Page 77 of Don't Tell

I get up and walk out of the cottage.

I start walking, trying to clear my head. Somehow I end up at the main house.

The kitchen light is on. Vivienne is at the stove with the kettle. She has two tea cups set on the counter. I wonder who the second cup is for.

She looks up and does not look surprised to see me.

"Sit."

I sit at the counter.

She pours and slides a cup across to me. She does not pour one for herself yet. She rests both her palms on the marble of the counter and looks at me like I’m a ten year old.

"Mom."

"Drink."

I drink.

She is quiet for a moment.

"Your father was not a bad man."

I don’t answer.

"He was not, Cade. I know what he was to you. I know what he failed at. I’m not going to argue with any of it. But the man I married at twenty-three was not a bad man. He was going through a rough time he could not get out from under, and he let that run his life. There is a difference."

"Mom."

"You are not him. You are not anything like him. You’ve spent twenty years making sure of it." She breathes out. "What I don’t want is for you to spend the next twenty making sure of it so hard that you do the thing he did anyway."

"What did he do?"

"He let a hard time keep him from being happy."

I look at the cup.

"He had the chance to come back, you know."

I look up. "What?"

"After he left, he wrote to me twice. He asked if he could see you. I told him he could. I told him you were ten years old, waiting for him at the door every weekend, and that if he was going to come, he had to stay. He did not write again."

"You never told me."

"You were too young. By the time I thought you might be ready to know, you had taken my name, built the company, anddecided who he was. I didn’t want to give you a complication you had not asked for."

I drop my head.

"He was a coward, Cade. He was a coward and a sad man, and he was your father. None of that is the same thing as the other things. I’m telling you because today is the day you should know it. Not because it changes anything. Because you have been telling yourself a story about who he chose not to be."

I don’t answer.

She does not say anything for a long minute.

"I watched a young woman this afternoon try very hard to compose her face while her boyfriend introduced her as his artist."

"I’m not…"