“Does Heavenly know?” Grace asked, her voice gentle but pointed. “About your first wife. About Tristan?”
“Yeah. Since April. It was a lot for her to process at first. But she knows how much losing them affected me. She’s very supportive and understanding.”
“That tells me everything I need to know about her. If she can handle your past with such compassion, she must be very special.”
“She is.” Seth’s voice was thick with emotion—and guilt. Time to change the subject. “So…are Jack and Connor back at their apartment near campus?”
“I assume so. I threatened to stop paying their tuition if they don’t focus on school and curb their…behavior.” Grace’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “I only have so many ways to influence them these days. I mean, they’re twenty-one. But I still pay their bills, and I can make their lives more difficult if they don’t walk the straight and narrow.”
Seth tested the waters carefully. “But…what if they really care about this girl? What if she cares about them both?”
“Care?” Grace’s voice pitched higher. “That’s not care. That’s perversion. And it doesn’t justify breaking God’s laws, Seth. It’s supposed to be one man, one woman, joined in holy matrimony. If they keep thumbing their noses at that, I’ll have no choice but to disown them.”
The words hit Seth like a physical blow. Disown? His mother—who’d cried for weeks when he’d moved to California, who still sent care packages and called frequently—was willing to cut her youngest sons out of her life?
Seth’s mouth went dry. If his mother couldn’t even entertain the possibility that love might take different forms without threatening to rip apart their family, how the hell was he supposed to find an approach that would save his own relationship with her?
They pulled into the driveway of his childhood home, the familiar two-story colonial looking exactly the same. For a moment, he was thirty-two going on seventeen.
“But hopefully, it won’t come to that,” Grace said, turning off the engine. “Those boys will listen to you. They always have.”
Not anymore. But she didn’t know that. He wasn’t changing his life to please his mother, and he could hardly coerce or browbeat the twins into doing the same.
“Like you pointed out, they aren’t kids anymore. I’m not sure how much they’ll listen to me.”
“Just do your best. That’s all I can ask.”
As they gathered his bag and headed toward the front door, Seth couldn’t shake the feeling that he was walking into a trap of his own making.
He had four days to begin changing his mother’s mind about non-traditional relationships, while hiding the fact that he was living the life she found so abhorrent. Four days to figure out how to bridge the gap between the family he’d grown up in and the future he’d chosen. Four days to figure out how not to lose his mother’s approval, despite the love he shared with Beck and Heavenly.
If he failed, would she disown him, too?
As Grace unlocked the front door, her fingers still trembling with emotion, that worry nearly knocked Seth off his feet. He’d already lost his father and his first family. Could he survive losing the rest?
A breeze blew through the September morning as Seth stood beside his mother in Lower Manhattan, at the edge of South Pool, listening to the names being read aloud in the hushed reverence that always marked this somber anniversary. Years had passed since the fall of the Twin Towers, but the weight of that morning still pressed against his chest like a stone.
Grace dabbed at her eyes with a tissue as the ceremony continued. Around them, families clutched photos and flowers, their grief raw, despite the passage of time. Seth found himself scanning the names etched in bronze around the memorial’s perimeter, recognizing far too many brothers in blue. Heroes who’d run toward the danger when everyone else had run away.
He watched a young woman trace her finger over a name and murmur, “I miss you, Daddy.”
Seth clenched his jaw. Life is too fucking short to waste on fear.
His recent idiocy smacked him in the face. Here he was, surrounded by reminders that this precious life could change in the blink of an eye…while he’d spent too many days terrified of the very future he wanted most.
When the ceremony concluded, a somber hush fell over the crowd at the memorial. He and his mother began walking toward the street, neither speaking. If he remembered some of the fallen officers and firefighters from his childhood, Grace had known many of them personally through his father. That day had been not only an attack on the country, but a deep scar gouged into New York. It still showed in his mother’s withdrawn expression and the trembling of her pale hands.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders in silent comfort and guided her toward the car. Halfway there, a familiar voice called out.
“Seth?”
He turned to find Tony Marconi approaching. His former beat partner looked a bit older now at thirty-one, but he still carried himself with that unmistakable cop swagger from their patrol days.
“Tony. Good to see you, man.” Seth held out his hand.
His former partner shook it. “Likewise.” Then he turned to Grace. “Hi, Mrs. Cooper.”
At Tony’s respectful nod, she smiled. “Nice to see you, Tony. You two catch up. I’ll wait in the car.”
