Or pierced right through the gut by Josie.
He was trying not to notice her, where she lingered on the edge of the crowd of Mitchells. The place she’d occupied for a long time. Hovering at the periphery but never pushing her way inside. It was one of the things that had bound them together when they were kids. Belonging, sure. But not really.
Stop.
He took a deep breath so he could let go of the anger.
Nope. No way. That way lies madness.
It seemed crucial that he treat her the same as he treated every other Mitchell, but that was so difficult he found himself ignoring her. And that was easier. In so many ways.
So he stopped giving himself a headache watching her out of the corner of his eye, but he could still feel her. Like there was a string stretched between them, and he felt the tug and pull the further away she got.
This was a feeling he had forgotten about. The feeling that dogged him the first few months after he left, before he headed for Europe, putting Josie, the Riverview, and that night a million miles behind him.
It had taken a while before the first thought he’d had upon waking up was not about Josie. Or the Riverview. These people.
But it had happened. He’d moved on.
“You came,” Helen said, smiling up at him.
“You made it pretty clear I had to.” He looked down at her belly. “How are you feeling?”
“Great.”
“Where’s Evan?” He’d met Helen’s guy a while back. They’d all been in Washington, DC, at the time. They were doing some lobby work and he had been in the city to interview an urban farmer, but then ended up staying because he and the urban farmer had fallen into her bed for about a month.
Cameron liked Evan as a person and he really liked him as a partner for Helen. He was a grounding force for that girl, whose natural state was electric.
“He’s been delayed,” she said. “But he promises he’ll be here by Christmas Eve.”
“He better,” Cameron said. Alice was back from the kitchen bringing piles of food, bright eyed but not crying. She set down the serving bowls and then grabbed him, ushering him toward the table. Her arm around his waist like a steel girder.
Her message was clear—you are not getting away from me.
“You must be hungry. Are you hungry?” she asked.
It was the question of his teenage years. God, the food she’d fed him. Stuffing him with potatoes and fresh green beans and plums and cheese and cakes made from scratch with love. He’d eaten it all. Every bit. All the time.
So used to starving he hadn’t even realized how hungry he was.
“What…happened here?” he asked, looking down at the messy table, serving bowls on their sides, forks on the floor. Total mayhem.
“There was a squirrel in the tree,” Alice said, pointing at the giant Christmas tree in front of the windows.
“Oh my god, it’s the racoons all over again,” Cameron said, remembering the racoons that had invaded the party tent the night before the very first wedding ever held at the Riverview.
“What a night that was,” Alice said.
“I don’t think it was that bad,” Gabe said with a smile just for Alice.
He had a physical reaction to Gabe and Alice, same as when he was a kid. A tension down his back, his hands curling into fists. As a teenager in constant survival mode, with nothing but anger and fear to feed him, the love and respect they had for each other had seemed fake. And it had literally made him angry. And when that love and affection had been spread his way he fought it with every part of his being.
Until Max somehow convinced him it was real. Something he could count on.
And he didn’t regret giving up that fight, but perhaps—if he hadn’t let them all the way in—he might have been able to protect himself a little bit better.
“Well, it probably won’t be the last wild animal loose in this place,” Max said, coming to stand next to him. Cameron stepped away just enough that he didn’t feel Max there. Couldn’t see him out of the corner of his eye. Could, in fact, pretend he wasn’t there at all.
His father had had the good grace to never be a decent man. Much less a father. But this guy? Max? He’d taught Cameron everything he understood about being a man.
Josie stepped up to the place across the table from him.
And he made the stupid mistake of looking at here. Right at her. It was like staring into the face of the sun. The girl she’d been was still there. Still recognizable. The freckles. The green eyes. Her wild red hair had changed to auburn and it caught the light behind her and made her glow. She was still tall and thin, and he wanted to ask if she still ran road races every spring. He’d done that with her for a few years because the training runs were such a good chance to be close to her. God, what a fool he’d been. He hated running.
She was wearing black jeans and a silky black shirt, and he’d seen that New York uniform every time Netflix or YouTube brought him into their offices. She was in television somewhere in the city. And every time he’d said yes to those visits, he’d had to force himself not to imagine running into her on the subway. Or in some bodega getting coffee. And he hadn’t. All day he’d walk around not thinking about her.
But at night he would dream unhinged dreams about her.
Dreams that made him uncomfortable. Dreams about anger and sex.
He’d wake up hard and grieving.
And angry.
He felt it now as he sat across the table from her. The attraction and the loss and the anger. Wanting something he couldn’t have. And shouldn’t even want anymore. Wanting something he’d hurt.
He took one last glance at her face, to memorize the grown-up version of the girl he’d been so wild for.
She was crying and trying to hide it.
She was crying and trying to stop.
She was crying.
Because of me.
And he would have stayed no matter how uncomfortable he was. How angry and resentful. How hurt.
But he wasn’t going to stay and hurt her.
Shit. Just…shit.
He looked at Helen. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
And he turned and left.
The Mitchell family was quiet behind him. Speechless. The reverse, maybe, of the shattering glass of before. He’d leave—again. And everything would go back the way it was supposed to be.
And he grabbed his winter coat, swung his heavy bag over his shoulder, and headed outside. He’d rented a car for this trip, thinking in the back of his head that he would need a getaway option.
And it sat at the side of the road, a nondescript dark sedan. He’d never been so happy about the decisions that past him had made.
He fished the keys out of his pocket and hit the fob.
There was the sound of feet behind him and he didn’t turn to see who had followed him.
Helen, maybe. The instigator.
Alice? He’d write her an email, explaining everything. She’d understand. For a long time she’d had her own sharp edges that kept people from getting too close.
Josie?
He hoped not. Couldn’t imagine it. He’d spent the first year of his exile imagining her finding him in his tiny apartments and hectic jobs. In Baltimore and Wyoming. San Francisco and Vancouver.
All while deleting pictures of her from his phone. Ignoring her emails.
He’d had to leave the continent to leave that daydream behind.
“Cameron?”
Jesus. It was Max.
Cameron sighed and stopped. Not because he wanted to talk to the guy. But because he knew Max wasn’t going to let up and this whole thing could end with Cameron running him over with the car or some bullshit.
He turned to face Max. “Max, I think we can both admit it was a mistake for me to come. I never should have—”
Max just kept walking. Not stopping, and Cameron felt the way he had that night, like Max might hit him. And he wasn’t a boy anymore, and if it was
going to come to that, to a god damn fistfight with his old mentor, then—fine. Weirder shit had happened.
He shrugged out of his backpack and changed up his stance. Max was still big and strong, and he had that ice-hard I’ve-killed-a-man edge to him that had always frankly terrified Cameron, but Cameron had been broke and homeless on the streets of Bangkok on more than one occasion.
He knew how to handle himself.
“Jesus, Max!” he shouted as the old guy got close, and he threw out an arm, a loosely gathered fist because, honest to god, he didn’t want to hit the man. But Max grabbed him by the shoulders, his dark eyes searching Cameron’s, and Cameron tried to step back but Max wouldn’t let him.
“I’m so sorry,” Max said, and wrapped his arms around Cameron.
He held himself still—shades of the glass breaking—before pushing at the guy’s chest.
“Max—”
“I’m so goddamn sorry, and if I was a better man—”
“Stop!” Cameron said, but Max just kept hugging him and talking. Cameron could only stand there and take it.
“I’ll leave,” Max said. “Just come back inside. Alice is ready to burn the place down and Helen is crying. I’ll make myself scarce.”
Cameron slumped in the man’s embrace, enough that Max must have gotten the sense that Cameron wasn’t going to fight him anymore and let him go.
Cameron looked over Max’s shoulder at the inn. Alice was standing in the doorway. He could see how anxious she was. He could feel it, practically. She was the only mom he’d ever known, really. Anything good that grew in his life, he could trace the roots back to her.
To Max, too, in a lot of ways.
It wasn’t comfortable. But there it was.
“It just seems…”
“Like a lot?” Max finished.
Cameron huffed. “You guys are always a lot,” he said. “But this maybe…maybe it’s just too much. It’s Christmas, and I think I’m a bad memory—”
Max sucked in a breath. “I’m so sorry you think that.” He shook his head, and to Cameron’s total and utter shock the former cop seemed to be about to cry. “Because you’re not.”
“That night is,” Cameron said. He would not be put off by platitudes. He wanted to say Josie is in there crying. But he couldn’t even say her name.
Max shook his head, so sad. “Not…for the reasons you think. Everyone regrets what happened. All of us. And if you come in…”
“We’re going to be one big happy family?” Cameron asked.
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t part of the family, Max. I was an employee.”
“You were much more than that, Cameron. So much more. And even if you don’t remember that, I do. Alice does. Everyone in there does. Josie—”
Cameron lifted his hand and Max, thank god, shut his mouth.
Cameron glanced up at the tops of the trees, the slate-gray sky above them. There was going to be snow soon. He could smell it. Max had taught him that. How the air changed in advance of weather. It had felt, learning it, like a stupid thing. But in his life on the road it had become a superpower.
I owe them so much.
“It’s Christmas, son—”
“Stop,” Cameron said. “Stop. I’ll come in. I’ll stay for dinner. Past that…we’ll go meal by meal, okay?”
Max blinked back his tears. “Meal by meal sounds familiar.”
“But you don’t call me son. Not ever again.”
Max nodded solemnly, like he understood it was the price of the past.
Cameron reached down for his backpack, but Max got there first.
“Good god, no wonder Garth fell over. What do you keep in there?”
“My home,” Cameron said. Max looked at him like he was joking, but he wasn’t.
He’d lost the only home he’d ever had, really. The only family.
He lived his whole life now making sure he didn’t have another one to lose.
7
JOSIE
Her first season working as an intern for the show had been the kind of season where everything went wrong. And since it had been her first year, she’d had no perspective on it. Josie had thought that things like the set catching on fire, and the costume department going on strike, and a stomach flu—the kind that created explosive diarrhea—burning its way through the cast were all normal.
She’d met every problem with the grim determination to control it. The way she couldn’t control any other thing.
Every season after that first season had been easier—which might be a part of why she stayed.
The rest of the night that Cameron came back to the Riverview was like that. After the shock of seeing him, the painful gut-clenching reaction to his obvious inability to look her in the eye, it wasn’t so bad.
When he walked away from the table and grabbed his things, clearly leaving, it hadn’t even registered in the atmosphere of shock in her brain.
When he and Max walked back in like nothing was really wrong, she didn’t know what to feel.
Relief? Dread?
So she used the great coping mechanism she always used.
She worked.
She cleared the dishes the squirrel had upset. She brought out new place settings. New silverware. When the oven timer went off and fresh bread was baked, she took care of it. Brought it out, sliced and wrapped in the cloth napkins that fresh bread was always wrapped in here at the Riverview.
She filled water glasses.
“Sit,” Helen urged when Josie jumped up to go grab a bottle of wine. “I’ll get it.”
But Josie was already halfway to the kitchen.
The kitchen was still dark and quiet. The smell of the dinner Alice had worked so hard on lingered, and the pots and pans were piled up, waiting for whichever family members were on the clean-up crew to come in and take care of them and probably another bottle of wine. Or two.
They’d bring Cameron in here and make him sit at the counter and not lift a finger as he told them more stories about his travels.
Out in the dining room it was a regular story time.
And she wanted to listen to every word and ask seven hundred follow-up questions.
You traveled with a Mongolian nomadic tribe for a month?
What does yak blood taste like?
What did you make for Prince Harry and Meghan?
Why were you arrested in France?
Did you miss us?
Did I ever cross your mind?
But the obvious answer to those last two questions was no.
The swinging door to the dining room opened as Josie took two bottles of white wine from the fridge. For the second her back was turned to the door, she foolishly hoped the footsteps belonged to Cameron.
“Josie.” It was Helen. Looking pregnant and contrite. Josie had a million things she could yell, but she swallowed them and smiled.
“I’ve got the wine,” she said, like she didn’t understand what Helen wanted.
“I’m sorry,” Helen whispered.
“For what?”
Helen shook her head and crossed the dark kitchen toward Josie.
“I’m just getting the wine,” Josie said, and she sidestepped Helen as she reached out.
“I thought it would be happy,” Helen said. “The two of you back here like this. I thought…”
What? He’d forgiven me? I’d forgotten him?
“Are you happy?” Josie asked, the words coming out harder than she’d intended. Meaner. It was like a crack in the wall, and the rest of her darker feelings rushed her, clamoring to be let out. Words she’d never said wanted to be said. Things she hardly remembered feeling.
“No.” Helen said, looking like the guiltiest, saddest pregnant girl who ever lived.
And it only made Josie angrier.
Josie stood still under the force of what she wanted to say. Scream at her cousin and best friend.
“You were both so young and you’ve both gone on to do such amazing things and yo
u never…you never talk about him and he never talks about you and I thought…” Helen sighed. “I thought it would be happy.”
Through the swinging door came a roar of laughter.
“Stop!” Alice shrieked. “You’re making that up!”
“I’m serious,” Cameron said, and there was more laughter.
“It is happy,” she told Helen.
But she knew at once that she wasn’t going back in there. She’d take the farm truck back to her parents’ place and…she didn’t know past that.
Work?
Leave?
Hide?
“Take these to the table, would you?” She handed the wine bottles to Helen.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to my parents’.”
“But—” Helen looked over her shoulder at the door, the family and happiness on the other side.
“Tell them I got a work call,” Josie said. They’d believe it. And it wasn’t even a lie. Her phone had been buzzing in her pocket all night.
She grabbed her keys from the hook by the door, and without even her winter coat, stepped outside into the brittle cold and made her escape.
8
CAMERON
The headache woke him up. The headache and the sun slicing through the window because he’d forgotten to close the curtains.
As a rule Cameron didn’t drink. Lessons from his father and all that. But when Helen had come back into the dining room with two bottles of wine and the news that Josie had gotten a work call. Well…he’d jumped headfirst into one of those bottles.
And then Alice broke out the good whiskey and poured him a glass while he did the dishes.
He wouldn’t let her help do the dishes.
She didn’t join him in a drink.
And he remembered the promise she’d made to him so many years ago. That she would stop drinking. It had been the very first promise an adult had made to him and kept. Which, if you were a kid like he’d been, was revolutionary. He’d grown used to being disappointed and forgotten. But in that moment, Alice—practically a stranger, relatively speaking—had put him first. It had been the start of who they’d become. This bond that was more than friendship, but just left of parenthood.
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