“What are you reading?” Hudson asked.
“Whitman.”
“Is that a person or a place?”
Elliot raised his gaze. “A poet. American. Nineteenth century.”
“Read me something.”
A pause. “No. You’ll make fun of it.”
“I won’t.” Hudson opened both eyes. “I swear.”
Elliot sighed. Then he turned to the book, found a page, and read—in French first, which Hudson understood zero of but appreciated greatly, and then in English:
“Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn'd love; But now I think there is no unreturn'd love—the pay is certain, one way or another.”
“Well…” Hudson said.
“I knew it. It’s like giving a child a present and watching them play with the box.”
“I was going to say,” Hudson said, drawing it out, “that I think that's genuinely beautiful and that you should read me some more.”
Elliot narrowed his eyes. “Really?”
“Yes.” Hudson closed his eyes again. “Please.”
He heard a page being turned and Elliot clearing his throat.“We two boys together clinging, one the other never leaving, up and down the roads going, north and south excursions making, power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching, arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.”
Having madeout for an hour in the hammock, Elliot and Hudson strode toward the house through the lush garden. The grass was uncut and came up past their ankles, warm and dry against their skin. Fig trees grew along the southern wall, unpruned, their branches reaching wherever they wanted. Rosemary had taken over a whole corner like things did when left to themselves. There were sunflowers gone slightly ragged at the edges, and something Hudson couldn’t name growing intall purple clusters along the path. It smelled like summer.
Hudson thought about how different this place must be from what Elliot grew up in. The disorder of it, the unmanicured abundance, nothing here performing anything for anyone.
He watched Elliot move through it, unhurried, hands brushing the tops of the rosemary as he passed. This was what Elliot looked like when nothing was required of him. Like he belonged here. Hudson loved the thought of that, but it also scared him. If this was where Elliot was supposed to be, how did Hudson fit into all of it?
He’d spent the last two weeks in Lyon trying to figure that out.
Elliot had explained that he bought the summer house right after his mother died. Apparently he had contacted the real estate agent before it was put on the market and told her the house was his. So bossy of him. Very Elliot.
Still, it wasn't until they arrived that Hudson had realized what this place was. What it meant. The second the car turned off the gravel road and the gate came into view—old iron, stone wall, plane trees—Elliot had exhaled loudly.
He had followed Elliot through the house without speaking. Elliot moved through it like this was a place he understood, opening shutters and letting light in as he went. Hudson stopped in the sitting room, taking in the line of photographs on the wall beside the fireplace. Eight, maybe ten, in frames that didn’t match.
A woman laughing at something outside the frame. A younger Marguerite, recognizable by the eyes, standing in the garden. A formal family photograph taken at some sort of occasion—and there, in the front row, a boy maybe six or seven. Straight-backed. Careful. Already trying.
“Is this your mother?” Hudson said and pointed at the woman standing behind little Elliot.
“Yes.” He had come to stand beside him.
There was a warmth in her face, completely unguarded and present.
“She looks like you,” he said.
Elliot scanned the photograph again. Then he squeezed Hudson’s shoulder and turned to open the last of the shutters, letting the morning light flood in. Hudson remained in the sitting room, taking in everything around him, and thought to himself that he was only just beginning to understand the size of what Elliot had been carrying around for thirty years.
Now, two weeks later, he knew which burner ran hot, which drawer stuck, and that the cellar key lived on the hook behind the kitchen door. He knew Elliot took his coffee black and his wine seriously and that he read for exactly forty minutes before bed every night without fail. He knew that the second stair from the top creaked and that the shutters in the bedroom needed to be angled just right if you didn’t want the morning light to hit the mirror and reflect straight into your eyes at 0600. All in all, two very enlightening weeks.
He intended to keep every single piece of information.
