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Aiden still wasn’t back. Neither was Jackson. As far as I knew, Mom, Kat and Harper were all in bed. The chateau was silent. Too quiet. I studied the bookshelves in the library, but not a single book caught my interest. I checked my e-mails but being that I had let everyone know I was going on vacation, there wasn’t much to distract me. I walked the halls of the house, remembering times when they’d be filled with childish laughter. My brothers and I loved playing hide and seek in the house when we were very young. We’d shut off all the lights to add an extra challenge, until one of us fell down the steps and Mom insisted we be more careful. Lights stayed on. No more running. The wood floors were slippery, and we weren’t allowed shoes in the house, so we’d slip and slide down the halls on our socks.
Those were the days.
At first, I wasn’t sure what Mom had hoped to accomplish by bringing all of us back to the chateau. Maybe she had hoped to recapture some of that joy, but we were older, and life had jaded us. Jackson had the early signs of a drinking problem. Aiden had PTSD. We weren’t children anymore.
After we arrived, however, I got it. She hoped being back in the place where some of our happiest memories were, that maybe we could forget about the scandal with our dad and become a family once again.If only it were that easy, I thought to myself.
Memories of childhood were all over the place, but so were memories of Dad.
And memories of Carly.
I had first brought her with me when we were seventeen then every year after that. I had planned to propose to her on Christmas, right there with my family and the views of Mount Blanc in the distance, but just a few weeks before, I walked in on her and Brett in the bed she shared with me.
It had been three years since that fateful day, and I was over her. I knew Aiden was right—she was an asshole. I tried to see the good in her because she was absolutely smitten with me, or at least she pretended to be. She and Brett deserved each other though, especially after what they did to Harper.
I found myself pacing the hallways upstairs, sliding around on my socks just for good measure. I stopped outside Kat’s doorway. There was no sound coming from the room, but I knew my sister, she was never one to go to bed early. Harper, on the other hand, had just flown in and was likely jetlagged and exhausted.
I wanted to knock and to tell Harper I was sorry for everything we’d done to her, and to explain that it was Carly and Brett that was behind the prank.
Yet I also didn’t want to wake her.
“Nathan?” Mom’s voice took me by surprise. “Is that you?”
“Yes, sorry,” I said. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, I can’t sleep. I keep hoping to hear Aiden come back from his walk. I thought I asked you to go with him?”
“I did go, but then he told me to leave him alone, so I came back.”
Mom pursed her lips as she tightened her robe around her. I knew she worried about Aiden. She worried about all of us.
“What are you doing out here in the halls? Not sliding down on your socks like you did when you were a child, are you?” A hint of a smile tugged at her lips.
“No,” I lied. I had done it earlier, but just once. “I was thinking of talking to Harper. To apologize.”
“Oh,” Mom said. “After all these years?”
“Better late than never. I have wanted to for years, but I never knew how to go about it or when the right time would be. I know she won’t ever forgive me, and that’s fine, but I think I need to apologize just the same.”
“Well, the first thing you need to ask yourself is, are you apologizing to ease your own guilt or because you want to help Harper to heal from the incident?”
“I want her to heal,” I said honestly. “But of course, I’ve felt guilty ever since I heard about it.”
“You know, Nathan, you might have made some mistakes when you were younger, like hanging around with those horrible people for example, but you’re a good man.”
“I’m not so sure about that, Mom. After all, I chose to keep company with them.”
“Carly never cared about anyone but herself. She saw that you were a good man who would give her the world and she exploited that. Look at you now, with your finance degree; you could have gone to work for any big Wall Street business you wanted, but you chose to stay in South Carolina, to help your mom, to sit on the board of our nonprofit and forgo the lavish corner office.”
I shrugged. “I want to help you and our estate, Mom. I’m not giving up anything.”
Mom stepped closer to me and put a hand on my arm, staring up into my eyes. She might be small, but she never felt little even compared to my brothers and I due to her fierce nature.
“You gave up a lot, and I’ve always wondered if you did it because you felt guilty, like you had to somehow make up for it.”
She knew me too well.
“That’s not the whole story, but yes. I’ve decided to focus on making the world a better place, to make up for my wrongs. My mistakes made me want to be a better man.”
