Page 92 of The Husband I Left

There’s a comfortable silence. The kind of silence you can only have with someone who has already seen every part of you: good and bad, and worse.

“Hey, Oliver,” I say after a while.

“Yeah?”

“You never did take me to Greece.”

He laughs. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, Genny.”

And this time, I believe him.

Chapter 34

Oliver

The gates are open when I arrive, which surprises me. I ease the car up the long curve of the drive, gravel crunching under the tires, and when the house comes into view, I stop and look at the place where I grew up.

It’s a beautiful house. Three stories of gray stone and leaded glass, gardens my mother spent decades perfecting, a fountain out front that costs more to maintain annually than my current rent. I used to love bringing people here. School friends, business associates, girlfriends. I never said the words out loud, never anything so gauche as look what we have, but I felt proud. I was proud of it. Proud of the money, proud of the name, proud of everything the house said about the Sinclairs without any of us having to say a word.

Now I look at it and all I can see is a very ornate prison. Beautiful walls are still walls.

My father’s message this morning had been brief, almost curt. Oliver. It’s your father. I’d like you to come by the house. There’s something I’d like to discuss with you. When you have a moment. I thought about it and debated with myself for almost a week before I finally called him back.

Genny had offered to come with me. She’d stood there this morning in my kitchen, wearing one of my shirts and asked if I wanted her to come with me and I couldn’t love her more for it, that she’d be willing to walk into a place that held two years of bad memories to stand beside me. I didn’t take her up on her offer, however. This was something I needed to do myself.

My mother told me, months ago now, that my father would never pick up the phone. That he’d go to his grave with it, rather than be the one who reached out. She was wrong. Or something changed. Either way, here I am.

At the front door, I knock, and then stand there on the step, waiting. It strikes me as absurd, suddenly, having to wait to be let into the house I grew up in. I never had a key. There was never any need; there was always someone whose job it was to open the door, and it’s only now that it struck me as strange.

The door opens, and it’s Marianne, which surprises me. Marianne has been my parents housekeeper for as long as I can remember, but she doesn’t answer doors. Frederick answers doors. Frederick has answered this door since before I was born.

“Oliver!” Marianne’s whole face lights up, and before I can say anything, she’s got my hand in both of hers, squeezing. “Look at you. You look wonderful. Your father’s expecting you. Come in, come in.”

I step into the entryway and look around. Everything looks the same as it has my whole life. Fresh cut flowers in vases. Everything spotlessly clean and gleaming with polish. Every piece of furniture, every piece of decor is beautiful and, above all, expensive. Marianne leads me across the marble, and I ask the obvious question.

“Where’s Frederick?”

There’s a slight hitch in her step at that. She glances back at me, and some of the happiness in her expression is gone, replaced by wariness.

“You’ll have to ask your father about that,” she says, and picks up her pace.

My curiosity thoroughly piqued, I follow her, and I’m so distracted it takes me a moment to realize we’ve walked past the hallway that leads to my father’s office. Which is another surprise. Every conversation I have ever had with Thomas Sinclair of any consequence has taken place in that office, with him behind the desk and me in front of it.

Instead, Marianne stops at the door of the blue sitting room, the one with the big windows overlooking the back gardens. It’s my mother’s favorite room in the house and the closest thing we ever had to a family room. Marianne gives me a small nod and reaching out, gives my hand a final squeeze before slipping away.

My father is sitting in one of the wingback chairs, angled toward the window, a glass of something amber in his hand. He doesn’t turn when I come in. He’s wearing slacks and a navy sweater, and his hair is more gray than I remember. The afternoon light catches the lines around his eyes, and for a moment, he looks older than his sixty-two years. Older and tired.

My mother is nowhere in sight.

“Dad.”

He looks up and there is one thing in his expression that I never expected to see in Thomas Sinclair’s eyes. Uncertainty.

“Oliver.” He gestures at the chair across from him. “Thank you for coming.”

I sit. The chair is exactly as uncomfortable as I remember; my mother chose these for their lines, not for human beings. My father looks at me, and I look at him, and the silence stretches out between us. He fiddles with the glass in his hand and doesn’t seem to know what to say.

So I throw him a line.