Chapter 48
WILLIAM
Shay arrived at Haven House on foot. William was alerted to her presence by a high-pitched chorus of cheers from the sitting room.
The men had just finished positioning the chairs around each circular table, which would seat the reception’s three hundred guests.
His back was damp with sweat, but still, he ran to see her, to make sure she was safe and sound.
He felt for the knife in his pocket, the polished wooden handle its own talisman.
The bridesmaids circled her, asking to see the dress.
Shay was flushed from the walk, and gray dust from the gravel powdered her heels.
Grace was nowhere in sight. Their mother eyed Shay suspiciously, and Mrs. Pruitt hovered like a hummingbird, asking if Shay needed coffee or perhaps something to eat—toast or a poached egg or half a grapefruit.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’ll need a shower,” their mother said. “Look at your feet. Why didn’t you ride over with me?
“I wanted to walk.”
“Well, you should have left a note. I went to your room to try and find you.”
“As I said, I wanted to walk.”
“There was a lot of traffic in that hallway.”
Shay said nothing, lifting her chin in challenge.
Something passed between them that William could not divine, and he wondered if the woman had been there.
The thought made him unsteady. Mrs. Pruitt had begun to lecture the bridesmaids about how important it was for a bride to eat on the morning of her wedding, and how she might think that she’d eat at the reception, but she really won’t, as she’ll be swept from table to table, to the dance floor, and then to cut the cake and then back to the tables again.
How a bride can be tipsy, but she can’t be drunk.
William cleared his throat, and the women turned to attention.
“What are you doing here?” Shay asked.
“Mom said you weren’t in your room, so I wanted to make sure everything was all right.”
Shay glared at their mother as the bridesmaids were shuffled upstairs by Mrs. Pruitt, to where everyone would finish getting dressed.
Mrs. Pruitt obviously sensed some discord, and she wanted to usher her guests away from it, as if it were a rotten scent she didn’t want them to smell.
William could tell some of the bridesmaids were whispering about him, catching the tail end of a sentence: “. . . run around the yard?”
“Everything’s fine, really,” Shay said, closing the distance between them in the foyer. “You don’t need to worry.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She seemed more like herself in that moment—firmer, clearer—but he was not sure what that meant. If he could trust her to stay.
“And you’ll be here with everyone? Until the ceremony?”
“I will. I’ve had my walk.”
“Let’s have you shower in the rose room, all right?
” Mrs. Pruitt said, lightly guiding Shay to the stairway by the elbow.
Though he would never have imagined Shay becoming this woman’s daughter-in-law, in this moment he was grateful for Mrs. Pruitt’s patrician distrust of outsiders, for this well-staffed house that would keep anyone undesirable from crossing its threshold.
He was glad for the Pruitts’ wealth to act as a moat, even if, in this moment, it was keeping her even farther away from him.
A young woman in a vest placed a vase of peach roses and pale pink dahlias on the narrow table by the front door.
It seemed absurd that so many people were preparing for the wedding, shucking oysters and polishing glass coupes, as if nothing were amiss.
He felt his exhaustion like a lead weight, faintly aware of his mother criticizing a painting in the sitting room, and how she thought it was a reproduction of a Flemish still life, which was odd, for a house like this to have a reproduction.
“What are you talking about?” he said.
His mother looked at him quizzically—he never spoke to her with even a hint of petulance. “The painting. I’m surprised, given the size of the estate, that—”
“Why do you care? Can’t you tell something’s really wrong with Shay?”
“Don’t be dramatic, there’s nothing wrong. You sister is just being your sister.”
William wanted to rip the painting from the wall, to pry the mounting loose with his fingers and crack the plaster.
Maybe it wasn’t the lack of sleep that had depleted him; it was feeling the years of small calculations, the feints and secrets, all of the ways his family had lied to—to what?
To protect one another, they once might have claimed, but really, it was to protect themselves.
To keep everyone at a distance. To preserve a facade of affluence or strength or sanity.
Before, he could have at least claimed that he and Shay never lied to each other, that they were each other’s saving grace, their open hearts, but now even that wouldn’t be true.
Mrs. Pruitt returned from upstairs, her loafers quiet on the plush green runner.
A small crease appeared at her forehead when she found him still there.
She looked to his mother, clearly expecting her to dismiss him, and he realized that of course they’d been lying to Mrs. Pruitt as well.
She was another stone in his pocket, heavier than any knife.
The truth never choked a man, Aunt Eleanor had said to him one morning when he was ten, after she’d found her milkmaid figurine beheaded, an accident caused by a knock of his elbow as he was chasing a rubber ball.
He was terrified to admit that it was him, as he thought that causing any disturbance meant that someone would love him less.
His father was all the disturbance their family could take.
“We can’t pay for the wedding,” he said.
“I’m sorry?” Mrs. Pruitt said, her fingers lifting off the banister.
“William,” his mother admonished.
“I should have told you and Mr. Pruitt sooner, but there was a misunderstanding within our family, and there’s no money to pay for our share anymore.” His voice was steady, almost not his own. “We thought there was, but there just isn’t.”
His mother’s lips thinned. “That’s not—”
“It’s not my mother’s fault, it’s really mine, and I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before now. Really sorry.”
“William doesn’t know what he’s—” his mother began again.
“Mom, please,” he said, turning to her. “Don’t.”
Upstairs, there was a tinkling of laughter, like a hand pressing stray piano keys.
Mrs. Pruitt glanced to the top of the staircase, her ear momentarily pulled to the sound.
William looked at his mother. Anger and embarrassment tightened her features, shaping a face he recognized from arguments she had with his father, with Shay.
She would not meet his eyes. The woman in the vest returned with another vase of flowers, and he thought of himself clearing dishes from a table at the restaurant, all the moments of rage and devastation and profound joy he must have passed in and out of, consumed by the single wasteful bite taken from their tiramisu.
Perhaps that was the task before him now: to truly see the people around him, to let himself be seen.
“Well, this is disappointing,” Mrs. Pruitt said, turning her attention back to them. One hand smoothed the side of her head, though every hay-colored strand of hair was in place. “Very disappointing.”
“We’re very sorry,” William’s mother said.
“I’ll need to talk to Mort, of course.”
“Of course.”
“And we’ll need to see if we can move funds around. It will be very inconvenient, especially to have to think of this on Andrew’s wedding day.”
He felt a new, true hatred for this woman. There was a sweetness to her, but it was all surface, a thin layer of frosting on a bitter cake. Like so many of the wealthy, when it came to others, she was incredibly cheap.
“Yes, I know.” It was clear it would be too painful for his mother to apologize again.
“So, we will discuss as a family when we can find the time. Today is awfully busy, and we’ve been planning it for so long.”
“Of course, I understand.” His mother turned toward William, a rare fury in her eyes. “May I have a word alone?”
His mother found a small office on the first floor that smelled like cigar smoke, its dark wood and hunting greens a contrast to the lightness of the other rooms, signifying it as a retreat for men.
On the desk, a trio of wooden ducks nested beside a notepad that had an unfinished thought scribbled at its top: Look up.
William did as it instructed, though all he found was smooth plaster.
The door shut, and his mother whipped toward him, her hands clenched in fists at her sides.
“It was not your place to say that,” she said. “I told you, I told you that I was taking care of it.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t think she’d be that awful.
” William took a step backward. He had done many things that should have angered his mother, losing books and mittens, repeatedly taking the wrong bus home from school, not attending college, but he had rarely experienced her anger.
“Did you mean to embarrass me? Because that’s what you did. You embarrassed our whole family just like—”
“But—how did I, exactly? I just told the truth.”
His mother threw her hands up. “You made us seem, you made us appear like we needed—”
“Money? But we do need money, that’s the point, isn’t it? If we’re being honest, we needed money from Aunt Eleanor, and now we need it from the Pruitts.”
“Aunt Eleanor is family.”
“Yes, but we—we used her in a way you shouldn’t use family.
You used her money to make us seem like we’re the same as the Pruitts, like we’re part of a class of people that we’re not a part of.
” He felt his own anger now, rising to match her own at a white heat, so it welded together with everything else he had felt over the last few days, his desperation and grief.
“Her money gave you an education, that’s it. You’re upset that you got a good education?”
“You know it was more than that. You’ve always made it seem like we’re privileged, like we’re better than most people, but that just felt destabilizing, like I didn’t know what was real. And that’s not just because of the money, it’s because of everything. You never talk to me, really talk to me—”
“That’s, I don’t understand—” his mother sputtered.
There were footsteps in the hallway. A young woman’s voice called up the staircase, and William recognized it as Grace’s. His mother took in a deep breath through her nose.
“We just wanted both of you to feel taken care of,” she said. “That every door was open to you. That there was nothing to worry about.”
“But there was a lot to worry about, wasn’t there?”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything with Dad. We never talked about it, and we still don’t talk about him. Even Shay didn’t, until, well—Aunt Eleanor was the only one who ever really did. And without her—without her—” William stuttered, tears gathering at his eyelashes.
“I can’t have this conversation with you right now.”
His mother turned her attention to her dress, pulling at her left sleeve.
William felt so close to getting it out, to confessing everything, but here she was, unable to even look at him.
It was the same as when she’d told him about his father.
Aunt Eleanor had been the one to finally hold him, the polyester of her dress scratching his cheek, and he was embarrassed that this was what he still wanted, to have his mother wrap her arms around him.
“I just don’t want to lie anymore, to you or anyone else—” he said, trying to recover.
“William, please.”
Her tone was firm, though her voice shook, and he looked up to the ceiling again, blinking until his eyes were clear. From a distance, Mrs. Pruitt called his mother’s name. Her voice had a cadence he recognized from the restaurant—that of an order.
“Coming,” his mother said, opening the door.