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The male Clarks were more approachable. The boys couldn’t sit still or keep their hands to themselves at the dinner table—pretty much the essence of boyness. The puppy was supposed to be sitting in the corner, learning how to obey commands, but they kept sneaking it scraps of food under the table, and the adults kept pretending to care. Caleb’s father sat on her right, down-to-earth in a red baseball cap, with an easy smile that matched his son’s. Amber’s husband turned out to be the hard-hat-wearing construction guy Ellen had been extremely uncivil to on the morning she yelled at Caleb for putting up the fence. His name was Tony, and he seemed friendly enough, if preoccupied with the kids.
Caleb was on her left, at the head of the table. She wasn’t sure yet what he thought of her being here. They hadn’t had a second of privacy, but a few times when she glanced his way, his eyes were on her, intense and possessive in a way that made her shivery.
My Ellen, he’d said.
Thank goodness she had Henry on her lap to keep her firmly grounded in reality. He dropped lasagna on her white skirt, screamed when she offered him milk from a cup with no straw, and knocked over the salad dressing, spilling a generous daub onto the tablecloth. He also made it impossible for her to carry on anything but the briefest, most superficial conversations.
Instead, she ate her dinner, tried to keep Henry pacified, and listened to the family banter flowing around her. It didn’t take her long to figure out that despite his complaints, Caleb’s family genuinely liked one another. They joked around, but they also took time to ask questions about the details of their lives, and the kids received just as much attention as the adults.
At home, Caleb was just as he’d been everywhere else she’d interacted with him, but more so—an irresistible blend of solid and witty, confident and caring, easy and commanding. Maybe that’s why she’d been afraid to see him here, among his family. Maybe she’d known it would be impossible to witness this Caleb and not fall for him.
The longer she listened, the more she noticed the way the conversation eddied around him. He didn’t direct it, exactly, but a lot of the discussion seemed to move through him, as though he exerted a pull on everyone at the table.
The only one who swam against the current was his mother. Janet Clark confused Ellen. She fawned over and insulted her husband in the same breath, and she said things to and about Caleb that made his shoulders tense and his jawline hard. But when Ellen analyzed the words, she could never quite find the offense she knew was in there, nor could she imagine a motive for Janet’s subtle attack. And with Katie and Amber, there was none of that. Janet seemed to reserve her brand of passive aggression for the males of the family.
Or so Ellen thought until Janet turned the conversation in her direction.”
“I imagine it’s quieter over at your place now that Carly and your brother are in Mount Pleasant,” Caleb’s mother said.
“Yes, quite a bit.”
Henry opened his mouth for another bite of lasagna, and she fed him a forkful.
“That m
ust be a relief. I’ve never seen anything quite like what was going on there last week. So many people with cameras! But I suppose you’re used to it, with your family.”
Ellen smiled politely. “Not really, no. Jamie was always performing when we were kids, but he didn’t get famous until I was in college. And nobody’s ever bothered to take my picture much.”
She thought briefly about the sort of pictures they’d taken. Her with sleep-tangled hair, no bra, and bare legs, standing in her front doorway beside a half-naked Caleb. Nothing she’d want his mother to see, but it wasn’t as though she could do anything about that.
“Want some water,” Henry said. She helped him hold her paper cup and drink from it.
“It must be so frightening, having all those lowlifes after you. I imagine you feel better now, with the real professionals in charge of you and your son’s safety.”
Caleb tightened up beside her.
“Actually, you’re dead wrong about that,” she said, and then Henry stood up in her lap and leaned way over the table for the salt shaker. When she pulled him back, he screeched. “No, buddy. You’re not allowed to have that.”
“Henry want it! Want to look at it.”
“Nice try, but no.”
He squealed in frustration, and she cast around for something to distract him with. Finally, she gave up and pulled the clip out of her hair, sticking it on his nose. Henry smiled. “Do the alligator,” he demanded.
She growled and chomped his nose with the clip a few times until he was cheerful again and had begun happily clipping and unclipping his own fingers. It was only when she turned her attention back to her plate, hoping to sneak in a few bites of food, that she realized Janet was still watching her, head tilted slightly to the side as if ready to resume their discussion at any moment.
Also, her expression had a distinctly mouthful-of-sour-owls cast to it.
Ellen backed up the conversation in her head. Oh, shit. She’d been rude to Caleb’s mom. She was so terrible at this leaving-the-house stuff.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Clark. I didn’t mean to be impolite. I only meant that Caleb handled everything so well, and the Breckenridge people have never impressed me much.”
“It’s kind of you to defend him, but I’m sure we can agree the situation got a bit out of Caleb’s grasp. All those photographs in the papers! And some of them quite … compromising.”
“Well, I agree that having the world gawking at you when you’re wearing a Butter Cow T-shirt is less than ideal,” Ellen answered, knowing full well that wasn’t the kind of “compromising” Janet had in mind. “But there’s not much to be done about it except keep the guys with the cameras off the lawn and wait for them to go away.”
She fed Henry another bite. Caleb leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed.
