Mr. Smithfield

by Louise Bay

  Whatever we’d had hadn’t been enough. It hadn’t stopped our family from falling apart.

  “I know I’m asking a lot. And I understand it’s difficult for you to trust me after what I did. But I’m patient.”

  It would have been far easier if Penelope had tried to excuse what she’d done, if she’d demanded that I let her back into Bethany’s life or if she’d lacked remorse. But the way she’d explained things, it painted the situation in an entirely different light. The anger and bitterness I had toward Penelope seeped away until I was left with nothing but sadness. For her. For Bethany. And for me.

  I nodded. “Thank you for telling me this. I’m sorry . . . sorry for not noticing at the time. For not coming after you. And for hating you for all these years.”

  She smiled at my confession. “I hated me too,” she said, tears forming in her eyes. “And some of that feeling still lingers.”

  I drew in a breath and pushed back my shoulders. Penelope wasn’t a monster, and I wasn’t about to keep her in a cage, protecting Bethany from someone who cared for her. There was no going back. We could only move forward. “We should tell Bethany that you’re her mother.”

  A guttural sob broke from Penelope’s throat and she nodded. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  It was the last thing I’d expected to come out of this lunch. I’d expected to be going through the motions so I could tell myself I’d done what Autumn had asked. Autumn couldn’t have known Penelope’s reasons for leaving and staying away, but she knew enough to understand that I should hear Penelope out. She was the wisest woman I knew.

  “You should come to dinner later in the week,” I said. “We can tell her together.”

  “You’re a good man, Gabriel.”

  “I’m going to ask you for something in return.”

  “Anything,” she asked, her eyes brightening.

  “Don’t take her from me, Penelope. I can’t give her up.” My jaw tightened and my fists clenched like I was ready to fight anyone who would even think about taking my daughter from me.

  “Never,” she replied, shaking her head. “I promise.”

  I reached across the table and put my hand over hers and my chest loosened at the softness of her familiar skin. We had to find a way forward. For Bethany and for ourselves. We had to move on from the hatred and anger, the shame and guilt. Contrary to everything I’d taught myself to believe, we all deserved a second chance.

  Thirty-Nine

  Autumn

  As I looked up at the bulging, undulating steps, it struck me. “It’s like Barcelona is the younger, wayward sister of the grown-up Madrid.”

  “Madrid is Prada and Barcelona is Lacroix,” Jackson said as we made our way up to the steps.

  “La what now?” I asked. Every other sentence Jackson spoke needed translation. There was no way we had grown up in the same country. It felt like we inhabited different planets most of the time.

  “Christian Lacroix,” he said as if I might be the stupidest person to ever walk the earth. “They must have Lacroix in Oregon.”

  “In Oregon they might, but I’m certain Christian never entered the gates of the Sunshine Trailer Park.”

  He cackled and then spun three hundred and sixty degrees. “I mean, it’s pretty. I’m just not sure it’s very me. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the drama, because you know I do. But I’ll take the baroque glory of the Spanish steps over this any day.”

  I groaned. “No Rome references,” I complained. “Not today.”

  I didn’t have to see Jackson’s face to know he was rolling his eyes. “Listen, I’m up before noon so we can spend an entire day in this place. I can’t promise I can go the whole day without mentioning Rome. Anyway, it’s where you first fell in love. It shouldn’t make you grimace. It should make you smile.”

  I linked my arm into Jackson’s. “No offense. I just wish I was spending the day with Gabriel today. He loves this park.”

  “No offence, but I’ve seen a picture of that man. I wish I was spending the day with him, too.” Jackson was also in Spain nursing heartbreak. Hiding or running or distracting himself. We were in the same boat and had been each other’s companions in misery for the last week.

  I laughed. “We’re both each other’s consolation prizes.”

  “You never know. He might take you here for your honeymoon.”

  “That hopeless romanticism is what will get you into trouble next time,” I said to him. “Gabriel won’t be the man I go on honeymoon with. I honestly wonder if I even want to get married.”

  “And they say the gays are dramatic.”

  “I mean it. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t have done for Gabriel. If he’d wanted to get married, I would have. For him. I just can’t imagine feeling that way about anyone else.”

  “Give it time, sweet girl.”

  Time wasn’t going to do it. Each day grew worse. It just created space where I replayed our conversations over and over in my head. It made me crazy wondering if I’d done the right thing by leaving. Should I have stayed and fought? Why didn’t I tell him I loved him? My heart grew heavier and heavier with aching for him. And Bethany.

  I missed them.

  “You’re getting maudlin,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes. And it’s three hours before it’s noon and acceptable to drink. Even in Europe.”

  “Should I send him a picture? We talked about this place.” If he and Bethany were here, we could have brought a picnic and a Frisbee and raced up the steps. Gabriel would have put Bethany on his shoulders so she could see out onto the city. She would love it here.

  “I know, honey. But don’t do anything you’re going to regret.” He glanced around. “There,” he said, pointing at an ice cream stand in the distance.

  “I can’t eat ice cream at this time of the morning.”

  “It’s not an ice cream stall. It’s a souvenir stand. Let’s buy a postcard. You can write it with what you’d want to say to him and keep it until you’ve had time to think about whether you should send it.”

  “Are you this sensible when you break up with someone?” I asked. I didn’t want to send a postcard. Or write one I knew I wouldn’t send. Getting in contact with Gabriel wasn’t the answer. He needed time to see if his family could be pieced back together. And I needed to give him that time.

  “Nope. I’d be texting eleven times an hour and drinking in the shower in the mornings.”

  I didn’t want to day drink. I wanted to make the most of the summer. Seeing Europe like this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and was the only kind of silver lining of an otherwise clouded sky. I needed to stay positive and make the best of things. “A postcard seems like a good option.” Even if I never sent it, there was something deep inside me that told me he’d feel what I wrote. He’d know I was thinking about him. He’d understand that I loved him.

  Forty

  Gabriel

  It felt like we were about to begin a séance. “I hate this place,” I said to Dexter, trying not to shudder as I took a seat at the round table of the private room where we often ended up if it was Dexter’s turn to choose the venue for our regular evenings out.

  He shot me a look. “It’s one of the best private members clubs in Europe.”

  “Did you bring your cauldron?” Joshua asked.

  “No,” I replied. “But I brought some eye of newt.”

  “I think it’s the red velvet curtains,” Tristan said. “Or that low ceiling with the star cut into it. It’s part witch’s lair, part nineteenth-century Parisian brothel.”

  “I have no desire for a spell or a prostitute, so like I said, I hate this place.” The lack of windows, the wooden paneling. The heavy velvet everywhere. It was claustrophobic and depressing.

  “Well, we’re planning my stag night, so I don’t care if you like it here,” Dexter said.

  “Vegas!” Tristan exclaimed.

  “Speaking of twenty-first-century brothels,” Andrew chipped in.

 
; “We’re not going to Vegas,” Dexter said. “Apart from it being a complete cliché, we all vowed never to go again after last time. Wherever we go, if you get arrested again, you’re staying in prison, Joshua.”

  “That was a shit show,” Joshua said. “Vegas is a terrible idea. Tallinn?”

  A collective groan echoed in our velvet cave. “Way too predictable,” Tristan said.

  “What about Harry Potter world?” Joshua suggested. “We could rent the entire place out for the night. No one could get into trouble. It’s original.”

  “Great idea . . . if this was my thirteenth birthday party,” Dexter said.

  I couldn’t hold back a laugh. “What about Peppa Pig world?” I asked. Arguably, that could mean an overnight stay at my place.

  “Or Legoland?” Andrew said.

  “Okay, okay,” Joshua said. “Message received. At least I’m coming up with ideas, even if they are all shit. Climb down from the cheap seats, get in the arena, and make some suggestions, Gabriel.”

  Why couldn’t we just stay in London?

  “Rome? Great food, great wine. Beautiful women,” Joshua suggested. “All that passion. God, I love Italian women.”

  “This isn’t about you getting laid,” I snapped. There was no way I was going to Rome. “I’m vetoing Rome.”

  “Have you heard from her?” Tristan asked.

  I shook my head. I’d not asked Dexter where she was or what she was doing. And I’d only seen Hollie once since Autumn had left. I’d come close to asking after her, but I’d held myself back. There was no point. She’d been clear.

  “And how are things going with Penelope?” Joshua asked.

  “Good, actually.”

  Dexter’s eyebrows shot up. He filled the expectant silence around the table by topping up my wineglass.

  “We had lunch and talked things through a couple of weeks back. We’ve told Bethany she’s her mother and she comes over to the house a few times a week.”

  “Well, that sounds mighty civilized,” Dexter said. “And you seem okay about it.”

  “It is and I am. It’s good for Bethany. Like Penelope said, she walked out, and it can be for three years or a lifetime. She’d prefer it to be three and . . .” I’d thought about it. I’d do anything for my daughter, and I wasn’t going to be the man who denied her a mother. “And so would I. It’s what’s best for Bethany.”

  “So, she’s back for good?” Joshua asked.

  “Yes, I think she is. And if she walks out again . . . Well, I’ll pick Bethany up and put her back together.” I didn’t think Penelope would leave again. She’d grown up. We both had. And she wouldn’t want to miss out on Bethany any more than she already had done.

  “What about the two of you?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s still the same woman I married but . . .” She wasn’t Autumn. And when Autumn came back, I wanted to prove to her that I’d done everything I could to try with Penelope, even if that’s not what I wanted. Autumn should have no doubt that I wanted her above all others.

  “Too much water under the bridge?”

  “I’m not sure I’m the same man she married.” My phone buzzed, interrupting my thoughts. I pulled it out of my pocket to find Mike’s number flashing at me and I groaned before ignoring the call.

  “Wait, did you just ignore a work call?” asked Tristan.

  I shrugged. I was sick of Mike. Ever since Penelope and I had lunch and she’d been surprised that I was still lawyering, it had gotten me thinking. “I’ve been considering that I might not like my job.”

  “This is hardly breaking news,” Joshua said. “What would be a surprise is if you said you were giving it up.”

  “Actually, I wanted you lot to talk me out of resigning.” Since Primitivo’s, I’d mulled over the idea of leaving the law. Penelope was right that, in theory, I didn’t have to work. The family trust meant that my father hadn’t worked a day in his life, and I wouldn’t have to either. I’d been a lawyer a long time, dealing with shitty clients like Mike and whoever came before him or would come after him. At long last, it occurred to me that I didn’t have to do something I hated to be a role model.

  “Excuse me, did I hear you correctly?” Dexter asked.

  “I’m not saying I’m about to resign from the partnership. I’m just thinking about it.” The more I thought about it, the more appealing it seemed. “But obviously it’s a terrible idea and I need to hear it. I wouldn’t even know what else I could do. I don’t want to sit around doing nothing and I don’t want to do something I’m going to enjoy even less.”

  “You don’t have to work, do you?” Tristan asked.

  “No, but I want to. It’s important that I’m a good role model for Bethany. And anyway, what would I do all day?”

  “You could do charity work,” Joshua suggested. “Set up a foundation. Raise money.”

  Didn’t thousands of rich men do that? It always seemed as much of an ego trip as a charitable endeavor. I’d rather just donate to someone else’s foundation.

  “Set up your own business,” Andrew suggested, which was typical for him because he seemed to have a new business every time I saw him.

  “Doing what?” I asked.

  Silence stretched around the table. That was the problem with lawyers. No one could see them doing anything but being lawyers, including the lawyers themselves.

  “You could go into politics,” Dexter said. “You’ve got high moral standards and great decision-making skills.”

  “I think that disqualifies me,” I said. “And anyway, I can’t think of anything worse.”

  “You could sell tables,” Tristan said. “Like the one you made for your kitchen.”

  Warmth gathered in my belly as I remembered Autumn describing how I gave furniture a new lease on life. I drummed my fingers on the table. “I didn’t make it,” I said.

  “But you . . . polished it up or something, didn’t you?” Tristan asked.

  Or something. It had taken me six months of evenings to get that table into a useable state. “I do that for fun,” I said. “To unwind.”

  “Right,” Andrew said. “So make it into your job and you’ll never feel like you’re at work. But don’t do it unless you feel it in your heart. In your gut.”

  “You’re saying that you feel it in your heart every time you want to start a new business?” I asked, ready for him to say of course not.

  “Absolutely,” he replied. Andrew was a rich man. His family were well off, but Andrew was rich. And he’d done it himself, jumping from idea to idea, building successful business after successful business. So, although I wanted to dismiss his romantic idea that I needed some kind of visceral connection to a business, he’d already proved he did it the right way. “The question is, do you love working with secondhand furniture?”

  “I love having sex with women. I’m not going to turn that into a business,” Tristan said.

  Tristan was a dick at times, but I saw his point.

  “Never say never,” Andrew replied. “You might need those gigolo stripes at some point in this economy.”

  Everyone around the table chuckled. Dexter opened his mouth to say something, and Tristan raised his hand to stop him.

  “Spare me the obvious gags, Dexter. I know, I’ll be bankrupt by the end of the week. Etcetera, etcetera.”

  “You know what, Tristan? I will spare you. What I was actually going to say to Gabriel was that he should do whatever makes him happy.” Dexter turned to me. “Tune everything out. Ignore what you think you should do for Bethany. Ignore your reaction to your father’s poor parenting and what you think people think about you. If it was entirely up to you, how would you spend your time?”

  “In my workshop,” I replied, without missing a beat. “But it’s fun. Doesn’t mean I’m good at it. And I know I’m a good lawyer.”

  “You’d be good at anything you set your mind to. It’s who you are,” Tristan said.

  I playfully punched him on the a
rm and glanced around when I didn’t hear the good-natured put-down coming from one of my brothers. Instead, they were all nodding.

  “And no one’s the best at anything straight off the bat,” Joshua said. “Practice and you’ll get better. That’s just a fact.”

  They made it sound so simple. But I thought about it—Dexter loved his business. Loved jewelry. He always said it ran through his veins. There was nothing that lit a fire in Beck like redeveloping real estate. In fact, they were all like that. Tristan tried to pretend he wasn’t, but he was a passionate geek. What exactly that he geeked out about I wasn’t sure—something to do with technology. But they were lucky—they’d managed to find the holy grail where their passions and their careers aligned. Most people weren’t so fortunate. I’d been vaguely considering resigning and maybe taking a couple of non-exec directorships of companies a bit like the older partners did when they retired. But these guys were telling me to rip up the rule book. “What? So I just resign and make the way I blow off steam my job?”

  “Why not?” Joshua said.

  “I’m a good lawyer. I’ve worked really hard for years and—”

  “You might be a lawyer, but I know you understand your way around the business world enough to understand the concept of sunk costs,” Joshua said. “If you’re done, get out now. Don’t give any more of your time to a career you don’t enjoy.”

  “Right,” Andrew said. “Not every business I invest in works. When it doesn’t, I get out. And sometimes it works for a while and then I need to move on because I’m bored, or the business needs to move on because it needs someone else. What worked yesterday doesn’t necessarily work today. Law served you for a while. If it doesn’t any longer, move on.”

  Move on and give myself a chance at a second career? It seemed so out of character. But something was pulling me toward the idea.

  “If you had to put food on the table for Bethany, it might be different,” Dexter said. “But you’re in a position that most people can only dream about. Don’t waste it. You should role model that for Bethany—making the most out of life.”