Page 74 of Don't Tell

I want to put my hand between his shoulder blades.

I want to walk to the front of the room and put my palm flat against the top of his spine and comfort him. I want to stay there for as long as he wants me to.

I can’t do that.

I’m just one of the artists he represents.

I cannot do that because Suzanne the artist would not put her hand between Cade Nightingale's shoulder blades at his father's funeral, and Suzanne the artist is who I'm supposed to be in this room.

I lean toward Beau. "Were they close?"

He shakes his head, small.

"What happened?"

"His father left when Cade was ten. Mom married my dad a few years after. He took her name as soon as he could legally do it, and he hadn't spoken to his father in fifteen years."

"Oh."

"They were never going to be okay. He came today for Henry and for Mom, not for the man in the box."

"And you?"

"I came for him." A small one-shoulder shrug. "He won't say it, but he needs us here. He has needed us here every day, and he is not the kind of man who knows how to ask."

Cade has always been like that. He would rather bleed alone than let you hold the gauze. He's protective of the people he loves and despises the ones who hurt them. That's the whole of him, really — shield or sword. Nothing in between.

The reception is in the house afterward. Forty people in small standing groups in the long living room. The catering is modest but thoughtful. The conversation is low. Cade moves through the room with his family — handshakes, the careful nods men give each other at funerals, the brief shoulder-touches.

I stay near the edge of the room.

Beau keeps finding me, whether it’s a hand at my elbow to introduce me to a couple, or a quiet comment about a watercolor on the wall. "That’s my mother’s, and she did three of them inthe year she moved in with my dad and me, even though they are not very good, but don’t tell her I said so."

I'm, somehow, surviving the afternoon because of him.

After a while, Vivienne finds me at the window.

"How did you meet my son?"

"At the Cresswell. There was a small event there. We…we just started talking."

"What kind of event?"

"It was an art reception. The Davies collection."

She nods, brings her free hand up, and squeezes mine briefly. "It is a lovely afternoon. I'm glad you came."

She moves on to the next group.

I stand at the window for a long time after. And I think about how I landed here — not just in this house, but in this family. At a funeral, of all seasons. Vivienne has her gentle hands, and Beau steers me through the crowd like I have always belonged. No one makes me feel like a stranger. They just fold me in, warm and whole, because that is who they are. That is who Cade came from.

We leave at 6:00 p.m.

The drive to the cottage is short. We are not staying in the main house. We are staying in a small guesthouse at the far end of the property — one bedroom, a kitchenette, and a stone hearth. It was Vivienne's idea. "More privacy," she had said in a warm, careful way.

He unlocks the door, and I go in first.

The door closes behind him.