“Bastards,” we both say at the same time.
Arthur grabs a beer from the bar fridge and sits down on the couch. I pick the same spot on the loveseat that I chose when we watched episode one here in this very room. The theme song starts up, and when we get to the bit where they show lots of clips of Will without his shirt on, I lean over and pick up a copy of Parenting magazine off the coffee table and start flipping through it casually. “What’s happening with you these days?”
“Same old, same old. Running a kingdom, blah blah blah,” Arthur says. Muting the commercial, he adds, “I got a strange call today from a man named Dwight Anderson.”
I freeze in place, staring at an ad for diaper rash cream, then force my voice to sound bored. “Will’s agent? Whatever did he want?”
“Oh, are you sure you even want to hear this? I mean, since you don’t care and all…”
“Well, I have no personal interest in it, but if one of Will’s people is bothering you, I’ll put a stop to it.”
“That’s all right, I didn’t mind, really. Interesting fellow with quite a sad tale of a devastated young man camped on his couch, drinking a disgusting-sounding concoction called ‘boozy smoothies’ every night until he passes out.”
I swallow hard, then say, “Well, I’m sure it’s only temporary. He’ll move on soon.”
“He told me what Will did to save our family.”
“Don’t sound too impressed,” I say, glancing up at the television, only to see Will’s perfect face and get shot in the heart like that dragon under the Virgin Mary’s feet.I’m the dragon, aren’t I?“He didn’t do anything that won’t help his own career immensely.”
“Arabella, he did the right thing. He stepped up when you needed him to. And as much as I hate to admit it, he may have saved our family from irreparable harm—harm thatyouwould’ve been responsible for, by the way.”
“I didn’t come here to be lectured.”
“I know that. You came to pretend everything’s fine and try to fool me into thinking you’ve never been happier.”
I open my mouth to object, but Arthur holds up his hand. “Don’t even bother. Unfortunately for you, you’re far too much like me for your own good. It appears as though you suffer from the family affliction of an abundance of pride mixed with an inability to admit when you’re wrong.”
“I certainly do not. That is such a man thing to say—assuming you know my mind better than I do.”
“It most certainly is not,” Arthur says. “I’m merely returning the favour that you did for me when Tessa and I broke up and I was too pigheaded to apologize.”
Dexter wanders over to me and sticks his snout in my lap, knocking the magazine out of my hands. I reward him for his pushy behavior with some scratches under his whiskery chin.
“It’s not the same,” I say. “When you two broke up, it was because Tessa didn’t believe she could ever fit into our world and you weren’t exactly making her feel welcome.Icalled it off with Will because the thing that made us so right for each other turned out to be a lie. I mistakenly thought he believed me to be strong and capable, but the truth is, he never did. Or, if he did at one point, he stopped believing it. Either way, the result’s the same.”
On the screen, the clip of some bonobos hiding from the rain in a tree plays, bringing me right back to that moment when he handed the camera over to me for the first time and told me to narrate. I remember how I froze up at first, and he told me to pretend I was talking to my gran, describing what I was seeing, and how that simple instruction freed me of my fear of messing it up.
“It’s hard being a man in the new world,” Arthur says, having a sip of beer.
“Oh boo-hoo,” I say. “I feel so sorry for you.”
“I’m serious. We have an innate need to protect the ones we love, and that’s hard to shut off. And if you can’t manage to turn it off, you wind up sending a message you don’t intend. I suspect that that was the case with Will.”
“Oh, so you’re suddenly a big fan of his?”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but I would say I’m immensely grateful for what he did for this family, and I understand why he did it.”
“Maybe you should date him then.”
“Ha ha,” he says. “But truthfully, Arabella, his heart was in the right place, and what he did has definitely won me over—which is not an easy feat.”
“And he lost me in the process,” I say. “Also difficult to do.”
I stare up at the screen, watching as we mug for the camera in our lean-to, my heart squeezing at those happy, carefree faces. How was that me? “At this point, it doesn’t matter if he was worth it or not. I’ve pushed him away, and it’s too late to go back.”
“Yup, I suppose that’s true,” he says with a sigh. “Nothing you can do now. It’s not like you could call, text, or email to ask him to meet you somewhere to talk.”
“Not doing it,” I say.
