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This was where the negotiation fell into ridiculousness. I put down my pen. Despite wanting to be all business, as cold and impersonal as the man across from me, my hands shook.
I put them in my lap. Clenched them into fists so I wouldn’t feel the tremors.
“I grew up with a father who didn’t love me,” I said. This was an old wound, but it still ached. “And after my mom died, my house was cold. I don’t want my children to feel that way. For my sisters I could survive this…relationship we’re negotiating. But my children—”
“Our children.”
“Deserve better.”
“You don’t think you could love our children?” he asked.
“Of course I could,” I said. My body ached at the thought of children.
“Then you’re worried about me? You don’t think I’m capable of loving them.”
“I don’t know if you’re capable of loving anyone.”
“I will love our children,” he said. It was as if we were discussing the sale of a house. Or the merits of a kind of car. Was a man like this able to love?
Could I love our children enough for the two of us? Or would his chill seep through everything?
I looked back out at that hummingbird. Working so hard just to survive.
“I used to have all these speeches I wanted to give you,” I said. “After I left. It was like this ritual I had. Every night when I couldn’t sleep I’d write out something I wished I’d been brave enough to say to you. I had dozens.”
“Where are they?”
“Bea found the notebook and made me get rid of it. She said it wasn’t healthy.”
“Do you remember them?”
“Of course.” Those speeches were written on my heart.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Give me one.”
“They were mean. Awful. I wanted to hurt you the way you’d hurt me.” I shook my head, still watching that hummingbird. “But then I realized that I didn’t really know you enough to hurt you. I didn’t know you at all. I knew what you ordered for dinner at Bishop’s and how you liked to have sex. I knew you slept on the left side of the bed and hated beets. I knew you worked hard and treated your employees well.” I remembered when I realized this, how it had felt like a balm. It had been a relief from my pain. Now it felt awful. “That’s it. Six months. Dozens of dates and weekends away. I practically lived with you and that’s…that’s all I knew.”
“It can be different this time.”
“Can it?”
“Are you implying that’s all there is to me? My dislike for beets?” he snapped. He was angry, and even that seemed like an improvement. It felt like a breath over the embers of what we’d been.
“I don’t know, Clayton. I don’t know if that’s all there is to you. Or if that’s all you wanted to show me.”
He was silent for a long time, looking over my shoulder. And then, finally, he met my eyes. I sat up, like I’d been shocked. Or caught.
“I had my own speeches,” he said after a minute. “Well, not speeches. But at night I’d rewrite what happened in that study. Sometimes you never came in. And sometimes I punched your father out.”
“Funny,” I whispered. “I’ve had the same fantasy.”
“But most of the time, I just stopped you from running away and tried to explain.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because what was there to explain?” he asked. “It was what you saw. There’s no excuse. The only thing we can do is start over.”
“How? Pretend what happened…didn’t happen? Because that feels impossible. I don’t know how you and I start fresh with that memory rotting between us.”
“Can I remind you what I’ll give you if you agree?” he asked.
“I know what I’ll have.”
“No,” he said. “Let me tell you what I’ll give you.”
Speechless, I nodded. “Protection for your sisters. Security for all of you. All the King daughters would get what they deserve from their father’s estate. In a way they never did when Hank was alive.”
I hated it, but tears burned in my eyes.
“We will extricate the foundation from the company and it will be yours. No strings. No ties. I had thought tying the foundation to the company would keep your father from folding it out of spite. But I was wrong. And if something happens between us down the road, the foundation is all yours. Children,” he said, “if we should be so lucky.”
I was watching that hummingbird like it was my job.
“And I offer you a husband who will do everything in his power to give you want you want in this life.”
Except love. And maybe that was okay. Maybe…that was better.
The silence between us throbbed. And it was more than I could actually process. He was offering me what I’d always wanted. What I’d dreamed of five years ago.
