Chapter 28 #2
Dante screwed his mouth to one side. “I’m begging you not to go into detail.”
“But yes, he did offer me a serious proposal once. At a nice restaurant with Dom Pérignon in an ice bucket and a violinist playing a love song. I wasn’t willing to be tied down to a man who so obviously didn’t want to be tied down.
But I also couldn’t vanish from his life.
We had a baby together—you—and there was also Zander and Brody and a few years later, Jaylyn.
” Her face softened into a smile. “I love you all. Dearly.”
Dante appreciated that about his mom. She’d loved him completely. And she’d loved Brody and Zander and Jaylyn in the same way—even though they weren’t her children.
“What made you ask about your father?”
“I spent my whole life believing that Dad was the flight risk.” Dante spun the water glass in his hand, watching the light bend and create a prism on the plane wall. “It’s hard to square what I thought was true. Especially when you let me stay with him so easily.”
“Easily! I was trying to make my own way—build my own income so I wouldn’t have to rely on O’s money. Why else would I have traveled all over God’s green earth for my career?”
“Because you love it?”
“Yes, but not more than you. I didn’t want to use my father’s contacts to help me get ahead, and for years I didn’t. I was trying to make a name for myself. Believe it or not, your father was the more stable of the two of us back then.”
“That was why you encouraged me to take over the foundation after Grandpa Arthur died,” he said, realization dawning. “You didn’t want me to struggle to find my way.”
“I still don’t. You’re stubborn, though. I had to convince you in a way that would work.”
“By taking advantage of my willingness to put you first.”
“Dante. I wasn’t taking advantage of you. I was lucky to have you.”
His stomach flipped. He felt like he’d been blind to what was so obvious for years. He wasn’t sure why, but next he admitted, “Honesty is handling things on her own. She told me she doesn’t need my help any longer.”
Simone clucked her tongue. “What did you do? Or what didn’t you do?”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Honesty strikes me as the type of woman who has been looking for something but didn’t know what it was. I’ll tell you what I saw in your father’s restaurant that night. She looked like she’d finally found it.”
Dante shook his head, but it was more out of habit at this point. He’d been arguing with anyone trying to tell him how to think or what to do.
“You know, I’ve been hearing a lot of unsolicited relationship advice lately. I wonder why that is.” He frowned and punched the call button. When the attendant arrived, he ordered a scotch on the rocks.
“It’s because you don’t do what you want to do. Dante, honey, you do everything required of you. It’s a wonderful attribute. But not when you do it in denial of what’s best for yourself.”
He accepted his glass from the attendant, but set it down without taking a drink. “It’s already over for Honesty and me. She made that clear.”
“The way it was over eight years ago?” His mother raised both eyebrows. “That ending was more like an ellipsis. Wasn’t this your second chance?”
He took a drink. Hopefully the hair of the dog would help him survive this conversation. When he got back to his house, he was going to sleep for three days straight.
“What did I do that was so goddamn repulsive?” he asked aloud.
“I dropped everything to show up at that event for Eli.
When I ran into Honesty, I introduced her to wealthy people who took interest in her charity.
I approved a grant from our foundation to help her get started.
I did everything I could to support her.
“And what do I get from my family? Questions like why aren’t I giving up my life in LA and moving to the Midwest? What the fuck am I supposed to say to that? How the hell are you supposed to make someone happy, when you have no clue how to make them happy?”
His mother sighed, set her Diet Coke aside, and moved to the seat beside him. She put her hand on his knee and leaned in close, so that he couldn’t avoid her gaze.
“You don’t ever truly know, Dante. That’s not the point. The point is to try. And then after we try, they decide if it was enough for them.”
He let out a sigh of defeat. “And I wasn’t enough for her.”
“I wasn’t enough for your father.” She let out a grunt. “Or hell, maybe I was too much.”
“Please. Dad and ‘too much’ are a matched set.”
“We have to take risks in life. What Brody did with Reagan? Risky. Watching Zander fall in love again after Emily died? Bold. There’s no guarantee anything will work out.
Life doesn’t come with a warranty. As you know, when your grandfather passed away.
Look at you. You took over the foundation and made me so proud.
You stepped in and held together our family legacy without having to be asked. ”
“You did ask me to do that.”
She shook her head. “Yes, but shortly after, I told you to drop the foundation and go home to Chicago. And to Honesty. You were the one who said you wanted to stay. You were the one insisting on being everything to everyone. You didn’t know how to merge her into the life you were building.
You can merge her into a new version of your life, you know.
You’re not the same man who left for Chicago two weeks ago. ”
Funny. Zander had said something similar.
“It’s too late for that, Mom.”
“Son, you’re a billionaire. There is nothing you have to do in Los Angeles that you can’t hire someone to do for you.
And before you trot out the part about how I need you, how I love having you close—both true—don’t go nailing yourself to that cross.
I leave in eight months for another country to make a film I’ve dreamed of making my whole life. I will be fine without you.”
“Ouch.”
She smiled and patted his leg. “And you will be fine too. Just as soon as you realize what you want out of life and take it.”
They looked out the window at the clouds a while longer, then he asked a question he had no business asking.
“You were kidding, right? About you and Dad last night?”
Her eyes slid to his. She patted his knee again. Then she went back to looking out the window.