“No. He’s my uncle,” Chap clarifies.
“Yes. He’s my son,” Porter corrects him, and Chap grins wide.
“Unc’ raised me from a baby,” Chap offers, to clear up my bewilderment.
“Rose’s son?” I ask them both.
Porter nods his head slowly. Off the football field, Porter always did everything slow and with exacting intention. Except disappear. That he did in haste.
“Callie, please sit down,” Porter insists. Chap picks my purse up off the floor and hangs it over the back of the empty chair as further encouragement to do as Porter has suggested.
I look at Chap, who has emitted a feeling of comfort and familiarity since the moment I almost ran him over in the crosswalk. All these months past, I could never pinpoint why. Taking him in anew, I clearly see it. The square jaw and the inescapable charm of his dancing eyes. The way he put his hand on the small of my back to help push me along on a run when I grew tired and, in that single gesture, I understood that he was telling me that hegot me, that he wasn’t going to leave me behind. It all felt very familiar for a reason.
Porter.
His jaw has softened with age, as has his chest, but Porter still stands solid in his being, content in his own company, the mountain of a man I loved with a thoroughness that suffused the most intense years of my life, and the greatest emotional pain I had endured. When Thomas abandoned our family with his harsh words, it was hard, but down deep in the dark and empty times of those first few months, I knew, even if the path was unclear, that I had made it through heartbreak before and I would again. WhenPorter disappeared without a trace, my heart felt like a raw open wound that would never heal. Every day that followed was a monumental act of survival.
When I married, I wanted Thomas with me, but I didn’t need him to be. I understood want and need to be two different actions. When Porter disappeared on our graduation day, my devastation was rooted in need. At twenty-two, I needed Porter Beaumont to breathe as much as I needed oxygen. His disappearance knocked the wind out of me for the next two years as I stumbled through my graduate program at Columbia and my first year as a grunt working for CNN. At that time, I was living in the apartment with Quinn and Charles, and the absence of our fourth was life-altering and agonizing for all of us, but for none more than me. When I wasn’t studying or working, I was excavating memories from Princeton for clues that would explain Porter’s disappearance. What I did wrong. What I could have done differently. If I’d scared Porter off with the pressures of our future planning. If all along I had been far more in love with him than he with me. Watching Quinn and Charles seamlessly and devotedly move out of our college years and into the adult world side by side, a unit of love and trust and commitment, only intensified the investigation of my mind. What had I missed, and what had been missing, between Porter and me?
I swivel my head back and forth between a younger and older version of nearly the same man and burst into tears, shocking all three of us and, I suspect, the entire restaurant. Lightning fast, Chap grabs the napkin from my place setting and hands it to me. The scene of a woman crying apparently terrifies him. With true concern in his eyes but taking no action, Porter lets me be, familiar that my emotions need to clear the way for any more words to pass between us. With a couple of long inhales, I gather all the sensations coursing through my body enough to manage sitting down in the chair pulled out for me so that the surrounding diners can return to their meals.
Porter steps back into his space and sits down as well.
Chap squeezes my shoulders, giving them a strong knead, willing me to relax into this evening. I believe his assured grip is telling me that this is exactly where the three of us are meant to be. I’m not so convinced.
“Itismy birthday, and I still do gotta eat,” Chap announces to cut the tension at the table. He also still hasn’t let go of me, making sure I don’t cut and run. “You think I can order myself a prime rib to go, Unc’?”
“As long as the key word in that sentence isgo, then yes, get yourself something to eat,” Porter instructs Chap without breaking eye contact with me.
“Good, because I already did while I was waiting on Callie up front.” Chap finally releases my shoulders and claps his hands together, congratulating himself on his scheming, his procured birthday delicacy, and most likely, on all fronts of this evening. “Catch you two later.” And with that, Chap is off and it’s just me, Porter, and three lost decades.
“Can I interest you in a drink this evening?” Our waiter cheerily steps in, breaking the strain between Porter and me. This woman is not skilled in reading the intensity that is encompassing our table.
“A gimlet, please,” I order without hesitation. The right side of Porter’s mouth turns up in recognition. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” I admit, as expressionless as I can muster.
“Nothing for me right now, thank you,” Porter adds.
“Leaving me to drink alone, I see.” The “leaving” dig is intentional.
With no Chap and a retreating server, the heavy atmosphere at our table returns. For several seconds we look at one another as if we are in a playground staring contest. Finally, I open my mouth to speak, but then close it. Porter tips his chin, urging me to go ahead. There are a million directions I want to take this conversation. The source of answers to the questions I tortured myself with post Porter’s disappearance is available less than two feet away. Long-sealed wounds are seconds from being reopened. Porter’s responses to all are this evening’s special when I was hoping it would be wild-caught Alaskan salmon.
Finally, I open my mouth again and determinedly ask the question Quinn and I have needed the answer to for Alice’s entire life: “Why didn’t you come to Charles’s funeral?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Present
“Did you even know he died?”
“I did know,” Porter answers matter-of-factly, like I had just told him the sky is blue. But then he bites down hard on his lower lip. He always did that when he suspected we were entering into sensitive territory, a place he rarely wanted to go.
“How could you have known? No one knew where to find you, how to contact you. You were supposed to be at Princeton, but you weren’t.” My index finger is tingling. I look down and see that I have wound my napkin around it so tight it’s turning white. Physical pain is easier to endure than its emotional equivalent.
“Charles’s sister reached out to Coach Mercer to invite him to New York for the memorial service. Coach called me. We were in touch.”
“So you fell off the face of the earth when it came to me, Charles, and Quinn, but you kept in touch with your college football coach?” I ask, shocked that my estimation of my place in Porter’s life was even less than I imagined.
“No. Charles and I stayed connected,” Porter states, keeping it short and to the facts.
