Chapter 25
Caleb picks me up one minute after Adelaide and Mom head off to the spa on Saturday morning, and I push aside my doubts, running to the truck before he has a chance to park.
“You’re early.” I slide into the cab, but Caleb tugs me closer, swallowing my words with his mouth.
He tangles his hands in my hair and punctuates the kiss with a soft sigh. “I think I was right on time.”
“Do I finally get to see your place?” I slip the seat belt on as Caleb pulls out of the drive.
“Not yet. I have somewhere I want to take you, and this is our last chance for a while.”
“You don’t need to court me, Caleb. I made my intentions clear when I climbed in your lap on Monday.” I’m not sure I should call them intentions as much as impulses.
He gives me a crooked smile. “Well, your intentions may have to wait a bit.”
But I wore the new underwear Cassie gave me. And shaved my legs.
He must read the disappointment on my face. “Humor me. I promise it’ll be worth it.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I startle, immediately concerned something happened to Mom. When I check it, it’s Dad’s face on the screen. I place it face down on the seat.
“Do you have to get that?” Caleb asks.
I shake my head, but when it buzzes again, I relent. It’s unusual for Dad to call more than once. I take a steadying breath before answering. “Hi, Dad. Is everything okay?”
“Edie.” There’s so much love poured into my name that guilt eats at me for ignoring his call in the first place. “Everything’s fine. Although the city is especially gloomy. I think it misses you.”
The Hawthornes are so repressed, we project our emotions on to the weather. “That must be why. San Francisco is always bright and sunny when I’m home.”
He chuckles, and my shoulders loosen. “Did you get that photo I sent of your wild roses? They’re really showing off this season.”
“They’re gorgeous, Dad. Thank you for tending to them.”
“I sent you your mail and a book from a local author, a fellow Berkeley professor. I went to a reading the other night and got it signed for you.”
As a literature professor, Dad’s recommendations are rarely the type of light, distracting fiction I gravitate toward. The last one he bought me was dense experimental literature that felt more like homework. “Thanks, Dad. That’s thoughtful.”
He clears his throat, and by the gesture, I can tell he’s stewing about something. “It’s an exploration of why people withhold truths from the people they love. I’ve been finding solace in the stories and analysis. I think you might, too.”
This stuns me silent. Since when does Dad dig into—or acknowledge—the lie that sent our lives off course? Neither of us went to therapy. We don’t talk about it. We talk around it. I wait to see if he’ll say more.
“Are you okay being there? I know that place holds a lot of . . .” He drifts off, stuttering before landing on, “Memories.”
I glance at Caleb’s profile, aware that I’m making new memories, too. “I am. I think it’s been good for me, actually.”
“That’s great, Edie.” But it doesn’t sound great, so I wait, letting the wind fill in the blanks.
“And your mom. How’s she doing?” he asks with forced nonchalance.
“Better. She’s out with friends today. She’s getting stronger.”
Caleb darts his focus to me, his face impassive. I wish I weren’t having this conversation with him within earshot. These two worlds are inherently separate, severed by a seismic shift all those years ago.
“And have you made any progress getting her to seek treatment? I’ve done some research, if it’s helpful. I could maybe send you some links?”
He’s breaking my heart by back-seat driving this intervention.
Dad doesn’t do “some” research. He fixates.
I imagine him hunched over a computer, reaching out to experts, dedicating days and nights to his quest, while I can’t even make meaningful headway with Mom while living with her.
“I’m working on it. And sure, send me whatever medical research you find. ”
Caleb looks at me again, and it’s strikingly similar to a glare.
“Dad, I’ll have to call you back, okay?”
“Sure, sweetheart. You take care of yourself . . . and your mother.”
When I hang up, Caleb grunts. “Was he seriously concerned about your mom?”
My hackles rise. “Is that so weird to imagine?”
“Well, yeah, after everything he put her through, it is surprising.”
I scoff. “After everything he put her through? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“He didn’t exactly make it easy for her to move on with her life.”
“She seemed to move on just fine. It wasn’t my dad’s job to give her a pass.
If Mom felt guilty, that was on her. And it doesn’t mean my dad can’t be worried about her health.
He’s a good, kind man. You don’t even know him.
” I worried this might be a bad idea. Maybe Cassie was wrong about multitasking, because this feels more like compartmentalizing.
Caleb and I are on opposite sides of the tragedy that upended my life.
Caleb exhales, and I can see the moment the fight leaves him, which is lucky for him because I was about to ask him to turn his stupid truck around. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He lifts a hand off the steering wheel in a gesture of surrender. “Sometimes I get protective, and—”
“I know.” I sigh. “But can you please acknowledge you may not know the whole story, because you and I can’t do this”—I gesture between us emphatically—“if we’re litigating what happened between my mom, my dad, and your uncle two decades ago.”
Caleb squeezes my thigh, and I hate the electricity that sparks even when I’m irritated at him. “Yes. I can do that.”
“Admit you’re wrong?”
“Don’t get carried away,” he teases. “But I’ll admit I don’t know everything.” And just like that, the mood shifts. Guard dog Caleb is a pain in the ass, but his loyalty isn’t wholly unattractive.
I clue in to our route, recognizing a series of turns. “Are we going to camp?” I ask, incredulous.
“Trust me.”
We arrive in the camp parking lot minutes later, and I twist in my seat and fold my arms across my chest. “Trust you?”
He slides out and looks at me pointedly before saying, “Yes.”
“Is anyone else here?” I amble out as he waits at the curb.
“Shouldn’t be.”
I glance around, checking for witnesses, before accepting his hand. “It’s possible that Adelaide’s plan was a ruse. She might jump out from behind a tree to catch us in a compromising position and force us to commit like in a Regency-era romance.”
“A what?” Caleb furrows his brows with an adorably confused half smile.
“Never mind.”
He leads me through the welcome court, his pace quick and purposeful.
“Did you bring me here for another forestry lesson?” I ask.
He tosses me an impatient glance. “No.”
Caleb doesn’t elaborate as he guides me onto the Ponderosa Path, which leads to the boys’ bunks, activity cabins, and sports-and-games fields. A hummingbird floats beside us until it dives into a patch of wildflowers. I check the sky for signs of a storm, but there’s not a cloud in sight.
The art room, where Mom taught class and I spent hours under her heel, is a kaleidoscope of color peeking out from a patch of giant sequoias.
There’s a newer mural on the side of the building, and I dart off course, striding toward it.
I freeze when I see Sonny’s profile, playing the guitar in front of a sea of adoring children.
The painting radiates joy but makes me melancholy.
Caleb clears his throat. “That went up after Sonny died. Your mom was already having trouble holding a paintbrush steady, so she designed it, outlined it, and the whole town helped paint it. Everyone adored him, you know.”
“I think I was the only person who didn’t,” I say, but then hesitate. “That’s not true. Maybe if I hadn’t loved him, I wouldn’t have felt so betrayed.”
Caleb hums and steps closer, the redwood leaves crunching under his feet. “He couldn’t help falling in love with your mom.”
“But he could control who he lied to.”
“Fair,” he says, but it sounds like an admission made under duress.
“I thought Mom was working here every summer to spend time with me. But she’d brought me here as an excuse to be with Sonny.
” I don’t know how to explain why the affair hit me so hard.
That time in my life was too painful to process.
When a building collapses on you, you don’t know which brick caused which injury.
I was battered; we were battered. Recovery and reflection weren’t possible; we just had to dig out of the rubble and learn to walk again with new scars.
“And it made me feel like their pawn, I suppose. Like I was brought along for cover, and I was an accomplice.”
It would be easy to chalk up the affair to the result of a loveless marriage, but I remember falling asleep to the sound of my parents’ conversation and laughter on the porch below my bedroom.
I was raised witnessing their small acts of love—simple gifts, foot rubs, constant affection.
They never ran out of things to talk about, until I said too much, and the whole house fell silent.
If I hadn’t been so eager to return every year, our lives could have turned out differently.
“That’s not your weight to carry,” Caleb says.
But the moment I used the agonizing truth as a weapon, I had to carry the weight of Dad’s heartbreak, too. “I should have figured it out sooner.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Caleb’s voice is stern, but kind. “Parents hide stuff from their kids all the time. They do it to protect them from things they won’t understand. Complicated relationships are at the top of the list of things kids don’t need to worry about. We’re not telling Abby about us.”
“You’re not cheating on her mom. And I’m not teaching her guitar and earning her trust while destroying her family.”