“Maybe I don’t know anything about love—but I knowdepravityis not caring if Blake’s happy so long as he’s successful. Depravity is letting me drink myself to death rather than admit that you fucked up raising us.” Brayden grinds his teeth, squares his shoulder, looks to Asher then to me. “Love is someone who challenges you to be better, not someone who molds you into only serving them. I don’t know what you’ve been doing all these years, but I can tell you, it’s not love.”
For a moment, neither Brad nor Barb says anything. Finally, Barb turns to me. “Do you like that necklace my son gave you—the one that’s been in my family for generations? Do you like all the other pretty little diamonds he buys you?”
I nod to her tennis bracelet. “I could say the same thing to you, Barb, only that thing on your arm is fake.”
“Yeah,” Asher drawls, “it’s easy to tell what’s real if you know what to look for.”
Barb’s face turns the color of the flowers she wouldn’t let us have at our wedding reception. Brad sputters something that sounds like words—none of them good. “Don’t do this and call yourself a Forsyth.”
“I thought about that. Then I remembered Blake’s also got my name and he’s better family than either of you.” Brayden squares his shoulders, like he’s finally ready for this fight. “Go to hell. And if you can’t do that, at least go to therapy. Either way, get the fuck out of our house.”
The next day,I wake up to about a hundred text messages, everyone I ever talked with in San Diego apparently wanting to get in touch. Half just read some version oftwo husbands???in slightly delighted outrage. Cherri, my favorite ex-stepmother, sent a congratulatory voice note and advice about prenups.
And another note, from my father.Where were you when I needed you?Still, I hit his number. “Hi Sav—” he says, when he picks up.
But I don’t let him get out more than that.
“I’m just going to say this once and then I’m going to hang up and really think about if I ever want to speak to you again.” My words come out in a rush. I take a breath, deliberately slow down. A lesson I got from him: in a negotiation, make the other person listen at your pace.
“You should have told me the business was in trouble,” I say. “But you didn’t. They cut off my health insurance, and you screened my calls. I worked to get into my dream program, andbecause of you, I couldn’t pay for it or get financial aid. I didn’t know how anything works, really. But I figured it out. Some of it was the lessons you taught me growing up, but more of it was what you didn’t show me: that even if I won, that didn’t mean someone else had to lose.
“I should be grateful, in a way. If you hadn’t cut me off like that, I don’t know if I would have learned any of what I have. I’m happy now with Brayden and Asher, and my life in Atlanta. Whatever reason you had for calling, I don’t really care. The fact is, it took me getting proposed to on live television for you to pick up the phone. I’m not mad we were broke. I’m mad youbrokeour relationship when it was convenient for you.”
For a moment, the other line goes so quiet I wonder if the call cut out. “Sav, honey,” he says, “I’m so proud of you.”
Despite our distance—the months apart, the fact that the only person to walk me down the aisle at my wedding was Miss Shirley and Miss Shirley’s vape—my throat goes tight. But I brace myself: a compliment might be a feint, the beginning of a negotiation between a bankrupt businessman and his suddenly rich daughter.
Nothing else comes. Not an angle, not a line. Just that simple statement.
“Goodbye, Dad. Thank you for everything you’ve given me.” And then I hang up.
Chapter Sixty
Brayden
The dayafter it all happens, I get up. Kiss Asher, who’s asleep, hair mussed against the pillow. He murmurs something close toleave me alone, B, then attempts to reel me back in. Savannah’s side of the bed—third of the bed, and we should probably invest in a larger one if we’re going to do this long-term—is empty.
I change into my running gear then go find her. She’s at the kitchen table. No,ourkitchen table inourhouse. The walls are still undecorated. Today, there’s a scatter of sunshine over the paint. Good enough for now. Savannah is in shorts and a tank, hair up messily, Baby sitting on the table beside her as she jots things down in a notebook.
I come up behind Savannah, lean to kiss the soft skin of her neck. Inhale her scent. Roses. Maybe today I’ll arrange for a dozen—or a few dozen—to be delivered here. Funny, how wide the world feels after yesterday. I kiss Sav a few more times.
Then I notice the column of numbers in her notebook. Various amounts labeledLexiandForrest. “What’s this?”
“When I moved out, Lexi lent me some money, and my friend Forrest gave me a place to crash. I’m figuring out how much I owe each of them.”
The coffeemaker beeps that it’s ready. I pour myself a mug, dose it only with milk. I pour Sav a cup and bring her over her mug along with the sugar bowl and a spoon, then sit at the table next to her, gently stroking Baby’s fur. “Why did you need them to lend you money?”
She gives me an odd look. “I don’t have any money that’s not yours.”
I think back to when we first got married. Distantly, I think I set up some kind of debit card with regular transfers into an account, but it’s all pretty hazy. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You were already giving me a place to live and paying my tuition and health insurance.” She studies her coffee cup.
“Of course I was doing those things. You’re my wife.”
“We weren’t really together.”
“Sav, I was with you from the second I saidI do. Hell, before that. I was with you from the second I met you.”
