Chapter 19. Cait
CAIT
Cait stood next to the kids’ table, pretending to ignore Luke and Nicole as they walked into the dining room, laughing.
It was like being in high school again and going from party to party trying to track him down, only to find him hanging out with another girl or getting wasted with Topher.
Just like old times. Had she really thought he’d changed? Had she really thought she’d changed?
Her hands shook as she cut the twins’ slices of turkey into tiny pieces.
There was no chance in hell they’d eat any of it, but she made them promise to take what Ruthie called a “thank-you bite,” though the phrase always irked her.
Poppy had woken about a half hour ago, but the Benadryl still seemed to be working to chill her out, and for that, Cait felt not an ounce of guilt.
The front door opened, and a moment later, Maggie and Kyle entered the dining room, bringing the cold air with them.
Isabel followed, bag in hand, and gave a half wave.
This could not be an easy room to walk back into, Cait thought.
When Kyle left to pick them up, Cait tried texting Maggie from Alice’s phone to get the scoop— Did you and Isabel make up?
Did she decide to stay? —but her sister never responded.
She tried to assess the situation now. Maggie was still in her clothes from yesterday, and her hair was pulled back in a messy bun—but then, yes, they were holding hands.
Or no, Maggie was reaching to take Isabel’s bag.
Cait looked for Luke again, but he was nowhere to be found, and Nicole was chatting with Alice about Finn’s basketball team.
“How were the roads?” their father asked.
Cait appreciated that he was trying to make the situation less awkward. Certainly no one else knew what to say.
“Icy,” Kyle said as he unzipped his jacket.
Nora welcomed Isabel and Maggie back and said, “Sit, please, sit,” to everyone around the table. Then she dashed off to check on the caterers, and Cait watched her father follow after her to help.
She found her place card between Alice and Nicole and sat.
Alice had asked the caterers to return Isabel’s table setting, but they’d put Maggie and Isabel right next to Father Kelly.
How’d that one slip by Alice? Maggie had said she felt more pity for Father Kelly, trapped in his own closet, than anger about how he’d tried to “save her” back in high school, but Cait still believed her sister was owed an apology.
“Maggie, dear,” Father Kelly said, as he hugged her hello. He reached his hand out to Isabel. “And this is your friend—”
“Isabel,” Maggie said.
Oh, for fuck’s sake .
“She’s not her friend,” Cait called from across the table.
Father Kelly turned.
“She’s her girlfriend ,” Cait said. “As in, they share a bed and—” She went to scissor her fingers, but Alice grabbed her hands and said, “We get it!”
Isabel and Cait shared a quick smile, but Maggie flashed Cait a look of complete horror. Cait didn’t know if it was because of what she’d said to Father Kelly—and, okay, maybe the gesture had been too much—or because Isabel was no longer, in fact, her girlfriend.
Father Kelly’s cheeks glowed as he went to sit.
“Do we get it?” Cait asked him.
“Yes, Cait, I believe we do.”
Nora walked back into the dining room. “Isn’t this lovely,” she said of the table spread.
She was avoiding her cane—out of vanity, Cait knew—and instead gripped Robert’s thin arm for support.
What good that would do, Cait wasn’t sure.
She’d been catching moments like this between them all day—her frail father supporting her frail mother, neither strong enough to be alone.
Luke reappeared holding two bottles of Malbec.
He walked around the table, filling each glass, maddeningly at ease as he explained that he was friends with the vintner.
Cait busied herself unfolding her napkin.
She refused to make eye contact with him even as he gave her a generous pour and placed a half-empty bottle in front of her place setting.
Father Kelly finished saying grace, and the platters made their way clockwise from hand to hand.
By the time everyone began eating, Cait had already downed her first glass of wine—it was fabulous, she was loath to admit—and so she poured another for herself and topped off Alice’s and Nicole’s, though hers was the only one in need of a refill.
By the second glass, her hands no longer trembled, but whenever she’d catch Luke across the table chatting with Father Kelly or laughing with Mukesh, she’d think to herself: I hate him .
It was not the kind of hatred that came with love.
She knew that hatred. This was pure. Even more complicated than pure.
Maybe it wasn’t even hatred at all. Unless it was hatred for herself.
Or for them both. The two flawed people they’d become who could never get back to the innocent kids they once were.
The hatred was confounding. It meant she did not know the version of herself who’d invited him there in the first place, who’d been lovesick over him since she was sixteen.
Who, then, sat here now? She tried taking a long sip of wine to calm herself.
“It’s all delicious,” Nicole said, and everyone mumbled their agreement before breaking off into their own conversations.
Cait picked at the kale salad on her plate and turned to Nicole. “So you know Luke from Saint Mary’s?”
Nicole smiled and fanned her hand in front of her mouth to indicate she needed to finish chewing; then she swallowed dramatically. “We didn’t actually know each other then,” she said. “But I was friends with Danny.”
The casual evocation of Luke’s brother’s nickname startled Cait, and her whole body stiffened. Not everyone called Daniel Danny . Just like not everyone called Christopher Topher . She looked to see who’d heard and caught her mother’s eye.
“Daniel was a sweet boy,” her mother said now.
Did her accent sound thicker? There was an unsettling intensity to it.
Luke raised his glass, but his smile faltered. “He was.”
Cait watched as the room absorbed this all in silence. Outside, the wind whipped the snow. The room darkened, and the candles flickered.
As the table resumed its chatter, Nicole turned to Cait. “Luke and I met again at an angel investment lunch two years ago when I was getting my NGO off the ground.”
Alice leaned over Cait. “What does your organization do?”
“We work with women entrepreneurs in Nigeria.” Nicole spoke now to Alice, over Cait’s shoulder. “We provide grants and microloans to help them launch their own businesses.”
Oh, the virtue. Cait wanted to barf.
“That’s incredible,” Alice said.
“Did you have a fundraiser in London a few months ago?” Cait asked.
“We did,” Nicole said, taken aback. “How did you—”
Cait waved her hand. “Luke mentioned something about it.”
She felt ill. The room blurred in a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds.
She sipped her water, and when she reemerged, Nicole was talking about how they’d recently appointed Luke as the director of major gifts at her organization, the name of which Cait hadn’t caught.
She could see Luke watching them from across the table. Nicole seemed to notice as well.
“He helped us with the seed money,” Nicole continued, smiling at Luke. “And now he leads our fundraising efforts.”
“Nicole, could you pass me the gravy?” Maggie said. “And did I hear you say you ran track at Saint Mary’s?”
Thank you, Maggie.
“Oh,” Nicole said, handing her the saucer. “Yes, long distance. I wasn’t very fast so—”
Mukesh turned to Luke. “I sit on a board for an aid organization that does similar work in rural India. Mostly Chhattisgarh. We should talk.”
“Anytime,” Luke said, too proudly, Cait thought.
Nicole took a delicate sip of her wine. “You should,” she said to Mukesh. “He’s brilliant. Whenever he comes to speak to the women, they’re all inspired by what a self-starter he was—”
Cait snorted, and the table quieted.
“Sorry.” Nicole sat up straight. “Did I say something funny?”
Alice pinched Cait’s arm. “Not at all.”
Cait knew she should stop, but she could not let go of the idea of someone—no, not just someone ; his date!—referring to Luke as a “self-starter” in present company.
“I don’t like the turkey,” Poppy said from the kids’ table.
“You don’t have to eat it,” Cait said, then turned back to Nicole. “You didn’t say anything funny. Untrue, maybe, but not funny.”
Alice squeezed Cait’s arm again, but Cait yanked it away, nearly spilling her wine but catching it at the last second. She took a sip as though the whole thing was intentional.
“I don’t get it,” Nicole said, setting down her fork and knife.
Luke coughed into his napkin. “I’m not sure I do either.”
Cait propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her entwined fingers. She fixed her eyes on Luke and felt strangely assured. “Of course you do,” she said.
“I’d love to hear more about the women’s businesses,” Alice said. “And what kind of—”
“Just stop,” Cait said to her sister. She turned to Nicole. “What I meant is Luke’s far from a self-starter. Unless starting with”—she glared at him, challenging him to disagree with her—“what was it exactly?” Her face grew hot. “One million? Two—”
“One million thirty-four thousand,” Nora said matter-of-factly.
Everyone at the table turned to Nora. Cait could hardly believe it. Her parents had never revealed the number—they didn’t want Topher to know.
“That was the final amount,” Nora continued. “When everything was settled.”
Cait turned back to Luke. “That had to help, no?”
Luke shook his head slowly.
“What was a million dollars?” James asked.
“We do not need to discuss this right now,” Robert said.
Cait turned back to Nicole. “You’re from around here,” she said. “You know what we’re talking about.”
Nicole looked up at Luke but stayed quiet.
Mukesh jumped in. “Is this about the NGO?”
“It’s not,” Maggie said.
“We’re talking about—” Cait began but stopped when her father slammed his open palm on the table, the dishes and silverware clattering.
The room fell silent.
“Why’s Papa so mad?” Poppy whispered to her cousins, her voice loud enough for everyone to hear.
Alice cleared her throat. “James, why don’t you tell everyone what you learned at the turkey farm with your class last week.”
James stood. “You can tell if a turkey is a boy or a girl by their poop,” he squealed.
Augustus and Poppy burst into laughter.
“That’s not what your mother meant,” Kyle said.
“You’re gross,” Finn said.
Poppy jumped up from the kids’ table. “Mummy,” she shouted to Cait, and pointed to the window. “The raccoon!”
“That’s Brew.” Alice sighed. “The Callahans’ beagle that howls all night.”
As everyone watched the floppy-eared dog run home through the snow, Cait met Luke’s gaze. He looked hurt, maybe embarrassed, but she felt vindicated in calling him out. What had he expected?
Alice turned back to the table. “Ah, holidays,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Always something!” Then: “Father Kelly, what were holidays like for you growing up?”
Father Kelly heeded the call and sat up, dabbing his mouth with his napkin.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “Right, well, when I was a kid, every holiday, my father would spend time with each of us children in the sitting room while mother prepared a special meal. We’d go in age order, and as the second youngest of eleven, I could always see that he was tired by the time I sat in the chair across from him.
But this was important for him and for us.
He worked long hours as a hotel manager and rarely got to see us throughout the week.
He’d smoke his pipe and inquire about our marks at school and were we being helpful to mother and the like.
Then, at the end, he’d always ask the same question—”
Luke stood and tossed his napkin down beside his plate.
“I never wanted that money,” he said to Cait. Then he turned to her parents. “You know that, don’t you?”
Nora did not answer him, and Cait wasn’t sure if that was because she disagreed with what he said or if she was just trying to keep it together, but then a strange look flickered between Luke and her father.
After a moment, her father said, “We know.”
Suddenly Luke was standing next to Cait. At first she assumed he was there to get Nicole so they could leave, but then he announced to the table, “Please give us a minute. Cait?” He nodded toward the door.
Cait sensed everyone watching them as they crossed the room, Luke’s hand on the small of her back guiding her, and she felt a flutter of exhilaration at finally being claimed by him publicly.
She let him steer her past the kitchen, where the caterers ate their dinner at the center island, through the foyer, and then out the front door and into the November snowstorm, where a strange combination of grim satisfaction and remorse hit her immediately and hard.