Ilook at my husband for a long moment. At the photographs still spread across the table behind us.
All those months. All those ordinary moments he thought to document. Whether he realized it or not, carrying on his mother’s photographic tradition: that amid the big milestone occasions are also so many of those ordinary moments, the small and beautiful ones that make up the fabric of a life.
Slade wraps his arms around me before carefully putting everything away. We both ignore the Sherwoods as they file out, but to my surprise, they’re waiting in the hallway when we come out.
On second thought, I don’t know why that surprises me. My father has never left a room without having the last word and apparently a judicial ruling doesn’t change that.
He straightens when he sees us. My mother is beside him, Birkin over her wrist, expression composed. Peter slightly behind them, arms crossed, still not looking at me. Celia at theend, sunglasses already on indoors, which means she’s tired or hungover or both.
My father speaks first.
“Lila. The judge’s ruling notwithstanding, I want you to understand that our concerns came from a place of genuine concern. Your mother and I came all the way here personally to ensure you weren’t be coerced.”
“More like ensure I wasn’t doing something that was going to embarrass you,” I interject.
“We didn’t know what to think,” my mother sniffs. “You could have joined a cult, for all we knew. You’d moved to the middle of nowhere, given away five million dollars?—”
“To charity,” I say.
“Not the correct ones.” Meaning, the Sherwood-approved ones. “You stopped returning calls. Married an appalling rustic—one who is evidently obsessed with impregnating you… I’m sorry, did I say something amusing?”
Beside me I feel Slade’s shoulders move. He’s laughing. Silently, contained, but laughing. And I start laughing too. Breathlessly, I manage, “Oh, you have no idea. An appalling rustic, though. I love it.”
“Got a certain ring to it,” Slade says. “Think I ought to have it engraved on a belt buckle.”
“Mom,” I say, getting serious, “I know I was always your least favorite kid?—”
She waves a bejeweled hand. “I love all my children equally.” Her upper lip curls in contempt as she glances at my brother. “Even Peter. I don’t care for him, but technically I still love him.”
Celia, mid-sip from silver flask, barks out a laugh that turns into a cough.
Peter rears back and gives our mother a look like,what the hell?
As my mother pats Celia’s back with an annoyed look on her face until the coughing fit passes, my father checks his watch.
Just another Tuesday with the Sherwoods. Why do I even try to mend fences with these people?
My father straightens his jacket and looks past me at Slade. “Mr. Rhodes. I think you and I should speak privately. As men.”
Slade raises an eyebrow. “As men,” he drawls coolly.
“Yes.” My father’s voice is measured and reasonable now, the voice he uses in boardroom meetings. He’s finally recognized Slade as a worthy opponent, every bit as cutthroat as he himself is.
The whole bespoke suit thing doesn’t hurt either, I’m sure. My family has always been all about appearances.
My father continues, “I think there are things better discussed between a father and his daughter’s husband in private.”
I grit my teeth. That’s how it’s always worked in this world. Never just Lila. Always Lila in relation to someone else: whose daughter I am, whose sister. Now whose wife. Always filtered through the nearest man in the room.
“Anything you have to say to me,” Slade says, “you can say in front of Lila.” He looks at me, brief and certain. “We tell each other everything. We’re partners.”
Squeezing his hand in gratitude, I take one step forward. It’s time to put this to rest with my family once and for all.
I look at all of them: my parents, my siblings. People who I wish could love me for me but never have. I gave up trying to earn that love a long time ago.
Now I’m finally, truly done even wanting it.
“I am proud of the life I’ve built,” I tell them. “I am proud of my business and the home I’ve made and the people I’vechosen to build it with. I know it’s not what you wanted for me. I know it doesn’t look the way you thought it would look or fit the shape you had in mind.” I take a deep breath. “And I’m genuinely sorry that you can’t see it for what it is. I’m sorry that your world is small enough that this—” I gesture at the mountains beyond the window, the man beside me, everything beneath this big sky “—doesn’t make sense to you. Because the world out here is big and messy and imperfect and completely extraordinary, and I wish you could see that. I really do.”
