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“You need—”
“No, I don’t need to do anything.” I take a few steps toward him. “If you opened your fucking eyes, you’d have an idea of what is going on around you, but you’re too stuck in your own selfish bubble to realize that people need you.”
“That right?” he asks without emotion in his voice. “Do you have any idea what it’s like going back to that house every day knowing that she’s not there?”
Of course I do. I’ve had to go to family dinners without them there for the last six years. “Tris—”
He squares up to me and raises his voice. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to hear your son screaming for his mom during the night? To be so scared of the dark that he has to sleep with countless nightlights on, knowing there’s nothing you can do to help him?”
I cringe; I hate hearing how Clay is coping just as badly as Tris is, but I need to steer this back to him. “Tris, I’m not talking about the kids—”
He takes another step forward so we’re inches apart now as he spits out, “Do you have any idea what it’s like to look into your daughter’s eyes and see your dead wife? Do you? Huh?”
The tension in the room reaches boiling point and I try to tamp down the anger and the sadness working its way back into my psyche, but I can’t. She was my cousin; my friend. So I get it. The pain I was in after she died was indescribable, but I knew I had to keep those kids afloat still, so I immersed myself in helping out whenever I could and work until slowly the pain dulled a little, becoming manageable.
“Do you think you’re the only one grieving?” My voice rings out in the large office. “She was my family too, just like those kids are. Yet you won’t even talk about their mom.”
“Because I fucking can’t!” he screams, his voice catching at the end as he looks away, his eyes shutting. “I can’t talk about her.”
I squeeze his shoulder gently, showing him I’m here for support. I’ve always been here. “You have to, not for you, but for those two little humans who need to know all about her.” He opens his eyes and looks at me, the tears shining in their depths nearly making me stop my onslaught, but I can’t. I promised Charlotte I’d do this. “Clay may think he remembers her, but he doesn’t. He remembers the idea of her. And Izzie? She never met her and yet you won’t tell them what they need to know.”
He takes a few steps away from me. “I can’t—”
“They need to know about her.” I start listing the things they need to know and remember about her. She was an amazing person. But as I’m talking, a vacant expression crosses his face before he closes his eyes and sighs in defeat. I know he knows I’m right, I just need to give him a push in the right direction without him feeling like I’m ganging up on him. It’s time for part two of mine and Charlotte’s plan: actually getting him to leave work.
I grip his shoulder again in silent support. “Come on. You need an afternoon off, let’s go and have a drink.”
He opens his eyes again and shakes his head; anger has replaced the vacant look that was just there. “No… I told you, I’m busy.”
I’m not letting him brush me off this time. “The hell you are. Get your fucking shit and let’s go.” His eyes widen but he doesn’t move as I hold the door open for him. “I’m not asking you to do this for me.” I pause for effect because I know what I’m about to say is screwed up, but he won’t deny the kids anything. “Do it for the kids.”
We stare at each other and I’m worried he’s going to shut down on me at any second. He’s the first to look away before sighing and grabbing his cell, following me out of the office and telling Catiya to cancel the rest of his meetings for the day before we take the ride in the elevator down to the lobby.
“We’re going for a drink?” he asks, scrolling through his phone.
“Yeah, I thought we could go to Gillies.” I needed to make something up so he isn’t suspicious as to why we’re driving toward where he lives.
I point him toward where I haphazardly parked my car at the curb and we both get in, the silence between us uncomfortable all the way out of the city.
I steal a few glances at him but he doesn’t acknowledge me, choosing to go between staring out of the passenger seat window and down at his cell. We make it to the part of town where I have to veer off toward Tris’s street and my palms start to sweat, luckily his gaze is pointed at his cell the whole time so he doesn’t bat an eyelid as I pull onto the gravel driveway.
That is until I park in front of his house and he looks up, his jaw tensing. “What are we doing here?”
He gets out and slams the door behind him as he looks at his mom’s car beside mine. I push out of my car and match his fast pace toward the doors.
“Listen, Tris, we thought—”
“Tristan!” Charlotte walks out of the front doors with Izzie on her heels.
The confusion and anger radiating off him isn’t a good sign as he looks back at me.
Shit. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all?
I stare at Charlotte as she walks through the front door, Clay and Izzie trailing behind her along with Edward.
When she called to tell me her and Nate’s plan, I told her I didn’t think it was a good idea. The last thing Tristan would want is to be ambushed, but I can see neither her nor Nate know what to do to get him to talk.
I wince as I think about the run-in I had with Tristan just a few days ago after we went to the gallery night at the kids’ art studio.
