Bill flips the menu page. “Browsing, in case something else strikes my fancy.”
I narrow my eyes. Maureen and the pub’s owner, Fiona—Fee, as everyone calls her—are old friends, and Maureen is a master gardener whose greenhouse bursts with blossoms that she’s always generous with. Bill’s both devoted to his wife and, especially since his retirement, about as inclined as Kate to stay still, so this story about delivering his wife’s flowers in the city for a wake at Fee’s is entirely plausible. It might even be true. It just doesn’t mean that’s all there is to it.
Jamie clears his throat. Again.
I sigh as I set my elbows on the table and lean in. “Okay, you two. Out with it.”
Bill meets Jamie’s gaze, blinking owlishly. “Jamie? You feel like sharing any thoughts?”
Jamie’s eyes widen to saucers. “Me? This was your idea!”
“Well, it was easier in my head,” Bill mutters. “I prefer my battles and confrontations left squarely in literature.” Drawing in a breath, he sets a hand on my elbow, then says, “Christopher. You know I love you like a son.”
A knot forms in the pit of my stomach. I hate when he says that as much as I love it. I’ve tried to protect myself, to keep myself from getting too close to Bill and Maureen, seeing them like a second father and mother to me. Moments like this remind me that ship sailed years ago.
I was thirteen when my parents died, when my paternal grandmother came to live with me and offered about as much comfort as those needle-packed pincushions she left all over the house. So I found comfort next door in my parents’ best friends, Maureen and Bill, in their daughters, who became even more like sisters to me—
Well, at least two of them.
I push away aggravating thoughts of Kate as quickly as they arrive, focusing on Bill.
“I know,” I tell him quietly.
“Good.” He pats my elbow once more. “Bear that in mind with what I’m about to say.” Clearing his throat, he laces his hands in front of him, elbows on the table. “What happened at Thanksgiving, as well as some further . . . insight”—his gaze slides to Jamie, then back my way—“has led to an epiphany.”
“Whose epiphany?”
Bill tips his head from side to side. “Mine. Maureen’s. I won’t speak for others.”
Jamie is quiet beside him, adjusting his watch so the face bisects his wrist bones.
“And what was that epiphany?” I ask, trying not to sound testy, but the fact is, I’m not used to being the one in the hot seat, waiting for insight. I run a company and my life with utmost control. I don’t do well with unknowns and anticipation.
Staring at me intently, Bill says, “Indulge me in a Socratic inquiry, Christopher.”
I rub the bridge of my nose. “You can take the professor out of the classroom—”
“But you can’t take the classroom out of the professor,” he says. “Too true. And the Socratic method of teaching served me well for many years, young man, so stay with me.”
“I’m staying.”
“Good. Now. How do you think Kate feels about how you two get along?”
I blink at him. “Feels? I think she feels that we get along terribly.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“Because we get along terribly. Because since she graced this fine earth with her presence, she’s provoked me and I gave it right back. Because unlike the rest of you, I haven’t hidden my disagreement with her choices, my concer—my disapproval, I mean—of how she lives.”
“How do you know that we see it like you do?” he asks.
I frown. “Don’t you? How can you not? How can you not take issue with her living that way, taking on so much risk, even outright danger?”
“When you have children, Christopher—”
I snort skeptically.
“—you’ll understand. They’re your heart beating outside your chest, but there’s no putting it back. You learn to live with the fear, because that’s what it is to love them.”
“That sounds hellish.”
“It can be,” Bill admits. “But what’s truly hellish is seeing your child hurt. And it’s not just Kate I’m talking about. What Juliet just went through, the toll that took on Beatrice, the toll this is taking on Bea now . . .”
I glance toward Jamie. “The toll on Bea?”
Peering down at his cuffs, he straightens them. “Well. To put it . . .” He sighs. “Oh hell, I don’t know how to put it in a way that spares your feelings, so I’m just going to be honest.”
“Please.”
“Bea called me very upset this morning. She said Kate told her things about your relationship, explained it in a way Bea had never picked up on that made her feel terrible. That made her feel like she has to take sides. And now she’s worried it’s going to be how things were with Juliet and Jean-Claude all over again, having to choose between people she loves because of this, creating tension and factions in the friend group, in your family.”
I sit back, wrestling with what I’m hearing. “What did Bea tell you specifically?”
Jamie hesitates, then says, “I don’t feel like I can say that without betraying Kate’s confidence in her.” He glances at Bill.
“In fact,” Bill offers, “I’d suggest that Kate is the perfect person to talk to about this.”
I stare at him, struggling to find a way to convey how impossible that is without revealing myself.
Well, you see, Bill, I’ve been a moth to the flame of your youngest daughter’s animosity for a long time, and I’ve fed it like a wildfire with the fuel of my own frustration. Because I don’t look at Kate and see her how I see your other daughters. I don’t look at her and think “sister.” I look at her and see a tumbleweed who’ll never stay in one safe place, a money-hating hellion who despises what I covet for its stability and power, a fierce, electrifying woman who could send me up in flames if I got too close.
“Whether you talk to her or not,” Bill says, reading my disdain for this idea in my pinched expression, “how you two interact has to change.”
Dread seeps through my system. “Change? How?”
“I need you to make peace, Christopher,” Bill says, holding my eyes. “I know Katerina isn’t the . . . tamest of personalities, that you and she don’t have the most commonality to bring you together, but I believe you both have the capacity to be kinder to each other. You can get along well enough that holidays and homecomings don’t turn into a war zone with everyone who loves you both caught in the cross fire.”
“Does Kate know you feel this way?” I ask. “Is she getting the same speech?”
Bill adjusts his glasses. “No.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because”—he smiles gently—“I know my daughter. And I know that she cannot be told to reexamine something or change her perception; she must be shown and . . . perhaps . . . led, without her precisely knowing.”
“You mean deceived?”
His smile fades. “Would it be a deception if you were simply gentler to her? Kinder to her? If you tried to make amends? Would it matter who started it, when all’s well that ends well?”
“I can see it mattering to Kate very much.”
He searches my eyes. “Then perhaps you’ll find a way to tell her the truth—that you didn’t know how damaging your dynamic was until others helped you recognize it.”
His words land like a blow to the gut, knocking the wind out of me. It’s never gone that far, has it? Our dynamic’s damaged her? Feisty, fiery, tough-as-nails Kate? With a few honest words, the natural clash between our personalities, innocuous years spent ignoring her when she was young, then keeping my distance once she was grown up?
I’ve wanted distance from Kate. I’ve wanted to feel indifferent to her. Never to hurt her.
I can’t have hurt her, can I?
“I think you’re wrong,” I tell him.
Bill’s smile returns again, tinged with amusement. “Maybe I am. Or maybe you’re wrong. You’ll figure it out soon enough, if you do what we’ve asked and try to make things right.”
“?‘Make things right.’?” I sigh as I massage my temples, which have begun to thud dully.