“Have you ever liked me?” He didn’t mean to say it out loud. Or maybe he did. Maybe it was time.
“’Scuse me?”
“You heard.”
Emmett put his tools down and sat for a moment contemplating the question, head bent, eyes obscured by his hat.
Brodie couldn’t hear anything but the thumping of his heart. He felt like a child. Like Zoey. He imagined them in a similar situation—her huge brown eyes staring plaintively back at him desperate for something he had no idea if he could give.
His dad looked up, eyes narrowed so thin, so disdainful, that Brodie could barely see them. “My job as a parent wasn’t to be your friend, Brodie, it was to make you a man.”
Brodie felt his taut muscles quiver in shame at the coolness of his dad’s words.
“To teach you the value of hard work, responsibility and respect. So you could go out in the world and make good decisions. Find purpose. Marry well. Start a family of your own.” He seemed to leave a deliberate pause so they could both recall Brodie’s disastrous marriage to Celeste. He saw his parents, having only met the bride once, at the lavish wedding, sitting among crowds of celebrities, out of place and uncomfortable. Then their faces when he welcomed them into the sprawling mansion he’d bought, complete with a Japanese water garden filled with koi carp and a butterfly house.
His dad’s ensuing silence suggested that he had failed on all accounts to instill such values in his son.
Brodie couldn’t understand how he was somehow being shamed for his year-long shambolic marriage—a mistake he made in his early twenties—when he was standing on a ladder asking why his dad had always looked at him like dirt. “This isn’t about marriage or the band. This is about before that!” he said, trying but knowing the words would fall on stubbornly deaf ears. “This was when I was a kid. Did you ever think it wasn’t a one-size-fits-all? Did you ever look at me and think,what I’m doing isn’t working?”
“Of course I did!” Emmett snapped back, ferocious like a crocodile.
See you later, alligator.
You have a kid.
Brodie feared for a moment he might lose his balance on the ladder, his mind spun, dizzy. He looked down at the tiles for a moment to catch his breath, then he glanced at his dad and said, “So why didn’t you do something different?”
But Emmett didn’t answer. His head was bent again, back to the task of fixing the roof.
Brodie almost flew down the ladder he was in such a hurry to get away from his father’s cold snub. Over in the driveway, he could see his car glinting in the sunshine.
His mom came out of The Silver Pantry and said, “Are you coming to have a look around? I’ve opened some elderflower cordial and—” She paused, taking in the expression on Brodie’s face. “What happened?”
Brodie shook his head, pretended it was all fine. “Nothing.”
His mom glanced up to where Emmett was banging on the roof. Brodie didn’t.
Instead, he forced a smile and, putting his hand on his mom’s back, said, “Love an elderflower cordial! Come on, give me the tour.”
ChapterTwenty-Two
Brodie did his best to sound enthusiastic as his mom showed him hand-tied brooms, artisanal olive oil and shea butter soaps pressed with rosebuds. He drank a couple of glasses of cordial and leaned on the glossy wooden countertop, marveling at the work that had gone into the place. But when the time came to leave, he was in his car and out the gates before anyone could stop him.
It was raining again as he drove home. The clouds low and gray in the sky. He wondered if it was too late to call Caleb and reinstate himself on the sailing vacation.
His phone rang as he was thinking about it and Maeve’s name flashed up on the screen. Somehow just the sight of it made up for the last couple of hours. Filled him with a fresh sense of, if not happiness, definitely interest. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” he quipped.
She was all business. “I’ve been called into a meeting. Carole is going to collect Zoey from school but I wondered if, erm—” She hesitated as if she’d suddenly thought through what she was going to say. “You’re probably busy but?—”
“I’m not busy.” He cruised onto Main Street.
“Okay. I, erm… I wondered if you wanted to take over when they got home. You know, look after Zoey. Only if you want to. She’s fine with Carole.”
“Carole who makes her wash her face with a flannel?”
Maeve laughed.
He felt a tingle up his spine.
