by Ruthie Knox
“What?” he asked.
“You’re really sure about this one?” Her tone was arch, her eyes warm. “You haven’t had any second thoughts, like, Maybe I should fall in love with someone who’s less like a force of nature in a sparkly tracksuit?”
“I like this one,” he replied. “Sparkly tracksuit and all. She’s good for me.”
“Aww.” Allie kissed Winston’s cheek. “You are the sweetest.”
Winston blushed. Rosemary smiled at him. That was good—it was good she got along with her ex. If only Kal could get her to smile at him.
She’d turned up twenty minutes ago, all calm graciousness, her eyes a little red, her mouth a little sad. Kal wanted to fix it.
He just had to catch her alone first.
He had a whole plan. Before he even came in the house, he’d called back Brian in Kathmandu and set up a meeting, and he’d returned Chris’s call from the other day and told him, sure, he’d write an article. They would get together in the city next week.
He’d texted his mom and his brothers and Sangmu to tell them he loved them.
That part had backfired, actually. His siblings were currently mocking him in group chat. His phone kept buzzing in his back pocket, dig after dig. Maybe he should’ve thought that part through first.
Dinner arrived on the table. Ben and May took their places, May beaming, Ben scowling, both of them taking turns explaining the food. Kal was grateful for the tour. Nothing on his plate looked familiar.
Rosemary cut her meat with her wrists high. She dabbed her napkin at the corners of her mouth. She held her salad fork upside down, the tines placed precisely into bites that were never too large or too small. She laughed when everyone else was laughing, made witty remarks at all the right moments, thanked Ben for the lovely meal with three seconds of sincere eye contact.
Kal had spent more oxygen-deprived nights than he could count high on the slopes of Everest, actively losing brain cells, and he had never felt more like he was dying than he did in this moment.
Breathe.
The conversation flowed easily across the table, jumping from Ben’s restaurant to May’s children’s book contract to Beatrice’s movie and its bottomless budget.
“I’d like a producer credit,” Winston said. “Given how deeply I’ve invested.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Beatrice replied. “Maybe you can come up with a company name for yourself, though, because I already promised Nan I’d give her one, and I don’t want the credits to be all Chamberlain, Chamberlain, Chamberlain.”
“It is your name,” Rosemary said.
“It’ll make me look like an amateur, though. Did I tell you I’m ‘Baroness Films’?”
“You’re not a baroness.”
“I know, but I will be eventually, and you’d be surprised how much play it gets me over here. Like I’m Lady Gaga.”
“We do love our stuffy English people.” Allie looked meaningfully from Winston to Rosemary, then to Beatrice. “No reason you shouldn’t exploit our tender feelings for profit.”
“Speaking of your nan,” Rosemary said, “I phoned her this afternoon.”
“You spoke to my mother?” Winston asked.
“I did.”
“Is that something you’re in the habit of doing?”
“No, it was the first time since we divorced.”
Winston dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, clearly perplexed. “How is she?”
“What he means is, why did you do that?” Allie asked.
Rosemary smiled. “Oh, I knew what he meant. The truth is, I needed some advice.”
“And you spoke to my mother?” Winston asked.
“I love Evita,” Allie said. “I would totally call her for advice. I have, actually, for fashion advice, because her whole look is sick. Also her wardrobe. She has vintage couture I would die for. I’ve considered marrying Winston for the sole purpose of positioning myself to get Evita’s clothes when she dies.”
Kal’s entire body itched. He couldn’t take it anymore. The smiling, the meandering conversation, the insane and horrible suspense.
“That was completely tactless, love,” Winston said to Allie.
“Those clothes are mine,” Beatrice said. “You can’t have them.”
“For the love of—What did she say?” Kal was standing, salad fork clutched in his fist. Shit. Why was he standing?
Because you have to do this.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just…What did Evita say?”
“She suggested if I want to have a successful relationship, perhaps I should avoid making exactly the same mistakes I’ve made in the past.” Rosemary speared a piece of…Kal couldn’t remember what they were eating. A piece of meat-food. And placed it delicately into her mouth.
“Rosemary—”
Everyone was looking at him.
Fuck it.
“Rosemary, I love you. I’m sorry this is so—whatever this is. With all these people, but they seem like okay people, so I’m just gonna…The short version is, I love you, and I want to be with you. All the time. I never stop wanting to be with you. I never have stopped, from the helicopter all the way to right now. I don’t think I’m going to stop. It’s like Bill said in the garage, there’s not a decision to make, because I already love you. And, you know, we can decide to suffer, or you can decide to surrender to the love, and if we surrender, we get…”
Out of inspiration, Kal glanced to Bill for help. It had all made a lot more sense before he’d opened his mouth.
Bill was chewing, the stem of an unidentified leafy green poking out one corner of his mouth. He tucked it in, finished up his bite, swallowed. Took a drink of water. Suggested, “Salvation.”
“Kind of a churchy word,” Allie said. “Are you churchy?”
“I think I’m a Buddhist,” was Kal’s inane reply. “But I’m going to table it for the moment.”
One thing at a time.
—
Rosemary sat very still, her fork poised in midair, deeply surprised by Kal’s declaration.
How simple it was.
“Completely,” she said. “We get completely.”
Kal smiled at her, the first smile, the best smile, with the lines around his eyes crinkling and the gap between his teeth, his face broken open and right.
“Yeah, but not how we meant it last night,” he said. “Not focused on what you have to give me or I have to give you for it to meet some standard that means we’re doing it right. I’m talking about completely in this whole other way, where I love you because you’re you, and whatever you want to do, that’s fantastic because I want you to be you, and I want you to live your life however you want to live it. That’s the kind of completely we can’t mess up. There aren’t any rules. There’s just you and me.”
Her fork hit the edge of her plate with a clatter. Her hand shaking. Her eyes watering, tears spilling over.
It was overwhelming, this feeling in her body. Familiar, too, but not because she’d ever felt it before.
Because she’d been searching for it.
This was how Rosemary had thought she would feel on top of the mountain, at the end of a long and difficult climb, with the world laid out beneath her. As though her body had no boundaries, just awe and gratitude and love spilling over everywhere.
She turned to Beatrice, her baby, with her rainbow hair and her perfect face. “I love you,” she said. “I love you so much. I’ve never stopped loving you for one minute, and I’m so proud of you all the time. I need you to know, I’m your mum.” Her voice had gone shaky. Her ears were hot. She wiped at her face with her napkin.
“Jeez,” her daughter said.
Rosemary leaned into Beatrice’s shoulder, put an arm around her, squeezed her close. “I’m just going to keep on being your mum however you need me to be. There isn’t anytime you can’t call me and ask for whatever you need, no matter where I am in the world.”
“I know that.”
“Okay. Good.” Rosemary leaked tea
rs into her daughter’s hair, fully aware that her behavior was that of a woman who’d come unhinged in front of an entire dinner table of virtual strangers and her ex-husband.
It was excellent to be unhinged. Probably she should have allowed herself to unhinge a long time ago. “I don’t know what I’m going to do next, you know? With my life? But I don’t want to lose you.”
“You’re not going to lose me, Mum.”
“Oh, good.” That was settled, then. She sniffled and squished love into her daughter’s body until Beatrice began to squirm, and then she let go and looked at Winston, whose expression was one she hadn’t seen in years—just love and approval and pleasure.
“We made such a good baby,” she said helplessly.
“We did.”
“Thank you.”
“Can I get a mojito to help me through this?” Beatrice asked.
Ben shot to his feet. “I’ll do it.”
Then Allie was laughing and Ben was in the kitchen, Nancy dabbing at the corner of one eye with her napkin, the stillness broken into relief. Rosemary found Kal across the table, beautiful Kal, who loved her even when she messed it up.
“I want completely,” she said. “I want completely with you.”
He walked around the table, and by the time he made it to her chair she’d risen to meet him, put her arms around him, kissed him in front of everyone with her full heart.
Her head on his chest, his hands on her back, she felt his reply with her whole body. “I want that, too.”
When Allie began applauding, and May and Winston and Nancy and Bill all joined her—and Beatrice, too—Rosemary was completely embarrassed. Completely happy.
Completely in love.
Chapter 28
Rosemary put the address on the key fob Allie had given her into her phone and set her phone in the cupholder. “Go where it tells you,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
He gave her a little salute. Feeling cocky, clearly, now she’d forgiven him. Now that they’d found their way again.
She put her hand on his thigh and squeezed.
Kal shifted in the driver’s seat.
She did enjoy him.
They made their way downtown, where Kal parked the car beside a building near the water. “Where are we?”
“Apparently Allie has been renovating a small inn. She calls it a micro hotel. I can’t say that I followed her entire explanation, but it has something to do with an investment by Winston’s driver, Jean, which she’s been managing. They’re nearly ready to open but haven’t booked any of the rooms yet.” Rosemary extracted the key from her pocket and dangled it in front of his eyes. “We’re going to try out the honeymoon suite.”
“That sounds promising.”
“There’s a featherbed mattress, rainfall showerheads, and a hot tub, among other enticements.”
Rosemary tried the key on the exterior door. It swung open. Someone had left lights on above the check-in desk, and there was a coffee station with an espresso machine for the morning.
“Did you ever get the feeling like you’ve been adopted into a very big, very weird family of Wisconsin people?” Kal asked.
“Yes. I quite like them. I was trying to work it out: if Allie is Winston’s girlfriend, and Winston is my ex-husband, does that mean we’ve been given a room to shag in by my future sister-in-law? I feel as though there should be a name for the relationship between you and your ex-husband’s soon-to-be wife.”
“Probably there is.”
“I’ll have to speak to a genealogist, work out what it does to the family tree.” They climbed the stairs together, Rosemary in the lead to allow Kal a view of her bum. She’d had a great many feelings in the past few days. Discharging them had left her with a terrible requirement for sex.
“Important shit if you’re a baroness.”
“I only would have been a baroness when Winston’s mother died. But even divorced, I’m Lady Rosemary.” She paused at the top of the stairs and threw a smile over her shoulder at him. “You can call me that if you like.”
“I’m good. Thanks, though.”
She unlocked the door to the room. It was vast, the four-poster bed draped in gauzy white, the ceiling painted tin, the walls exposed brick, the floors shining. “Well done, Allie.” She dropped the key on a tray by the door.
“This is swanky.”
“It’s perfection.”
They poked around the room, opening and closing cupboard doors, examining the amenities. “So Allie is rich,” Kal said.
“She’s done well for herself in antiques and real estate, according to Winston.”
“And what’s her sister do again?”
“She illustrates children’s books. Or she’s attempting to.”
“I thought my mom had a lot of kids, but the Fredericks—there’s, like, twenty of them.”
“Two,” she corrected.
“Yeah, but they’re big. Or if they’re not big, their hair is big.”
That made Rosemary chortle, and she flopped onto her back on the bed. Kal laid down beside her. “And what’s Ben’s deal? Talk about a misanthrope.”
“Oh, he’s lovely. Did you try that scallop sashimi? The best I’ve ever had.”
“Was that the white thing with the orange squares on it?”
“Yes. We’ll have to eat at his restaurant. I’m very pleased to have a connection to Ben.”
Kal wrapped his fingers around her hand. They relaxed on the feather bed, side by side. “How much money did you give Bill after dinner for his Syria project?”
Rosemary smiled. “Enough.”
“What’s that mean, enough?”
“Perhaps I promised him enough for a mobile medical unit. And he’ll need a plane to fly it over with, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Not that all of the funds will come from me. I have some connections I can tap.”
Kal rolled onto his side. “I’ll bet you have connections all over the world.”
“What’s the point of being an almost baroness if you don’t develop a network? You don’t think I wormed my way onto the Everest team with just my good looks, do you?”
“I doubt your looks hurt.”
“Well, no. We use what we’re given.”
She turned onto her side, too, so they’d be nose to nose. “We should break into the minibar. It’s very well stocked.”
“They know how to drink in Wisconsin.”
“I’ve noticed. I like that about them.”
“I made some phone calls today. While you had the car.” Kal told her his news, how he’d cranked up the stalled machine of his ambition to see what he might be able to make of it. It pleased her to know he’d made such an effort, so quickly, even if he couldn’t predict yet where it would all lead.
He moved his hand up to her waist, and she scooted her body closer to his, pressing their stomachs together. She unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt. He wore a T-shirt underneath, which was disappointing. She hiked both shirts up from the bottom so she could press her cheek to his skin. He was hers to be next to. Hers to chat with, and sleep with, and love.
“I want to go in the hot tub,” she said dreamily.
“Do you know how much water those things waste?”
“No, and I’d rather you didn’t tell me.”
He made a disgruntled noise. Rosemary kissed him. “They should have hot tubs on Everest. It would make the climb much easier to endure.”
“We are fundamentally incompatible.”
“I know. It’s why I like you.” She kissed him again, lingering this time. “Does it waste less water if I take off all my clothes?”
“Gallons.”
“Oh, good. Get your kit off.”
“Right now?”
“I saw a bottle of something called Sex Suds over there.”
The hot tub was already full and steaming. Rosemary turned on the jets, poured in half the bottle of Sex Suds, and undressed, sending Kal
to the minibar to procure their drinks so she could ogle him. He returned with half a dozen bottles of assorted hard liquor. They slipped into the heat beneath the foam, taking places opposite each other on the hot tub’s bench seats.
Water flooded over the side of the tub onto the floor.
“Blimey.”
“I hope they’ve got a mop.”
“Well, she did say to thoroughly test it.” Rosemary leaned out of the tub for her towel and dropped it into the middle of the puddle they’d made. “If we ruin the floor, I’ll offer to pay for it.”
“You’re a paragon of responsibility.”
“Give me one of those tiny bottles.”
They sipped whiskey and gin in the slippery foam. The jets worked over the tight muscles in her upper back, and she spread out her arms to give them better access, relaxed and happy.
“Hey, Rosemary?” Kal said.
“Yes?”
“Just so we’re clear, I wanted to say, I’m in this with you for whatever. If you want to write books, I’m game for reading your drafts, or sitting in the audience at your signings, but if you want to climb mountains, you know, I’ll make that work. I’ll help you pack your gear.”
“I don’t—”
“No, let me finish, okay?” He smiled, and Rosemary understood that he was nervous. She smiled back.
“The main thing I figured out today talking to Bill was that I’m going to love you no matter what you do, and I’d rather love you and have you than love you and lose you just because I’m not willing to deal with exactly who you are and support whatever it is you want.”
She understood him. She’d heard the same message in their fumbling conversation across the Fredericks dinner table, but it was lovely to hear it again, to let it sink in and believe it.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No, thank you.”
“The same is true for you, you know. Whatever it is that you find you want to do, however you want to follow your impulse to speak truth to power—even if it means you have to travel, or put yourself in situations that aren’t comfortable for me—I’ll support you. I’ll love you. We’ll find a way to make it work.”
Kal closed the distance across the hot tub and took her in his arms. “Jesus, Rosemary.” The emotion in his voice made tears well in her eyes, and she kissed him, so grateful that they’d managed to get here together. So glad she hadn’t boarded the plane to London and lost him forever.