Bo paused. “You didn’t call an ambulance? You mean you didn’t know how?”
“No, I knew how.” Max made that ugly sound again, bitter and awful. “I still didn’t do it though. I lied to myself that shewould wake up. Told myself that she would get up and bring me a bowl of cereal like always. She didn’t though.”
Bo felt a wave of sorrow for Max, and instinctively her hand reached for his. “I’m so sorry.”
“I remember tucking her in.” His voice went quieter, almost flat. “Like she was sleeping. I pulled the blankets up to her chin, just like she did for me every night. I thought she was just cold. That she’d wake up if she warmed up. I must’ve sat there for hours, just waiting for her to wake up.”
“Oh, Max.”
He shook his head, the movement sharp, nearly embarrassed. “Anyway, that’s why I don’t like it. Sleep, I mean. Since that night, I’ve always been . . . not scared of it. Not exactly. Just wary of it. I have to be bone-deep with exhaustion before I can do it.”
“What happened? Afterwards?” Bo asked gently, and Max made a noise. “Oh, Geoffrey turned up, of course, once our neighbours realized something was amiss. They called the police, who then called him. He was still my mother’s emergency contact, can you believe that? That was the biggest joke of all. Geoffrey wouldn’t marry my mother, wouldn’t leave the wife he hated for her, but he was still down as her emergency contact. He even identified her body at the morgue. Arranged the goddam funeral. Oh, quietly, of course,” Max clarified, his words dark, “he couldn’t have the press getting wind of anything. Couldn’t have anyone find out about his dirty little secret.”
Bo opened her mouth to speak, went to defend Geoffrey, before realizing she couldn’t. Not this time. Max however saw her face, and he exhaled sharply.
“I told you once before, I know he was kind to you. I know you loved him. That wasn’t my experience though. Some of the things he did . . . pretending I wasn’t his son, dumping mein boarding school after boarding school, not even inviting me home for Christmas . . . he wasn’t a good man, Bo. Not always.”
Bo chewed on her lip. “He made some bad decisions, I know that. He told me about some of them.”
“He didn’t tell you about me,” Max stated flatly.
“No,” Bo admitted. “But he told me about—” abruptly, she stopped. Geoffrey might have been dead, but the secrets he told her weren’t, not while she still held them.
Max gave her a look. “What did he tell you about?”
Bo swallowed. “Something he did. Something he wasn’t proud of. Something he spent the rest of his life regretting.”
“What?” Max looked curiously at her. Still, she paused, uncertain of what to say. She could still recall the look in Geoffrey’s eyes when he’d spoken about his past; could still recall the pain in his face as he’d confessed the thing that haunted him most. Was it a betrayal to share it now with his estranged son? Or would it help Max understand more about the man his father had been?
“You know, your loyalty to Geoffrey is admirable,” Max suddenly remarked, looking at her keenly. “I’ll never know just what he did to inspire such absolute trust in you. Oh, aside from leaving you a gift in his will worth millions.” There was a snap to his voice Bo didn’t like, his sharp words a reminder of their enmity of old, and she pushed at him, pulling her legs towards her chest to shift him away. He was too quick for her though, grabbing one of her ankles and holding her in place.
“Settle down,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No. You damn well shouldn’t have.”
“You know Geoffrey is a touchy subject for me,” Max said, and his eyes softened as he looked at her. “But I shouldn’t take that out on you.”
Bo said nothing, still annoyed, and Max stroked her ankle. “I shouldn’t have said it,” he said again. “I don’t want to be like this whenever I hear Geoffrey’s name.”
“If it’s any consolation to you, Geoffrey wasn’t a happy man,” Bo replied, and Max seemed to think about her words, sitting up, still stroking her ankle thoughtfully.
“I think I knew that already. Happy men don’t stay with wives who make them miserable. Happy men don’t stay in careers they don’t want. Happy men don’t latch onto young and vibrant women in their old age to liven their retirements.”
“Vibrant?” Bo nearly scoffed. “I’m not vibrant.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I know I look a certain way, and I understand those looks could be . . . well, mistaken for something like vibrancy.” Bo chewed on her lip again. She’d never admitted to anyone — other than Willa, that was — just how uncomfortable she was in her own skin. How much the blonde hair, long legs and figure of which her mother had been so proud discomfited her. How sometimes she felt like a stranger in her own body. “I know I look like something I’m not,” she added. “I know all this.”
Max inhaled deeply. “I’m not talking about how you look, Bo. That’s nothing to do with what I meant. Your vibrancy . . . it doesn’t come from your hair, or your face, or your breasts — as nice as they are,” he clarified with a smile. “No. Your vibrancy comes from within you, Bo. It comes from your kindness and capacity for thought and consideration for others. It comes from the care you take of your garden and the love you have for your friends and your willingness to look for the best in others. I said that I didn’t understand how Geoffrey was able to inspire loyalty in you, but I get how you were able to inspire loyalty in him. Completely and utterly.”
Bo was floored. No man had ever complimented her so beautifully before. All the other men in her life, the dates, theboyfriends, the erstwhile lovers . . . they’d all fixated on her looks. She’d been told before that she was beautiful. She’d been told she was attractive. She could even recall Oliver, in a fit of jealous anger one day, telling her she was the kind of woman who gave men thoughts they were better off without.
No man before had ever told she was good. No man had ever used so wonderful a word asvibrantto describe her before.
“Max,” she uttered, still stunned, “thank you.”
“You don’t need to thank me for telling the truth,” he replied fiercely. “You don’t need to thank me for honesty.”
