He shrugs, swallows thickly before clearing his throat.“It was my idea, to have Ben. I pushed and pushed. And after, I could see Laura wasn’t happy. She wasn’t so happy before, probably, but at first, we had something. I was stupid, young. I thought a kid would make us closer, how we’d been before. Worst thing I ever did, and that’s the truth—trying to force her into a life she didn’t really choose for herself.”
I wonder if he’s told this to Ben, if what I’d said about not getting shuffled around by circumstance and about choosing for myself, had rung some kind of painful, pealing bell for him. He’d been so quiet after that.
“Ben’s the best thing, the best thing of my life, and I don’t regret him, not for one second. But I’m sorry for Laura. I’m sorry that my wanting Ben cost her, and forced her to do something I know she feels bad about. But it was the right thing, for her and for him. She loves him. But she couldn’t be a good mother to him, not that way. She had to choose something else for herself.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes, Henry tinkering, me thinking. I don’t know for sure why he’s telling me this, telling me something I doubt Ben knows himself. The quiet grows almost comfortable again, against all odds, against the fact that I don’t have any real reason to be here, any real tie to Henry anymore.“I don’t think it’s right. I think she should’ve chosen him. Even if she didn’t stay with you, she could’ve—been around. Been a mom to him,” I say.
Henry sets down his tools, turns in his chair and looks at me.“Don’t think he ever let her, not after that day. He never asked her for anything again. Everything she ever gave him—her attention, a gift, her help when he got into trouble—she had to force it on him. Cost him a lot to go to her back then. He’s been—well. He doesn’t like to ask after what he wants, not much since then.”
Aha, I think.This is whyhe’s telling me.
“He doesn’t get off the hook, Henry. For not telling me about what he’d done with Beaumont. He doesn’t get to say—youdon’t get to say that it’s hard for him to open up, and have that be enough.” But even as I say this, I wonder: What would have been enough? What would have been enough for me, in that moment, when Dr. Singh had told me about Beaumont’s offer, when I’d felt small and scared and like Ben was going to take everything good in my life away from me?
“I’m just telling you, Kit. I expect he feels as bad as he can feel now, about how it happened with you. I know that boy same as I know my own self, and he’s crazy about you. But don’t think he’ll come back. I don’t know if he has it in him anymore.”
And that’s the worst of it, what Henry has said. Because hearing it put this way, with this kind of finality, makes me admit to myself that I want him to come back, that I’m waiting for him to come back and try again. That’s what I’ve been doing, tiptoeing around work, avoiding my house, constantly telling Greer and Zoe I’m fine. I’mwaiting. I’m waiting for him to call or to show up here, to talk to me about what went wrong with Beaumont, tosellme on him and on us. For all my talk to Ben about choosing for myself, I’m not choosing anything right now. I’m waiting for more options to present themselves—I’m waiting for him to present himself, again, the right way this time, some way that’s going to convince me to go all in, to not be freaked out by tying myself to someone else, someone who could really have an effect on all my future choices.
But if he doesn’t come back…
Henry slaps his hands on his knees, casual change-of-subject time, and says,“Ready to see some of those tubs?” Like he hasn’t just punched me right in the gut with this story of little boy Ben, trying so hard and failing, to get someone to choose him.
An hour and a half later, I’ve picked out a slipper-style clawfoot tub and Henry’s promised he can switch out the feet, since the ones that are modeled after lion’s paws give me the creeps. I stall because I hope he’ll say something else about Ben, but he doesn’t. When I leave, I don’t go to Zoe or Greer’s. I go home, and wander through the wreckage of the kitchen renovation, getting a good look at that brick wall that’s being exposed behind the place where the stove will go. I wash my face in the downstairs powder room. I go up to my bedroom, but only to bring down a pillow and extra blanket for the couch, which is where I’m going to sleep. Or not sleep, as the case may be, since I lie awake staring at my ceiling for hours.
Until I make a choice.
* * * *
A week later, I’m in Houston.
It’s seven o’clock at night and still ninety-three degrees. August, I’ve heard, is brutal around here. I’d given myself all of today to wander around the city, to follow a few suggestions from a local I’d talked to on the flight, and from the person who served me coffee at the hotel Starbucks this morning. I’d gone to the Museum of Natural Science and spent too much time in the exhibit about minerals. I’d eaten lunch at a Tex-Mex place that had no air conditioning, but amazing food. I’d walked around a park called Discovery Green, studied a map of the city while sitting on one of the park benches, skyscrapers looming behind me. When I’d gone to leave, walking through a shady grove of pine trees, I’d spotted a sculpture, a big bronze-cast heart mounted on slats of wood. From a distance, the heart looked roughed-up, lumpy, but up close, embedded in the heart, were tools—an axe, a hammer, other things I wasn’t quite sure about. It was calledThe House. I’d snapped a picture before heading back to my hotel to change for my meeting with Jasper, which I’d insisted on having in the hotel restaurant. I’d insisted on a lot from him, actually, including complete confidentiality, but he hadn’t balked at any of it.
Jasper tells me many things during our two-hour conversation, but the most important is that the Beaumont corporate offices are where I’m most likely to find Ben. He works late these days, especially when he’s not traveling. In fact, Jasper tells me, I’m lucky to be catching him this week, because the last two, he’d done three trips, all in different time zones. He watches me with a careful, measured suspicion, and at first I think this is because he distrusts my out-of-the-blue interest in talking more about Beaumont. But as we talk, I realize it’s because he distrusts my interest in Ben. When he stands to shake my hand at the end of our conversation, he holds it a beat longer than makes sense for a business meeting, looks at me through deep brown eyes that reveal nothing.“End of the hall, fifty-eighth floor,” he says.“Good luck.” And then he strides away, not looking back once.
So here I am, wandering a long corridor of sleek, frosted glass doors to darkened offices. Every once in a while, the space opens to a large conference room, and midway down there’s a lounge space with low, modern black leather sofas, two impossibly thin, mounted televisions, both off. I imagine they stay mostly on during the day, stock prices trolling along the bottom of the screens. Up ahead I can see a door open, light streaming out, and I pause next to one of the sofas, set my hand on its cold surface, steady myself in these insane, soul-destroying shoes. This entire outfit is borrowed, from Zoe. I think I look ridiculous but also like I completely belong here. Suddenly, I think:This was a stupid idea, this whole gesture. You should have called him. You didn’t have to go through all of this.
But when I close my eyes against the nerves, I see Ben, and this steels me anew. I can’t wait to see him in person. I can’t wait to be near him, finally. I have no idea how this will go, but just that I get toseehim—it counts for something, and it gives me the courage I need to keep walking.
He doesn’t hear me walk up to his open door. He has earbuds in, and his hands are typing furiously on the laptop he has set up on the glass surface of his desk. There’s a blue necktie heaped next to his arm. He’s wearing a white dress shirt, the top button undone. I am heart stoppingly pleased that he has not cut his hair, which curls a little across his brow, and his jaw is stubbled, the way I’m used to seeing it. Behind him is the sky turning purple-orange,some of the city lights starting to twinkle on.
Before I think to do anything—clear my throat, knock on the open door, offer up ahello—he raises his eyes to where I stand, and there’s a brief second when he doesn’t do anything at all. He only stares, his eyes a little unfocused from the screen of his computer. And then just as quickly he stands, jolts from his desk, really, and the motion yanks the laptop up from the desk, the earbuds out of his ears.“Shit,” he says, saving the laptop from a dive off the ledge, untangling the earbud cord from where it’s gotten stuck in his belt loop.
“I’m sorry!” I say, too loud in this quiet office, and holy crap, is this awkward. I grip the handle of Zoe’s briefcase tighter even than I had before, when my knuckles were already white with it.“I’m—I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“What are you wearing?” he asks, his brow furrowed.
“What?” I say, though I’ve heard him perfectly. I just don’t know how to start the conversation from this point.
He waves a hand in my direction, a gesture that encompasses everything from the neck down—my fitted, black blazer, the silky, dove-grey camisole underneath, the knee-length pencil skirt that matches.“A suit?” he says, that brow still slammed down across his eyes.
“Oh. Well, it’s Zoe’s. I know it’s not really my—”
“You look beautiful. I don’t care what you’re wearing. You’re a sight for sore eyes.” It’s so honest, how he says it, but he stays right where he is, behind his desk. He’s tucked his hands in his pockets, his fingers clenching into fists beneath the fabric.
“I met with Jasper today,” I say, rushing it out. I just want those hands out of his pockets. I want them on me.“To hear his pitch.”
I can see the surprise on his face, the confusion. He looks up past my shoulder, maybe looking for Jasper, or someone who can explain this to him, but it’s only me here.“But you said no. Singh called and said no.”
“Right, yes.But I decided I should give it a fairer hearing, from an—an unbiased party. And you know, from a place where I wasn’t so—reactionary. Where I could listen.”
