Chapter 8: What He Should Have Said Five Years Ago
The guests were gone by four o'clock.
The caterers moved quietly through the emptied garden, collecting untouched champagne flutes and disassembling the flower arrangements that had been built for a ceremony that never happened.
The string quartet had packed up an hour earlier.
The white chairs stood in their rows, waiting for a wedding that was not coming.
Charlotte had left with her father's attorney to begin the document process.
Before she went, she had shaken my hand and said, simply, "I hope things go well for you." She meant it.
I could tell.
Eleanor had been escorted inside by two members of her household staff.
She had not spoken again after Richard Hale handed over the final set of documents.
She had simply stood, smoothed her dress, and walked toward the house with the posture of a woman who had not yet decided what her next move was.
But she had no next move.
Not today.
Maybe not ever again.
Richard Hale had given me his personal number and left.
The boys were inside the estate's guest wing, supervised by my assistant Diane, who had driven up from Chicago that morning and was now, by all reports, losing badly at a card game that Mason had invented and whose rules changed every three minutes.
Ethan and I were alone in the garden for the first time.
We sat on the stone bench near the property wall where I had taken Charlotte's call.
The afternoon light was going golden and long across the grass.
Somewhere a bird was making noise in the hedgerow.
Neither of us spoke for a while.
"I need to ask you something," I said finally.
"I know."
"When you signed the papers." I kept my eyes on the far end of the garden.
"You didn't look at me once.
Not when I cried.
Not when my hands were shaking.
You just—" I stopped.
"I need to understand that."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"My mother told me you had been unfaithful," he said.
I turned to look at him.
"She told me three weeks before the proceedings started.
She said she had evidence.
Photographs.
She said she had been trying to protect me from knowing for months." He looked at his hands.
"I didn't believe her at first.
Then she showed me something.
I don't know now whether it was fabricated.
It probably was.
But at the time—" He stopped.
"At the time I was twenty-nine years old and I had been raised to trust her judgment over my own instincts, and I believed her."
"So you signed."
"So I signed." He looked up.
"And I told myself the reason I couldn't look at you was because I was angry.
But that wasn't it."
"What was it?"
"I was ashamed," he said.
"Because some part of me knew it wasn't true.
And I signed anyway."
The bird in the hedgerow went quiet.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"I know that doesn't fix anything."
"No," I said.
"It doesn't."
"I know."
We sat with that for a moment.
"The boys," I said.
"I want them to know you.
I've always wanted them to have a father.
I just couldn't give them that father while I was afraid of what your family would do."
"That fear was reasonable."
"I know it was.
But they asked me sometimes.
Mason especially." I looked at my hands.
"He asked me once if fathers were real or just in books.
He was four."
Ethan closed his eyes briefly.
"I want to be in their lives," he said.
"Whatever that looks like.
Whatever pace you need.
I'm not going to push.
I'm not going to use lawyers or pressure or any of the things my family—" He stopped.
"I'm just asking."
"I know you are."
"Is there a chance?"
I thought about Mason on the grass, teaching his father the pebble system.
Little Ethan leaning against an arm that had not existed in his life two hours ago.
Logan, who trusted no one quickly, showing a man he had just met the beetle he had found.
"There's a chance," I said.
He nodded.
He didn't push it further.
That restraint told me more than anything he could have said.
"Eleanor," I said.
"She's going to need to answer for what she did.
Not just to me.
To you."
"I know."
"That's going to be hard."
"She's my mother," he said.
"It's already hard." He looked toward the house.
"But I'm done letting hard be a reason to look away."
I stood up from the bench.
"I'm going to go check on the boys," I said.
"Diane is probably letting Mason rewrite the rules of whatever game they're playing."
"He does that," Ethan said.
Then caught himself.
"I mean — I imagine he does."
"He absolutely does," I said.
"You'll learn."
I walked back across the garden toward the guest wing.
Behind me, I heard Ethan stand.
Heard his footsteps on the stone path.
Not following me.
May you like
Just moving.
Just a man learning how to be somewhere new.
