It had been a very long day. They all gathered in Luke’s living room, exhausted, when Lillian finally spoke.
“I called your father,” she said quietly to Luke, but everyone could hear. “I just couldn’t sit by and watch him pull everything away from you like that. I told him point blank that he was going to lose you.” She leaned against the wall and looked up at the ceiling. “He hired a car to take us home from the hospital when you were born, and he sat next to your seat, cooing to you all the way home.” She looked into Luke’s eyes. “He helped you take your first steps when you started walking, holding out his hands everywhere you went so you could try to reach them… He spent hours outside, teaching you how to ride a bike, steadying the back of it as it wobbled. You didn’t want to go inside that day, and he stayed with you, delighting in your perseverance—do you remember?”
Luke nodded and there was a long silence as they both contemplated the enormity of the situation. “What did he say when you spoke to him?” he asked.
“He’s just scared and hurt. I know him well enough to know that. But I could feel his sadness in his silence.”
Luke took in a breath. “We’ve all had a lot going on. Let’s try to relax and be thankful that our homes were mostly spared by this storm. Why don’t we all just unwind?” He pinched the bridge of his nose and squinted his eyes as if relieving the pain there, then went into the kitchen. “Who needs a glass of wine?” he said over the large island separating the rooms.
They all nodded wearily. While Juliette and Luke handed out glasses, Lillian made an impromptu cheese platter with a few crackers and several cheeses. They had broken into small groups of chatter as they sprawled out on the sofas in the large living area. Luke’s face had fallen back into a neutral expression, as if he wanted to block everything out for the time being.
Callie sipped her wine quietly on the sofa, smiling subtly at Aiden as he told Olivia that he’d like to take Wyatt to play mini-golf once this ordeal was over. She also noticed how Frederick had started chatting quite easily with Luke about the dog. She could tell they’d been getting to know one another during their time together at Paula’s by the way they were talking.
After quite a while, once the wine had done its job, and everyone had relaxed a little, Frederick sat up and ran his hands through his hair. In that moment, Callie could almost see what he might have looked like as a young man, and Luke’s strong resemblance to him was clearer than it had ever been. “I brought something,” he said, the other conversations subsiding. He smiled nervously, pulling out the same bag he’d brought when he’d arrived to do the mural. Callie had noticed that he’d taken it with him when they’d evacuated, but he hadn’t opened it until now.
They were all gathered around, scooting together on the sofas in the living room. The bag was too flat to have clothes inside, and she’d never seen anything quite like it. He reached over and set it on his lap, unzipping it, and drew out large sheets of paper, laying them down on the coffee table. Callie had to catch her breath.
Lillian clapped a hand over her heart, getting up to view them: pencil sketches of Lillian, the wind blowing her hair, large sunglasses on her face, smiling; Luke pitching a baseball—he must have been about seven; the back of a woman as she sat reading on a blanket on the beach and another of her, leaning against a surfboard.
“Oh my God,” Callie said, unable to look away from the pictures scattered along the table.
“Alice was there while Luke was growing up, but I was too.” Frederick regarded Luke, his face vulnerable with his admission. “I didn’t go to see him as much as she did because every time I did, it ripped my heart out. But I was there. I kept going to Corolla, I was at his baseball games, I saw him riding horses and learning to surf like I did. Whenever I could muster the energy, I went, but after I saw him, I just felt drained, empty.”
For the first time, Callie saw fondness in Luke’s eyes when he looked at Frederick.
With trembling arms, Lillian hugged them both, and what looked like years of burden fell away from her face, relief flooding it. Frederick had his hand on Lillian’s shoulders now, his fingers moving up to her neck as he pulled her into the embrace, Luke by his side. It was as if time stood still. Maybe it hurt, maybe things would be changed forever, but this was right. It should’ve happened years ago. Once the moment had passed, Lillian pulled back. “What will we say to the press?” she worried.
“I don’t care,” Luke said. There was a commanding presence to him just then, and it revealed that he’d made up his mind. He wasn’t shying away from the press anymore.
The phone pulsed against Callie’s ear as it rang. Sprawled across her air mattress, she looked up at the fresh paint on the ceiling and the recessed lighting that had been installed where Olivia’s pencil marks had been. She could barely keep her eyes open after the day she’d had, but she had one more thing that she wanted to do. She couldn’t make things right with Luke, but she could start to make them right with someone else.
Callie had seen tonight how right Gladys was when she’d said, “The truth will set you free.” She’d learned by letting Luke into her world and her thoughts how being honest with someone made life richer and not so scary when she’d always thought it was the other way around. So, if she were being honest with herself, she’d have admitted that she missed her mother. She missed those days before everything had become so complicated, and she was going to try mend things.
“Hello?” her mother answered.
“Hi. It’s Callie.”
“Oh, hi, Callie. How’s the cottage? Is everything okay?”
Callie had felt a twinge of guilt for having been in the same city as her mother and not tried to see her, but things had gone so fast, and she hadn’t been ready then. Now she was. Her mother hadn’t been very supportive after she and Kyle had split up, and they hadn’t ever really talked about it, which had hurt Callie. But now, she could step back and see that being supportive might be easier for her mother if Callie would forgive her.
“The cottage had some damage,” she said. “But we’re getting it all fixed. Thank you for asking.”
“That’s great. I’m glad you called to update me.”
Callie sat up. “That’s not why I called.”
“Oh?”
“No, Mom. I called because I just wanted to see what you were up to.” She balled the sheet into her fist and then smoothed it out, her fingertips light with anticipation. She’d never taken a step like this before.
There was a kind of silence, during which Callie felt that her mother was assessing her, trying to decide her motives, but the truth was, she only had one motive: Luke had lost a lot of time with Frederick—time he’d never get back. Callie didn’t want the same thing to happen with her mother.