He reached across the console and took her hand.
Aubrey looked down at their joined fingers.
“She could be wonderful,” she whispered. “That was the worst part.”
Bennett’s thumb moved once across her knuckles.
“When she was there, really there, she made you feel like the only person in the world. And then she’d disappear again without ever leaving the room.”
The lights appeared through the trees.
Aubrey’s voice dropped.
“So when people ask why I don’t trust her…”
“They haven’t earned the right to ask,” Bennett said.
She looked at him.
He pulled into the drive and cut the engine.
For a moment, they sat in the dark.
Then he lifted her hand and kissed her fingers.
Aubrey closed her eyes.
Inside the house, Moose greeted them at the door, tail thumping heavily against the wall. Bennett let him out, then back in. Aubrey took off her shoes near the couch and stood there, suddenly unsure what to do with herself.
Bennett locked the door.
When he turned back, he found her watching him.
“What?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know.”
He came toward her.
She tried to smile.
“I think I’m tired.”
“I know.”
“Not sleepy tired.”
“I know that too.”
He stopped in front of her.
For a moment, he only looked at her.
Then he lifted one hand and brushed her hair back from her face.
The tenderness of it nearly undid her.
“Aubrey.”
She looked up.
“You don’t have to be fine in this house.”
Her breath caught.
Bennett’s hand settled against her cheek.
“You don’t have to make it easy. You don’t have to make it neat. You don’t have to turn it into a joke before it hurts somebody.”
Her eyes burned.