We’d talked more this weekend than in the last twenty years, maybe longer. I felt a fool for not knowing him before, but Max had said he’d done the same. Dad had protected our mother, not wanting us to think badly of her and letting us think badly of him instead. Then he’d hidden in his world of work because she was gone and he couldn’t fix it. And he didn’t get us.
I understood.
I didn’t think what he’d done, leaving us with nannies and to our own devices was right, but I understood. No one was perfect.
Fuck knew I was anything but.
“Did you blame me for her dying?” The words fell out like hailstones in a storm.
“What?” He looked genuinely shocked.
“She was depressed after she had me. I know it wasn’t my fault – you can thank that therapist for that – but did you think it was?”
“Callum, I know I wasn’t the greatest father, but I wasn’t stupid enough to blame you. I blamed myself and I blamed her.” He pulled out a handkerchief, his favourite object to fiddle with when he was nervous. “I didn’t know how to be with you. She’d always done the baby thing. I’d always worked. Therein was the issue.”
I nodded, unsure of what else to say. We could rake through the past, uncovered the headstones of the things that had died from the moss that had been used to hide them, but where would that lead us. Forward? No.
“I didn’t know who I was because I never thought of me as being your son.”
“What about Marie? I wouldn’t say this to Max or Jackson or Claire but she became your mum.”
“She did. They know that.”
He gave a nod. “Do we need to talk more?”
“No. I think I just need some time. I don’t mean time to be away; just to let things settle. Work things out. Figure what there is to work out.”
“Figure who you are.”
“Kind of. I think I already know.”
“What is it you know?”
“Thatto live would be an awfully big adventure.”
I felt him watch me as I stood up and walked away, knowing he’d recognise the last line from the play script of Peter Pan.
Heading back to the house wasn’t something I wanted to do. Being inside four walls could be claustrophobic and right now I needed air. I walked down to the river where we played as kids, getting mucky and wet, swinging off ropes into the water and swimming in the water, making dens and playing hide and seek. Later, this had been one of the places we’d taken girlfriends, or spied on Jackson and Max when they’d come here with girls.
In years to come, it would be where my nephews and nieces would spend summers, maybe my own children, if I put down roots.
I thought of Wren, her messages, the picture of her and Seph eating take-out in my living room, both looking relaxed and happy. She’d turned me down because she couldn’t guarantee she would be able to hold me together when I needed to break apart, but was that about me or her.
I kicked off my shoes and rolled up my jeans, wandering into the river. The stones were hard under my feet, the water cold. The swell and ebb the same as what I remembered it, but I wasn’t recalling those days any more as a kid, the summers spent running wild.
My thoughts were about memories more recent, days old, weeks old. Wren with her hair mussed by the wind, the desert behind her. In Zimbabwe, beneath the stars, by a campfire where we toasted marshmallows. In Marrakesh where we’d shared a bed just four nights ago, me inside her as we both broke apart and then put ourselves back together, except I’d given a piece of me to her then, tried to hand over the organ she’d thrown back at me.
It had never been mine since then. The heart I had was branded with her name; the one person I’d been myself with, because I knew who I was when I was with her.
I was hers.
I just wasn’t ready yet to tell her.
* * *
“Evening,brother. How do you fancy a few drinks in Borough tonight?” Seph dropped his arse in the seat next to me, adding significant weight to the structure.
I hated to think what this sofa had seen while I was away, because as great a person as Seph was, he was still a manwhore when he felt the need.
