Chapter 16 Darcy
The messages started arriving the day after Tyler sent his correction, a slow trickle at first and then a fuller, more constant flow, cousins and family friends I hadn't spoken to in months suddenly eager to weigh in on a night most of them hadn't even attended.
Some were kind, an aunt I liked writing simply that she was sorry and had always thought I handled the family beautifully.
Others were something closer to an invitation to manage their discomfort, a family friend writing that she felt terrible not saying anything at the time and hoped I understood how hard it was to know what to do in the moment.
I read that last one twice, feeling the old reflex rise, the urge to write back something reassuring, of course you couldn't have known, it's not your fault, don't worry about it.
I didn't send anything. I let the message sit unanswered, a small, deliberate practice in not absorbing other people's guilt just because they'd handed it to me gently.
It wasn't my job to make anyone feel better about what they'd watched happen.
I'd spent twelve years doing exactly that, softening everyone else's discomfort so thoroughly that my own had never gotten any room to exist.
A cousin of Tyler's I'd always liked, a quiet woman named Marguerite who'd sat next to me at more than one dull family dinner, sent a longer message, admitting she'd felt Claudette's comment go wrong the moment it left her mouth and had told herself it wasn't her place to say anything.
I keep thinking about how easy it would have been to just tell you, that was awful, right in the moment.
I didn't. I'm sorry. I read that one three times, feeling something in my chest ease slightly.
It didn't fix anything, but it was the first message that didn't ask me to reassure the sender in return.
I wrote back a short, genuine thank-you, and left it there, no obligation attached to either side of it.
Maxine, reading over my shoulder one evening as I scrolled through the backlog, snorted at one particularly performative message from a Westcott second cousin who'd written three paragraphs about her own shock and sadness without once asking how I was doing.
"This one wants a gold star for feeling bad," Maxine said, unimpressed. "You don't owe her a response."
"I know. I'm not planning to give her one." I set the phone face down, feeling lighter for having said it out loud, the relief of not needing anyone's validation to know my own reaction was reasonable.
"It's interesting, watching who actually asks how you are versus who just wants absolution," Maxine said, topping off both our glasses. "You could build an entire personality assessment out of these texts."
"I might, eventually. For now I'm just sorting them into two piles and only responding to one." I scrolled past two more messages that fell squarely into the gold-star category, and felt no obligation at all pulling at me to answer either.
Edmund called on a Thursday, his voice careful in a way I wasn't used to hearing from him, and asked if I'd be willing to meet him for coffee, just the two of us.
I almost said no out of pure instinct, some old wariness about being pulled back into Westcott business I'd already extracted myself from, but something in the way he asked, none of Claudette's managing brightness in it, made me say yes.
We met at a small place near his office, away from any restaurant that carried history for either of us, and he looked older than I remembered, or maybe I simply hadn't looked at him closely in years, always too busy managing the room around him to notice the actual man in it.
"I owe you an apology," he said, before I'd even finished sitting down, no preamble, no attempt to soften it with small talk first. "I knew, Darcy.
I want you to know that clearly. I knew Claudette treated you differently than she treated Felicity, differently than she treated anyone else in this family, and I let it happen because managing the family was Claudette's job and staying out of it was mine.
That was easier for me. It was never fair to you. "
"Why didn't you say anything?" I asked, not accusingly, curious, because I'd wondered this for years without ever having the standing to ask him directly.
"Cowardice, mostly." He said it plainly, without flinching from the word.
"Claudette and I built an arrangement a long time ago.
She runs the family, the social world, all of it, and I stay out of her way and focus on the business.
It worked for us. It just never once occurred to me to ask what it cost the people inside her arrangement.
" He turned his coffee cup slowly, not quite looking at me.
"I watched you organize a dozen events for this family and never once thanked you properly.
I told myself you enjoyed it, that it gave you something to do. I never asked whether that was true."
"It wasn't. Not for a long time." I said it simply, without the old urge to cushion it.
"I appreciate you saying this, Edmund. I do.
But I want to be honest about what I can offer you in return.
I'm not ready to be back in family gatherings where nothing's actually changed.
I'm willing to have coffee with you, like this, when you want to.
I'm not willing to pretend the last twelve years didn't happen just because you've apologized for your part in one conversation. "
"That's fair." He nodded, something like relief moving through his expression, as though he'd expected worse and was grateful for anything less than that. "I'd like that. The coffee, I mean. However much of it you're willing to give me."
"Can I ask you something else?" I turned my own cup slowly, working up to it. "Do you think she knows what she does? Or does she genuinely believe her own version of things?"
He considered it a long moment, longer than I expected, the question clearly one he'd sat with before on his own.
"I used to think she genuinely didn't see it.
I'm less sure now. I think some part of her knows exactly what she's doing and has simply never had to face a consequence large enough to make her stop.
That's on me too, in its own way. I was the consequence that never came. "
I didn't have anything to add to that, and he didn't seem to need me to. We sat with it a moment, the coffee going lukewarm between us, two people quietly acknowledging a truth neither of us had the power to undo.
"Can I tell you what I actually regret most?
" Edmund asked, after a while, his voice quieter than before.
"Not the big gala moment. That was Claudette's doing, mostly, and Tyler's failure to stop it.
What I regret is smaller than that. There was a Christmas, years ago, maybe your third or fourth with us, and you'd spent the whole afternoon cooking because Claudette insisted the caterer she wanted wasn't available that year.
You made everything yourself. I remember thinking, at the table, how good it all was, and I remember not saying so.
I told Claudette the gravy was excellent. I never once turned to you."
"I remember that Christmas." I hadn't expected the specific memory to still be sitting in me, but it surfaced whole, the exhaustion of that day, the quiet hope that someone would notice. "I don't think anyone did turn to me, that year."
"I know. That's the part I can't take back.
It wasn't one gala. It was a hundred small dinners where I let my wife take the credit for your work and told myself it wasn't worth the friction to correct her.
" He shook his head slowly. "I'm not asking you to forgive that today.
I just wanted you to know I remember it too, not only the big failures. "
We talked for a while longer after that, easier conversation, his early years building the company, a story about Tyler at eight years old trying to negotiate a higher allowance with a spreadsheet he'd made himself, and I found myself laughing in a way that surprised me, genuine and unguarded, sitting across from a man I'd spent twelve years quietly resenting for his passivity and was only now beginning to see as something more complicated than that.
Tyler and I had dinner two nights later, a small Italian place we used to go to before the gala, before any of it, and I agreed to it mostly because I missed the specific rhythm of talking to him about nothing important, a rhythm I hadn't known how much I'd been rationing until Edmund's coffee reminded me how good it felt to laugh with a Westcott man again.
The first half of the meal was easy in exactly the way I'd hoped, him telling a story about a supplier meeting that had gone sideways in a way only he could make funny, me telling him about the singer emergency at the Whitcombe wedding, both of us laughing at the right places the way we always had, something old and familiar between us still recognizable underneath everything that had changed.
Over the second course he asked whether I wanted to join him and Douglas for a Sunday afternoon game.
I told him I had promised myself a quiet day after the wedding and intended to keep it.
He had mentioned earlier how much he missed doing ordinary things together, and I waited for him to remind me of that.
"No, thank you," I said. "I need a day without plans." He started to answer, then stopped and put his glass down. "I know you wanted me there," I added.
"I did. But you've just told me you need some time to yourself." He reached for the bread basket. "I can go with Douglas. Would you rather I left Monday free too, or can I call you then?"
"Monday's fine." I accepted the bread he offered. I had prepared an explanation about the hours I'd worked, but he had already moved on to asking whether the bandleader had thanked me. I could answer that without defending my Sunday.
"I'm trying." He said it simply, without asking for credit, and we let the subject go, moving on to easier things, the rest of the meal passing in the particular comfortable silence of two people who'd once known each other completely and were relearning parts of it in real time.
We split a dessert, talking between bites until there was only a spoonful left, and at one point he reached across the table to steal the last bite off my plate the way he'd done a hundred times over twelve years, an old, thoughtless habit that made me laugh out loud before I could stop myself.
"Some things really don't change," I said, swatting his hand away too late to actually save the bite.
"I'd argue that one specifically shouldn't have to." He grinned, unrepentant, and for a moment the whole evening felt uncomplicated in a way I hadn't let myself expect walking in.
He walked me to my car afterward, and there was a moment at the door, close enough that I felt the old pull of him, the twelve years of habit that lived in my body whether or not I'd decided to trust it yet.
He didn't reach for me. He stood there, hands in his pockets, letting the moment exist without trying to resolve it into something more.
"Thank you for tonight," I said. "I had a good time. A really good time."
"Me too." He held my gaze a moment longer, something unspoken and patient in it. "Get home safe."
When I got home, I hung up my coat and put the kettle on.
I had wanted to kiss him beside the car.
I had also wanted to return here, to the apartment where I could decide how the evening ended.
Both wishes had survived dinner. I sent him a short message saying I was home safely, then took my tea to the couch and opened the book I had left there.