Farrow grinned, his eyes dancing with glee. “Because the four of you look at her the way I look at my wife, that’s how I know. That’s not something that can be faked.”
Then he was gone, hopping up on top of the log with the sprightliness of someone much younger than he was as he followed his granddaughter out of the forest, leaving me looking like an idiot with my hands out ready to catch him in case he fell.
Chapter Sixteen
United Kingdom Delegate’s Dinner — White House
2 months & 1 week until the election…
“I’m just glad you’re sounding better,” I told Carter as I checked off the final table settings for the delegation dinner that was happening later this evening. I was standing in the middle of the state dining room as people whooshed around me, fulfilling the many tasks that needed to be done before tonight.
It was also the first day that the rehabilitation center that my grandfather had taken Carter to allowed family phone calls.
The first few weeks of someone’s rehab journey was usually spent detoxing and settling into the reality that they were going to be there for a while. Once that happened then they finally let the patient have contact with the outside world.
“And I’m just glad the food here is much better than the last place I was chucked in,” Carter joked, still sounding tired but much more like himself than the last time I’d seen him.
Alan held up his iPad in front of my face, showing me the final menu spread that would be placed on top of each plate for the guests to look at before dinner.
I nodded before turning back to my phone call as people rushed around me to get my outfit and hair ready. “Yeah that’s because Grandpa picked this one. Dad picked the last one and you know he didn’t really care about the food.”
The best way to describe our dad’s food taste was militant. Food was meant to energize—the man ate like clockwork. Unless we forced him out of his routine he would have been happy eating the same three square meals and drinking the same protein shakes every single day. It used to drive our mother, who liked the occasional date night, nuts.
Carter’s chuckle was sad in my ear. “Yeah…”
Silence pooled in between us as we were both lost in the memories of our dad, memories we usually did everything in our power to avoid.
“Hey, Lennie?” Carter finally said, his voice starting to shake. “I’m sorry for what I said back then—in the bathroom I mean.”
I flinched at his words. That was another thing I’d been trying really hard to forget.
All I had been doing was trying to help him up off of the floor and out of the puddle of his own vomit that I’d found him lying in and he’d lashed out at me.
‘No one can be as perfect as you, Lennon, so why bother even trying. I’m so fucking sick of all of this shit and you. I betyou wish I’d just disappear already,’he’d spat before promptly vomiting again all over the front of my top.
I hadn’t even been sure if he remembered saying that to me, but had been secretly hoping over the past few weeks he hadn’t.
“Carter…” I trailed off, not knowing what to say to him.
“No, I need to say it. It’s a part of my recovery, y’know,” he tried to keep his tone light, but his words felt flat to my ears.
Letting out a heavy sigh, I felt someone’s gaze on me.
When I looked up from the floor, I found Zeke’s dark eyes watching me carefully.
‘You okay?’he mouthed from where he stood against the wall, his hands carefully clasped in front of him.
I gave him one imperceptible nod, somehow comforted by just the one look from him as the tension in my shoulders melted away.
“I’m sorry for telling you that I was sick of you. I think I was just tired of being such a burden all of the time.”
“Don’t say that, Car, I don’t think of you as a burden,” I told him vehemently, drawing looks from several other people in the room.
It had always been Carter and me against the world.
We were the only two people alive who really truly understood what it was like to be the children of Athena Holloway and grandchildren of Farrow Holloway.
Growing up in an old family like ours was its own special kind of hell and it reared its ugly head in both of us in different ways.
