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Geraldine could remember thinking that she couldn’t understand that kind of math, when it was so clearly never going to add up to anything. And she still believed that.
But she also believed in Lionel.
She believed in all the things he couldn’t say, and not because he didn’t feel them. She saw the way he looked at her. And not only when they were here, in his bed. She thought of the way he took her hand when they walked. She thought of the way he listened when she spoke, making her the total focus of his world, as if nothing else could ever exist, or ever would.
She thought of how much more often he smiled now. She had even made him laugh a time or two.
And then, wrapped all around these and threaded through it all, was the way he looked at Jules. Geraldine did not have to ask if this man had a great deal of experience with babies. She knew he didn’t.
Yet these days it was perfectly natural for him to take Jules in his arms the way he had when he’d come home last night. One morning she’d had to rush out of the room for a moment to get Jules’s favorite toy and when she come back, she had found Lionel down on his hands and knees, making the baby squeal with delight.
She had already known that she loved him then.
But it was that morning, that moment, that had made it inevitable that she would tell him so.
That and the way he had looked around at the Thanksgiving feast she’d plotted with the kitchens to prepare for him, then had smiled at her as if she’d personally climbed up into the night sky and fetched him the moon and a sprinkling of stars.
It was the fact that if she could, she would.
“I’ve spent a lot of time with your grandmother,” she told him now, when all he did was glare at her. “She’s helping me learn Spanish. But her favorite topic of conversation is you.”
“I would strongly urge you not to put too much stock into what myabuelitasays when it comes to me. She cannot be trusted to tell the truth when she could meddle instead.”
“She says it’s her fault,” Geraldine said quietly, and Lionel looked as if she’d struck him.
There was a part of her that wanted to stop, because she knew that he wouldn’t want to have this conversation. But she pushed on.
“That she grew tired of your grandfather and was disgusted with your father’s excesses. She left you here, thinking that there was enough staff about and that you might be all right, because they cared for you better than your own mother did.”
She had brought up Lionel’s mother with the assumption that he was exaggerating, but had discovered, to her dismay, that he had been underselling it.That woman was no good, his grandmother had said quietly.
“Instead, when she returned, you had changed completely. You had been a loving, happy boy, and she’d thought that was simply your personality. That it wouldn’t matter what your parents did or didn’t do—but she was wrong.”
“She has no idea what she’s talking about,” Lionel said, his voice rising—until he stopped himself. Geraldine thought he might stop talking altogether, but then he shoved his hands through his dark hair. “You don’t understand what it was like. Everything was...this feeling or that feeling, as if feelings were facts. As if feelings were more important. As if any promise, or any hope of a promise kept, disappeared in the face of those feelings. It was like walking in quicksand and I decided when I was fourteen that I would do it no longer. There was only one way to find solid ground, and I found it.”
He turned toward her then, staring at her with a look on his face that she knew, somehow, he would hate to know he was even capable of making.
But she saw it. And she couldn’t stop herself. She was upon her feet and crossing to him without knowing she meant to move.
And she didn’t much care when he looked as if the last thing in the world he wanted was her to touch him. She went to him anyway, sliding her hands up his chest to loop around his neck, and then gazing up at him.
“My grandmother is trying to trick you,” he told her stiffly. “She wants the bloodline secured into the next generation.”
“I’m sure she does,” Geraldine said. But gently. She tipped her head back. “But do you really think she’s the sort of woman who caresonlyabout bloodlines and family traditions? I’ve known her for less than a whole season, and I know better. That isn’t why she wanted you married. It isn’t why she thinks you should have children.”
“You cannot possibly think that you know my grandmother better than I do.” But his voice was a low scrape of anguish.
Geraldine pressed on. “She loves you. She wants you to know that you are loved. And more, that youcanlove.”
But Lionel looked as if he was awash in nothing but misery. “My grandmother is many things, but never has she been mawkish and sentimental.”
“She loves you,” Geraldine said again. “And let me tell you something about love, Lionel. It’s not selfishness dressed up in terms of endearment. It’s not self-centered justifications for bad behavior. You’ve never told me a single story about your parents that made me think they ever loved anything but themselves. Neither has your grandmother, for that matter. But you aren’t anything like them.”
And she felt the shudder that went through him then, as if his bones themselves were quaking. She thought he tried to argue, but all that came out was her name.
Like a song he’d once sung, but he’d forgotten the melody.
So Geraldine would remind him. “You love your grandmother beyond reason. You love this land and the legacy of what has been created here, then maintained. You love the people who work for you, here and in all your offices. You treat them like humans, not faceless robots here to do your bidding. You listen with yourwhole body, Lionel. Do you have any idea how rare that is?” She laughed, then, and held him all the tighter. “You are demanding but never imperious, never rude. You simply expect that everyone should be the best version of themselves, including you.”
