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“That includes attending company functions as befits your role.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She taps her fingers on her desk.
“Your father never understood that,” she says, “About family. We missed the mark there, somehow. It’s why your grandfather changed his will.”
“I thought he hated me.” The words are hard to get out but if I don’t say them now, I don’t believe I’ll ever get another chance. Grandmother purses her lips.
“I think he hated some of your choices,” she says at length. “But the last couple of years… he had reason to reconsider.” Her gaze goes hard, her eyes clouded with memories.
After a long moment, Grandmother looks at the clock. “I suppose that’s that,” she says, finishing off her scotch. “Your father will no doubt have assembled his lawyers by now. We’ll have no shortage of work for the next little while. Best get out of here while you still can.” She dismisses me with a wave of her hand and turns back to the old-fashioned folio on her desk.
She doesn’t have to tell me that part twice. I pause at the threshold.
“Grandmother?”
“Mm?” She doesn’t look up from her work.
“Thank you.”
She looks up then and gives me a small smile, one I recognize well enough from my own mirror. I shut the door quietly behind me.
The air outside is brisk, hinting at the winter to come. I pull my collar up and begin the walk, taking my time finding my car. When my phone pings with a notification, I’m ready. Now or never, West.
The drive to Hale House goes faster than I’d like. Before I get the car in park, my hands are trembling at the wheel and my breath comes in short puffs, tiny clouds that disappear into the cold.
These past weeks have been a slow march through the quietest, coldest hell I can imagine. I thought being angry at the world was how I’d live and die. Angry at my family for wanting me in the closet, angry at a world where an unchecked virus can wreak such havoc, angry at people for expecting things of me I could never give. Angry at myself, more than anything, for letting the world tell me who I am, who I can be, and who I ought to be.
Turns out I was wrong. Hell isn’t being consumed by that anger. Hell is a vacuum. It’s nothingness, stark, alone, and numb.
The light clicks on in Callahan’s kitchen, and for the first time in weeks my heart starts to beat again. I have no reason to expect that she’ll take me back, or that Raleigh will, or that we can find that beautiful, perfect space between the three of us again. That they’ll let me love them.
If they don’t, it’ll be my cross to bear. To be in love alone. People live through it all the time, I hear.
For the second time in the last hour, emotion clogs my throat and this time I let the tears fall unchecked. Just for a second, out here in the dark where nobody can see.
A car pulls up next to mine and Raleigh jumps out, taking the porch steps two at a time to get out of the cold. Just before he goes inside, he turns to fix me with a glare, then walks in, leaving the door open behind him.
Right. That’s my cue.
Raleigh’s standing behind the storm door, arms crossed and still glaring at me like a pit bull guarding his home.
“May I come in?” I ask him through the glass. His mouth thins, and he looks so much like his mother in that moment, it tugs at my heart.
“Let him in, honey,” says Callahan’s voice from somewhere inside. Raleigh gives me a warning look and steps aside, shutting the door behind me and resuming his guard-dog stance.
“What are you doing here?” he asks. There’s no sign of my wide-eyed, fearless optimist now. He’s closed to me. The knowledge shouldn’t surprise me, but it does, and it cuts deep.
“I’m here to apologize.”
“I’m not sure that’s necessary,” says Callahan softly, coming through the kitchen to stand next to Raleigh, holding his hand.
“You two are still—” Words fail me. “Good. That’s good.” It had been one of my many fears, one of my more shameful worries that they might have parted ways without me here to hold things together. I really should have known better.
Callahan arches a brow at me but doesn’t speak. She waits.
“Right,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I’m here to apologize. I should never have left you the way I did.”
