Chương 9
Ethan nodded slowly.
“That sounds more true.”
“He could be selfish. He liked admiration. He believed apologies counted more than changed behavior. He resented Richard while accepting Richard’s money on projects. None of us were particularly admirable that year.”
“Did he want me?”
“Yes.”
The answer was immediate.
Ethan’s throat tightened.
“What did that mean?”
“He wanted me to leave Richard.”
“And you wouldn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I loved Richard too.”
Ethan looked at her.
“That seems impossible.”
“It wasn’t.”
He almost said something cruel.
Instead he waited.
Victoria went on.
“Richard was difficult. So was I. We had spent twelve years learning each other’s worst habits. Thomas felt easier because he did not have to live with me.”
“That’s romantic.”
“It isn’t meant to be.”
“Good.”
She looked toward Richard’s desk.
“After I became pregnant, Thomas wanted certainty. I refused testing. He said the timing made him certain enough.”
“And Dad?”
“He thought you were his.”
“For sixteen years.”
“Yes.”
“Thomas watched another man raise me.”
Victoria’s mouth tightened.
“He believed I would eventually tell you.”
“Did you tell him not to?”
“Yes.”
“Did he agree?”
“No.”
That surprised Ethan.
“He threatened to tell Richard twice.”
“What stopped him?”
“Me.”
“How?”
“I told him if he did, he would never see you again.”
Ethan stared at her.
Victoria’s voice lowered.
“I was twenty-five, terrified, proud, and convinced that making a decision was the same as solving a problem.”
“You were twenty-five?”
“Yes.”
Ethan had never done the arithmetic.
His mother had always seemed fully formed in every story from before he could remember.
Twenty-five.
Claire had been twenty-five when they met.
At twenty-five she still ate cereal for dinner when she worked late and once called Ethan crying because she had accidentally shrunk a cashmere sweater she could not afford to replace.
The age did not excuse Victoria.
It complicated the picture.
Ethan resented complication.
“When Thomas died,” he said, “were you with Dad?”
“Yes.”
“Did you go to the funeral?”
“Yes.”
“I remember.”
Victoria closed her eyes.
“I know.”
“He hugged you.”
“Yes.”
Ethan stood.
He walked to Richard’s shelves.
A photograph of the three men still sat there: Richard, Thomas, and a young Ethan at the groundbreaking of the Caldwell Avery Hotel in Charleston.
Ethan had seen it a thousand times.
Now Thomas’s hand on his shoulder seemed unbearable.
“Why did you keep this?”
Victoria looked at the photograph.
“Because throwing it away would not change anything.”
“That hasn’t stopped you before.”
“No.”
He picked it up.
Richard stood on his left.
Thomas on his right.
Ethan, six years old, wore a miniature hard hat much too large for his head.
He had Richard’s smile in the photograph.
Not genetically.
Learned.
The realization hit him so quietly that he almost missed it.
Richard had smiled with the left side of his mouth higher.
Ethan did the same.
No laboratory would find it.
He set the photograph down.
“I want Noah to know you.”
Victoria looked up quickly.
He raised a hand.
“I’m not finished.”
She waited.
“You don’t get access because you’re his grandmother.”
Her eyes hardened, then softened.
“You get access if Claire and I believe you can respect us as his parents.”
“Yes.”
“No lies. No private decisions for our good. No using staff to get around us. No calling his doctors. No asking the nanny for information we haven’t given you.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t trust that you do.”
Victoria went still.
“So for now you see him with us.”
“That’s humiliating.”
Ethan almost smiled.
“I know.”
She accepted that too.
“And if you ever do anything like this again, you won’t see him.”
Victoria looked toward the photograph.
“That is clear.”
He walked toward the door.
“Ethan.”
He stopped.
“Did Richard ever tell you why he stayed?”
Victoria asked.
“With you?”
“With us.”
Ethan turned.
She smiled sadly.
“He said leaving me might be justified. Leaving you because of something I did would be cowardice.”
Ethan looked at her.
“Did he forgive you?”
“No.”
The answer surprised him.
“He stayed.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
“Did you forgive him for not forgiving you?”
Victoria looked almost amused.
“Some days.”
For once, that was enough.
The first visit with Noah happened the following Sunday.
Victoria arrived at Ethan and Claire’s house at eleven exactly.
She brought no gifts.
Claire noticed.
Usually Victoria arrived with enough baby clothing to outfit a boutique.
She stood in the foyer while Ethan took her coat.
Her eyes moved automatically toward the wall.
The damage was gone.
She touched nothing.
Noah was on the rug in the family room wearing a pale blue romper and trying to pull himself into a sitting position.
Victoria sat on the floor.
Claire had never seen her do that in an ivory dress.
Noah stared at her.
Victoria stared back.
“Well,” she said. “You’ve gotten fatter.”
Claire laughed before she could stop herself.
Victoria glanced up.
“He has.”
“He’s a baby.”
“Yes.”
Noah grabbed Victoria’s pearl necklace.
Everyone froze.
Victoria looked down at his fist.
Then she unclasped the necklace and handed it to Ethan.
“Probably not my best decision.”
“No,” Ethan said.
It was the closest thing to normal they had managed in two months.
Victoria stayed forty minutes.
When she left, she did not ask when she could return.
That helped.
Months passed.
Ethan’s anger at Richard evolved more slowly than his anger at Victoria.
That surprised him too.
He had expected gratitude toward the man who stayed.
Instead he resented Richard for agreeing to secrecy.
He resented him for protecting a relationship with a dead son who had never existed as he believed.
He resented him for dying before Ethan could ask why.
During one therapy session Ethan said, “Everyone keeps telling me he was still my father.”
His therapist waited.
“That makes me want to hit something.”
“Why?”
“Because I know.”
The man across from him said nothing.
May you like
Ethan rubbed his thumb along his watch.
“I know he was my father. I don’t need anyone to explain that. I need to be angry that he lied to me without people acting like anger means I love him less.”
