Chapter Eight
At the end of the day Jake stuck his hand between the closing elevator doors. “We have an interview set up for next Tuesday with the little woman on the prairie,” he said. “Bronwyn … Pemberley? Paddington? Something like that.”
Pembroke, Charles wanted to correct him. “Okay,” he answered.
Jake held the doors open. He’d been watching Charles all day with a perverse curiosity. He was right to watch, of course—something was bothering Charles, something that was directly linked to work. Not that Charles was about to explain himself.
They stared at each other for a few seconds more. Then the elevator buzzer sounded, indicating that the door had been held open for too long. “So, see ya,” Jake finally said, releasing his hand.
“Yep,” Charles answered. The elevator doors slid closed.
So this was where Bronwyn had turned up after twelve years. Charles didn’t see her the summer after senior year. In fact, none of his circle did. She didn’t attend the parties people held when they were all home on breaks from their respective colleges the following Thanksgiving and Christmas, and no one heard from her the next summer, when they were all home for three months. Bronwyn’s dad was still a member of the local country club, and a few of Charles’s friends asked him if Bronwyn was okay. Bronwyn was doing wonderfully, he reported. She’d aced her first year at Dartmouth, just as everyone thought she would. Mr. Pembroke had gotten her a prestigious internship in Europe for the entire three-month summer break. The same thing happened the summer after sophomore year and junior year—more far-flung internships, all orchestrated by her father. By the time everyone finished senior year, many weren’t coming home for summers anymore. They’d found jobs elsewhere. Their strong ties to their Swithin friends were forgotten, at least until the five-year reunion. But Charles, well, Charles didn’t know how to move on.
Charles couldn’t see Bronwyn now. There was no way, not after all this time, not after what he’d done, what she’d heard, which he was sure was why she’d stayed away. Or maybe he could face her: How bad could it be? And really, wasn’t he kind of curious? But then he pictured her with that pitying look on her face, the one she’d given Scott when she cornered him on the patio, probably asking him to come and sit with Charles and the rest of his friends. The same one she’d given Charles the very last moment they were together.
She’d still feel sorry for Charles. She’d see him as a powerless consumer, a slave to modernity. Not brave enough to build a tent, for he’d told her that story of how he’d failed miserably at camping with his dad. He’d told her lots of things about his father in moments of weakness. He’d even slipped out a few resentful words about Scott. Charles always took back everything he said about anyone quickly and repentantly, and Bronwyn understood he didn’t mean it—“Family can be so awful sometimes,” she’d say—but that only made what Charles eventually screamed to Scott in the mud room all the more shameful. It proved to Bronwyn once and for all that he really did mean all those things he’d said. His father and brother affected him far more than he let on.
And then Charles was right back to where he started—he couldn’t see her. He had to get out of this. He could pretend he was sick, maybe, the day of the interview. Or he could just blow it off altogether. Which would get him fired.