The California Dashwoods

by Lisa Henry

  “That’s because it’s supposed to make you stop hurting, not get high.”

  “That’s no fun.” Her dozy smile faded. “I’m really tired.”

  “I know.” Elliott squeezed her hand gently.

  John stood in the doorway watching. He looked tired. Maybe relieved. Maybe even a little envious.

  “John,” Marianne said in a wondering tone that Elliott thought had something to do with her concussion, and something to do with her morphine. “Hi!”

  “Hi,” he said awkwardly, straightening up.

  “Come here,” Marianne said.

  John exchanged a look with Elliott before moving inside the room and taking a seat beside the bed.

  “I got hit by a car,” Marianne told him.

  “I heard,” John said, reaching out to take her hand.

  “It really hurt.” Marianne wrinkled her nose. “But now I have morphine.”

  “Good.” John looked to be fighting a smile. “Morphine is good.”

  “Morphine is . . .” Marianne dozed off again before she could finish her sentence.

  Elliott held her hand for a while after.

  ***

  The following days were a blur. Elliott spent as much time as he could at Mount Sinai, and the rest of his time catching up on sleep in the apartment above the studio. John joined him at the hospital for at least a few hours a day, and Elliott was grateful. He wasn’t sure he could deal with everything on his own, particularly when Abby was frantically calling at least four or five times a day, worrying that she needed to be there for Marianne. Elliott suspected that Paula and Deanna were running some interference on his behalf there, or Abby would have been calling at least twice as often.

  Even Francesca made visits to the hospital. Elliott didn’t know if she was finally starting to soften to him and Marianne, or if perhaps she didn’t trust John not to welcome them into the bosom of the Family without her there to stop him. If her frosty presence was the price he had to pay for finally beginning to forge a relationship with his brother, that was fine.

  Marianne was recovering well. By the end of the week she was in discussions with her surgeon as to the best way of getting home to California. Her surgeon was happy to transfer her into the care of a doctor closer to home, but didn’t want her flying so soon after surgery with the increased risk of blood clots. She wanted to wait another week or two, but Marianne hated being stuck in hospital, and hated being stuck in New York. Elliott couldn’t blame her. Their trip had ended in disaster, and they both wanted to put it behind them.

  It was Deanna who came up with the idea of hiring a van. They could share the driving and make Marianne as comfortable as possible in the back seat. Elliott shuddered at the thought of another drive all the way to California, but Marianne looked so hopeful that he didn’t dismiss it out of hand.

  Elliott was heading into the hospital one afternoon with Lucien at his side when it happened. As he punched the button for the elevator, he heard someone call his name from behind.

  “Elliott!”

  Elliott turned and saw Jack Willoughby standing there, a bunch of flowers in his hand. A fucking bunch of flowers. The sheer fucking audacity of it froze Elliott for a moment.

  Jack looked shamefaced. He looked miserable, like he hadn’t been sleeping.

  Good.

  Fucking good.

  “You take one more step toward Marianne’s room, and I’ll punch you in the fucking face,” Elliott said.

  “Elliott, please, let me explain.” Jack’s voice was raw.

  Elliott folded his arms over his chest. He didn’t take his eyes off Jack. Beside him, Lucien squared his shoulders, like maybe this really was going to end in a fight. Elliott had never punched anyone before in his life. He abhorred violence, but he was willing to make an exception in Jack’s case.

  “My . . . my aunt,” Jack said. He dragged his fingers through his hair. “She threatened to cut me off. I . . . I love Marianne, but . . .” He shrugged helplessly. “You understand, right?”

  “Yeah,” Elliott said. “I understand. You chose money over my sister.”

  Jack flinched.

  “You walked into our house, and you called yourself our friend, and you chose the money.” Elliott shook his head. “Get the hell out of here, Jack.”

  Jack held the flowers out. “Will you . . . will you give them to her?”

  Lucien stepped forward and snatched the bouquet out of his hand. Then he strode to the nearest trash can and thrust them inside. “You heard him,” he said, dusting the pollen off his hands. “Get out of here.”

  Jack nodded dumbly. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his expensive jeans, and then turned and walked away.

  He looked like a broken man.

  Elliott fought down the wave of sympathy that rose up in him. Because he knew what people like that were like. He knew what it was to have a Family instead of a family. He knew that not everyone could make the same decision that Henry Dashwood had.

  But meanwhile, Marianne was lying upstairs in a hospital bed.

  Jack Willoughby was a broken man?

  Good.

  On his last morning in New York, Elliott packed his and Marianne’s bags and looked around the small apartment that had been home for longer than he’d intended. There were things he’d miss about the city, but it had mostly been a disaster. Not a total disaster—he and John talked every day now, which was nice—but Marianne’s heartbreak and humiliation had been too high a price to pay for that. It was too high a price to pay for anything, Elliott thought. They’d both had their dreams crushed in the city, hadn’t they? Marianne on that awful night, and Elliott because of Lucien. And maybe Marianne’s dream had been bigger, brighter, a riot of beautiful color, but Elliott’s, cautious and small-drawn, hadn’t been nothing.

  Marianne was waiting downstairs for him now. Elliott and Odette had collected her from the hospital an hour ago because she’d insisted she wanted to see the Retrospective again before she left and take photographs for Abby and Greta. Elliott had left her on a chair in front of one of the display cases while he came upstairs to pack, and Lucien darted around snapping pictures on his phone.

  The Henry Dashwood Retrospective still had a few weeks to run, but many of the paintings had already been sold and would be shipped off to their new owners once the exhibit closed. Odette hadn’t figured out their cut on the merchandising yet, but with the paintings alone they were looking at around sixty thousand dollars. Henry would have been proud.

  “They’ll be worth a hell of a lot more when I’m dead. Make sure they pay through the nose, Elliott!”

  And they had.

  Sixty thousand seemed like a lot, but Elliott was conscious that was it now; there would be no more paintings to sell. That money needed to stretch a long way into the future. But it was a safety net, and it was a weight off his shoulders. It was breathing room.

  Elliott looked around the apartment one last time, then slung their bags over his shoulder and took the service elevator downstairs to the gallery. He got off at the second floor and glanced at Marianne. She seemed tired, but she was as eager as Elliott to put New York behind them.

  Elliott stood in front of Abigail in Lamplight and smiled at her. In a few months she’d be back in California, propped against the wall behind Abby’s bed where she belonged.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Elliott turned in time to see John and Francesca stepping into the room. Francesca immediately averted her gaze from Abigail in Lamplight and huffed a breath.

  John came to stand beside Elliott. “This painting still horrifies me.”

  “Oh, please,” Elliott said, elbowing him. “It’s not your mom’s vulva.”

  “Thank God.”

  Elliott smiled.

  “So this is what he did, huh?” John said after a moment.

  “Yeah,” Elliott said softly.

  John moved away to inspect one of the display cases. Elliott watched him, only vaguely aware of the low
sounds of a conversation behind him. John lifted a hand and traced his fingers over the glass above one of Henry’s brushes, and Elliott wondered what the gesture meant to him. He wondered how it felt to lose his father twice.

  “What.” Francesca’s voice rose. “What?”

  Elliott turned quickly, realization rushing over him as he saw Lucien standing in front of Francesca.

  Oh no. Lucien.

  He remembered what Lucien had said the night after the opening, when they’d all drunk too much champagne: “His family just keeps trying to push him back in there. Ned wants to give them time. I think that maybe if they met me? I mean, I think I’m likeable?”

  “What?” Francesca exclaimed again, her voice rising into something like a shriek. “John!”

  Lucien backed away from her, his eyes wide.

  “John!” Francesca pointed an accusatory finger at Lucien. “This . . . this person says he’s engaged to Ned!”

  John stood there like a deer caught in headlights.

  Elliott turned to look at Marianne. She was wide-eyed, a hand raised to cover her open mouth.

  “John!” Francesca exclaimed again.

  “Hey,” Elliott said, crossing over to Lucien’s side. “Francesca, just take a breath, okay?”

  “You!” Francesca exclaimed. “Don’t you dare—”

  “Shut up.” The last thing Elliott needed was for Francesca to spill about what he’d done with Ned. Lucien didn’t deserve that. And Elliott wished he could pretend that sentiment came from a place of moral decency, but it didn’t. It was selfish, too. He didn’t want Lucien to hate him, and he didn’t want to be humiliated again. “You need to shut the hell up. You’re not Ned’s keeper, and you and your evil fucking family should be over the moon to have someone like Lucien in it. He’s a better person than the rest of you put together!”

  He clamped his mouth shut, surprised at his own vehemence. The vaulted ceilings really projected his voice. Great acoustics. Much more volume than he’d intended.

  Francesca gasped.

  Lucien’s jaw dropped.

  John face-palmed.

  Marianne raised her other hand to her mouth.

  “John!” Francesca turned toward him, tearful. “John! Don’t let him talk to me like that!”

  John drew a deep breath. “Let’s go, Frannie.” He put an arm around her shoulders and steered her toward the stairs. “Elliott, drive safe. Marianne, you look after yourself. Call me when you get home.”

  Elliott nodded, stunned at his own outburst and at what he was almost certain was the rueful smile John was fighting to hide.

  “What just happened?” Lucien whispered once John and Francesca had descended the stairs. “What did I do?”

  “I think you’d better call Ned,” Elliott said. “Before Francesca does.”

  “Oh God.” Lucien pressed a hand to his forehead. “Oh my God.”

  “You’re better than them. Don’t let them make you forget that.”

  “Oh my God,” Lucien whispered again as Odette clattered up the stairs, demanding to know what the fuck she’d just missed.

  ***

  “You knew,” Marianne said when the room had cleared. “Elliott, you knew.”

  Elliott leaned on the wall next to her chair. The gallery was quiet now. Empty of everything except the ghosts of Henry Dashwood and the detritus of his life. Elliott stared at a photograph of Norland Park. In the corner of the frame he could see the greenhouse on the croquet lawn. He could smell the loam, and taste the beer on Ned’s lips as they kissed.

  “You knew they were engaged!” Marianne’s voice hitched. Her eyes were wide and filled with tears. “How long have you known?”

  “Since our first night here.” Elliott’s throat ached, and he was afraid to swallow.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Her tone was almost accusatory now.

  He fought the urge to squeeze his eyes shut, to escape her gaze somehow. “Because he asked me to keep it a secret.”

  “Elliott!” She sounded outraged, and Elliott didn’t know if it was because he’d kept his word or because she was angry on his behalf over Ned. These were unchartered waters for Elliott. They were treacherous, deep and unknown. They flooded into the hollow space inside his chest, dark and cold, and Elliott was afraid he was drowning.

  “It was just a thing,” he forced himself to say. “With Ned. It didn’t mean anything.”

  “But Ned likes you!” There was a note of childish insistence in Marianne’s tone that made his stomach roil. “He can’t marry Lucien!”

  “What do you want, Mar?” he asked, fighting to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Do you want him to treat Lucien the way Jack treated you?”

  It was an unfair blow, and one that caused Marianne to flinch back. Her fingers fluttered at the edges of the loose button-up shirt she was wearing over her skirt. Then she lifted her chin, her old determination back. “I think that Ned should marry who he loves.”

  Love.

  That was the word Elliott had never dared pin to all his strange, fluttering hopes—too solid and unequivocal a word for the mass of uncertain and contradictory feelings that clamored for attention when Elliott thought of Ned. He couldn’t face it now.

  Elliott turned away and found himself staring at a photograph of his parents. They were standing in the sunlight outside of Norland Park. They were barefoot, both of them laughing. Henry had his arm around Abby’s waist. She was heavily pregnant.

  Jesus. He’d known Ned for days. A thing like that—like love—couldn’t happen in days, no matter what his parents had always told him. No matter what had happened for them. That wasn’t how the world worked.

  “I think—” he said, attempting uselessly to gather his thoughts. He swallowed and began again. “I think Ned made Lucien a promise that he never made to me, and he should honor that promise. And I hope they’ll be very happy together.” He looked at the way the light caught on his parents’ faces. “I think the idea that your happiness depends on just one person is—”

  Is seductive. Beguiling. Bewitching. It was the sort of fantasy that even Elliott wanted to sink into, to drown in, but it wasn’t real. How could it be real?

  He swallowed again. “Impossible.”

  “Elliott.” Marianne’s voice was soft. When he turned back to face her, her eyes were shining with tears and there was a strange half smile on her face, as though she were looking at something hopeless and pitiful. “Why are you like this? Why do you do this to yourself? You’re always so caught up with practicalities.” She said the word like it disgusted her, and then her expression softened again. “Elliott, where is your heart?”

  Elliott flinched back, a sudden wave of something too cold to be anger coursing through him. “My heart? What the hell do you know about my heart? For weeks it’s been all about you, Mar, about you and Jack, and the whole time I’ve been sitting on this thing with Lucien and Ned, listening to Lucien tell me what a great guy he is.” His eyes stung. “And every time he says it is like a punch in the guts, but I sat there and I listened and I smiled like nothing was wrong, and you didn’t even fucking notice!”

  And maybe that was the betrayal that hurt the most: that his sister and his best friend in the world hadn’t seen how much he was hurting, and all because he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve like she did.

  It didn’t mean he didn’t have one.

  If Elliott was heartless, then what was breaking inside him right now?

  Tears slid down Marianne’s face, her breathing choppy as she struggled to contain them. And Elliott didn’t know if she was crying because he’d raised his voice to her, or if she was upset at his heartbreak, or at hers, or if—most likely—she was tired and in pain and this was the last fucking straw.

  He crossed over to her and knelt beside her chair. She leaned into his embrace, and he closed his eyes as she cried on his shoulder.

  “I want to go home,” she murmured, her breath hot. “I just want to go home.”


  “Me too,” he whispered. That, at least, was something they could agree on. “Me too, Mar.”

  ***

  “Road trip!” Marianne exclaimed as Elliott and Deanna helped her from the sidewalk and into the van. She grimaced as she knocked her leg against the door. “Fuck.”

  “No complaining,” Deanna said. “If it’s hurting, at least it’s still there.”

  Marianne looked nonplussed for a moment, and then she smiled. It might have been the first smile Elliott had seen on her face in the two weeks since the accident. Not counting her dozy morphine grins. “You’re a real glass-half-full person, aren’t you?”

  “That I am,” Deanna deadpanned. “That I am.”

  From the doorway of the gallery, Odette and Lucien watched anxiously.

  It took a while to get Marianne situated. She sat in the very back, with her leg propped up carefully on the folded-down seat in front of her. She had a nest of pillows to support her, and everything she might need in easy reach: a water bottle, her meds, snacks, a few magazines, and her phone.

  “Okay?” Elliott asked her once she was buckled in.

  “Yes,” Marianne said. “We’re going to avoid every pothole and speed bump between here and California, right?”

  “That’s the plan.” He laid her crutches on the floor.

  “Elliott, sit up front here,” Deanna said. “I’m gonna need a navigator to get us out of the city. New York traffic terrifies me, and I’ve landed choppers at Bagram under heavy fire.”

  Elliott flashed a smile at Marianne and climbed out of the van. He pulled the back door closed and turned to Odette and Lucien.

  “Drive safe,” Odette said.

  “We will.”

  Lucien hugged him tightly. “Come back and visit us soon, Dashwoods!”

  Elliott forced a smile. “Take care of yourself, Lucien.”

  He meant it. It would have been so much easier to hate Lucien, but life was never that simple, was it?