Budgets, contracts, the merger. None of it really matters anymore. I should be ecstatic, but even yesterday, when the last piece was set in place for the weekend at Caldwell’s estate, Henry’s potential disappointment was eating at me, ruining it.
I land in New York to discover texts from my friends about Lucie, but nothing at all from Lucie herself, which I guess makes sense. ‘One little thing and it’s all good?’ I demanded. I was referring to Jeremy’s offer of assistance, but when she took it the wrong way, I didn’t stop her. I guess a part of me thought it seemed like the easiest way to cut this whole thing off. And then she cut it off herself, and she was absolutely correct to do so.
BECK
Just checking in. How’s Lucie?
I assume she’s fine.
Please tell me you didn’t end it.
It wasn’t going anywhere. It’s for the best.
You fucked things up with Kate and now this. How many chances do you need to be given? You let her go and you’re going to regret this for the rest of your life.
“It’s better for them in the long haul,” I say quietly.
It’s the truth. I’m not sure why it feels like a lie.
When I finally fall asleep after forty-eight hours awake, it’s a nonstop montage of my worst memories. It’s coming over the hill to see Lucie clutching Henry’s body. It’s walking into the hospital to find my wife singing to our dead daughter with tears rolling down her face. It’s holding Hannah for the one and only time, her little rosebud mouth pursed as if asleep—so tiny, so helpless and so failed by me. It’s Henry saying, ‘I wanted to show you the arm,’ and Kate’s screams when I let the hospital staff take Hannah away. It’s Lucie with her eyes full of tears, saying, ‘I’ve loved you since I was six’ and telling me she’d given up. It’s my father’s agony over failing the company as he died—a situation I could have prevented if I’d come back here after grad school—and my mother weeping as we left the lake house for good.
It's an entire night spent dreaming about the death of various people’s dreams, deaths I’m responsible for.
Harrison comes by my room when his flight lands. We have corporate lawyers here for the negotiations, but I brought him in as a backup. He catches shit no one else does, and he’ll put my interests—and TSG’s—first.
He perches on the edge of my bed. “This isn’t what you need to hear right now, but Kate took off again. The process server couldn’t find her for a while—she’d left rehab and was in a halfway house—but she was gone the day after the papers were served.”
“Okay.”
I stare out the window—Central Park is in full bloom this time of year, and the whole damn city appears to be out there enjoying it. Couples stroll hand in hand, parents chase errant children. They are the living...and I don’t know what I am. I’m not a ghost, but I’m not one of them, either.
“You all right?” Harrison asks. “Ready for tomorrow?”
“Yeah.” The negotiations should be straightforward, which means this merger is pretty much a done deal assuming the trip with Caldwell goes as planned next weekend. I’ve worked for years for this, yet here I am, imagining another life entirely. I’m imagining myself as one of those parents chasing a kid. As the old guy helping his wife.
“I talked to Beck,” Harrison says slowly. “He said you and Lucie ended things.”
I move away from the window. “If you’re planning to tell me I fucked everything up with Kate and I’m fucking this up too, save your breath. Beck already said it.”
He sighs. “Kate wasn’t your fault. Beck’s always…He’s always defended her, even when she didn’t deserve it.”
None of us ever discuss it aloud—Beck’s thing for my exwife. I’m pretty sure Kate’s the reason he stopped dating, the reason he just fucking gave up on life.
“But Lucie’s different,” Harrison continues. “The two of you make each other happy. She turned everything around.”
No, she turned my well-organized life into fucking chaos. I was happy before, or if not happy, I was…used to things. And now I’m daydreaming about a life I don’t have instead of figuring out how to exist in the one I do.
Maybe I’m a ghost after all.
37
LUCIE
I take the twins to see the rental Jeremy mentioned. It’s nicer than the cabin but unfurnished. I guess it’s lucky that Caleb and I are no longer going away next weekend so I can get it set up.
“It’s so fun, moving to a new place, isn’t it?” the agent asks.
I give her a polite nod, and the kids don’t respond. But no, it’s not fun at all. Moving to an empty, new house with my two sad children feels less like the start of something good than the end of it.
Just after we arrive home, a call from my mother flashes on my phone. I strongly consider not taking it because this day’s been hard enough, but relent at the last second.
“I just heard about what happened to Henry,” she says. “I can’t believe I’m only hearing now.”
I roll my eyes. Because you’ve been such a devoted, involved grandparent? The kids don’t even know who you are. “What do you want, Mom?”
“I’m extremely concerned. This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t left Jeremy. You know that, right? You should have been watching them yourself.”
I laugh. “The way you watched me growing up? Should I have watched them like that?”
“I had no choice. You do.”
I’d worried that adversity might turn me into my mom. That I’d become the sort of person who bullies everyone around her as a form of self-protection. I feel fairly certain, now, that I won’t—but I can definitely put a bully in her place when necessary.
“I’m a better parent on my worst day than you were on your best,” I reply. “If I ever need advice, you’ll be the last person I seek it from.”
And then I hang up.
WHEN I ARRIVE at work on Monday—both relieved by Caleb’s absence and emptied by it at the same time—there’s an email waiting from Mark:
Congrats. Knew I was right about you.
I click the article he’s linked to—"Five People Changing the Workplace.” There, in bold lettering, is my name, followed by a description of the walking program and team retreats, giving me way more credit than I’m due for the improved retention rate.
It’s bittersweet, this moment. I’ve done things here, good things. Growing up in the shadow of Robert Underwood and his aunt provided me with skills no legitimate job could have. It just took putting them to use to understand it for myself. That doesn’t mean I can stay, however. If you want to let an old dream die, you’ve got to stop dreaming it first. And how am I supposed to do that if the old dream is a guy I still work for?
I walk out and run into Mark, who’s scrubbing a hand over his face and doesn’t even seem to see me. “Oh, Lucie,” he says, narrowly avoiding me and appearing a decade older than he did last week. “Sorry. Congrats on the article.”
“Thanks. Are you okay?”
He gives me a tired smile. “Just got off the phone with Caleb. He’s in a mood.”
He starts to walk past me, but there’s a question I’ve wanted to ask nearly since I arrived here, a question I’ve tiptoed around for too long. “Hey, Mark? Why did you guys close the seventh floor before?”
His eyes widen, and then he frowns. “Well, Caleb was concerned about the utility costs.”
I shake my head. “Except the utilities are minimal relative to the rest of the budget. Did something happen there?”
He looks over his shoulder before he answers. “This stays between us,” he says, “but the last event we held up there was a baby shower for Caleb and his wife. Make of that what you will.”
I flinch. It’s an even worse answer than I expected, one that simultaneously makes me wish I could spend my whole life fixing Caleb’s while recognizing that he has wounds no one can fix until he admits they’re there.