Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
E sme drove home that night with her heart in her throat. Rebecca and Bethany were still awake, waiting up for her. It was just as Esme had once waited up for them, worried sick about their teenage antics, terrified that something horrible would happen. I couldn’t lose another child. It would have killed me.
Rebecca pointed at the kitchen table and poured her a glass of wine. “We want to know everything.”
Esme cursed herself for having told them where she was off to. She should have kept this to herself. Secrets so often mean safety.
Esme thanked her daughter for the glass of wine and raised her shoulders. Right now, leaning over the kitchen table as their children slept upstairs, Bethany and Rebecca looked remarkably alike.
They look like me, Esme thought.
“I wanted to check on him,” Esme said. “I left him really dramatically in the middle of nowhere, Colorado. It wasn’t fair.”
“I mean, Dad did awful things to you in the past,” Bethany said.
“Forgiveness doesn’t mean treating them the same way they treated you,” Esme said.
Rebecca and Bethany glanced at one another. A wordless thought was exchanged.
Esme thought for the millionth time since their return, I can’t read my daughters’ minds. I used to be able to. But I’ve lost it.
“We thought we might have a family barbecue here at the house next week,” Esme announced. “It’s been a very strange summer, and we want to celebrate the fact that we can all be together.” She swallowed. “For now.”
Bethany raised her eyebrows. “We’re staying, Mom.”
“Don’t say that,” Esme urged her quietly. “I don’t need promises. I just need to know that we’ll be there for each other. Even if we’re miles and miles away.”
Rebecca and Bethany bowed their head in agreement. This was something they could offer.
Esme sipped her wine and looked down to share the final blip of news with her girls. “Your father went to see Bree.”
“No!” Rebecca cried. “He couldn’t have!”
“He wants her back.” Bethany sounded smug. “Now that you don’t want him, he wants to move to Providence?”
“It’s not that simple,” Esme explained. “You both have been married before. You know what that connection is like.”
Rebecca and Bethany nodded tentatively. They didn’t want to agree. But they had to because they’d lived it. They knew enough about the world outside the walls of this house to understand.
“Bree has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of multiple sclerosis,” Esme explained.
Rebecca drew her hand over her mouth. Bethany gasped.
“Bree wanted to tell him face-to-face,” Esme said.
“Oh, Dad. Oh, no.” Rebecca hung her head.
They sat in silence like that for a moment, three women at the mercy of time.
“He must be reeling,” Rebecca said finally. “What did he tell you about it?”
“I imagine he’ll want to tell you that himself,” Esme said after a moment’s pause. “I don’t want to speak for him.”
Rebecca clicked her tongue.
“I’m sure he appreciates that,” Bethany said.
Esme finished her glass of wine and joined her daughters in the living room to watch All About Eve, a classic film from 1950. Esme allowed herself to get swept up in the feeling of vintage beauty and ornate clothing. She allowed herself to fall in love with a fantasy world that had long since passed.
And then she fell asleep on the sofa, only for her daughters to wake her up an hour later and urge her to go to bed.
I’m safe, she thought to herself. I’m protected. Finally.
Larry had had a heart attack out of nowhere.
The doctors hadn’t seen it coming.
In fact, Larry had had a clean bill of health just three weeks before that.
The night before his heart attack, Esme and Larry had ballroom danced across the kitchen and knocked a glass of wine to the ground. Glass had shattered everywhere. Esme and Larry had thought they’d cleaned up all of it, but Esme was still getting glass in her socks and the skin of her feet long after Larry died.
Esme was still horribly angry about Larry.
Esme still wanted to break glass when she thought about it.
It was just his time , somebody had told her after the funeral. Esme had wanted to scream.
It hadn’t been Joel’s time. It hadn’t been Larry’s time.
What sense did any of this make?
Autumn was in the air now. Crisp and filled with apple spice. The light dimmed over the horizon early, and Esme found herself baking for her grandchildren, helping with homework, and reading till she got dizzy. Sometimes she fell asleep while reading and imagined that Larry was beside her, that he’d also fallen asleep with a book on his chest.
But he was never there.
Victor’s suggestion to celebrate the Sutton family coming back together again was wonderful. It really was. And Esme decided to throw herself into it by baking pies, buying the best-quality meat for grilling, and opting for all sorts of snacks for the kids, including ingredients to make s’mores.
Victor arrived an hour before the party was supposed to start. He said he wanted to help set up.
Esme watched him mount the porch and fix his hair in the reflection on the glass. Her heart pounded with the memory of who he’d been and what she’d once felt for him.
Esme met him at the door with his favorite beer and a list of orders. “There’s still so much to do.”
“I’m ready to do it. Put me to work,” he said.
Esme didn’t want Victor to slip back into his role as her husband. Not the way it had been.
But she’d begun to dream about him sometimes.
Sometimes, in her dreams, they were on their honeymoon to Florida, swimming in turquoise water. Sometimes they were stretched out on Victor’s boat—one that was still called Esme despite all the time that had passed . Sometimes they were just kissing beneath a black sky splattered with stars.
Esme had begun to crave a kiss from Victor.
But she didn’t know if she had the courage to leap.
Too much has happened. Too much to overcome.
Victor got to work on the barbecue. As he grilled meat, onions, peppers, and even slices of potatoes, his grandchildren whipped up to ask questions or laugh with him. Esme watched his face illuminate with smiles.
Our grandchildren. Our world. We built it, she thought.
Esme touched his shoulder. He flinched and turned to smile down at her.
“They’re something else,” he said, gesturing toward the grandchildren as they raced across the sands.
“They really are.”
They ate shortly afterward. Esme and Victor on one end, plus Bethany and her boyfriend Rod and Rod’s daughter Renée and Bethany’s three children; Rebecca and the two children who remained here now that her eldest was back at university; Rebecca’s new boyfriend, Ben; Valerie and Alex. It was a massive crew. It was also quaint—people talking all over each other, people so pleased to tell stories and laugh and pass the salad, meat, and ketchup.
Victor made a bonfire in the pit shortly after the meal and helped the younger kids roast marshmallows.
“They’re bottomless pits,” he said of the kids’ hunger.
“Tell me about it,” Rebecca said with a laugh; although her children were older, they didn’t eat quite as much as Bethany’s. Not anymore.
Victor helped the youngest, Phoebe, roast a marshmallow. Esme cracked the graham cracker and chocolate and slid her roasted marshmallow between everything to make a perfect s’more.
Esme had a flashing memory of doing just this with their kids. She remembered Victor helping Joel, Valerie, Rebecca, and Bethany. She remembered making sure everyone was safe.
She could see it in Victor’s eyes, too, that he remembered.
Forty-five minutes later, the grandkids began a game of baseball on the sand. They recruited Rebecca, Bethany, and their boyfriends. This left Victor, Esme, Valerie, and Alex on the sidelines. Valerie and Alex were talking quietly on the opposite end of the table as Valerie sipped a glass of sparkling water.
Esme had a startling moment of clarity, it could be like this if I let it.
It could be like this if I open my heart to it.
“Could you help me with something, Victor?” she asked.
Victor nodded and got up. Esme pressed various things into his arms and asked him to help her carry them into the kitchen. Nothing about this was pressing. At the same time, it was the most important thing in the world to her right now. She tried to impart that in her eyes.
Victor and Esme laid the items across the counter. The kitchen was quiet, except for their grandkids' echoing laughter outside. A soft and translucent moon floated ghostly along the horizon. You could feel winter around the bend.
Esme considered running upstairs to fetch her thicker autumn jacket.
She considered hiding herself away.
But instead, she raised her chin to Victor and asked, “Are you happy here? With us?”
Victor pressed his lips together. “I’m the happiest I’ve been in many years.”
Esme heard no hint of irony in his voice. She believed him.
Esme considered this kitchen. It was the kitchen in which they’d fed their babies. It was the kitchen in which Esme had baked Victor so many birthday cakes. It was the kitchen where he’d first told her he was in love with someone else.
How can we oversee that? She thought now. Maybe we never can.
“The house looks incredible,” Victor said now. He sounded tentative. “I remember you saying Larry had an eye for interior design.”
Esme felt a lump in her throat. “Yes. He did.”
Victor’s shoulders dropped. “You must miss him.”
Esme felt a swell of sorrow. She felt a sob that she swallowed down. “I will always miss him.”
Victor set his jaw. “He was the love of your life. Wasn’t he?”
Esme tilted her head. She hadn’t expected such a question from Victor Sutton. She hadn’t believed him to be the kind of man who believed in something like a “love of your life.”
She answered as honestly as she could.
“Larry was one of the great loves of my life, yes,” she said. “But I think I might be one of those lucky people who get two.”
Victor’s eyes lit up.
Esme thought back through all the pain, heartache, and horror they’d been through. She thought back to how much he’d hurt her, how much she’d wanted to hate him. She remembered how little she’d been able to hate him. I failed at that, too .
Suddenly, Esme was on her tiptoes. Unexpectedly, she kissed him as though the rest of her life depended on it.
There was no telling where this was headed. Perhaps it was headed toward disaster. But being Victor and Esme Sutton meant leaping without thought. It meant taking a chance. It meant taking a second chance. It meant believing in the miracle of being alive, no matter how often that “miracle” tried its hardest to destroy you.
It meant the miracle of being in love.