Conrad nods. I hear Jessica next to me sigh audibly. “My first year of sobriety. The birth of each of my children.”
“Are they like Sabrina?” Audrey asks.
Robert smiles. “I’d like to say yes. I mentioned Daisy likes to sing. She’s in a conservatory for directing, writing, and performing. I know her mother worries about her ability to provide for herself with such a creative career, but I think she’ll be okay.”
“Is she talented?” Audrey asks.
“Very,” he says. “And stubborn—like you, I think?” Robert looks at me and then blinks a few times rapidly. “Alex is much more reserved. She grew up quickly; she was always an old soul, and she married quite young, actually. I was still there for that.”
“You walked her down the aisle,” I say.
“I did.”
“Nice for her.” I don’t want to be, but still I’m bitter. I feel the emotion in my throat like the remnants of cough syrup—sticky and dense. And since we’re almost out of time, I ask him.
“You got better and they got you,” I say. “And all I had was a drunk father who left before I could even remember why.”
Robert exhales. “I can never make right what happened, but I’d like you to know them,” he says. “They always wanted to meet you.”
I know this. I have a letter from Alex sitting in a box at home. I never opened it, even though it’s been more than ten years. It felt like a betrayal to my mom, somehow, to be in touch with her. To want more than what she gave me. So I didn’t.
But she’s not here tonight. Only Robert is.
“Alex is a dentist, you said?” Conrad asks.
I see Robert’s eyes light up. “She’s training to be an orthodontist. She’s very bright and does quite well. Oliver…” He pats his coat pocket and then seems to remember himself.
“It’s true what they say,” Audrey reacts. “You can’t take it with you.”
Conrad chuckles. “I’m still going to try.”
Jessica squints at Conrad. “You mean you’re not…”
“Dead?” Conrad nearly screams it. “Most certainly not! I am very much alive. Whatever gave you that idea?”
Jessica shrugs. “You just give off the impression.”
“Of being dead?” Conrad asks. “How flattering.”
“No, she means wisdom,” Audrey says. “About life, which makes sense. It is best suited for the living.”
“I know I can’t ask anything of you,” Robert says to me. “But if I could, I’d like you to look them up and meet them. I think it might help.”
“Help?”
“Sabby,” Tobias says. “You know what he means.”
“I don’t think it would,” I say.
“It might,” Jessica says. “You don’t know.”
I look at her, because out of everyone she should understand. Her mom had another family. Jessica has three younger brothers she helped raise. Her mother was a teenager when she had her and a grown-up when she had them. And then she died and left Jessica in charge of it all.
“I love my brothers, you know that,” she says, reading me. “They made a lot of it worth it. And those girls miss him. Just like you do.”
“I don’t even know him,” I say.
I look at Robert. He’s sitting upright, his face drawn, but his eyes are wide open. I can register the pain my comment has caused, but I see something else there, too. He looks hopeful.
“I have a lot of regrets,” Robert says. “I should have left Jeanette more money. She’s okay, but I worry about her. I wish the girls were a little older. I didn’t get to see Daisy graduate. She needs a father now. She fights with her mother a lot. I wish I had met my grandson.”
“Do I have to sit and listen to this?” I say.
“Yes,” Robert says. And it’s the first time I’ve heard him speak with authority all night. He looks taller, and younger, too. “I have a lot of regrets, Sabrina. About my whole family. But I am here with you. Tonight I am here with you.”
Happiness is a choice.
“He’s right,” Tobias says. “You can be angry, you can hate us, but we’re here for you. All of us.”
It’s so much, it’s too much. Tobias in purgatory and Robert with his regrets and me, mourning both of them, still. “Alex wrote me a letter,” I say. “I never opened it. I was just too…” I look to Robert. “I guess I didn’t want it to be that easy.”
Robert looks down onto the table. He holds his fist to his mouth and clears his throat.
Our coffees arrive then.
“Oh, how delightful, foam art! I completely missed foam art,” Audrey exclaims. She clasps her hands together and peers down at her cup. It doesn’t even appear performative, although she is, after all, an actress.
“You are the delight,” Conrad says to her.
Audrey blushes.
“And I don’t hate you,” I say just to Tobias. But I know the table can hear. “I miss you.” I look up just an inch when I say it and catch Robert’s eye.
SIXTEEN
OUR LAST SUMMER, TOBIAS GOT AN assignment in the Hamptons photographing the new Montauk Inn. I took a vacation day and went out to the beach with him. It had been a rough winter and a rougher spring. His unhappiness with his job and our opposing schedules were taking their toll. I knew we needed the time together. He knew, too, and he arranged the whole thing. He asked for a bungalow right on the beach (which the shoot paid for), he asked me to get off work, and he picked up my favorite wine and brought it out with him.
Tobias borrowed Matty’s car (he had one of his own now) and drove out east on Thursday. I followed on Friday and met him at the Montauk train station. I took the LIRR out after work, a ride I hadn’t done since our first year in New York, when Sumir’s boss at the law firm had lent him his house for the weekend and Jessica and I had piled into the train with Two Buck Chuck, Scattergories, and bags of popcorn. We were only out there for a long weekend, but it felt like a month.
When I saw him standing on the platform, holding a single sunflower, I knew instantly we were okay. It was him. Tobias. My Tobias. Not the grumpy, downtrodden guy who sometimes inhabited our home, but the boy I fell in love with on the Santa Monica Pier all those years ago.
I leapt into his arms. He picked me up and spun me around. I could smell the salt water on him. “We really should stick to beaches,” he said.
That night we cooked lobster and dipped it in butter sauce on the bungalow’s deck. I had brought in four bottles of white wine from the city in addition to his red, and we drank two of them snuggled in a chair together. I was wearing his sweatshirt—an old one from UCLA that smelled like him. I remember thinking that this was the heaven I wanted to be in—this, right here. The two of us and butter and the sunset—making everything fluid and hazy and golden.
“Why do we fight?” he asked me. “We don’t need to. It’s stupid.” He nuzzled his face in the crook of my neck. I felt his nose graze my collarbone.
“I know,” I said. “It is stupid. I just want you to be happy, and sometimes I feel like you’re not.”
“I am,” he said.
“Now.” I sat up and put my hands on his chest. “But sometimes I feel like you blame me for the work stuff. Like if you had stayed in California you’d be shooting for Vanity Fair by now.”
“That’s crazy,” he said, but it wasn’t, I could tell. He was trying to bury his tone.
“It’s not.” I turned his face to mine. I looked into his eyes. “You came back for me, but it’s not enough if you don’t really want to be here. I love you, but it doesn’t mean anything if you’re not happy.”
Tobias shifted me in his lap. He brought his face close to mine so that I couldn’t see his features, just the smooth square of skin. “I’ve blamed the situation,” he said. His voice was low and hoarse—near a whisper. “But I don’t want to anymore.”
I felt his heartbeat on my chest, the warmth of his breath on my chin. “Okay,” I said.
“It’s not fair, I know. But I need you to forgive me.”
“Tobias.”
“Please?” he asked. Although it wasn’t a question.
“Of course,” I said.