He took a deep breath, his chest aching. “Lydia said she’s in love with me. But it feels like . . . like it’s not fair to her. Because she doesn’t deserve some broken stray who has to learn how to be a husband or father. . . .”
“You listen to me,” she said, moving her hand across the table, her expression never wavering, and not anywhere near as shocked as he had expected it to be. “Lydia has always knownher own mind. I learned that I couldn’t argue with her about the things she’s passionate about the day she brought home a nest of baby squirrels and just about scared twenty years off my life with them. She is going to love the way she’s going to love. And as fiercely as she’s led to. You were denied a lot of love, and it seems to me that if you are lucky enough to have Lydia’s, you should grab hold of it with both hands.”
“But . . . don’t you think I should maybe stay away from her? Don’t you think I’m not really good enough for her?”
“I brought you into this house when you were a sixteen-year-old boy. And I had a young daughter who looked at you as if the sun, the moon and the stars were created by your very hand. I’ve always put a lot of trust in you.”
He had never thought about it that way. Mostly because he hadn’t realized that Lydia . . .
But even if she hadn’t had a crush on him, he supposed it said a lot that her parents had been willing to let him move in with a teenage daughter in the house.
“You have proven to be a wonderful, honorable man. I couldn’t ask for a better man for my daughter. If you love her.”
He did love her. That was such an easy thing for him to identify. He did. How could anyone not love Lydia?
“But I don’t know how to do all this.”
“Well, you can provide for her financially,” she pointed out.
“Yeah. But . . . I didn’t grow up seeing a marriage function any kind of way. Not till I moved in here.”
He half expected her to say that he should simply copy the Clays. But she didn’t. “You imagine all the things you would’ve loved. The kind of love you would’ve wanted filling your house. And then you fill your house with it. Because it’s your choice. Because your father is dead. He doesn’t have power over you anymore. He doesn’t get to decide what you deserve to have. That’s the bottom line. You get to decide. If you love Lydia asmuch as she loves you, then live with her. Give her credit for being a strong, grown woman who can tell you what she wants. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”
“But I worry that if it’s not, our relationship will only deteriorate. Because of my parents . . .”
“You’re not your parents. Look at the life you’ve built. You’re not your parents.”
Lydia had already said that to him once. And so he was really left with only one reason why he couldn’t be with her. Probably the truest thing.
“I’m just scared. Scared to want too much. And lose too much.”
“I’ll bet that Lydia would tell you the same thing that I’m about to. Because she has loved a whole host of animals, some of whom really were lost causes, though she’ll never admit that. And I’ve given a lot of love in my life. To my own children, to my husband. To a teenage boy whose parents wasted themselves, wasted their lives by not loving. And I’ll tell you, I have never been sorry for risking my heart. Not even one time.”
Love filled him now. Certainty. A sense of stability. He had never really felt as if he belonged, but his loneliness had nothing to do with the Clays. It was him. Being too afraid to risk his heart.
But he could see what she was saying. He was keeping himself back. Allowing himself only as much happiness as his father had decided he ought to have.
He had gone to college. He had made his fortune.
Why shouldn’t he have it all? Why shouldn’t he have love?
“Thank you,” he said. He stood up. “I have to go to Lydia. I . . . I love you.”
Nancy went over to him and pulled him into a hug. “I love you too. It’s been good to have you as a surrogate son. But I think I’d like to have you as a son-in-law even better.”
Yes. That was what he wanted.
He had spent the better part of his life not caring what anyone thought.
But he cared desperately about this.
He was finally going to see it through.
* * *
Lydia heard a knock at her door, and she wondered if it was Matthew, come to commiserate.
It was very him to do that.
