Finding Liberty

by B. E. Baker

  “Trig said I broke us,” I sob.

  Rob swears. “I love your brother. I really do, in spite of, well, let’s leave it at that. But he’s really idiotic sometimes. What in the world could he be talking about?”

  “I didn’t know.” I hiccup loudly.

  His eyes widen. “Didn’t know what?”

  “That you’d read it out loud!”

  “Read what?”

  “I mean, I didn’t realize they’d make you read it out loud that I was the one who donated all that money. I’m so sorry!”

  “You’re sorry? For donating to my charity?” Rob licks his lips and I want to kiss him so badly it pains me. “What are you sorry for? You donated an amount beyond my wildest dreams, to a cause that matters to me. And I assume it’s a cause that also matters to you.”

  “I s-s-stole your thunder,” I say.

  “You didn’t.” He wipes my tears carefully with his thumbs and then kisses my cheeks. “Who told you that? You made us look like a united front to the world. My girlfriend, donating generously to support her boyfriend’s efforts. Surprising me, lifting me up, motivating me, like always.”

  I lean back against the seat so I can see his face. He’s serious.

  “What about a thousand years of social conditioning?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rob says. “Maybe I should call Trig.” He reaches for his phone, but I stop him. We’ve had quite enough of Trig’s moronic brand of misguided help.

  I bring his hand to my face. “Don’t call anyone. Just kiss me.”

  He does. Oh, he does. And I forget all about money, and trusts, and well-intentioned, stupid family members. And I forget my own name. And then I forget I ever had a name. All that matters is Robert Graham, and the knowledge of a truth his kisses stamp deep into my bones.

  He loves me. He loved me before, and he loves me still.

  And I think he always will.

  29

  Rob

  When someone taps on the window and lifts their eyebrows knowingly at us, it’s time for me to stop kissing Brekka. Or I might just punch that random rich guy I don’t know in his smug face. As much as I’d love to do that, it might set me back a bit on my public image, which matters now for Cultivate.

  I sigh and shift away from Brekka. “Maybe we better go.”

  She smiles slyly. “You might be right.”

  I wait for her to buckle, and then I start Debbie back up. “You still up for checking out my shop? Because if you’re tired, we can do that later. I can take you… where are you staying? Trig’s?”

  She shrugs.

  “You don’t have plans?”

  She shakes her head. “My plans were seeing you, and now I am.”

  I close my eyes and remind myself that I’m a gentleman. My mom raised me right, and I love this girl. I focus on being the gentleman she needs me to be. “Well, I have a guest room if you need it.”

  Her eyes burn into mine.

  A guest room. I have a guest room.

  I focus on the road, not pressing her for information. I still can’t believe she thought I’d be angry that she donated to Cultivate by buying my favorite piece. “You know, the table and chairs you bought are the twins to the ones I made for Geo and Trig, out of the inosculated ash tree I was telling you about on the day we met. I’d bought that wood a few weeks before, which is the only reason I knew the fancy word to begin with.”

  She smiles, but doesn’t comment.

  “Those trees were beautiful individually, but even stronger together.”

  Brekka reaches across the bench for my hand. “Sort of like us.”

  Exactly like us. I open my mouth to ask the question I’ve been afraid to ask. Then I close it again. What if she shuts down again?

  But at the end of the day, I need to know. I blurt the question out before I can chicken out again. “Why did you change your mind about me moving to Colorado? What did I say or do that was wrong?”

  Brekka unbuckles her seat belt and slides across the bench. She buckles up again in the middle seat and leans her head against my shoulder. “It was all my fault. It had nothing to do with you, nothing you said, and nothing you did.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “No, it was. You have parents who love each another. You grew up in a happy home. I know you worry sometimes that I’m rich and you’re not, but if we’re valuing the things that matter, you’re the wealthy one, and my family was practically bankrupt.”

  I don’t interject, even when she pauses. I don’t ask questions, or even tell her that I agree. I feel like she needs to get something out, and I don’t want her to lose momentum.

  “You misconstrued something I said, I think. When I said we’re different, I worry you thought I meant that you don’t have a college education, or didn’t go Ivy League. I worry you’re thinking about Nometry. Or even before, you thought I meant because I can’t walk and you can. None of those are what worried me. I meant that you trust people. You live your life motivated by a desire to help, to care for, to protect people around you.”

  “Brekka, you’re the most caring person I know. In fact, we only met because you flew across the country to defend your brother.”

  “Which gave you a skewed view of the kind of person I am,” Brekka says. “I’m fiercely loyal to a handful of people. Actually, if I’m honest, it’s less than five people. Trig’s at the top of the list, and then Geo’s a new addition. And I try to take care of my parents, in spite of their flaws. That’s about it. After the accident, things got weird with most of the people I thought were my friends. And everyone at Nometry works for me. I’m not you, Rob. I don’t have Clives all over America blessing my name. I don’t donate my weekends to charity, and I don’t quit jobs so I can support people I love. I’m selfish at my core, and you’re a giver.”

  “You don’t see yourself the right way.”

  “Maybe,” Brekka says. “Or maybe I’m completely correct about this. But when you agreed so quickly, so readily, without agonizing or struggling over it, when you just up and said, ‘sure, I’ll move to Colorado,’ I don’t know. When you were ready to drop your family for me, it scared me. I think my parents may have started out that way, with my dad bowled over by my mom’s strength of will, offering her the world, offering her everything he had. And my mom took it all, and then she just kept right on taking.”

  “That’s not at all my impression of your parents,” I say, “for what it’s worth.”

  “No?”

  I clear my throat. Maybe I shouldn’t share this, but it’s too late at this point. “We talked at the wedding, you recall, and I’ve talked to you and Trig a little. I think your dad met your mother and was entirely bowled over, like you said. But I think he was taken in by her competence, her tenacity, and her intelligence. The same things that impress me to the ends of the earth about you startled him. I think your dad probably hadn’t spent a lot of time around women who knew what they wanted and went for it with everything they had. And your dad had been so used to always getting his way that he had no idea what would happen when he agreed to marry a force of nature like your mother. I think at first he loved it, but over time, he began to measure himself against her. Instead of being proud of her, he began to resent her for being so good at everything.”

  Brekka begins to cry. “He did, you’re right. He hated her for being what he wasn’t.”

  “Unless you think I’ll wake up one day and wish I had a knack for business, or an ability to manage massive corporations, we might not run afoul of one another on that issue.”

  Brekka laughs. “Maybe not.”

  “But more than that, I think your dad failed in his most basic task as your mother’s husband.”

  “What’s that?” she asks.

  “His job was to treasure her and to celebrate her victories. When trees intertwine, the wind brushes them back and forth. Think of the wind like issues and problems that chafe the bark away. If the trees grow together, th
ey’re both stronger. If they try to build that bark up, if they insist on going their own way, if they refuse to move.” I pause. “If they refuse to yield, then bark reforms and the tree conceals a weakness at its center. Those trees aren’t inosculated. They’re flawed, primed to be split apart by wind and rain. Your gardener would tell you to cut them down.”

  Brekka squeezes my hand. “I started to bark up, didn’t I?”

  I nod. “You did. And it hurt me here.” I tap my chest. “I know that sounds idiotic, but I want us to grow together in the wind.”

  “So do I,” Brekka whispers.

  I pull into my driveway. “I have something to show you. I don’t want to freak you out, though. So if any part of you feels like running, or like barking up, tell me now and I’ll wait.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m not scared. I feel stupid, but I’m not afraid. Every time I think you’ll freak out, you don’t. Every time I think you’ll be angry, you’re calm. Every time I expect the worst, you show me the best. And I haven’t had time to tell you yet, but Rob.” She chokes up. “Your furniture, well, people might have been spinning out a bit tonight, and no piece of furniture is worth a hundred million, but you have to know, that frenzy wasn’t all media hype. It wasn’t all posturing. Your work is … moving. Your pieces are brilliant and delicate and refined, and utterly unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Now the world sees you as clearly as I do, and I’m not sure I like that.”

  “My other pieces were up to five and a half million all together when I left. Tate told me he’d let the auction run another hour.”

  “Mom will be shocked,” Brekka says. “She told me she liked you in spite of your being poor, which by her standards means you’re worth less than two.”

  I laugh. “Your mom’s been calling and interrogating people, you know.”

  Brekka groans. “I was hoping you didn’t know. It’s so humiliating.”

  “And even so, she’s been misinformed. We’ve got a family partnership and we own all the dealerships together, so I was already worth more than two before tonight. But I’ll let that slide. She’s only protective because she loves you,” I say. “She’s bizarre and boundaries mean nothing to her, but she’s doing it to try and protect her daughter, and I have absolutely nothing to hide.”

  “I know that.”

  I climb out of the truck and assemble Gladys, and this time, instead of transferring herself, Brekka holds her arms out to me and lets me lift her and set her in her chair. I kiss her on the top of her head and head for my shop.

  “We aren’t wasting any time tonight, are we?” Brekka asks.

  I shake my head. “I’ve wasted enough time.”

  She grins. “Or rather, I have.”

  “You said it.”

  She laughs, a sound like she made when we stood in front of the waterfall at Stone Dam, a free sound, a joyful sound. When we finally reach my shop, and I open the door and turn on the light, seeing it so empty hits me like a slap in the face. I’ve sold nearly everything I ever made. My fingers itch at that thought, desperate to dive back in and start creating.

  “I have a custom order,” I say. “From your brother.”

  “You do?”

  “Which means my very first custom order, and now my second, both came from Trig.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m sure you heard that Geo and Trig are having a baby. Mary and Luke are too, and they won the crib, I hear. So I promised Geo I’d make her an even nicer one.”

  Brekka beams. “You better do it, too, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “You’re going to be an aunt,” I say. “How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet,” Brekka says. “I’m giddy, and then I forget all about it. Then you mention it, and I’m giddy again. I want to squish a baby so badly.” Her eyes soften and lose their focus.

  “Do you want one?”

  She turns toward me slowly. “From the tips of my toes all the way to the top of my head.”

  “Good to know,” I say. “Well, the piece I’m looking for is easy to spot, at least. Everything else has been cleared out. It’s the one piece I didn’t sell. It was a custom design, too, although the customer didn’t know about it.”

  She weaves around the table saws and the drying wood, the belt sander and the sawhorses, following me until I reach the table I made. “At first I meant to make you a cabinet. It would have gone floor to ceiling, and been full of varying sizes of cupboards and drawers. Tall, short, large, tiny. There would have been drawers in the bottom, and each box and drawer would have held something different.”

  “This is a table,” Brekka points out.

  “Yep, I made you a table. A coffee table, in fact.”

  “Why the change?”

  “Because I was at my sister’s house, and her son climbed on top of a chair and pulled out a half dozen china plates, smashing them on the floor before she could stop him. They were on display, you see, and he realized they were beautiful.”

  “And?” Her brow draws together.

  “Well, I figured one day you might want children. I decided to make this child friendly right from the starting gate.”

  She runs her hand across the top of the shiny, smooth, light ash wood coffee table.

  “I intended to make this into a giant slab.” I run my hand down the side of the ash edge. “I left it live edge, as you can see. It’s finished, but the bark is still there.”

  “Okay,” she says patiently.

  I reach underneath and find the latches. “But if you loosen these, which you need to know how to do. I’ll show you later.” I slide the entire top part of the slab backward. It slides smoothly. “The table opens to reveal these boxes. Some large, some small. They’re hidden, because sometimes we can hide them. And we can choose what to display to the world.”

  “Most of these are empty,” Brekka points out.

  “You’ll notice there are twelve spaces,” I say. “I figure this table will last me ten years that way. But two of these spaces are already filled.”

  I reach down and lift up a delicate porcelain teacup, the top part reddish brown, filtering down to deepest blue at the bottom. I hand her the teacup. “What do you notice about this?”

  She takes it carefully and touches the edge. “It’s broken,” she says, “and repaired.”

  I nod. “Through a process called Kintsukuroi.”

  She shakes her head. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “In America, when we break something, whether it’s a dish, a bowl, or a toy, we usually throw it away. Or if we do keep it, we try and repair or glue it so that no one can see the break. We consider breakage and damage to be something to hide, to cover up, or something that destroys the value of the object.”

  Brekka meets my eye with a questioning glance. “But this break is repaired in gold. It shines.”

  “Ah, there you have the difference. But before I fully explain, let me tell you another story. On the day of your surgery, I slugged your brother in the face, nearly breaking his nose. I did it because he kept referring to you as someone who needed to be fixed. I told him you weren’t broken. I didn’t realize that I was wrong too until I left the hospital and took to wandering the streets of New York.”

  Brekka flinches, her eyes injured.

  “I stumbled, angry, emotional and upset, into a pottery shop. The man there showed me something I’d never seen or heard of. Kintsugi pottery has been broken, and repaired. But the art of Kintsukuroi celebrates the breaks, because they’re a part of our history. They make us more beautiful. They add to the story of who we are, and what we’ve overcome to become what we are.”

  Brekka traces the golden vein of the repair on the teacup.

  I crouch down in front of her. “Brekka, you were broken in that accident, physically on T10, and metaphorically in that the landscape of your life shifted seismically. The change in your goals and dreams broke your spirit, and being limited to a chair a
nd unable to ski as you once did destroyed your plans. Being unable to walk and run and dance wounded you deeply. I’ve seen the pain of that break, and the repercussions that have reverberated through your life. But I’ve also seen the strength deep inside of you that allowed you to heal, to repair that break, and to strengthen the rest of yourself, your mind, your body, your heart, so that you are whole. You aren’t broken anymore, and in that I was correct when I yelled at Trig, but even I almost meant to hide the break. I thought you were like me. You’d glued yourself back together and Trig should stop making reference to the breakage.”

  I take her hand in mine. “I missed part of your incandescence too. You’re more beautiful for your history and your rewrite of your future. You’re kintsugi, in every sense of the word. I love everything about your break, and the healing you did to address it. I promise that every single year, I’ll find something, some unique gift to give you. Something that’s more beautiful for an inconsistency, or for having overcome something. And we’ll put it in this table together. In that way, this table is my promise. We’re better together, and together we can celebrate the twists and turns that lay before us in this life, no matter what they are. Together.”

  “But there are two things in the table,” Brekka says.

  The other thing is a blue box.

  “That’s true.” I pick up the blue box. “Trig assured me I had to find this at Tiffany’s.”

  Brekka’s hand flies to her mouth.

  “But when I went to look for gems, nothing looked quite right. They swam in front of my eyes, if I’m being honest. I went down row after row. The jeweler showed me perfect sparkly rock after perfect sparkly rock. None of them looked special enough for you.”

  I open the box, and she reaches for it. I shake my head. “Uh uh, not yet. I’m not quite done.”

  She smirks.

  “What do you know about inclusions in diamonds?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” she says. “Just that Mom and Dad won’t buy one if it has any. That’s about it.”

  “Typical,” I say. “But I did some research. Inclusions sounds like a good word. It sounds like something you’d want, and maybe that’s meant to be a marketing tool. Technically, they’re flaws, yes, but they don’t always make something less beautiful. It took the jeweler at Tiffany’s weeks, but he found this for me.” I reach inside the box and pull out the ring. It’s a simple solitaire in a platinum band. It cost me every dime of my liquid savings, but I think it was worth it. Plus, once I hear back from Tate, I think I’ll be more than replenished. Even after taxes.