Page 31 of Something About September

“It’s embarrassing,” she said.

“Everyone in that house on Saturday night was a person who loves you. You don’t need to be embarrassed by anything.”

She sat on a stool and rested her chin in her hands. He sat down beside her. She didn’t look at him but could feel him close, like he was a radiator in a blue flannel shirt. “I left because I had to,” she said, then sighed. “Or I felt like I had to.”

“It was something about that picture of your mother. What was it?”

She lifted her chin and turned to look at him, to search his eyes for what, she wasn’t sure. A sign that this secret could be safe with him. And maybe it wasn’t safe with anyone. But she knew she needed to talk about it. So she took a deep breath and told him about the photo she had found, in her mother’s box of treasured items, of Evie and James. “And now I can’t help but wonder, were they together? Why didn’t anyone ever tell me? What if James Calloway really is my father?” The tears threatened again. “Sabrina is my best friend. Her family has always been so kind to me. They’ve treated me like family, they feel like family—and it would be so unfair to James and Marion to open up this can of worms.” Cort was listening sympathetically, closely, the way he did. “Plus,” she continued, “it might not even be him. I don’t look anything like him.”

“You look like your mom,” Cort said, nodding. “But, Becca, how do you know the Calloways wouldn’t be thrilled about this?”

Rebecca shook her head. “I can’t risk it,” she said. “Sabrina, last night…She saw it, too, in that picture of them. And it just scared me.”

“What are you so afraid of? I’m sure she’d be excited at the possibility of having you as actual blood family.”

Rebecca shook her head. “No. It’s too risky. What if it changed things between all of us?”

Cort looked at her for a long moment. “This doesn’t sound like something that’s going to just go away, Becca. But I do have a place I like to go when I need to clear my head. Can I take you for a drive?”

—

The drive took them up a winding hill road, the truck climbing steadily as the maples and oaks gave way to pines and firs. Just when Rebecca was about to ask where they were going, Cort pulled into a small gravel turnout.

“It’s just through here,” he said, leading her to a narrow path between the trees.

The path opened suddenly onto a rocky overlook with a view that took Rebecca’s breath away. Below them stretched the entire valley, a patchwork of farmland, forest, and small towns woven together in a tapestry of autumn color. Evergreen was in the distance, with its glimmering lake, the horse farm at its bank just visible, horses in plaid blankets dotting the distant landscape, a man in a Stetson, tiny but visible, leading a horse along by a rope. The morning sun hung high in the eastern sky, casting shadows in some places, turning the leaves into glowing embers in others. In the distance in the other direction, she could just make out Bramley Hollow, nestled in the bend of the river, and beyond it, the neat rows of Calloway’s Orchard stretching up the opposing hillside.

“Oh,” she breathed, moving to the edge of the overlook. “It’s beautiful.”

“I found it by accident,” Cort said, coming to stand beside her. “Got lost on the way back from a carpentry job my first year running the business. Pulled in to turn around, and here this was. Been coming here ever since, when I need to think.” He glanced down at her.

Rebecca stood and took in the view. She had never seen Bramley Hollow from this perspective before. So far away, so high up. From this distance, the problem of the picture, the mystery of James and Evie, the questions she didn’t know if she would ever be brave enough to find answers for, felt somehow manageable.

There was a bench and she stepped back to sit down on it, and Cort joined her. Their silence was companionable; she felt no need to fill it. All she wanted to do was sit near him and drink in the familiar comfort this gave her, try not to overanalyze the way it felt like a shower of sparks across her skin when his thigh brushed against hers. Eventually, she turned to him.

“I don’t feel like I have enough people in my life that I can afford to lose any of them. In Toronto, I have friends—but really, they’re more like close colleagues. I don’t have family, not anymore. It just feels too fraught.”

He nodded. “I know you feel that way. And in some ways, I get it. But in others…well, fear can stop you from doing so many things in life. Or it can make you do things that maybe you shouldn’t.” He shook his head then. “Sorry. I don’t want to make this about me.”

“No, please. Talk about you. I want to know.”

“I think we sometimes choose the relationships that feel safest,” he said finally. “The ones that fit our plans or meet others’ expectations. It takes courage to admit when something’s missing, even more to walk away.”

“Is that what happened with you and Melanie?” Rebecca asked, and felt immediately regretful. This might be a tough topic for him. But he just smiled, a little sadly, nodded.

“We tried, especially after Pip was born. But we were pulling in different directions, and eventually, the strain became too much. The funny thing is, we’re better friends now than we ever were as a couple. We just needed to find the right roles in each other’s lives, I guess. I’ve grown a lot since the divorce. I know she has, too, because we’ve talked about it. I think we were both still those high school kids, for the longest time, and it wasn’t good for the relationship. Now we’re probably better people than we were when we were married.”

“Does that make you regret anything? That you grew and changed only after? Maybe things would work out better now.”

He shook his head. “I really don’t think we could have grown and changed if we stayed together. I’m totally at peace with it. The only hard part is how much I miss Pip on the nights he’s with his mom, but that gets easier, too.”

They fell silent, watching as the sun peeked out from behind a cottony cloud, casting rays of light that looked like ladders offering access to another world. One beam shone directly on the diner building in the distance. Rebecca suddenly thought of her grandmother and felt a peaceful sensation spread through her chest.

“Thank you for showing me this,” she said, turning to face Cort.

She found him watching her, his eyes reflecting the golden light of the autumn morning. They were sitting closer than she’d realized, close enough that she could see the faint stubble along his jaw, could catch the scent of cedar sawdust and coffee that seemed to cling to him at all times.

As she gazed into his eyes, the air between them seemed to thicken, charge up like a divining rod above water. Rebecca felt herself swaying slightly toward him, drawn by some invisible force she wished she could fight. Her heart was racing again. The peace she had so temporarily grasped was gone.