The Patron

by Tess Thompson

  “You’d have to ask Brandi.” He let me go but cupped my chin. His glove felt rough against my skin. “All will be well if you go with your heart. That one’s from my dad.”

  I wished that were true. Sometimes things weren’t well.

  “Do you have a picture of your parents?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “Sure.” He reached into his jacket pocket and took out his wallet. “This is a photograph of my parents on their wedding day. They were twenty years old here. Sunny and David were their names.”

  I studied the black-and-white photograph, searching for myself. His mother was almost as tall as David and skinny like me. Her eyes might be similar to mine as well.

  “Do you think you look like her?” Jack asked.

  “A little. The tall and skinny part, anyway.”

  “She often complained about being too thin and feeling awkward and gangly.”

  “That’s how I felt growing up too. During my brief stint as a runway model, I met girls who were just like me. We commiserated about never having had a date in high school. We looked better walking down the runway than wearing an actual prom dress.”

  “You became a swan, no matter how you look at it.”

  I warmed with pleasure at the compliment. “My mom said you noticed just recently that I looked like Sunny?”

  “That’s right. I always thought you looked just like your mom but one day over at Brandi’s you made this certain gesture with your hand and I swear it was exactly like my mother. I pushed it aside as a fanciful notion. I hadn’t even planned on asking Jennifer about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Like I said, I’d dismissed the idea. But as we were sitting there, it just kind of slipped out. I knew the minute I asked that I was right.”

  “I wish she’d told us the truth,” I said.

  “Don’t be too hard on her. Holding a grudge can’t go side by side with love.”

  “Will you be able to forgive her?” I asked.

  He looked over at the statue of Alexander Barnes before answering. “I can and will forgive her, especially considering my part in everything. I hope in time you’ll be able to do the same.”

  “I can’t imagine this anger is going away anytime soon.”

  “I can understand that. But life’s too short for fussing. Another thing my mother used to say. Call your mother. Have dinner with her. She’s hurting.”

  “How can you be so forgiving?”

  “Because I loved her, and yet I hurt her very badly. It’s important we take responsibility for our part in any scenario.”

  “I’m hurting Garth.” Shame flooded through me. “Even though I love him.”

  “Sometimes the ones we love the most are the ones we hurt the worst.”

  I’d go to Garth, I thought. Tell him how I feel. Make this right.

  He patted my leg. “Come along now. We’ll get you back to work.”

  I sighed with pleasure as we rose to our feet. “This wasn’t as weird as I thought it might be.”

  “Agreed.” He tucked my arm under his and we walked back to my shop that way. Just a father and daughter out on an ordinary day for lunch. Life was too short for fussing.

  17

  Garth

  On my patio that evening, Crystal and I snuggled together under several wool blankets. Stars twinkled from their inky sky. A sliver of a moon hung just above the mountains. From somewhere below came the howl of a coyote.

  Crystal shivered. I pulled her closer. “I had lunch with my dad today.” She sucked in a breath that made a whistling sound. “My dad. How weird is that?”

  “And great. Right?”

  “Yes, he’s great. We had a really good talk.”

  “Great.”

  “We talked about a lot of things, including you.”

  I braced myself. “Yeah?”

  “I’ve come to understand something better. Your accident, almost losing you, scared me. You know that.”

  “I do.”

  “But it also woke me up. If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t have been so terrified. I’m ready to embrace my feelings for you. There’s nothing wrong with me getting on with things. I’ve been an idiot.”

  My heart raced. Were her words real or was this a dream? “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I love you. I want to be with you today, tomorrow, and for all the days after that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. I was lying to myself in order to stay detached and therefore safe,” Crystal said. “I don’t want to be that way. My dad said his mother used to tell him that life was too short for fussing.”

  “Fussing?” I laughed. “Like a baby?”

  “I think she meant, making things harder than they have to be or focusing only on the difficult parts of life.”

  “Sometimes life is hard, though. We can’t just wish them away.”

  “I know. But there’s also a point when it’s time to embrace whatever’s next. You’re my next. I’ve been running from you for long enough.” She shifted to look up at me. “I don’t want to run anymore. I’m sorry for how hard I’ve made this.”

  "I do understand. More than you know. My divorce was like a death in a way. I didn’t want to fall in love with you and have you leave me—or what was once love become anger and indifference. From the first night together, I sensed that whatever this was with you was big. Bigger than I wanted. I didn’t feel ready to take this all on.”

  “Me either. Yet, here we are.”

  I stroked her hair. “Here we are. It’s occurred to me that we’re not really in charge of any of this.”

  “True. I remembered something Nan told me once. She said that when I found the right person, I might feel very, very scared. I was to take that as a sign.”

  “A sign of what?”

  “That he was the right one.” She lifted her mouth to kiss me. “And that’s you.”

  I closed my eyes as a wave of emotion overwhelmed me. A phrase echoed through my mind. She loves me. She loves me. She loves me.

  She caressed the side of my face with her thumb. When I opened my eyes, she was there, staring straight into my soul. “What do you think?” Crystal asked. “Are we ready for this big thing between us?”

  “I am. I’ve been ready from that first night.”

  “You saved my life and now we’re forever bonded?” Crystal asked, teasing. “Or am I forever in your debt and must commit to a life serving you?”

  I laughed. “We both know that’s not going to happen.”

  “Depends on what you want.” She trailed a finger down the side of my neck to my collarbone. “I have two skills. Cooking and nightly activities. They’re yours if you want.”

  “Be careful. This cast is only on my leg.”

  She threw her head back in laughter. If I could spend the rest of my life making her laugh, I’d never want for anything else.

  18

  Crystal

  A few days later, I’d just come down from serving Brandi her lunch when Jack knocked at the back door. I waved for him to come in. Since I’d been staying here, I’d become accustomed to Jack coming and going. Today, however, his visit felt different. I was his daughter too.

  “What brings you by?” I asked.

  “I found this in a trunk of my parents’ old things.” Jack carried an old hatbox with him, which he placed on the island. “They’re letters exchanged between Lizzie and her daughter Florence during the 1930s. I thought you girls would enjoy reading them.”

  I thought about all that for a moment. Brandi had shared some of the letters exchanged between Lizzie and her mother. I’d enjoyed them as fiction and a peek into the past. Now that I knew I was related to Lizzie, they had a whole new meaning. “Lizzie belongs to me too.”

  “She sure does. Have you ever wondered where your love of cooking came from?”

  “No, I never did. Nan used to let Brandi and me make cookies and quick breads at her house. I thought that might be
the reason we both fell in love with baking and cooking. We had such fun on those days. Now I can see that we have Lizzie flowing through our blood.”

  “The older I get, the more intrigued I am with the past. Isn’t that funny? When I was young, I thought only of the present and the future. Ambition and doubt and worries—how best could I provide for my family and was I a good enough husband and father. Then, perhaps as a way to better understand my own life, I’ve looked to the past.”

  I pulled the hatbox closer. The color had once been purple but had faded to a dusty lavender. I expected it to smell moldy. Instead, I caught a hint of cinnamon. “I wonder what Lizzie smelled like?” I asked, thinking out loud.

  “Cookies, maybe,” Jack said. “Like Brandi.”

  “I’ve always associated ice cream with Brandi,” I said. “Not just because she’s sweet.”

  “Because of the first day you met?”

  I peered up at him, surprised he remembered. “Yes.” My eyes filled. “If I’d only known who you two really were to me.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that too,” Jack said. “Wondering how I didn’t know.”

  “Right? Doesn’t it seem like we would have sensed a connection?”

  “I was a mess that day. You looked so much like your mother when she was that same age. I was flooded with all these memories of growing up with Jennie. God, I was crazy about her. My whole childhood I’d bragged to everyone that Jennifer Whalen would marry me someday. That day we saw you, I wanted to ask about your mom. I had a hundred questions. However, I knew better than to bring any of it up with your grandmother. She wasn’t too fond of me for obvious reasons.”

  What had she said when I asked if she’d known the boy who’d broken my mother’s heart? Not as well as I thought I did.

  “Nan told me that a boy had broken Mom’s heart. I had no idea it was you.”

  He rested his backside against the sink. “I wish it hadn’t been me.”

  “But then we wouldn’t have Brandi.”

  “Right. It always circles back to that.

  “I thought you might like to read some to Brandi as a way of distracting her.”

  I smiled at him, touched. “She’ll like that.”

  “I love that you girls are interested in the past. Even if you're only humoring me. My ex-wife hated when I talked about my family. It irritated her.”

  “A lot of things irritated her,” I said, not joking.

  “Sadly, true.”

  “Brandi says Malinda’s called a few times but their conversations are stilted and awkward. I thought the baby coming might help break the ice, but it hasn’t. Have you heard from her?”

  He shook his head as he headed toward the coffee maker. “No, not since the divorce was final. It’s better this way. We can’t have civil conversations. Not yet anyway. I wish it didn’t have to be that way for Brandi’s sake. Malinda is who she is.” He paused to pour himself a cup of coffee.

  “Do you think Brandi will ever forgive her?” I asked, thinking of my relationship with my own mother.

  “I hope so. Her attitude might change once the baby comes.” He brought his coffee with him to lean against the sink. “Becoming a mother or father has a way of changing the way you look at your own parents. People become less critical once they experience the terror of holding the fate of a little person in your hands and how easy it is to make mistakes. At least, that’s how it was for me.”

  Knowing I had nothing generous to say about Malinda, I kept my mouth shut. “Have you read any of the letters?”

  “Yes, there’s some good stuff in there. Florence was Lizzie’s daughter. The letters are back and forth between them when Florence was a young woman. She writes about when she first meets her future husband, Robert and of their work later in Castaway.” He hesitated, abandoning his coffee cup by setting it in the sink. “Like you, Lizzie lost a baby. She talks about it some in the letters to her daughter. I found them particularly moving. And I thought…”

  “They might help me?”

  “That’s right.” He looked down at his shoes before gesturing toward the upstairs. "How’s our patient?"

  "She's a little cranky about being in bed yet another day."

  "She never was one for sitting still." He pushed his hands into the pockets of his khakis. “Have you talked to your mother?"

  "Just a text or two," I said.

  "Maybe take her to dinner tonight?" Jack asked. “I’m sure she’s hurting. This has to be a nightmare for her.”

  “What about for us?”

  “We gained something, kiddo. We have the chance to know each other. She might feel like she’s losing you.”

  “Maybe.” No wonder my mother had loved him so much. “You’re a good person, Jack.”

  “Nah. No better than most.” He brushed aside my compliment with a wave of his hand.

  I cleaned up the kitchen while he was upstairs and started the dishwasher. After that was completed, I looked over at the hatbox. Were there secrets in those letters? Ones shared between mother and daughter? None would be as large as the one my mother had kept from me. Jack was right, though. I couldn't let too much time go by without a reconciliation. My mother had always been there for me. Besides Patrick, she’d been the most important person in my life. I needed to find a place within myself that could forgive her. I was grateful that I now knew the truth. I needed to focus on that part.

  And Garth. Just thinking of him made my body tingle with longing.

  I opened the lid of the box. Jack had arranged the letters neatly in piles with a rubber band around them. I picked up one of the groupings and realized they’d been put together by decades on the date stamps. How clever, I thought. Like me, he was a detail type of person. I appreciated that quality. For the ninth or tenth time since I learned the truth, I thought about what a strange pair my mother and Jack must've been.

  I would save the letters for later. I needed to deal with the living right now, not the dead.

  I texted my mother asking if she would like to meet me for dinner that night.

  She wrote back almost instantly that, yes, she would very much like to have dinner.

  We agreed to meet at the lodge at seven. She promised to make a reservation. That in itself was an olive branch, I thought, as I set the phone down. Reservations were not really my mother’s thing. I always made the arrangements. She was in charge of fun once we got to wherever we were going.

  Thinking of life without her made me feel ill. Repairing the damage between us might take work, but we would mend our relationship. There was no other choice. Not for me. Not for her. It had always been Mom and me against the world. I could not let that go even after this kind of betrayal. Family was family. We took each other as we were, flaws and all. My love for my mother had been the through line of my life. Pride and anger and fear kept us from the love we all craved.

  I had to find a way to move past all this and start the next chapter of my life. Garth and I had a future mapped out. I wanted my mother part of it all.

  My mother was already seated in a booth in the lodge’s dining room when I arrived. She stood as I approached. We quickly embraced.

  “I’m so glad you texted,” Mom said. Dark smudges under her eyes told me that my mother had not been sleeping well. A twinge of guilt nudged at me. I’d caused her sadness with my lack of empathy.

  “It’s good to see you,” I said as I slipped into the booth.

  I focused on the abstract painting hanging on the opposite wall, avoiding eye contact. What did we say to each other now? I knew it was up to me to initiate the conversation, but I was empty of thoughts.

  “You’re a good girl to meet me,” Mom said, breaking the silence. “You’ve always been such a good daughter. Better than I deserved.”

  “Don’t say that.” I had always been a good daughter—responsible and steady. We’d made a good pair. She reminded me the only way to soar was to fly. I’d grounded her enough to keep her from crashing. “This doesn�
�t take away all the good.”

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Mom said.

  A server came to take our drink order, saving me from having to come up with a response. I asked for a bottle of chardonnay and a basket of bread. I’d been too nervous to eat earlier and needed something to soak up the alcohol. I’d been vacillating all day about what to say to my mother. I couldn’t seem to stop careering between anger and a longing to have her wrap me in her arms and comfort me as she’d done when Patrick died. This time, however, the person who usually gave me support was the same person who had caused the problem.

  “I’ve missed you,” Mom asked. “Are you all right?”

  My heart softened at the sound of such tenderness in her voice. “I’m still reeling, but I’m getting used to the idea. I’ve spent some time with Jack. It’s been nice.”

  A small muscle in her cheek twitched. “Good for you.” She took a menu and stared at it as a tear traveled down her cheek, making a path through her makeup.

  “Mom, don’t cry.” I reached over and took her menu. “We’ll get through this.”

  Her face crumpled as more tears came. “Do you think you can ever forgive me?" She opened her purse and took out a package of tissues to wipe her cheeks.

  “You’re my mom. It’s always been the two of us, facing all the good and bad together. Knowing the truth doesn’t change any of that. Nothing would ever change how much I love you."

  “I wish there was something I could do to make it up to you,” Mom said. “To Jack too.”

  “He’s surprisingly forgiving. In fact, he blames himself.”

  “He was always that way. Selfless.”

  “He knows he broke your heart.”

  Her gaze flickered toward the wall behind me. “That’s generous of him.”

  “It must have been so very hard to leave here, all alone, knowing he was with someone else.”

  “You have no idea,” Mom said.

  “I lost Patrick, so I know what it’s like to be without the one person you loved more than anyone else. The betrayal, though. I would’ve have been devastated in a whole new way had that been the case.”