by Rachel Kane
If I took Braddock’s money, I could make a good life for her up here. She’d never have to scrub another person’s bathrooms, she’d never have to stoop and bow.
If I refused Braddock’s money, things would be hard. We could make it work, but it wouldn’t be the life she deserved.
And, as a final if, if Theo stayed, if he told Val he wasn’t going to make this ridiculous move, then at least I’d have someone by my side, as I tried to make a better life for my mom. If Theo stayed, I think I could have the courage to tell Braddock to go to hell.
That was a lot of ifs, and very little certainty.
“It’ll be good to have you around,” I told her. “Although I’m not sure I have room for boxes of baby clothes.”
A tap on my office door.
“Mom, I need to run. But I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”
Debra poked her head into the office. “Braddock Moore wants to speak to you. He says you know what it’s about? He says he needs a decision.”
“Thanks,” I told her.
That final if. I could make Braddock go away, if Theo was by my side.
I had to know.
I had to ask him what his decision was.
There wasn’t time to think, to consider, to weigh all the options. If he loved me, if he truly loved me, then he would stay.
If I deserved love, he would stay.
If I was worth it.
Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe Jerome was right, when he said I was absolutely empty, a void trying to fill itself with work.
It was possible that I simply didn’t deserve love.
I was scared to call. I think I could have put it off forever, if the issues with Braddock and my mom hadn’t been pressing down on me.
Would his plane still be in the air? Would he be back at work yet?
I traced the edge of my phone with my fingertip. Finally, I worked up the nerve to punch in his number.
25
Theo
I had returned home. Not my home up in the city, not the apartment where I did most of my drinking and hiding.
Home. Harrison House, next to the lake, the place I had grown up, and the place that was going to be taken from me. I had been at the airport when I changed my mind, and walked to the car rental booth instead of getting on my flight.
I could have simply called. Spoken on the phone, like modern people.
But I told myself I wanted to see her face when I told her. I wanted to understand.
Besides, so I told myself, I’d spent the night in Corinth anyway, sleeping next to Micah on that tiny bed. It was a short enough drive from Corinth to the lake. So it made perfect sense that I would come down here, my neck sore and shoulders tight.
Honestly I think I just wanted to see it one last time. To ask the house’s advice, as it were. Not my mother—oh, I would talk to her about it too, I would tell her all about Val’s command, and the pressure I felt from it, and the way I wished I could just refuse—and the fact that if I did refuse, I would need her utmost support in backing me against him.
I would talk to her about it, sure. But I wanted the house’s advice. The way the house made me think, the way it guided my emotions.
Maybe I’m alone in that. Maybe nobody else in the world finds their heads clearer in a certain place, a certain house, where familiarity and memory make you more of who you truly are.
It was something I’d been missing during my long period of hiding behind Val and the company, not coming down here, not visiting, all these years. Unable to face the grief and sorrow, and the guilt of my own choices, the guilt of leaving everything behind.
I was returning now, because I needed that honesty.
Even if I couldn’t make it make sense to anyone else, I understood why I had to be inside these walls one more time.
“Can I talk to you alone?” I asked her.
I found her in the breakfast room.
If I were painting it, what would I call it? Study in Imperiousness? The Morning Orders?
Morning sunlight slanted in, but did not fall on cheerful breakfast conversation. The table was covered. All the silver was out, and the light beamed down on it. It would be hard to capture the glow over the table, almost like a holy shrine, shattering into individual glints off every blade and tine.
Mother was standing over it all, spine erect with pride and authority, and she was directing Mildred and Consuela on how best to box it all up.
“Is everything all right, old man?” asked Nick, his voice too avuncular for my tastes. He put a protective arm around my mother.
I bit back a sharp retort about things being damn fine. “Sure,” I said. “I just need to talk. Privately.”
“We’re just so busy,” she said, pointing out the dessert spoons to Consuela. “So much to do, so much to sort through.”
I didn’t want to do this here, in front of people. I hadn’t come to fight, not at all: there was nothing left to fight about, between me and her, now that her mind was made up and she was getting rid of the house. But there were things I wanted to say, that I couldn’t in front of everyone else. Especially not in front of her boyfriend.
And why did she get to have a boyfriend, and have everything work out for her, when I did not? When I felt like Micah and I had barely gotten together before we were immediately under siege again?
“Mother,” I said. “Please.”
“They exhaust me,” she said, leaning against the window in the study. Boxes of books were stacked on the floor, and dust-covers had already turned the furniture into ghosts. “Every item has a memory. If I have to hear one more story from them, I will go mad, Theo.”
“You should have hired movers,” I said.
“Needless expense. Besides, it gives the ladies something to do other than glare at me. I hope you haven’t come on their behalf. It’s too late. My mind will not be changed. Everything is underway.”
I shook my head. “Not at all. No, I came about something else.”
“Thank god. Nicholas was very concerned when you pulled up. He wondered if he would have to intervene.”
If Nick tries to get in my way, I’ll snap him in half, I thought.
“Nice to have someone looking out for your well-being,” I said.
“I’d ask you if I detect a note of bitterness in your voice, but lately you’ve been like a piano with one key held down, when it comes to bitterness, haven’t you?”
“We never used to talk like this,” I said. I found myself twisting my hands together, wringing them. Consciously I forced them back down. “I don’t remember us ever fighting. I was always on your side.”
It wasn’t what I had come here to say, but it was true, and it needed saying.
Her lips pressed together, she gave me a curt nod. “Something has changed,” she said. “You’re so angry these days. Oh, you try to hide it, I know. The fun-loving drunken fool, it’s a role you’ve learned to play. But everyone can see it. Even Nick.”
“If we could just stop mentioning Nick every five seconds—”
“I know he can’t replace your father—”
“That’s not it, you don’t understand, none of this is why I’m here. I don’t care that he’s not Dad, okay? I don’t like him, but whatever. He’s not my boyfriend, I don’t have to like him.”
“Very conciliatory of you. Why are you here, Theo? There’s clearly something on your mind.”
I explained it. It all came out in a rush, in a torrent: Missouri, the company, Val’s request. The fact that Harrison Holdings was depending on this acquisition.
The only thing I left out was Micah. And how hard it would be on us, if I had to leave.
I could picture him now, up in his office, files stacked high, working hard.
It occurred to me that what my mother had said could apply to him too. He was also angry. A deep anger, a frustration over being forced into a life he didn’t ask for.
“And you don’t want to go?” she said.
“Of course I don’
t want to go. I mean, I’m sure Missouri’s very nice and all, but six months?”
“You’re young,” she said. “Six months is nothing. I can’t believe you two are fighting over such a small amount of time. You’ll go in, you’ll be out, you’ll get on with your life.”
“It sounds like you’re comforting me over a prison sentence.”
“It’s not like you’ll be locked in a cell there. You’ll be free to move around, come back for weekends—”
“Yes, I know that, yes, Val already made that point. I don’t need to hear his side of it again. Damn it, Mother, I was hoping you could… I was thinking you would…”
“Hoping I would what? Tell you to let the company fall, so you could stay home? Let you dissolve into a drunken puddle, and give up all responsibility in your life? Wait…is this about Micah? Is that where all this emotion is coming from?”
“Actually, leave Micah out of this.”
“Leave him out? It sounds like you’re the one who brought him into this. Dear, I don’t know how to tell you this…I especially don’t understand how you don’t already know this after all this time…but Micah is not for you.”
“Mother—”
“Shortly after your father died, Val told me that you and Micah had been having a youthful affair. My heart sank, Theo. It’s one thing to be cordial with the help. Noblesse oblige, as they say. Quite another to give your heart away to them.”
I couldn’t believe how angry I was. Couldn’t believe how it felt to hear her say this.
“He’s not the help, Mother. He’s a successful lawyer—”
“Good for him.”
“—and I love him.”
“No,” she said. “No, you do not. You think I don’t know what you feel? I’ve known you your entire life, Theo. You had a youthful infatuation with him, and we made the right decision, keeping you away from him before it could grow more serious. Now you’ve seen him again, and you blithely think something could happen between you, but it can’t. This is just your anger again, your emptiness, looking for an outlet, a way to express itself, to fill itself up. You don’t love Micah, you’re just using him to make yourself feel better.”
“That isn’t true!”
“And now you’re using him as an excuse not to follow through on your responsibility to the company and to your family!”
“Do you hear yourself?” I shouted. “Do you hear how crazy that sounds? Why can’t I love Micah?”
“Because you’ve only known him as an adult for a few days!”
“I’ve known him forever—”
We were interrupted by Nick stepping into the room. “Is something wrong?”
“This doesn’t concern you,” I told him.
“Listen here, Theo, you can’t shout at your mother. She’s in a very delicate state.”
“What does that mean? She’s not delicate, she’s just as much of a hard-ass as she ever was!”
Their sudden silence told me I had missed something. Something major.
I could suddenly hear Val’s voice in my head, all that time ago:
Use your head, Theo. I haven’t spent these past years training you in business, for you not to figure these things out on your own.
At the same time, I pictured her as I’d seen her when I came down on that first visit, locked away in her study, picturing her as a frail ghost, her concern about spending the rest of her life in this house.
The rest of her life…
“Are you sick, Mother?”
She looked away and would not speak. So I turned to Nick.
“Is she? Is there something you’re keeping from me?”
He went to stand next to her, and took her hand.
“She’s going to be fine,” Nick said. “Everything is going to work out.”
But she pushed his hand away. “You don’t know that, Nicholas, and I would rather you didn’t lie on my behalf.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Someone has to tell me.”
“They’ve found a tumor,” she said.
“A small one. Very small,” added Nick.
“Nevertheless, it exists,” she said, glaring at him. She reached up and smoothed her left eyebrow with her fingertip. “In here. In my head. It’s all in my head, isn’t that what people say? Except in this case, that spells trouble.”
“You weren’t going to tell us?” I asked in horror.
“Yes. In time. When I knew for sure. For ages, I thought I was having migraines. Stress, you know. I began to think it was the house itself causing them. Then they found this…this thing inside me. There are so many tests, Theo. I never knew there were so many different types of cancer. Some more easily treated than others. Everything is in the air. Diagnoses, treatments.”
The room felt very small and hot. I reached up to loosen my tie to help me breathe, only to find I wasn’t wearing a tie, just the same shirt I’d had on for two days, rumpled and messy. My hand covered my throat, as though protecting myself.
“Is that why you’re moving?”
A curt nod. “I can’t stay here, Theo. I may have years left. I may have months. But I don’t want to spend my remaining time here, surrounded by painful memories.”
I couldn’t untangle what I felt. It was like sadness mixed with anger and fear. I wanted to cry, cry with the untrammeled passion of a little boy, great heaving sobs, fat teardrops falling from my eyes.
She swallowed. Her face smoothed. She had always been one for keeping her emotions under control. Had always been better at it than me.
“Now you see why I tell you to go along with your brother’s plan,” she said.
But I shook my head. “No. I need to stay with you. I need to be there when you get your treatments.”
“No. We all have our duties, Theo. The last thing I need is for you to fall apart right now.”
“I’m not talking about falling apart, I’m talking about helping you.”
She had by this time returned to Nick’s side, and now allowed his arm back onto her shoulders. “What I need from you is to make peace with your brother. He understands the business, he understands what’s best for you.”
“But if I’m a thousand miles away—”
“Then you won’t see me when I’m at my weakest, with my hair falling out and my stomach refusing food. I don’t want to be on display, Theo.”
My family had always had this crushing, twisted logic, a logic that always seemed to involve giving up what you thought was right and good, of making you feel like those right and good things were actually selfish.
I was too sad, too torn, to argue.
“I don’t want to go,” I said. “Especially not now.”
“If what you say is true,” she said, “and the company is hurt by you staying, then what will you have accomplished? What guilt will you be putting on me? I don’t want to be the cause of the company collapsing, Theo. I don’t want to destroy everything your father worked for, everything you and Val have worked for, all because you wanted to stay and give me sympathy. I will be fine, or I won’t be fine, and your presence won’t budge my fate one inch.”
“We’ll keep in touch with you,” said Nick. “I’ll make sure of it.”
I wanted to punch him. Just ball up my fist and punch him in his calm, caring face, for letting her do this to us. For letting her cut me off like this, at a time I needed to be close to her.
I was going to be an orphan soon. The shock would not stop settling in, digging itself deeper and deeper into my heart.
“Let us finish packing,” she said. “Go talk to Val. Tell him you’ll do it. Let me believe that there’s peace in my family. That my boys aren’t fighting. It’s only six months, Theo.”
It might be the last six months I ever have with you, I thought. Why are you pushing me away?
I had come for the house’s advice. I had come to let the memories and emotions of home inform my decision. Thinking that I would find some peace and solace in my mind once I was here.
<
br /> Instead, just like that summer long ago, the house had pushed me to leave. Had ordered me out.
I was in the car, blinking back tears so I could see the road, when my phone buzzed.
Micah’s name was on the caller ID.
26
Micah
I didn’t understand him at first. The house’s advice? Cancer? Nothing he was saying made sense, and I wondered if he’d already been drinking.
At the very time I needed him stone-cold sober, no less. The one time I needed him absolutely straight, so he could help me make this decision.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I know I’m incoherent.”
He hadn’t flown back up to talk to Val at all. Instead he’d gone right back down to the lake. And as he told the story of his morning, my heart sank lower and lower.
“I didn’t even know she was sick. I don’t think my mom knows about it,” I said. “She would have mentioned it.”
“None of us knew. Except Nick. Micah, my heart is broken, what am I going to do?”
“You’re in the car, right? Why don’t you just come back here? We’ll talk, we’ll figure things out.”
I couldn’t burden him with my own problem right now. Not now, not after finding out his mother might be dying.
What kind of family was this, after all?
I remember my mom warning me, years ago, long before Theo and I had first started our relationship. Don’t think you’re friends with him, Micah.
It had made no sense to me. He’s my best friend.
No. The lion can’t be friends with the lamb. When they’re young, maybe they play together, and it’s very sweet, but eventually the cub grows up, and when he does, he’s going to eat the lamb.
At the time it had just sounded like one of my mother’s weird sermons, like how insistent she was that I never play in certain parts of Harrison House, the parts where company might come. How I had to be invisible at times, slipping into the kitchen so that no one would no there was an extra boy running through the halls.
