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But it isn't hers, and it isn't anything she's expecting. Instead, it's a letter, addressed to Julien. It's the letter that she'd found on the kitchen table the morning Ruby had departed, folded into an unsealed envelope with her son's name on the front. She'd handed it over to him and forgotten about it, curious though she was that Ruby’s Secret Service agent had seen fit to leave her son a note.
She pulls out a chair and sinks into it, holding the letter in one hand as she reads it carefully.
Julien—
The other night in the garden took me back to a place I haven’t been in ages, and I want to thank you for letting me be there beside you. It’s been years since I needed my father’s guidance and when he was alive, our relationship was not at all like the one I believe you had with your father. For that, I am envious. I always wanted a dad who would sit next to me when I didn’t feel well, who would rub my back and tell me everything was going to be fine. So while I know I’m no substitute for the real thing, I do believe that I did exactly what YOUR father would have done, and I hope that it brought you some small comfort. Remember that no matter what happens, things will work out the way they’re supposed to, and you WILL be okay. You’re a tough kid and a smart young man. Your dad would be incredibly proud.
Going forward, life will be hard for you without that father figure in some ways, but in other ways, it will allow you to formulate for yourself what kind of man you are and want to be. Not having someone watching over your every move, critiquing it, and setting impossible standards for you might be a gift (in some senses), and in others, it will be a tragedy. There have been so many times when I wished for nothing more than to have my dad beside me, telling me what he would do, and asking me to think things through before I jumped into them. But alas, not having him has made me a more critical thinker, a stronger and more confident person, and a man in my own right. I had to be there for my mother in the years after my dad died (as will you), and I felt as though that was an important role for me to fill. It WAS an important role to fill. Your mother gave you life, she loves and protects you every single day (whether you see her doing it or not), and she deserves the utmost care and respect.
No matter how bad things get, remember that too many substances will not fill the hole in your heart left by your dad. Too much drinking might temporarily numb the pain, but it will not bring him back. Nor will you find true comfort by moving through women quickly, thrashing around wildly as you seek your destiny, or starting and quitting things because they don’t fit perfectly. Keep pushing. If you choose a path, stick with it. See it through. Not every path will lead you where you’re supposed to be going, but you WILL learn something along the way. Trust me on that. I’m about to turn 50 and I’m still learning that some of the choices I’ve made were not the right ones, necessarily, but they were the ones that led me to where I am now, and I’m happy.
And the final thing I want to say is going to be hard to hear, but you need to hear it: there are some people who would say you should never have been born. Many people, in fact. Their opinionsdo not matter. Never forget that! The people whose opinions count are your mother, your father, the people who love you…your sisters will grow to know you and love you as you spend more time together, and you will find that your heart expands as your family grows. No one gets to say that you don’t deserve to be here—NO ONE. And to hopefully make you feel better about things, I can tell you that Ruby does not hate you. She is not the kind of woman who holds hate in her heart. She may not yet have come to terms with all of her husband’s choices, but she is practical, wise, and loving, and I know she wants you to be a part of her daughters’ lives.
Thank you again for the short amount of time that we got to spend together, and I wish you nothing but happiness in this life, Julien. I watched over you from a distance while you were young and your father was there with you, and if you come to Shipwreck Key, just know I’ll have my eye on you here as well. Your safety was important to your dad, and therefore it will be to me as well. That’s just how I’m wired.
Best wishes to you—
Henry Banks
Etienne reads the letter through two more times and then sets it on the kitchen table as she crosses her legs and leans back in the chair. This is not at all what she’d been expecting. To her, Banks has always been background noise, like all Secret Service agents are supposed to be. When he’d come to France with Jack, she’d barely noticed his presence. To think that he is still, in his way, devoted to Jack and what Jack would have wanted for his son makes her feel something poignant. Something intense about the way men honor and hold rank.
She stands up and wanders over to the door that leads out into the breezeway, leaning against the doorframe as she drags her bare foot across the cool tile. Julien will go forward and have a whole life that she’s not a part of—this she knows—but he will have relationships with Jack’s daughters and adventures that she’s not a part of. Having Jack as a father has set in motion a whole chain of events and a life’s journey that is entirely different than it would have been had his father been a Frenchman who owned a vineyard or a shop in a village.
“Mom?” Julien’s voice fills the house as the front door slams. “You home?” he calls out in French.
“Ici!” Etienne calls back.In here.
“Hi,” Julien says, breathless. He walks directly to the refrigerator and takes out a glass bottle of milk, drinking out of the container.
“Julien,” Etienne admonishes, shaking her head. But she’s not angry; she’s awed by him. Her boy. Her tall, lanky, thoughtful, sensitive boy. She smiles at him. “Do you want to take a walk?”
He wipes the milk mustache from his face with the back of his hand and puts the bottle back in the fridge, closing the door. “Sure,” he says, giving her a lopsided grin. “Okay, Mom.”
They walk through the door together, leaving it open as well as the window over the sink. A slight breeze ruffles Banks’s letter on the table as their voices grow faint in the distance.
They amble through the countryside, mother and son, waiting to see where life takes them next.
Chapter19
Banks
His tuxedo is hanging in the closet and his shoes are shined and ready for the big event at the Whittemore House. Banks spent the morning at the gym in their hotel while Sunday went to the salon to get her hair done and makeup applied, and then they ate lunch together in the small bistro on the hotel’s mezzanine, but conversation between them felt stilted.
When Banks finally returned the evening before after his long, rainy walk around D.C., Sunday was waiting for him in their room, looking anxious.
“Where did you go?” she asked, though she didn’t sound angry, just worried. “I called and texted you so many times, and nothing. What was it? Did Peter say something? I’ll kill him—I swear.”
By this point Sunday had rushed across the hotel room and flung her arms around his neck, holding him tightly as she raged about Peter, squeezing Banks with her arms to punctuate each thought or question.
“Seriously, I need to know why you left. I was panicked.” Sunday let go of him and took a step back, and in her eyes he could see the worry he must have caused.
Inadvertently, he’d ruined the event for her, though in his mind he hadn’t thought that far ahead of walking out the door to even comprehend that his leaving would do anything but free her up to enjoy her daughter’s shower. It had been stupid to leave, and he saw that now.
“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have left you without saying anything. I just had a moment where I realized that I didn’t belong there.”
“Was it because Peter made you feel like you didn’t belong?” Sunday’s voice went up an octave.
“No,” Banks shook his head firmly. It hadn’t been Peter’s words; men say things and try to get the upper hand with one another all the time in situations where the power dynamic is lopsided, and he can generally let things like that slide right off him. “It wasn’t that. I just felt like I didn’t belong there. I wasn’t needed. Your girls had their parents there, and your family was celebrating something special and exciting that has nothing to do with me.”
