Page 9 of What We Had

“You okay?” She looked at me over the rim of her glasses. Her hands rubbed my shoulders. “I bet that can be hard, seeing an old fling like that.”

I exhaled and chortled, my chest bouncing. “He actually pulled me over last night.” Her brow went up. “What’s that word for all this?”

“Serendipitous,” Rachel said, not missing a beat.

“Serendipitous.” I shook my head. “He’s ancient history, though. How’s Ma?”

She stepped back and folded her arms across her chest. “She should be getting out of the bath now. If you wait in the library, I can have her come to you. I’ll need to change the bedsheets while you two talk.”

“In that case, let me get a cup of coffee. I’ll be out there shortly.”

Rachel stopped at the pass-through from the kitchen to the hall. “She’s very… well, she’s peak Cordelia right now.”

She won’t be happy.

“Hence the coffee.”

Rachel snickered. “The liquor cabinet is fully stocked in case you need something extra.”

I dropped a pod into the coffeemaker. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.” She laughed and vanished into the hallway.

?

Thelibrary extended through the second floor, a colossal space intended to dwarf the inhabitant. Much like the family room, I rarely came in here, a space dedicated for Cordelia to entertain her guests. A spiral staircase wound up to the second floor, three walls of the balustrade filled with shelving and books. I hovered by a particular section on the first floor, where two rows were dedicated to my mother’s bibliography.

I sipped my coffee as I browsed the leather-bound manuscripts of her life’s work. My eyes targeted one play of note near the center of the first row.The Affair on Ministerial Drive, a play she fully wrote over the course of twenty-four hours. I had appendicitis that day. Her then assistant, Edmund, drove me to the hospital, while she sequestered herself in the study. Like all her plays, she debutedThe Affairat the local theater, the Prescott Playhouse, to a standing ovation. Then on to Boston theaters, then New York. She sold the movie rights shortly after. The lead actress had won an Academy Award.

“People know me out there, darling,” she had told me during my first year in LA. I already had roles lining up once word got around that there was a legit soldier who could look and act the part. “And I don’t want our reputation soured. You have potential. Let’s keep quiet aboutthings, all right?”

Things. Namely, being gay.

“Darling,” came a voice from the hallway entrance of the library.

Cordelia Clarke stood under an archway of books, wearing an ivory silk robe tied at the waist. She wore a pair of matching slippers, her head in a lavender-colored wrap. She stood tall despite her illness, her body thin not from exercise but a careful diet of coffee and air. When she stepped from the entrance, she wobbled, and I hurried to help her. When I got her arm, I gave her a kiss on the cheek and helped her to one of the wingback chairs set before the fireplace.

No embrace, even after eight years of physical distance. Easily explained away, though—I could count on two hands the number of times my mother actually hugged me.

“Thank you, darling,” she said. Born in Surrey, England, the Garretts moved to America five years after the birth of their only child, Cordelia. While she spoke with the standard American accent, she sometimes colored her inflections with hints of her lineage.

“Please, sit,” my mother told me. As I sank into the chair next to her, she adjusted her robe, then took in a breath as if she were about to make an assessment. “Rachel called you.”

“Because you didn’t.”

“I had planned on it.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t lie, Ma.”

I saw her upper lip twitch. I had lost count of how many times she corrected me in my youth, reminding me that we lived inConcord, notBoston. Worse than the accent was calling her “ma” instead of “mom.”

“It’s my prerogative whom to tell of my condition.”

I leaned forward in the chair. “I’m your son.”

She shifted and adjusted her robe again. “How much has Rachel told you?”

“The history of it. But I don’t know the future. How much time?”

“They say six to twelve months.”

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