Page 79 of Don't Tell

I find her at the stone wall by the pond.

She is sitting with her back to the path. She is looking at the dark water. Her hair has come down from the clip, and her hands are flat on the stone on either side of her hips.

She doesn’t turn around when she hears me.

She doesn’t move.

I stop 6 ft. from her. "Suzanne."

I take one breath.

"I'm sorry."

She still does not turn.

"You were right. I should have told you about your mother. I should have told you about Brandt. I have been telling myself I was protecting you, and that is partly true, and it is not the whole truth."

She keeps her eyes fixed on the water, never turning around.

"The truth is that I've spent my adult life building something nothing could get through."

The water laps once at the bank.

"My father didn’t love my mother by the time he left, and I don’t think he loved me ever. Not the way it is supposed to mean. He was in the house for the first ten years, and he was not in any room I was ever in. I learned, very young, that wanting a thing from a person who has decided not to give it to you is a thing that rots you from the inside, and I learned, by the time I was twelve, not to want."

I take another breath.

"I got to a place where nothing I cared about could be used against me. I got there by being very careful about what I cared about."

She is very still.

"I didn’t know what to do when I started caring about you."

The wind moves through the trees behind us.

"I introduced you as an artist this afternoon because I didn’t trust myself with what my family would see when they saw you for what you actually are. I was afraid of being seen wanting someone. I have been afraid of that since I was ten years old. That was my failure today. It had nothing to do with you. It was not fair to you."

She doesn't budge.

"I’m going to try to do this differently."

I wait.

It is the longest wait of my adult life.

After a while she breathes out, slow, and her shoulders drop a quarter inch.

"What happens next?"

"Whatever you want."

"Cade."

"I want you to move in."

She doesn’t say anything.

"I know how that sounds, but I’m asking anyway. I would sleep better. I would think better. I would be better, Suzanne, with you in the same place I am at the end of the day. That’s what I want. You don’t have to."