For the cameras.
CHAPTER 15
Christopher
I was developing a problem.
The problem had flour on her collar and hummed while she cooked. The problem left covered plates in the refrigerator every night with sticky notes, once, just a small drawing of an angry face with its arms crossed.
The problem was five-foot-six with hazel eyes, auburn hair, and a smile that had a slight overlap on the left canine that she tried to hide when she laughed, pressing her lips together fast like she could catch it before anyone noticed. I’d noticed. I noticed it the first time it happened, at the farmers market when I smelled the peach and she laughed so hard she had to cover it with a cough, and the tooth showed, and she covered her mouth, and I thought:don’t do that. Don’t hide that.
I didn’t say it. I kept it the way I kept everything about Miley Torres. At a distance. Underinformation gatheredrather thanfeelings experienced.
I was lying to myself and I knew it.
But before I could deal with the problem of Miley Torres, I had another call to make.
My grandmother answered on the second ring. I could hear the television in the background, low, and the clink of a teacup being set down.
“Christopher,” she said, faintly.
“I owe you an apology. The hospital. What I said to you. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.” I leaned back in my chair and pressed my thumb and forefinger against the bridge of my nose. “You were trying to help. And I repaid that by snapping at you like a child.”
“You were upset.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“No. It’s not.” Another pause. The teacup clinked again. “And I should apologize too.”
“You don’t need to?—”
“I do.” Her voice changed. The brisk, commanding Eleanor was gone. In its place, something weaker than I’d ever heard. Guilty. “I’m sorry, Christopher. For all of it. For what this family did to you.”
I didn’t speak.
“I watched Patrick treat you like a punishment instead of a child, and I fought him, but I didn’t fight hard enough. I should have taken you out of that house. I should have gone to court, hired lawyers, done whatever it took to get you away from him and Esmeralda. Instead I negotiated. I compromised. I told myself that some access was better than none, that seeing you on weekends was enough, that the holidays and the summers would make up for the rest of it.” Her voice wavered. “It wasn’t enough. And you paid for my cowardice with your childhood.”
“Grandmother—”
“Let me finish.” She took a breath. “I know how much this family has hurt you. I know because I watched it happen and I carry that every day. I stood there and said nothing because I was afraid of losing access to you entirely.” Her voice broke onthe word. “You deserved better. From Patrick. From Esmeralda. From all of us. And especially from me.”
I sat in my study with the phone pressed to my ear, eyes burning, but couldn't say anything because there were no words for what I was feeling. Gratitude, grief, and the particular ache of hearing someone say the thing you needed to hear for thirty years and realizing it still hurt even when it came with love.
“However, I’m trying to make it right,” she said. “With the company. With you. And with Miley.” A pause. “Which brings me to my condition for accepting your apology.”
“You have conditions?”
“I always have conditions. You know this about me.” The brisk Eleanor was back, just slightly, enough to tell me she was pulling herself together. “Don’t hurt her, Christopher. If you hurt her, I will not forgive you. And I am the one person in this family whose forgiveness you actually want.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because the way you dragged her out of that hospital room suggests otherwise.”
“I know, Grandmother. I’m working on it.”
“Work faster.” A small sigh on the other end of the line. When she spoke again, her voice was gentler. “She’s good for you, Christopher. Don’t let your fear ruin the best thing that’s walked into your life.”
We said goodbye. I set the phone down and sat in the dark for a while, letting the conversation settle into the spaces where it needed to go.
