Besides, it’s neither here nor there.
Water under the bridge—all of it.
A strange blip on the never-ending timeline that is my life.
I unlock my classroom, flip the light on, and hang my jacket on the hook behind the closet door—same routine, only it feels different, like I’ve stepped into a parallel universe where everything’s a bit askew.
The sky outside has lightened since I got here, the sunrise painting the sky in shades of creamy oranges and purples with a section of pale blue the color of Bennett’s eyes.
They’re saying the snow’s going to melt over the next couple of days, which will make for several slushy, muddy recesses, but I don’t mind. We’re that much closer to spring, and with spring comes rain.
I used to find it depressing until Trevor said he loved the way it washed everything clean and left things a shade greener than they were before.
I haven’t looked at the rain the same way since.
Trevor was good that way—seeing the bright side in the darkest moments.
I mark an ‘x’ through yesterday’s date on my calendar. The class Valentine’s Day party is coming up, which always makes me think of the first Valentine’s Day I spent with Trevor. We were freshmen at Indiana State, broke as a joke. We cooked a three-dollar frozen pizza and watched P.S. I Love You from a friend’s borrowed Netflix account. It was the first time since Linda’s diagnosis that I spent a couple hours free from the burdens of life. When I wasn’t working part-time at the campus copy shop and taking sixteen hours’ worth of credits per week, I was driving back and forth to Linda’s treatments and tests and appointments.
Trevor went to each and every one.
He never left my side.
Never complained.
He’d bring his laptop and his homework and he’d simply … be there.
Sometimes I think half of love is just showing up.
A cleared throat by the doorway pulls me out of my melancholic reverie.
Standing in the doorway, Honor by his side, is Bennett.
Fifty-Two
Bennett
* * *
“Honor, hi. Bennett, you realize class doesn’t start for another forty-five minutes …” She rises from behind her desk, tugging on the hem of her pink cardigan.
Honor skips past us, hangs her jacket and bag in her cubby, and makes herself at home in the reading corner.
“Was hoping I’d catch you.” I take my time approaching her. “Did you get my email?”
Her gaze narrows. “Email? No. I didn’t realize we were back to that.”
“We weren’t. But you weren’t taking my calls or texting me, and I wasn’t going to come to your place like a psychotic ex-boyfriend.” I sniff a chuckle, trying to keep this light. “I’d really love a chance to explain everything—in painstaking detail if you wish.”
“Not here. Not now.”
“Obviously.”
“I need to get my room prepped for today, so if we could—”
“Eulalia is picking Honor up today. She said she could stay as late as I need,” I say. “Why don’t I pick you up around four? There’s something I want to show you, and we can talk on the way.”
There’s less tension in her shoulders than there’s been the last couple of times I’ve seen her, and she isn’t crossing her arms, trembling, or avoiding my gaze.
It’s a good start.
Perhaps she needed some time to calm down and think this through.
That or she’s exhausted every emotional nerve and is immune to the way my presence makes her feel.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?” I want to make sure I’m hearing this correctly …
“Okay.”
Fifty-Three
Astaire
* * *
“Where are we going?” I fasten my seatbelt in the front passenger seat of Bennett’s SUV Monday after work.
He’s driving.
I’ve never seen him drive.
The onyx leather beneath me is soft and warm and flitters of snowflakes land on the hood, melting on impact.
I’m prepared to hear him out.
I’m not prepared for what comes after that.
“You’ll see in about twenty minutes.” He pulls out of my apartment’s guest parking lot and heads toward the southwest quadrant of town.
Classical music plays softly. I dial down the passenger heat and unbutton my jacket.
Clearing my throat, I say, “I read your email …”
He glances at me from the corner of his eye. “And?”
“It was … convincing.”
“Just convincing?”
“You have a way with words, Bennett. You can be persuasive when you need to be.” The houses we pass grow bigger by the block. I don’t know that I’ve been to this part of Worthington Heights, but I’ve heard about it. “I guess I’d like to understand the dynamic between you and Errol better. I don’t understand why you couldn’t have just told him the truth? Or why you had to discuss me at all …”
“My brother and I have a complicated history, one rooted in jealousy and competition from a young age—mostly due to my father always pushing us to out-best one another. I was always the stronger one, the naturally athletic and agile one. He was always better at anything requiring attention to detail … drawing, sculpting, building computers, anything to do with his hands. Academically we were neck and neck until we got older and he became less focused on his studies and more focused on his extracurriculars …” Bennett flicks on his left turn signal and checks his rearview. “Anyway, when it came to choosing majors and colleges, my father pushed us both to attend Harvard and study business. It was expected that we were going to take over the corporation when we were older. My brother refused. He wanted to study art. My father didn’t like that, so he began shoveling all of his attention and affection—if you can even call it that—in my direction and more or less pretending my brother didn’t exist. After that, it was war. Anything my father gave me, any girl I was seeing, anything he remotely believed meant anything to me—he’d destroy it anyway he could.”
“Okay, he was a juvenile and petulant young adult. That was a lifetime ago. I don’t know what this has to do with me.”
“Five years ago, our father died. Massive stroke. Came out of nowhere. At the reading of the will, we discovered that he left half of his estate to our mother—and the other half to me. Errol got nothing.” Bennett crawls to a stop outside a set of iron gates, and then he rolls down his window, punching in a six-digit code. The gates part and he pulls in, curving around a circle drive and coming to a complete stop in front of a massive limestone estate with deep-pitched roofing and intricate cast-iron crests. Double doors, glossy and black, with stainless steel lion’s head knockers, adorn the center of it all. A black marble fountain rests lifeless and winterized in the center of the drive.
Everything about this presentation is as cold as it is beautiful.
None of it feels like home.
“This is where I grew up,” he says. “Seventeen thousand square feet and eight acres of pure unadulterated hell.” Bennett takes another moment. “This is where I learned what family was. What family wasn’t. At least by Schoenbach standards. This is where my mother brought Larissa home for the first time and quickly realized she’d bitten off more than she could chew.”