Page 17 of Father Knows Best (A Family Affair #1)

It worries me that she hardly smiles as she greets me, but I follow after her anyway, treading quietly as we come to the kitchen.

Sutton, wearing track pants and a UCLA t-shirt, glances up from where he’s positioned at the stove.

His eyebrows lift and then he returns his focus to the pot on the stove, where he stirs and blows.

An eyebrow lift is the way he says hello, and there is no amount of time that can make that not hurt.

“Hello, Sutton.”

Another lift of his eyebrows as he sprinkles salt into the soup he’s stirring. “Avery said you caught her in the office today, and that you need to speak with me.”

Avery, who disappeared a moment ago, returns with three long-stemmed wine glasses and a bottle of red. I wait for her to look my way, and when she does, I smile. “Thank you for inviting me, Avery.”

She smiles in return, but it fades when Sutton looks up between us. “Did you share with Sutton what we discussed?” I glance at my son, and immediately have my answer.

She didn’t tell him.

“I didn’t want to betray your confidence, Geo.

” She curves the counter and comes to stand right in front of Sutton, sinking her hands into the flesh that hides beneath his t-shirt as she grabs his hips, aligning their bodies.

She blinks up at him, half his size but double both of our courage, apparently.

“I did not want to share with you something that should come from your father.” She rocks to her toes and he dips down a little, like her asking for his ear is something she does often enough for him to bend down without question.

Routines, rituals, they have all that. Sutton is happy and I adore Avery.

As much as it pains me to be here, Ford and Avery are right. It’s time.

When she sinks back onto the balls of her feet, she drags her hands out from beneath his shirt, tugging gently at the hem as she whispers, “Okay?”

He nods, and bends down to kiss her, and my chest constricts from not having what my son has, from seeing the tender way she soothes him, from being witness to a pure and beautiful love.

Sutton slides a lid onto the soup and takes Avery by the hand, and I follow their lead, heading into the open living space.

They take a seat on a couch, and I take a seat across from them on a chair no doubt hand-picked by Avery, a burgundy velvet tufted chair, one that looks fantastic in redone Victorian era homes, with aspen wood feet and ornate backing.

I smooth my fingers over the luxurious armrest, and finally look up at them.

Avery is wearing a small smile of hope, while Sutton simply frowns. My eyes fall to the large stone on Avery’s finger, and I remember that I have to do this.

“Talking about her never gets easier, all these years later,” I start, wasting no time with preamble about how our days went or how wedding planning is going. He knows I’m here with intent, and if I don’t rip the Band-Aid off, Avery might.

The noise of the room–the whirr of the ceiling fan, the clicking of the arm on the grandfather clock, the gentle sway of olive leaves against the glass window from the bay breeze outside– it all falls away as I meet my son’s eyes.

“Your mother loved you so, so much. You were her pride and joy. You were everything to her, Sutton, and I want you to know that, or, if you already knew, be reminded of it. Because it’s important that you understand, amongst everything else I’m going to say, that she loved you.

You were easily the best part of her life. ”

One of Sutton’s nostrils lifts and he tips his head to the side, but he says nothing. Avery places her hand on his knee, eyes on me, and squeezes a little.

“Okay,” he says, his form of meeting me halfway. I nod my head, appreciating the single word, of the lifeline, of any reaction whatsoever.

“I lied. All those years ago, I lied about Mom to protect your image of her, and I don’t know…

” I trail off, scratching at the side of my jaw as I consider things differently now, for maybe the first time.

“I thought if I made myself the bad guy, I could save you from knowing her the way I did, from ruining all your childhood memories. But maybe now I wonder if I was lying for myself. To preserve my own ego, afraid to let the world at large know the type of woman I loved, or ashamed, maybe to let the world know the way she loved me in return.”

Sutton’s brows pull together and he shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”

My eyes veer to a silent Avery, her hand still gripping Sutton’s knee. She nods, telling me to keep going, tipping her cheek to his shoulder in quiet support of us both.

“All those years ago, that night your mom passed away, I rewrote it all for the media and paid a few people to go along with my story.” Out loud, now, years later without heightened emotion and a young child’s vision of his mother on the line, it sounds so stupid.

Like such a bad choice. Nausea stings my senses.

“And so much of the truth aligned that… I didn’t have to do much for everyone to roll with it. ”

Sutton huffs an impatient exhale, as if I should rattle off the truth of his whole life as fast as I can because my mere presence is so intolerable.

“Extend me a moment of patience,” I say to him, invisibly reigning in the occasional anger that catches hold of me when I’m catching the brunt of Sutton’s attitude.

“Forgive me that discussing the day my wife was murdered may take me a few moments.” I try desperately not to snarl, but at this precise moment, I don’t see Sutton as someone in the dark, I see him as an impatient and irrational person who can do better for his father.

Avery’s tongue slides along the supple curve of her bottom lip as she leans forward, pressing her hand into the mirrored table between us.

“I forgot the wine.” She stands, her jumpsuit which had bunched at her hips from sitting, whooshes down, the soft probably expensive fabric unraveling with ease.

Avery bends at the waist, kissing Sutton at his hairline before dropping quiet, private words into his ear.

He nods and murmurs a rough “yes” to her, then focuses squarely on me.

I already really liked Avery Bennett, but seeing the way she brings my son ease almost immediately makes my chest tighten. “Continue,” Sutton says, softly adding, “please.”

I hold his eyes, the ones that look so much like hers, the eyes that remind me that Margot, though gone, was absolutely the best thing to happen to me. She gave me him.

“Your mother was the love of my life. But the love of her life was attention.” I swallow thickly against a prickly knot of emotion already rising up in my throat.

I’ve only just begun and I’m already feeling exhausted.

Avery returns, passing me a glass of wine before collecting hers off the table and passing another to Sutton.

“Desired,” she corrects softly before taking a slow and passively seductive sip of wine. “I think it was more apt when you said desired .”

I shrug, because she’s right and yet, to me, those words are interchangeable when it comes to Margot.

“I would agree that desired is far more romantic, and I’m not trying to shift the narrative of what I said to you to what I’m telling Sutton.

But the truth was, Margot just… it was never enough.

” I need a sip of wine because my throat is starting to split, raw and rough from how tense I’ve become.

Sutton and Avery do the same, and after a moment, I continue.

“No matter how much attention or affection I gave, she was never sated. And the partying, she just—we had you and she was good or, I don’t know–better?

” I shake my head as I think back to those nights that Margot had wine despite the fact that she learned she was pregnant.

Or when she slept with another man while pregnant with Sutton.

Those were less egregious offenses than normal, and at the time, I was grateful for less .

“She loved attention, and she could never find the bottom to her needs. I tried to be okay with it at one point, just because it was easier than being upset all the time.”

Sutton just stares at me, blankly, holding his wine motionlessly as Avery stares up at him.

My eyes slide to her, and she looks at me for a moment before slipping her hand from Sutt’s knee to his thigh.

She pats him, just once, lightly, I can’t even hear it.

But he rolls his lips together, and in a hoarse whisper he asks, “Are you saying she cheated on you?”

I scratch the back of my head, finding it hot, and my neck, too. She has such a calming way with him, and I truly didn’t expect this talk to go this way. He’s listening. He’s understanding. He isn’t yelling or walking away. And that’s Avery.

“She was never faithful to me, but I thought it was something I could navigate and handle… accordingly,” I reply, adding, “I’d do it all the same, for what it’s worth. I’ve never loved anyone the way I loved her.”

Avery sips her wine then rests her cheek against Sutton’s shoulder again. He glances down at her, then up at me. “What happened that night? If what I read online, in the papers, if that was coercion, if that was a lie, whatever. Then… what happened?”

I finish my wine, because I don’t want to hold the glass.

I set it on the table and cradle my temples with the heels of my palm, just for a moment, just to steady myself.

It’s not a singular glass of wine getting to me.

It’s remembering this specific night, again, for the second time in one day after putting it out of my mind for years. For survival.

“We’d taken you to the beach for fireworks. It was the 4th of July and you were dying to go to the marina. Afterward, we came home, swam, and ate some ice cream.”

“I remember,” Sutton says, and those two words dust my eyes in mist. I swallow.