by B. E. Baker
Once Brekka and Ruth are loaded in the car, she rolls down the window. “Beth.”
I walk closer.
“Thank you,” she says softly. “For everything. You helped turn a dark time into one of my fondest memories. Other than Trig and Geo, I don’t have any family that I really, truly love and enjoy. Now, I feel like I have a sister.”
I hug her then. “Call me whenever you want.”
She blows me a kiss.
And for the first time in a long time, I drive home. Brekka and Rob’s house was close to the hospital, so I’ve been sleeping and showering there. Mom and Dad complained half-heartedly, but they understood. When I walk in the door, for the first time in months, it’s the exact same as when I left.
But it’s also different.
It hurts a little to admit this to myself, but it doesn’t feel quite like home anymore. Mom hugs me, and Dad does too. They ask about Ruth and Brekka and Rob, and then they let me head for my room. Five minutes later, I whip out my phone.
No new messages.
I call Mr. Ferrars. He answers on the third ring. “Bonsoir,” he says.
“This is Beth Graham,” I say.
“Who?”
“Henrietta Gauvón’s daughter.”
“Oh!” I hear some kind of clanging and then he says, “I’m so happy you have called. Have you decided you want to make a record?”
“I have some terms,” I say.
“What are they?”
I tell him. I want to do a record full of only my songs, my lyrics, my music. I don’t want a lot of crazy production, extra sounds, and modulation. And if we do a tour to promote it, no huge venues, nothing over three thousand. No fancy lights, no back up band members, no gimmicks or dancers or smoke. Just me, my piano, and the audience.
“You have no idea how exhausting that will be,” he says. “The dancers help you. They keep you from being so tired. They carry a lot of the show.”
“I want to connect with the fans. I want to say something to them, and a conversation requires back and forth communication.”
“It’s different,” he says. “But so is your music, so I think I can make it work.”
“And I don’t want anyone to know I’m Henrietta’s daughter.”
He tuts. “That I cannot do. Once the cat has escaped the Prada purse, it cannot be stuffed back inside.”
Hm. “Well, fine. I guess I’m okay with that.”
“I can’t tell you how delighted I am that you will be coming on board,” he says.
Surprisingly, I’m excited too.
16
Cole
When Noel died and Holly left shortly thereafter, I didn’t have a smartphone. I hadn’t wanted to be able to check my email everywhere. I prided myself on maintaining a healthy balance between tech and life. It took forever on my phone to compose a text to Holly, scrolling through the letters assigned to each number, painstakingly tapping out each letter of each thought. Even so, I managed to send her over four hundred text messages in the first month that she was gone.
I know, because we were charged for every one of them. International fees.
Mom and Dad certainly never noticed, and they wouldn’t have faulted me for it if they had, but Mr. Heinrich handled all the day-to-day affairs of the household, and he certainly noticed. He waved the bill in my face.
“Mum won’t mind,” I said.
He crossed his arms and stared me down. “All these texts were outgoing. I looked it up on the itemized bill.”
I jutted out my lip. “So.”
“So it means she doesn’t want to hear from you, and all these messages are salt in a wound. Give her time and space.”
That chastisement was the slap in the face that I needed. I thought, at the time, that Holly would come back to us on her own. I thought that once the wound had sealed over, she’d text me, she’d call me, or she’d fly home.
Of course, she never did.
I’ve learned, and I’ve grown from my youthful exuberance. This time, when my hand hovers over the phone, itching to text Beth, I set it down and walk away. I know Beth arrived safely, because our pilot told me so, but she didn’t text or call to tell me herself. I’m sure she has a lot on her mind, so it’s not that I’m offended by her lack of gratitude.
Before she left, I was very clear with her—I want to date her, I want to spend time with her, I want to be with her.
Three days later, still no word. Three days without a thirty second window to text me? Three days without the opportunity to say, “Thanks for lending me your jet. I miss you.” I close my eyes and think this through. One text from me will turn into a hundred. I know myself. Every single day will be a struggle not to call her. I’ll rationalize that one little message would be fine, casual, friendly, even. After all, if nothing else, Beth and I are friends. Right?
Wrong.
I can still see her in my mind, playing piano here, in my home. The music floating through the palace, Beth in her truest form, Beth blissful, unaware anyone else is even there, so in love with creating music. I want to worship her, I want to listen to her forever, I want to wrap her up in my arms and kiss her until she can’t speak or stand, but I don’t want to sit down and have a beer with her. I don’t want to give her a ride from the airport to her boyfriend’s house. I don’t want to be her friend. It would kill me slowly. Chatting occasionally, hearing about her newest boyfriend, getting a wedding announcement with an image of her smiling face and some other bloke’s arm around her.
I throw on my running clothes so I can go for a jog. Once I’m dressed, I check my phone again and that’s when I remember my other option. I could delete her number so that it’s not an everyday struggle. If I were an alcoholic, I’d clear the house of all liquor to remove the constant temptation. That’s what I need to do here. I pick up my phone, my fingers shaking, and open my contacts, scrolling to her name.
Beth Graham.
I tap and tap and my finger hovers over the delete button. I should do it. I need to do it. I will do it. I do. It’s gone.
Except our text chain is still on my messages. Now the number is there, splashed out in its international glory. With the swipe of my finger, that’s gone too. I could always text Holly and ask for her to send it to me, but that would be too humiliating, even for me. I’d have to admit that I deleted it when I couldn’t keep myself from messaging her, like an addict, like a lunatic.
Holly would know that I love Beth and that I’m pining for her. She would never let that go. Never.
So that seals it. I’ve removed the temptation and I won’t be making the same mistake again. Beth has my number, and if she ever misses me, even the slightest amount, she can message me. Then I’d have her information and wouldn’t need to feel bad about responding.
When she still hasn’t called or texted two days later, I reluctantly call my friend Russ and take the job. I toss a suitcase in the back of my Range Rover and head for Antwerp. It’s strange to live in a townhome alone. No family, no servants, no friends. In some ways, it’s nice. I can walk around in my underwear, drink soda straight from a container, and watch TV in the living room all night. No one to complain, except for the neighbor who bangs on the wall the first, and apparently only, time I try it.
But I’m also lonely, as lonely as I’ve ever been, as lonely as I was after Noel died.
I spend more time thinking about my brother than ever before, and Beth’s words haunt me. Did I do the right thing? Was I motivated by the right reasons? I think about the weeks and weeks that I spent with Noel, hiding his pills and disposing of them, watching as he grew weaker and weaker, and then the last day. His final words to me still haunt me, even now.
“Thank you, Cole.” The bags under his eyes were pronounced. Worse than the day before? I couldn’t tell.
“I think I did the wrong thing.” I confessed to him selfishly, like a greedy publican, hoping he’d put in a good word for me at the pearly gates. “I shouldn’t have kept your secret. I
should’ve told you what everyone else would have—that you need to fight. That you’re just depressed and things will get better.”
“I had cataract surgery at the age of twenty-one. Cataracts are what happens to eyes that have endured extreme age and exhaustion.” Noel coughed. He closed his eyes, breathed in and out a few times, and then opened them again, as if moving his lids required a Herculean effort. “You did what no one else would. You understood me, and what I needed, and you—” That time, the cough wracked his entire body. He couldn’t seem to stop.
I ran for the nurse.
He died thirty minutes later.
I selfishly stole his last words, his last minutes, whinging like a little baby, asking him to forgive me. He didn’t get to tell Holly goodbye, he didn’t get to hug our mother, and he didn’t get a proper send-off. No, Beth may be terribly insightful most of the time, but in this instance, she’s wrong. Dad would never forgive me, not for this. Not for being the reason he lost his real son, his perfect son, and everyone’s favorite person—including mine.
My focus narrows to work. I show up before everyone else, and I leave after everyone is gone. When I’m home, I work out. I lift weights and run, then lift some more. Russ tells me he’s never had an employee catch so many tiny details. He’s never had an employee add so much value. He asks me if I’m gunning for his job.
I laugh.
I’m not gunning for anything. I’m just. . . lost. Adrift. I have a beautiful townhome, a paper that says I have a family, and yet I feel homeless. Without a place and without a purpose.
Weeks pass, each day the same as the last. Until one Sunday, the only day I’m stuck at home all day because the office is closed, there’s a knock at my door. No one knows my address. Who could it be? My heart races. Could it be Beth? Could she have found my work profile or searched property records?
I answer the door, and Mom and Dad beam at me. “You never invited us out, so we thought we’d surprise you!” Mom holds up a basket—filled with all my favorite baked goods from Chef. I do not cry. Tears do not well up in my eyes, but only because I focus all my energy on not sobbing. If I hug them a little too tightly, well, they don’t complain.
“Let’s go to lunch,” Mom says. “What’s your favorite place?”
I’m embarrassed to admit that I haven’t been anywhere. “The takeout from Little China is pretty good.”
Mom frowns, but she doesn’t comment.
After a quick search on my phone, I have a few suggestions. “French food,” Mom says. “I bet it’s good here.”
It’s not bad. I spend the entire meal discussing my work.
“But tell me about your friends,” Mom says. “Have you met anyone new?” Her eyebrows wiggle and I realize she’s asking about girls.
“Not really,” I say. No one who can even come close to comparing to Beth, anyway. No one whose name I’ve bothered to remember. No one I have thought about more than once.
“What shall we do now?” Dad asks.
I rummage around in my brain for offhand comments, or suggestions co-workers have made. Most of the people I met when I first moved here had some kind of suggestion. Think, brain, think. “Uh, I’ve heard the Museum aan de Stroom is nice.”
Dad frowns. “If that’s what you want to do.”
With his eyesight, anything indoors is hard. He can’t see much unless it’s very, very bright.
“I’ve heard they have a lovely zoo,” Mom says. “And that the animals are very active, in beautiful enclosures.”
“I love the zoo,” I lie.
Mom smiles and Dad nods, and we head for the zoo. The entrance is vibrant, bright, energetic. Holly would love it. I wonder what Beth would say. We never spoke about animals. Would she hate that they’re caged? Or maybe she would look on with glee as the seals bark and the baby elephants flap their enormous ears.
No one contests Mom’s position as our unofficial tour director. We follow her around without contest, agreeing when she says something is cute, and heartily agreeing when she looks skeptical about whether our enthusiasm is genuine. Mom takes off to grab us some food, and Dad points at a bench. I follow him over dutifully.
“What’s going on with you, Cole? I promised your mother that I wouldn’t just spit it out, but I can’t help it. It’s who I am, and you know that.”
I slump.
“Your mother thinks it’s that your uncle is taking over. She says you took the loss hard, that you don’t think you have a place with us. But I think you loved that girl, Beth.”
Ah, Dad. He can’t see, but he still understands. Too much, really.
“So which of us is right?”
“Those are my only two options?” I ask.
“Either that, or you’re gay and you’re afraid to tell us.”
I laugh. “It’s not that.”
“Then it’s Beth.”
As he says the words, I realize that while I do love her, long for her, miss her with every breath, that’s not it. That’s not why I left. And I didn’t leave because I don’t want to see Franz at the capital, either. “Dad.” I swallow hard. Beth’s words bounce around in my head. I can’t tell them, I know that. But the secret, now that I’ve spoken it aloud, is festering, in my mind and in my heart.
He puts a hand on my knee. “I love you, even if you have a boyfriend. You know that.”
Even if. Well, he means well. I look heavenward. “Dad, Noel died because of me.”
My dad flinches, his hand dropping from my knee. “Explain yourself.”
“You blamed Holly all this time, and I let you. You thought she should have known, that Noel would have told her, but he didn’t. Because he told me his plan, not her. He knew Mom would find his pills without someone to help him dispose of them every day. He gave them to me, and I flushed them for him.”
My whole body is shaky, like I’ve drunk a gallon of espresso. Even the crisp fall air in Antwerp doesn’t keep me from breaking out in a cold sweat. Will he understand, like Beth swore he would? Will he forgive me? Or have I just shredded things beyond repair?
Dad doesn’t meet my eye or say a word. He stands up and walks away. I’m not sure how he finds my mother, but she doesn’t come back with food or looking for him. I sit at the bench for more than an hour, hoping that they’re just talking, that they’ll come back and hug me and tell me that they understand. I want them to forgive me, because I haven’t ever been able to forgive myself.
My phone buzzes. I swivel the screen around slowly. YOUR FATHER’S NOT FEELING WELL. I’M TAKING HIM HOME.
That’s it. My verbose mother never texts. She always calls.
They both know and sweet, kind, big-hearted Beth was wrong. They won’t forgive me for it. I am the monster I always thought I was. I killed Noel, and I should have taken that secret to my grave. I walk around the zoo like an automaton. I don’t call a cab to take me home. I walk the eleven miles that separate the zoo and my townhome one shuffling step at a time. I don’t bother showering, either. I just flop into bed and close my eyes.
I’m nearly asleep when there’s another knock at my door.
Probably the grim reaper, come to finish me off. I ignore it. Louder knocking ensues. I ignore it. But when the knocking continues, my neighbor starts banging on the wall.
“Fine!” I drag myself out of bed and stumble to the door.
Mom and Dad are standing there, no basket in their hands this time, but they have matching looks of concern on their faces.
“We handled this all wrong,” Mom says. “I’m so sorry.”
I can’t move. I can’t speak.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Dad says. “It just took me by surprise is all.”
I step backward.
Mom and Dad take that as an invitation to come inside. Mom closes the door behind her. “Your neighbor is a rude sort, isn’t he? We should buy that townhome from him and then we’d have a place to stay when we visit.”
“I have a guest room.” I blink. Is she really tal
king about buying a townhome in Antwerp? Even I don’t want to be here.
“Can we sit?” Mom asks.
I nod, but I don’t move.
Mom and Dad settle on the couch. Finally, I follow them over and sit on the edge of a chair.
“Why didn’t you tell us before?” Mom asks. “That you helped Noel?”
“Helped?” My brain isn’t processing words right. She must have meant to say killed.
“You said you killed him,” Dad says. “I’m not making excuses for walking away, but I’m old, son. I—” He shakes his head. “Sometimes I take some time to figure out what I want on my toast these days. I had to sort through a lot of things with your mom to figure out exactly what must have happened.”
“What?”
Mom leans toward me, her eyes kind. “Noel asked you for your help, didn’t he?” Her entire face crumples. “Because.” Her lip trembles. “Because we didn’t listen to what he needed or what he was telling us about how miserable he really was.” Mom’s sobbing now, her face red, her eyes puffy. “I was torturing him because I couldn’t accept that he was dying.”
Dad wraps an arm around her shoulders. “We all were, but Noel knew that you loved him enough to listen.”
It happens so fast, I’m not sure whether I move toward them, or they move toward me, but suddenly we’re a jumble of arms and legs and hugging and tears and murmurs and “I love yous,” and before I realize what I’ve said, I offer to move back home.
“Oh, this is the best day ever,” Mom says. “Just the best. Noel is up in heaven smiling down on us, I just know it.”
Before Mom and Dad leave the next morning, over coffee, I decide to take Beth’s other piece of advice. “Hey, Dad, strange thought.”
He sips his coffee, but his eyebrows rise so I know he’s listening.
“What if, and I know it’s crazy, but what if we talked to the people. Do you think they’d prefer me to Uncle Franz? You haven’t made him your regent yet, right?”
