Unlike the busy streets of restaurants and shops I jogged down to get here, this one is a quiet neighborhood, the sounds of the city seeming far away. It’s familiar; we were here on his tour.
When I sit next to him, he’s silent, both of us staring at the address opposite us. Framed by two large stone pillars, the gate between is what I assume to be wrought iron, intricately designed with details of swords and spears. People and minutes pass, neither of us saying anything, staring at a gate that I know must be more than a gate to bring Nash to it.
Clueless how to handle this, I fish my phone out of my purse and dial his number. He looks at the phone like he might not answer, but he does, silently putting it to his ear and looking at me.
“I’m sorry,” I say to him and the phone.
His silence is crushing.
“You got the job in DC the day I found out,” I tell him. As badly as it hurts to look at him, I don’t look away. “And I didn’twant you to stay out of obligation then hate me as much as I didn’t want to ruin your dreams because we got swept up in something we didn’t think through.”
He opens his mouth to argue, but I keep going.
“I was trapped between wanting two things: the baby and you. And you were too free to be put in a cage. I damn sure wasn’t going to be the one to try. For better or worse, I made a choice, Nash. For Bennie. For you. For me.”
“Dammit, Rue,” he bites out. “You should have told me. I would have stayed. I—” His voice nearly breaks. “I’ve missed seven years of her life.”
“I know.”
“You know?” he shouts, making me wince and pull the phone from my ear. “Is that supposed to make this better?”
“You think this is what I wanted?” I fight back. “To lie to my kid?”
“Our kid,” he corrects.
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth. “Our kid.”
“And you were just going to let me sign those papers without telling me?”
He reads my silence as a yes and makes an angry growl. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
“Yes.” I swallow, rallying the courage to tell him the rest. “My mom wasn’t going to get the surgery if I didn’t.”
“So you had to be blackmailed?” He’s incredulous. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I wince. Because when he says it like that, probably a lot of things.
“What did you tell her about me?” he demands.
“The truth about everything,” I say quickly. “Your shirts. Your obsession with Ben Franklin—how I came up with her name. Your charm. How much I loved you despite your harmonica.” He fights a smile at this. “Your laugh. Everythingexcept where you’ve been. I told her”—I squeeze my eyes shut—“that you died.”
He mutters a swear then blows a strained breath through clenched teeth. When he pulls the phone from his ear and looks at it, I half expect him to throw it.
“I want to know her,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Really know her.”
I smile a little at his conviction. “Okay.”
He drags his hand down his face. “Your fiancé is a piece of work.”
“Ex-fiancé,” I correct him, both of us ending the call and putting our phones away. “And he’s not usually like that. He’s a good man.” We shouldn’t be together, and he came here for the wrong reasons, but guilt chews me up just the same. “Who can’t hold his whiskey.”
A laugh sticks in his throat, and for the first time since I sat down, I touch him with a bump of my shoulder. “Tell me why we’re sitting here.”
“It was on the tour,” he says flatly. “But now that I know you were hiding our child—” He pins me with a look. “I’ll repeat it. In 1829, this house was a French boarding school for girls run by one Madame Talvande. A young girl named Maria Whaley was sent here from over on Edisto Island by her father as an attempt to end a love affair she’d been swept up in. Her father, a colonel, hated the relationship. The man, George Morris, was older and a northerner.” Nash shakes his head. “Not a good combo. Maria’s father took all kinds of measures to stop what was building between them, but none worked.” He gestures with his chin toward the house. “Thought a boarding school would do the trick and set her straight.”
