Chapter 5
Even Thomas smiled.
I sighed.
“I’m glad my emotional development is entertaining.”
“Extremely,” Matthew said.
My father arrived the following morning.
Apparently Matthew had called him.
I considered being annoyed.
Then I remembered that transparency had recently become fashionable in our family.
Charles Avery was seventy-three and still carried himself as if every room belonged to him until somebody produced paperwork proving otherwise.
He found me in the garden.
“You look tired,” he said.
“I’m going to be a father.”
“So I hear.”
“You knew.”
“Your mother told me recently.”
“How recently?”
He considered.
“Three months.”
I laughed once.
“Remarkable.”
“What?”
“I appear to have been the last person informed about my own child.”
“That is not entirely our fault.”
“No. It isn’t.”
He looked surprised.
I continued walking.
He followed.
The gardens at Hawthorne Ridge had gone golden with early autumn. Kate had restored them slowly over the previous year, preserving the old stone paths rather than replacing them.
My father disliked preservation.
He preferred rebuilding.
Perhaps I had inherited that too.
“Did you tell Thomas to keep Kate away from me?”
“I told him to reduce distractions.”
“She’s my wife.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
My father stopped.
“Be careful, Adrian.”
There it was.
The warning that had governed most of my childhood.
Not cruel.
Not threatening.
Simply certain that authority deserved obedience.
I turned toward him.
“No.”
His eyebrows rose.
“No?”
“I’m forty-two years old. I don’t need to be careful about disagreeing with my father.”
Something almost like amusement entered his face.
“You sound like your mother.”
“God help me.”
That earned a brief smile.
Then I said, “You taught me that loving people made them vulnerabilities.”
His expression closed.
“I taught you to protect your family.”
“You taught me to manage them.”
He looked toward the house.
“Is that what Katherine says?”
“It’s what I say.”
That mattered.
I saw him recognize it.
“I thought I was helping you.”
“I know.”
“Bergen was the largest acquisition of your career.”
“And Kate was carrying my son.”
“You didn’t know.”
“Exactly.”
He fell silent.
I expected an argument.
Instead he looked older.
“I missed Matthew’s first steps.”
I stared at him.
He rarely spoke about our childhood.
“I was in Singapore,” he continued. “Your mother called the hotel. I was in a meeting and told my assistant not to interrupt me.”
He looked down the path.
“By the time I returned her call, Matthew was asleep.”
I said nothing.
“I convinced myself there would be other firsts.”
“There were.”
“Yes.”
“But?”
“There is always another meeting too.”
We stood together beneath an old maple tree.
My father looked at the house.
“I should have known better.”
Perhaps forgiveness sometimes began without anyone asking for it.
Not because the mistake became smaller.
Because the person finally became honest enough to see it.
Kate was sitting in the sunroom when I returned.
She had a sketchbook balanced on her knees.
“How bad?” she asked.
“Surprisingly civilized.”
“Did anyone declare you a disappointment to the Avery dynasty?”
“Not explicitly.”
“Progress.”
I sat opposite her.
“What are you drawing?”
She turned the sketchbook.
A nursery.
Not the elaborate room I would have imagined.
Simple shelves.
A chair near the window.
A crib beneath a painted mural of trees.
“I was thinking about the room beside mine.”
“Your bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“You mean our old bedroom.”
Kate looked at me.
“Technically.”
The distinction hurt more than I expected.
I nodded.
“The room beside yours would work.”
She closed the sketchbook.
“You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“Pretending something doesn’t hurt because you think admitting it gives someone power.”
I stared at her.
“That is becoming irritating.”
“I know.”
“It hurt.”
Her expression softened.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sleeping in the guest room because you need space.”
“Yes.”
“I respect that.”
“I know.”
“But I don’t like it.”
“I know that too.”
We sat in silence.
Then Kate said, “I don’t want a divorce.”
I forgot how to breathe.
She looked down at her hands.
“That doesn’t mean everything goes back to how it was.”
“I don’t want it to.”
Her eyes lifted.
“I don’t know how quickly I can trust you.”
“As slowly as necessary.”
“And I need a life that belongs to me.”
“Your restoration work.”
“My work. My friends. Decisions about where I go without someone reporting my movements to you.”
“Yes.”
“And when you’re frightened, I need you to tell me instead of trying to control every variable.”
“That one may take practice.”
“I assumed.”
I leaned forward.
“My turn?”
She nodded.
“When something is wrong, tell me.”
“I tried.”
“I know. I mean from now on.”
“All right.”
“Don’t disappear because you think I’ve already decided what I want.”
She absorbed that.
“All right.”
“And…”
“What?”
“I want a vote on the name.”
She laughed.
“I knew there would be a catch.”
The next weeks became something neither of us had expected.
Courtship.
Inside our own marriage.
I brought her tea badly.
She taught me the difference between conservation and restoration and became offended when I used the terms interchangeably.
I learned our son kicked most strongly after Kate ate peaches.
She learned I had kept the blue scarf she left in my apartment after our third formal dinner together, six months before our wedding.
“You kept that?”
“It was expensive.”
“It cost thirty dollars.”
“I was emotionally attached to its fiscal potential.”
“You are impossible.”
“You married me.”
“Our parents arranged it.”
“You signed voluntarily.”
“Under questionable judgment.”
Sometimes we laughed.
Sometimes we did not.
There were difficult conversations too.
We spoke about our wedding day and how lonely she had felt standing beside a man who treated affection as a contractual hazard.
I told her how certain I had been that she would eventually realize she could have chosen someone easier.
“You thought I would leave?”
“Constantly.”
“So you made yourself impossible to love first.”
When she said it, I had no clever answer.
“Yes.”
Kate reached across the table.
Her hand covered mine.
“That was very foolish.”
“Yes.”
“But fixable.”
I turned my hand beneath hers and intertwined our fingers.
“Is that a professional restoration opinion?”
“Absolutely.”
At thirty-two weeks, Dr. Ramirez smiled during an appointment.
“Everything looks reassuring.”
Kate exhaled.
I realized I had been holding my breath too.
Our son had grown.
He remained determined to keep one hand near his face.
The doctor reviewed the plan, appointments, warning signs, and the importance of continuing to take things carefully.
On the drive home, Kate stared out the window.
“You’re quiet,” I said.
“I was thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
She gave me a look.
“About the letters.”
I waited.
“I want you to read mine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
That evening she gave me the box.
I read them alone.
The first was hopeful.
Adrian, I have something to tell you, and I don’t want to do it in a voicemail.
The second was angry.
You cannot keep deciding when our marriage exists and when it is inconvenient.
The third was lonely.
I heard a man laughing outside the café today and turned around because for half a second I thought it was you.
The fourth made me close my eyes.
I miss my husband, which is ridiculous because sometimes I’m not sure I ever really had him.
Then came the fifth.
The one where she told me she loved me.
I read it twice.
The sixth was written after Thomas’s note.
Its final paragraph broke something open inside me.
I won’t make you choose me. I only wish you had trusted me enough to let me know there was a choice.
The seventh had been written after she arrived at Hawthorne Ridge.
It contained only four lines.
I am going to have our baby.
I am going to build a good life.
I wish you were part of it.
I don’t know how to ask anymore.
I found Kate in the nursery.
She was sitting in the chair beside the window.
I handed her the letters.
“I’m sorry.”
She looked at my face and understood what I meant.
Not only the calls.
Not only Europe.
Everything.
“I know.”
“I should have come after you.”
“Yes.”
“I should have answered.”
“Yes.”
“I should have—”
“Adrian.”
I stopped.
“You’re here now.”
May you like
The sentence did not erase anything.
That was why it mattered.
