by Louise Bay
I hated to think of Bethany doing a job she didn’t like, especially if she believed her father had taught her a “grin and bear it” mentality. With the amount of time everyone spent at work, it would mean she’d spend most of her life unhappy. I tried to picture myself in my workshop every day. I liked the idea of not having to put on a suit. Not having to wedge myself into an overcrowded tube train. More than that, the idea of getting to spend an entire day on a project was like the sun breaking through thunder clouds. My mind started to race with ideas of what I’d like to work on. I’d seen a Victorian bedframe online I’d love to have a go at. It would involve some cane work, but it was something I’d been meaning to try. And I’d always hoped that one day, I’d actually make something—a chair or a table—from scratch. “I wouldn’t know how to start.” A new venture sounded completely daunting, but at the same time there was a feeling of freedom that began to unlock the pressure around my heart.
“I’ll tell you where to start,” Joshua said. “Tell Mike to fuck off and find another lawyer to harass.”
“Then resign from that firm,” Dexter said.
“And pick up your axe and do something nice with wood,” Tristan said.
“My axe?” They made it sound so simple. And in theory it was. In theory, there was nothing stopping me from handing my notice in.
“Worst-case scenario,” Andrew said. “You can always go back to law.”
Penelope had been right—I wasn’t my father. I wouldn’t make entertaining a series of nameless women my life’s work. If I left the law, I’d read my daughter a bedtime story more often. I’d spend more time in my workshop. I’d make pieces I’d only let myself dream of. I could travel.
Why had it taken my estranged wife to bring these thoughts to the surface? Or maybe it hadn’t been her at all. Autumn had been the one to insist I give myself a second chance at a future I’d dreamed of. Perhaps I’d just had time to examine those aspirations more closely and found that what I wanted had shifted.
“Great. Now we’ve figured out what Gabriel’s going to do for the rest of his life, can we get back to planning my stag party?” Dexter asked.
“Yes, back to our cauldron,” Joshua said. “What about Barcelona?”
Forty-One
Autumn
It was raining, and I had no appetite for bad weather. Instead of being out sightseeing, making the most out of my last few hours in Croatia, I’d packed and repacked my case at least nine times. I was due to fly to Paris this afternoon, but I didn’t want to go. How ridiculous was that? I was due to go to Paris, France, and I didn’t want to go.
I was homesick. Not for Oregon. But for London. For my sister. For Gabriel. And Bethany.
“You called at the perfect time,” Hollie said as she answered my videocall. “I’m deciding on napkins. To tell you the truth, Dexter decided on napkins and chose something ten times more expensive than we need, so I’m rechoosing napkins. Don’t say anything if you speak to him.”
“I promise. What are the options?” She held up two white napkins. “I prefer the plain ones.”
“Great. Me too. The coordinator was pushing the scalloped edges, but I prefer the plain white.” She collapsed onto the couch I recognized from her office. “So, haven’t spoken to you since you left Greece. How’s Zagreb?”
“Pretty. I wish you were here,” I said, a little too weary to keep my smile from faltering.
“I wish I was there too. I could have come out. You want me to see if I can get flights?”
“Hollie, you’re getting married in two weeks. You can’t come out now. And anyway, I’ll be back in London in six days.”
“I’ve missed you so much,” Hollie said.
“Same.” I didn’t have the energy to launch into how great the trip was, which was what I normally did when she told me she missed me. I didn’t want her to worry.
“You don’t sound like yourself. What’s the matter?”
I wasn’t sure whether or not Hollie was expecting me to have gotten over Gabriel by now, but we hadn’t mentioned him since I’d left London. “I miss you. I miss London.”
“Does that include Gabriel?” she asked.
I drew in a breath and prepared myself to disappoint my sister. “I’m so happy that I’ve had the chance to come to Europe, see all these amazing places. And I’ll never regret leaving. You might not like this, but as much as I wish you’d been here with me, I wish Gabriel and Bethany had been here too.”
She stared into the phone, her eyebrows pulled together, but didn’t say a word.
“It’s been weeks and I miss him more every day. Not less.” I thought back to the dinners Gabriel and I had been to at Hollie and Dexter’s place, and wondered how often he’d been there without me in the past month. It had taken me every ounce of willpower not to ask after him during every phone call. But just like I was out of energy, my self-control was at an all-time low.
Hollie’s frown might have been disapproving but it also might have been sympathetic. Did she know something I didn’t?
“Have you heard from him?” I asked.
“I was about to ask you the same question. I’ve been avoiding him,” she said.
“I told him I didn’t want to have any contact while I was away. I wanted him and Penelope to have a good shot at giving their marriage another chance.” A thousand times a day I’d wondered if that had been the right decision. He might have moved on already. He might have thought I’d given up on him. “You haven’t seen him at all?”
“Just once when I picked up Dexter. Wedding prep is a pain in my butt but it’s a great excuse not to have people around for dinner.”
“What about Dexter? Has he said anything?”
“About Gabriel? He’s banned from telling me anything.”
I understood why she didn’t want to hear how Gabriel was—she was a loyal secret keeper, and while it was one of the things I loved most about her, I just wish her lips were a little looser when it came to Gabriel.
“You think he’s back with Penelope?” I asked.
When Hollie didn’t respond I assumed the screen had frozen. I held my phone toward my hotel room door. Damn WiFi.
“You know what?” she asked finally.
My heart pounded like I was waiting to hear my fate. She knew something, I knew she did, just like I knew she didn’t want to tell me what it was. “What?” I braced myself to hear the truth. Better to find out here than watch him turn up to Dexter and Hollie’s wedding with Penelope on his arm.
“I think I know you pretty well.” That didn’t sound good. “I’ve seen you go through your fair share of boyfriends.”
We were veering off course. I wanted to know about Gabriel and Penelope. “Where are we going with this?”
“I’m saying that you’ve had lots of other boyfriends and I bet there’s been a few you’d have difficulty recalling a surname for.”
“Enough with the slut shaming, Hollie. You’re supposed to be on my side.” Was she saying I wasn’t good enough for Gabriel?
“Like, you’d just move on, right? You’d leave them in your dust.”
“Jesus, Hollie, you’re making me sound like a monster.”
“Sorry,” she said, grinning into the camera. “I’m just saying that you’ve been through Europe on your own and you haven’t met anyone. No crazy affairs, no Italian boyfriend, no flavor-of-the-week. You’re still pining for Gabriel.”
“Are you recapping all this for any particular reason or are you just testing the WiFi?”
“You’re in love with him.”
Hearing it from my sister was like being presented with evidence of an open and shut case. Of course I was in love with him—that wasn’t new information. But knowing Hollie saw it too proved it wasn’t going to be something I just got over.
“I know,” I said, standing up from the bed and staring out over the city. I was in love with a man who might well be starting a new life with his wife. A man who used to love me and who I hadn
’t seen for weeks. A man who was hundreds of miles away, just where I’d left him. “What’s your point, Hollie?”
“My point is that you’ve had the opportunity to spread your wings and you still love him, so you need to get the heck back here and fight for him.”
I spun to face my suitcase. “You think?” Excitement fizzled in my chest before panic pushed past. Did she know something and wasn’t telling me? “Who am I fighting? Is he back with Penelope?”
“Honestly I don’t know. I told Dexter I didn’t want to hear about any of it because it didn’t seem fair. But if you love him, you need to tell him.”
“I’m due to fly to Paris this afternoon. If he’s decided to go back to Penelope, I’d rather stay there and lick my wounds.”
“Fly to Paris,” Hollie said. “If things are going to work out, a few days won’t make much difference. Go distract yourself with the city and make a plan—I know you’re good at those. If you weren’t, Dexter and I wouldn’t be about to get married. Then get your butt back here and fight for him. I’m sure there’s a part of you that’s scared to care about a guy but—”
“I’m not scared of loving him. I just don’t want to get in the middle of him and Penelope if he can make a life with her. He’s not good at giving people second chances.”
“Sometimes they don’t deserve them.”
“That’s not for me to decide. That’s up to Gabriel.”
“Right. It’s up to Gabriel to decide if he wants you or not. Come back. Tell him you love him and then he can decide what he wants.”
Was that what I should have done all along? I’d been so sure that me staying around would have muddied the waters for him and kept him from giving Penelope a second chance, but maybe she didn’t deserve him? And although I wanted Gabriel to be happy, I wanted him to be happy with me. Because I knew he was the only man that I would ever want.
Forty-Two
Gabriel
There had been nothing wrong with the evening. The babysitter had turned up on time. Penelope and I had arrived at the restaurant within a few minutes of each other. We’d been seated at a nice table by the window that overlooked the park. The waiter was friendly when he took our order and the starter had been delicious. There had been nothing wrong with the evening, but it wasn’t right either.
“How’s work?” Penelope asked.
So far, our conversation had revolved entirely around Bethany. It was a neutral, common ground that didn’t create any roadblocks or conflicts. And it didn’t give anything of me away either, not that I’d been consciously holding myself back. I was trying. I’d promised Autumn I would spend time with Penelope and get to know her again, and I was fulfilling my promise. Which was why we were at dinner. And why I felt so uncomfortable, I wanted to crawl out of my skin.
“Same old, same old,” I replied. She didn’t need to know that I was planning to resign. “What about you? Are you still writing?”
She shrugged. “I mean, in theory. I just don’t enjoy it like I used to.” Penelope had been a staff writer at a magazine when we split. She’d said she’d been doing freelance ever since.
“You’ve got something else in mind?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said, moving the food around her plate. “I guess it depends on the next . . . however long.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. I obviously want to be around for Bethany. And you . . .” She said it as if it was a sentence she was expecting me to finish off.
“What does that mean?” I took a sip of my wine.
“Just that things are going well. We’ve been out to dinner a few times and Bethany and I are bonding. If things keep going along this route then hopefully . . . you know, it will get even better.”
I finished off my lamb and sat back, watching her. Things were friendly between us but if I were watching our interaction, I wouldn’t guess that we were married. Or dating. It wasn’t flirtatious on either side. Penelope seemed on edge, as if she were going for a job interview, and I felt as if I were going through the motions at a business dinner.
“Where do you see yourself in five years?” I asked. I couldn’t stop the images flooding my brain as soon as I’d asked the question. I was with Bethany. And Autumn. And we were sitting out in the garden on chairs that I’d made us.
She shrugged. “I guess, hopefully back with you and Bethany. As a family.”
I didn’t react, not because I didn’t see that picture at all, but because we’d been talking about her career. “What do you see yourself doing professionally?”
“I really want to make it up to you and Bethany. I hope you let me do that.”
“But that’s not a job, Penelope.”
“But being a full-time mother is,” she replied. “And a wife. That’s what I want to focus on. If you’ll let me.”
When I was a kid, there was a river we all played in during the summer months. It looked like a mud pit, so murky and brown that you couldn’t see the bottom. One winter, long after I’d outgrown summer afternoons swimming in the water, I passed by when I was training for my Duke of Edinburgh Gold. At first, I hadn’t recognized the place. The surface of the water was like a mirror, reflecting the trees and hedges on the bank. I stopped and looked more closely to find that the water was crystal clear—I could see right to the bottom. The bed was covered in smooth stone pebbles punctured by bits of weed and bigger rocks. It was an entirely different world that I’d never noticed beneath my feet. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been looking before—it was just a different time of year, which showed me something new.
I took a deep breath as I stared into Penelope’s eyes. The water was crystal clear.
It was as if I’d never seen my wife until now. I’d never understood her drive or ambitions or what she wanted in life. When we were married, she just seemed to be excited by what I wanted—a life with her. A family with her. And despite her explanations, I hadn’t really understood why she’d left. But now I saw clearly.
Penelope was desperately searching for something.
She hadn’t found it in writing. And she hadn’t found it in me. Or Bethany, or our life together. And that wasn’t going to change the second time around. She needed to figure out her place in the world.
“I don’t think that’s going to work,” I replied.
Terror slid across her face, but I continued as she started to protest.
“I’m not saying you can’t be Bethany’s mother, but I don’t think that’s going to be enough for you, Penelope. And you haven’t been my wife for a very long time, despite what the law says. There’s a lot of water under the bridge.”
“But I’m still the same woman you married and you’re still the man I married. We can try. I’m sorry I left and I’ll work to regain your trust—”
“Lack of trust isn’t the reason we’re not going to work out,” I said, my mind completely clear. “We’re not compatible. I want someone who wants me. Not the idea of me. Not a husband. Not the father of her child. But me: Gabriel Chase. I’m not looking for someone who needs me to complete them.”
I’d told Autumn I’d try with Penelope and I had. I could genuinely say that I’d spent time with her, wanting to understand why things hadn’t worked between us. I’d looked carefully at that idealized image of family that I’d longed for. But I’d realized what I wanted wasn’t simply the opposite of the life I’d had as a child. My dream had crystalized—had been for a while now but most especially in the past month.
I wasn’t the same man I had been when I’d conjured up that ideal. I was a father now. I was older. I didn’t want some fantasy. I wanted to be happy.
“I’m not asking you to leave our lives.” I continued. “I’m not saying you can’t be a mother to Bethany. But we can’t be married anymore. And I think one day, you’ll see that too. I don’t think I’m what you’re looking for.”
“But I loved our life together.”
“Are you sure?” I asked her, genuinely curi
ous. “Some of it worked, Penelope. But if it wasn’t enough for you to stay then, is it enough now?”
Minutes ticked by as she gazed out the window.
“I want it to be,” she said finally.
I reached across the table for her hand. “I know. But I’m not sure wishing something is enough makes it enough. If that was the case, you would never have left.”
“I did love you.” Her eyes pleaded with me to believe her.
Love seemed like such a meaningless word when it came to our marriage. I wasn’t sure it had been about love for either of us. “I thought you were my forever but looking back . . . I should have known. Looking back, you were always searching for something. And you didn’t find it in me. Or in Bethany.”
A churning in my gut stirred memories of that cupboard where I used to hide. The shouting. The crying. I knew it then. I understood all those years ago that my father should have left. My mother should have kicked him out. We weren’t enough for him. I didn’t think Penelope had cheated on me. Maybe she had—it didn’t matter. I was breaking this cycle. I wasn’t going to take her back when I knew nothing was solved and so nothing would change. Maybe she’d stay, but if she did, she wouldn’t be happy. We weren’t enough. She had to figure out what she needed to make herself whole.
“I think I’m broken,” she said. “You are the best of men. And Bethany’s adorable. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Maybe it was me. Penelope had left and now Autumn was finding her fulfilment in Europe. I knew Autumn had left because she thought it was best for me. But she was young. Perhaps down the road, she’d realize I wouldn’t be enough for her either. Something told me that it wasn’t the same. What Autumn and I had was deeper somehow than what Penelope and I had. We hadn’t talked about a future together, but I saw it as clear as I saw the plate in front of me. I knew we’d be together, knew it in my bones. “I don’t think it’s you. And I don’t think it’s me. You need to find you, rather than look for someone else to give you what you need.”