Chapter 21. Cait
CAIT
Cait expected to find the cottage empty aside from her mother’s old paintings and the bags of donations her parents perpetually collected for the parish.
Instead, she noted the porcelain water pitcher on the dresser next to the sleigh bed and the red-petaled flower in a turquoise vase that looked out of place against the snow piled along the windowsill.
Then she remembered her mother insisting that Isabel stay in the cottage.
Luke closed the door behind him and turned to face her. He was pissed, but then, so was she.
“So this is why you invited me?” he said, his eyes bright and serious. “To humiliate me?”
This surprised her. “Humiliate you ? You’re the one who showed up with your girlfriend!”
The thrill of walking out of the room with Luke was passing.
What a joke she was. She imagined her family sitting around the table, her parents totally bewildered and her sisters ready to pounce.
She’d gone too far. Why was she always going too far?
She needed to go back and apologize. She stepped toward the door, but Luke blocked her with his arm.
“I already told you that Nicole is not my girlfriend,” he said. “She has a fiancé in Tanzania.”
“Of course she does.”
Luke clenched his jaw. “I shouldn’t have come here,” he said.
This stung, and Cait shot back, “I shouldn’t have invited you. I should have known.”
“Known what?”
“That this could never work.”
Luke let out a bitter laugh, and she wanted to hit him.
“Why are you laughing?”
He poured himself a glass of water and leaned against the dresser as he took a few sips, closing his eyes. This pleased her. Just like that, back to the pathetic teenager thrilled to have his attention. He wants to stay! He cares! She could hardly stand herself.
“I didn’t mean to laugh,” he said finally. “I’m not laughing now.”
Cait turned to the door. You need to go back to your family. To your kids.
“I shouldn’t have stopped you.” He gestured toward the door. “If you want to leave…”
Cait faced him. She didn’t want to leave, regardless of what she knew she should do.
She’d have to do it eventually, but the thought of returning to the dining room filled her with shame.
It was now obvious that something more was going on between her and Luke and that that was why she’d invited him to dinner.
She had so much to explain and no idea where to begin—or finish, for that matter.
She sat on the bench at the end of the bed.
Luke switched on the lamp next to the water pitcher, and a warm light softened the room. Then he sat next to her.
“Clearly you have things to say to me,” he said. “We’re alone now. Let’s have it.” He crossed his arms. “Or is it not as fun when there’s no audience?”
Cait looked at his blue eyes and recognized her own age in the creases across his furrowed brow.
Not her youth or what had already passed, but the years stretched out before her.
She had so much life left to live. And what was she doing with it all?
Billing three-hundred-hour months while a woman she didn’t even like raised her children?
Living so far away, alone and miserable in London?
Expecting Alice to take care of their parents all by herself?
Assuming the Folly would somehow be passed down to the next generation even though no one was stepping up to claim it?
And what was she doing in this room, here and now, with Luke?
She did have things to say to him. She had years of things to say to him. But there was one question that stood out most. “Why are you here?” she asked.
Luke thought about this. “For whatever reason, we always seem to find our way back to each other.”
“Or we always seem to let go,” Cait said.
“I suppose it’s a matter of how you look at it.”
Is it?
“You like this game we play, don’t you?” Cait said. “I used to think the push and pull with you had to do with our families and everything that happened, but you get off on this.”
“And you don’t?”
“It’s miserable,” she said, aware she wasn’t answering his question.
Luke stood and walked to the window. He stared outside. “When you reached out to me after my mom died,” he said, turning to face her, “I wasn’t sure what to expect, seeing you in London. Then you invited me here, and I guess I thought maybe enough time had passed.”
“Enough time had passed for what?”
He turned again to the window and pressed his forehead to the glass and exhaled.
Then he stepped back and ran the tip of his finger across the patch of fog from his breath.
Outside, evening fell. She stopped herself from walking up behind him and wrapping her arms around his waist. She needed to hear what he had to say before she was willing to expose herself anymore.
Finally, she tried to answer for him. “For us to be together? For everyone to have just forgotten what happened?”
He was quiet for a moment, then turned back to her and said, “For the record, I told my parents not to pursue the lawsuit. I don’t know if you know that.”
Cait did not know that, and it immediately raised another question. “Did you tell them why? That it wasn’t just Topher’s fault?”
“We were kids,” he said. “It was an accident!”
“That we could have stopped. All we had to do was tell him—”
“You don’t think I know that? That I don’t think about that every day?”
“How would I know what you think about every day?”
“Of course I do!” He was pacing the room now. “But I’ve forgiven myself. I’ve had to—” He looked at her. “Have you not?”
“No,” Cait said. “I haven’t. I don’t think I ever will.”
Luke stopped pacing and turned to her. “Topher would not have wanted you to blame yourself.”
“Well, he fucking killed himself, so he doesn’t get a say.”
Luke hung his head low. Then he looked up at her again. “You need to forgive him,” he said. “And me. And yourself.”
Cait didn’t know what to say. Topher had taken responsibility.
Cait and Luke hadn’t had to admit a thing.
Still, even during the long stretches when she and Luke didn’t speak, every time she thought about him, she knew that there was at least one person in the world who understood and shared her crippling sense of guilt.
This had almost been a balm for her distress.
But she was wrong. He didn’t share her blame.
And maybe that made sense; he had less to assume.
It’s all mine to hold .
A new wave of shame coursed through her, until suddenly she thought of something.
“Why not give their money back if you disagreed with the lawsuit?” she asked.
“You’ve got plenty now, don’t you?” She knew this wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t about the money or even her parents not having to worry about the house.
It was a sad and desperate hope that in doing so, Luke might make her parents see him differently and mend the one thing that had any shot at repair.
Luke sat next to her on the bench. “I tried to,” he said.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I called your dad, years ago, and told him I wanted to write him a check.”
Cait stood. “What’d he say?”
“No.”
“ No? That’s it?”
Luke uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “He said that Topher made a mistake, and he didn’t want the money back.”
Topher made a mistake.
Cait was shocked into silence. Her father had never said it directly, but she’d always suspected he believed the lawsuit was just. She assumed her mother did not know about this conversation. That was the look Luke and her father had exchanged at dinner—Robert was asking him not to say anything.
Regardless, hearing that her father accepted this truth released something in her. She felt it in her body. As though this thing inside of her that had crystalized so long ago was undergoing a slight but definite shift.
Luke continued. “He also said that if I had that much hanging around, then good for me. Put it to good use. Which I have.”
Now Cait understood. “So that’s why you brought Nicole here—”
“Yes,” Luke said. “To show your dad, if nothing else, that I’m a man of my word.”
Cait shook her head. “And you didn’t think to tell me any of this?”
Luke shot up. “When are you going to stop feeling so goddamn sorry for yourself?” he said, his face and neck flushed.
“I’ve lost my entire family. Do you not get that?
Do you not see what you still have?” He gestured to the main house, but instead of gratitude, Cait felt sick at the reminder that she would have to go back there soon and face everyone.
“Or are you going to spend the rest of your life stuck on what’s been lost? ”
Before Cait could answer, cold air swept in from the open door, and she turned to find James rushing to the closet. “I have to get the shells for Papa,” he said as he used a chair to reach the top shelf. “The raccoon’s in the garbage. It’s okay. I know how to handle them safely.”
“Wait,” Cait said. “Where are the twins?”
“In the house eating pie.”
“Tell them they are absolutely not allowed outside.”
James nodded and shut the door behind himself.
“I have to go back,” Cait said to Luke. She did not want to, but they’d been gone for too long as it was, and she had to find the twins if her father was going to be raccoon hunting with James.
Luke nodded, but then took a step closer, placing his hands on her waist. Is he going to kiss me?
she wondered, almost confused. Why now? He looked at her for a moment, then leaned in, and she felt his lips on hers.
She’d been waiting for this since she last saw him in London, desperate to be held by him, but now she worried about everything happening outside the cottage.
The stubble along his cheek chafed her skin and the scar on his lip tickled her as it once had, but his mouth tasted like wine and sage, not beer and weed and Bazooka gum, like she’d expected him to still taste, as though twenty-five years of life wouldn’t change that, too.
His lips moved to her neck as he pulled her to him—
And that’s when they heard the crack from the shotgun. Outside the window, the sound was dampened by the freshly fallen snow, but was as unmistakable as the scream that followed.