Page 99 of Just for Tonight

I don’t know how I’m going to stay away forever when this estate is settled.

I always make the smart choice, but the smart choice isn’t very appealing right now.

Because of Mackenzie.

It’s worse when I’m back in the bedroom that was mine many moons ago. It is a shrine to the past, a room that hasn’t changed since it was home to my adolescent dreams and desires. The bed is too small. The sheets that I got from the linen closet are nowhere near the thread count to which I’ve become accustomed. The lights from the greenhouse shine through the curtains even when they’re closed, and here I am, back in this room, my thoughts spinning with memories of Mackenzie Rhodes wearing nothing but those black heels.

Close to twenty years and just about nothing in my life has changed. Mackenzie wasn’t the star of my fantasies when I occupied this room, but I was fantasizing about women even then. Now I can only wonder how I overlooked her.

Then I wonder how different my life might be now if I hadn’t.

The path not taken. Huh. Not the usual direction of my thoughts, but I might as well indulge it tonight. I won’t be sleeping anytime soon.

What if I hadn’t left Empire? Where would I be now? Right beside Mike in those greenhouses, the ones right across the parking lot outside the door. Working for Mike, probably, because he has the graduate degrees. I smile because that would never work. I would be miserable. I would make Mike miserable. I like to be in charge a little too much.

What if I had proposed to Chelsea? Another abandoned path. By now we’d have kids and debt and annual vacations and I’d probably be working just as hard, trying to fund the various dreams of those under my care. I have a hard time believing I’d be any happier than I am on my own. The sex wasn’t that good.

And yet, my life is not – as they say – a bowl of cherries. I work hard, I don’t play enough, I save my money with my father’s diligence – except I don’t have a Candace to spend it all. Did my father think his second wife was worth it? I have to think he did. I come honestly by my asshole tendencies. He would have kicked Candace to the curb if she hadn’t made him happy.

I mean, he beggared himself so she could have the lifestyle she wanted. I have to think about that, given my own confession to Mackenzie about the power of love. There was twenty years between them. When they married, he was rich and she was attractive. Was my father afraid Candace would reject him if he denied her anything? Was Candace afraid he’d abandon her if she didn’t look young and attractive anymore?

Could it be that they were in love?

I think of Candace confessing how much she missed my father and I wonder.

Would my father have said it was worth it? The weird thing is that I think he might have. He would have stopped financing Candace if he ceased to care whether she was happy. Maybe juggling the debt was his way of moving mountains for her.

He screwed around on my mother. He screwed around on Luke’s mother. But as far as I know, he never screwed around on Candace. That could be a lack of information on my end – or it could have been love.

If so, their romance is and was a cautionary tale. What if you love someone so much that you lose a part of yourself? What if love leads you to sacrifice everything else that you think is important? Could any love be worth that?

I don’t know. I get up and go through the house, looking for something of my mom’s. There are only faded squares on the walls where pictures used to hang. I wonder who has those old photographs now. Her closet is empty, but I knew that. We did live here for years after her death, when Candace stepped into her place.

Mostly there are memories. We used to put the Christmas tree there, for example, in that corner of the family room. I smile. My mother loved Christmas. She loved all the sparkly ornaments and the decorated cookies, the mistletoe and the carols. When I think of Christmas, I hear her laughter, faintly, and suddenly I understand why I haven’t really liked Christmas since she died.

It hasn’t been the same. It can’t be the same, not without her. Not without an afternoon baking cookies together. Not without all the little events that made the holidays special, all initiated and managed by my mom. I stopped coming home for Christmas as soon as I could, and I’ve never really celebrated it since.

But I stand in the darkness, staring into the corner that once held a Christmas tree, and I see my mother hanging tinsel on the branches. There was never enough tinsel, to her thinking. I wonder if she would be sad to know that I can’t have Christmas without her.

I know she would be and that makes me feel like a failure.

No, it makes me feel like I lost something precious in my haste to put Empire in my past.

I wonder what Mackenzie thinks of Christmas, then realize I don’t have to wonder. Her grandfather is always Santa Claus in the Christmas parade. I’m sure there is merriment and celebration at Rhodes Vineyards in December, and strangely enough, I want to…

No. Better not to wish for the impossible. That way lies heartbreak.

It is smarter and better to remain a fortress and an island, even if I find it hard to believe as much right now. It is wise to stay on the path you know best. Prudent even.

Lonely.

I’d better get some sleep while I can.

28

Mackenzie

Of course, I don’t hear anything from Jake Cavendish after our unplanned fourth encounter. I know better than to be disappointed, even if I didn’t know better than to have hopes.