“Listen to me,” I say. “I pity him. Because his daughter is one of the most extraordinary people I’ve ever met. And he blew it. And he knows it. That’s why he’s like that. Because he failed you, and he’s ashamed.”
She takes a deep breath.
“Yeah? Well, he’s where I get it from.”
“Get what?”
“Being a selfish remote asshole with a cruel streak.”
I’m taken aback. “Molly, you are none of those things.”
“Yes, I am,” she says flatly. “I’m built just like him. I’m cold and cynical and I hurt people.”
Before this moment, I have never truly understood the meaning of the word aghast.
“You are absolutely not,” I say, wanting to sear it into her brain. “I’m not even entertaining—”
“No? Sarcastic writer throws away great guy, ghosts him for fifteen years? Sound like anyone we know? Remember when you said I’m a bolter? Well bingo. Learned it from the best.”
“Molly, I was awful to say that. No one is only their past. No one is just one thing.”
“Yes, I’m sure I’m all the colors of the goddamn rainbow, but I get my shitty parts from my dad. Relationships freak me out, and I check out and run away and hurt people who care about me. And I know how that feels, because he fucking did it to me, okay? He still fucking does. And if you are wondering how you fit into this, as a nice person with feelings who loves me, so am I.”
Her pupils are dilated, and I can tell she’s catastrophizing. Condemning herself to a character trope that I’m partly responsible for casting her in.
She’s writing the end of our story before it even begins.
“Molly?” I say. “We all make mistakes, and we all have baggage. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you human.”
Tears well in her eyes. “Thank you for saying that. But I’m not sure this trip is a good idea. I’m not going to be good for you.”
I shake my head. “No. Sorry, kid. You are exactly what’s good for me.”
“I don’t want to treat you like that. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m so afraid of myself.” She’s not crying, but her whole body is clenched, like she’s using every muscle she possesses to hold it together. “I don’t want to lose you again.”
“Baby,” I say, squeezing her with my entire life force, “I won’t fucking let you.”
And I know, when she goes limp and starts to cry into my neck, that she’s willing to try to believe me.
CHAPTER 30 Molly
I’m so glad Seth didn’t let me flee at the airport. Because if I hadn’t gotten on that plane, how would I have ever known that he murmurs words in his sleep?
They aren’t in English. He speaks a made-up language in his dreams.
He wakes up with the sun at 6:00 a.m. and goes out to the deck to meditate. When he’s done, he takes a morning kayak, or goes for a run around the lake. He comes home dewy with exertion and takes a shower. And then he returns to bed and kisses me awake.
He won’t let me out of bed until he’s made me come at least two times. It isn’t hard. My body is in a permanently heightened state around him. I want, and want, and want.
He makes me breakfast every day. Eggs scrambled with juicy tomatoes and fresh basil, topped with feta. Yogurt with homemade granola—a fragrant mix of cinnamon and pine nuts and oats and ancient grains—served with a dollop of blueberry jam. His grandmother’s drop biscuits with cheesy stone-ground grits. Raspberry-studded pancakes saturated with melted better and doused in maple syrup he heats up on the stove.
He never lets me help him. Other meals we prepare together, but breakfast—he makes me that alone.
While he cooks, I putter around, trying to read him from his possessions like they’re tea leaves. His house is spare and airy, an A-frame cottage with big glass windows that look out onto the lake. The furniture is more rustic than I expected—a leather Chesterfield couch that’s been allowed to age. Rewired vintage lamps. Hand-woven rugs. A farmhouse table he keeps piled with candlesticks and teak bowls of fruit. Every item in the house, from his vintage board games to his cookbooks to his yoga mat, has a specific home. He never leaves anything out of place.
Occasionally, Seth has to carve out time to deal with work. At first, I brace myself to hear him talk about divorce and alimony—trigger words. But once I hear him counseling clients with patience and compassion—delivering hard truths about the dissolution of their marriages or good news about negotiations over custody of their children—I realize I’ve been wrong about his job. I still don’t love it, but it requires empathy and kindness and insight into human nature. It suits his better self.
He’s also funny and collegial with his team as he discusses cases and assigns responsibilities and makes decisions. I hear his calls with lawyers on the other side—unfailingly upbeat and polite even when he rejects their demands and shreds apart their arguments. I marvel at his competence. I understand how he can afford a lake house.
He still loves music. When he’s not on calls or videoconferences he always has it on. He wasn’t lying about his predilection for Cat Stevens, which I find endearing. He’s given me a new perspective on the discography of Elvis; the man had bangers. Despite Seth’s best efforts, I still hate The Rolling Stones. We both love Etta James. He thinks it’s funny to play NSYNC when we get in bed, and I have to steal his phone to turn it off.
The first night, I tried to listen to lullabies in my earbuds to lull myself to sleep. He gently plucked them from my ears and put my playlist on the speakers. Every night, we fall asleep to them together. Sometimes he croons them in my ear.
In the afternoons it’s hot and humid and we go swimming in the lake. Afterward we lie on towels and read books we bought at the secondhand store in town. He picked out a pile of sci-fi paperbacks—the same kind he loved in high school—and tears through them one by one. He reads expressively, smiling at the good parts, furrowing his brow when things get tense. I pretend to read a dog-eared collection of Alice Munro stories, but mostly I peek at Seth and ponder my good fortune.
I try not to think about my father, or work, or Los Angeles—the ticking clock we’re both aware of. The fact that this is temporary.
We have five days, I tell myself. Three more days. Still one last night.
We come home damp and sun-sated, have lazy sex, and take a nap.
Seth loves shopping. He loves to take me to the natural grocery store to buy hand-ground peanut butter and nutty bread. He knows the vendors at the farmers market, and proudly introduces me to them: “My girlfriend, Molly.” He’s friendly with the girls who own the local wine shop, and they point him toward bottles of ruby-tinted pinot noirs and skin-fermented orange wines that remind me of the sun.
At night, Seth grills lake-caught fish and midwestern steak while I make us herby salads and summer corn. We open wine and eat on the deck under the July sunset. When darkness finally falls, the sky’s so clear you can see the Milky Way.
Seth talks about our future. We should try long-distance for six months, he says, and take stock. FaceTime every day. See each other in person at least once a month.
He brainstorms places we could meet—places neither of us have ever been, where we can make new memories together. Santa Fe. Yosemite. Orcas Island to see whales.
