Page 27

27

KIT

F or two days the snow falls, and I’m stuck in my apartment.

I’m not actually stuck. Outside, people are in boots and ski pants and hats, walking through unplowed streets, marveling at this version of the city that’s only existed a handful of times in the past hundred years: no cars, no honking, no traffic. Just ice-laden trees hanging heavy, the pavement a carpet of unbroken white, people who actually notice each other again as if they’ve woken from a long trance.

If Miller were here, I’d be out there with him.

I’d lose a mitten, and he’d try to give me his. If I refused, he’d remove his, too, and put my hand in his pocket.

When the phone rings, for a half-second I think it’s him. That maybe he’s thinking about this as well and wondering if I’d like to share his pocket once more.

“Let me up, Kit,” says Charlie. “I’m downstairs.”

“Why?” I ask.

“I’ve heard a rumor that you’re languishing.”

“I’m not even sure what that word means so I can neither confirm nor deny.”

He laughs. “Fucking let me up.”

He arrives a minute later, handsome and smiling like a guy who just got blown by three models on the way here, which is entirely possible where Charlie’s concerned. He shrugs off his coat and takes a seat without being invited.

“Ah, languishing it is,” he says.

My hair is unwashed and I’m wearing torn leggings, so I guess languishing is not a compliment. “I still don’t know what that word means.”

“I don’t want to define it for you in case I’m wrong because I’m now questioning my own definition, but it seems like something people did when they were dying of consumption. She languished away , that sort of thing.”

“So you’re saying that I’ve got tuberculosis?” I ask. “If so, it’s an odd thing for the family to be gossiping about behind my back.”

He lays his phone on the table and smiles at me. “I’m saying that you’re clearly brokenhearted and pining, and given the way Miller was eye-fucking you all through that dinner I assume it’s about him.”

My eyes widen. I knew someone would notice. “That’s crazy. He’s Maren’s ex and she thinks she’s in love with him.”

He sighs. “Mare was just looking for a mast to cling to in the storm. Harvey’s going to be awful when she tells him, and she wanted to believe that some big strong man would be there to stand up to him since you’ve trained her not to stand up for herself.”

My eyes narrow. “This is fun. Anything else you want to blame me for?”

“Loads, but am I right?” he asks. “You and Miller?”

I stare out the window, at the streets I should be walking along without a glove. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

“It’s funny the way you both got so tan while climbing a mountain in subzero temps.”

I turn back toward him, jaw locked defiantly. “Have you never skied before?”

“I have, and it doesn’t normally lead to arms as tan as yours or his,” he says with a smug smile, nodding at where my sweatshirt is pushed up around my elbows.

I pick up a magazine. “Charles, I’m extremely busy right now. What is it you want?”

He kicks my foot. “Don’t worry about Maren, Kit. She can take care of herself.”

“I’m not sure what you’re basing that upon.”

He bites his lip. “You know what Maren’s issue is? It’s that she’s smart, and strong—just as smart and strong as you—but she doesn’t know it. You know why she doesn’t know it? Because every time you fight her battles for her, it’s the opposite of a vote of confidence. It’s like you’ve just said, ‘Sit back and look pretty while the adults take care of this issue, dummy.’”

I frown. “I know she’s smart. But she’s a people pleaser, and she never wants to make anyone mad, and she ends up getting taken advantage of a lot.”

“What she cares about—more than people pleasing and far more than Miller—is her baby sister. And if she thought she was the reason your hair looks that bad, she’d never forgive herself.”

I laugh, unwillingly. Maren is incredibly vain about her hair and therefore mine, I’ll grant him that much. But that doesn’t mean she’d forgive what I did…especially if I let it continue.

“Take a shower and get out of here,” Charlie says, rising. “It’s supposed to be in the sixties tomorrow. Spring is here, summer is coming, and you Fischer girls always like to have a boyfriend when the weather’s good. I’m pretty sure we both know who yours should be.”

* * *

When I wake the next day, the sun is out and the gutters are dripping, so I guess Charlie was right. I force myself into the shower not because I think Charlie was right about anything else , but simply because I promised my dad I’d meet him for lunch.

I blow out my hair, apply careful makeup, and put on an outfit even Ulrika would approve of: camel wool wrap dress, red Louboutins—just so my dad won’t agree that I’m languishing.

The restaurant is predictably swanky—floor-to-ceiling views of New York City’s skyline, a hundred bucks in flowers on every linen-clad table. My father’s favorite waiter rushes over as we’re seated and my dad orders a 1955 Pinot Noir and steak for us both.

I’m not sure I have the appetite to eat, but whatever.

“You look thin, Kit,” he says, as the waiter leaves. “And pale. You were glowing when I saw you at dinner.”

I open my mouth to make excuses when I see Prescott Hughes heading toward us. People are constantly swinging by to kiss my father’s ass—one of the least enviable parts of his job. Maybe if I were happier right now, I’d let him come and go unscathed, but I’m not happy so I flip him off, and Prescott turns the other way.

“What was that about?” my dad asks.

“He dated Mom,” I say, meeting his gaze.

There’s a hint of softness in his eyes. My mother is legendary for the sheer number of husbands and boyfriends she’s brought through her home and what incredibly terrible taste she has. It’s honestly hard to keep the misdeeds straight at this point.

Rich men, poor men. The one thing they have in common is that they think they can fucking get away with anything.

With a few notable exceptions. My dad, Roger, Charlie.

Miller and Rob.

Dad gives me a sad smile. “Then I guess we’re lucky you didn’t swing a golf club at his head. So you’re thin and pale and sad, which I assume is about Miller, so what’s your plan?”

I suck in a breath. “Miller?”

“Kit, I know your palpable distress is not about a career shift. And you don’t run off to a private island in the Caribbean with a man who’s just a friend.”

Dad knows. Fuck.

While he and my mother don’t get along, they do enjoy a good bit of gossip about their offspring. I wait until the waiter has set our steaks in front of us to ask the question on the tip of my tongue. “Have you told Mom?”

He shakes his head. “I figured I should let you work it out first.”

“Work what out?” I ask. “There’s nothing to be worked out. He’s seeing someone anyway.”

Dad raises a brow. “I’m not sure how you’ve come by that bit of information, but I know for a fact that it’s not true.”

My pulse races for a second. It shouldn’t make a difference. It doesn’t make a difference.

“Even if that’s the case, I can’t have him, Dad,” I whisper, my voice shaking with unshed tears. “And you know good and well that I can’t. He’s Maren’s ex. And she still thinks he’s the guy she should have ended up with.”

“At a certain point in your life, Kit, and I really hope that it’s this one, you’ll learn that sometimes you have to hurt other people to get the thing that will make you happy. Miller does not want her. He didn’t want her ten years ago, and he doesn’t want her now, which is why I brought him to that family dinner…so you’d see it for yourself.”

“All I saw was that Mare still thinks he’s the one that got away,” I reply, while my dad adds wine to the glass I haven’t even touched. “It was that dinner that made her decide to leave Harvey. And whether he wants her or not isn’t really the point.”

“Eventually Maren will realize that she’s been glorifying a relationship she really didn’t understand at all, and she will find the sort of man who can make her happy. And when she finds herself happily married, and probably producing loads of badly behaved children, and you’ve lost the man you should have been with, will it have been worth it then? Will it have been worth everything you gave up?”

He isn’t wrong. And I think Maren already understands, to some extent, that she’s been glorifying that relationship. But it doesn’t mean she wouldn’t be deeply hurt if she learned the truth.

I blow out a breath. “If she was your biological daughter, you’d be far less calculating about this.”

“I love Maren as if she’s my own,” he argues. “I just don’t entirely respect the decisions she’s made.”

My mouth opens to rush to her defense, and he holds up his hand, nearly upsetting his wineglass in the process. “To be fair, I don’t entirely respect a lot of yours either. But Maren has always seen beauty where there’s none and convinced herself it’s real. She could probably do something amazing with that if she put it to use in the right way. Unfortunately, she’s put it to use by seeing what’s not there with the wrong men. And you shouldn’t be the one who pays the price for that.”

I almost believe him. The problem with my father, however, is that he’s slightly too good at putting disparate facts together and making them look as if they’re puzzle pieces that have fallen into place. It doesn’t mean he’s right. He’s just good at selling a story.

“Did you ever wonder why I forgave him?” my dad asks.

I glance up from the steak I can’t manage to eat. “Yes, I wondered it nonstop for the first three days of the trip. I finally assumed he’d just charmed you into it.”

My dad tips back in his chair and smiles. “I’ll admit that it was hard to stay angry at him, but no, that’s not it. There’s only one excuse for what he did to Maren that I’d have accepted, and it happened to be the excuse he gave me. He did it for you.”

I stare at him. “For me ? How did it benefit me ?”

He swirls his wine in the glass. “Your sister is a lovely girl, but there are men in the world who prefer a woman with a little spine. Or in your case, a lot of spine. An unreasonable amount of spine, some might say?—”

“You can stop now.”

He smiles. “And Miller, to his credit, is among them. So the minute he realized he was in love with his girlfriend’s seventeen-year-old sister, he did the most responsible thing he could, and left. Because he knew you were too young, and extricating himself as fast as possible was what would serve you best.”

I think back to that moment in the kitchen in Starfish Cay. I’d thought it was simply my fantasy, a reenactment of that day in the Hamptons, taking the things I’d wanted for a decade.

But maybe it was his too.

That’s what was going on, wasn’t it, that whole summer? Bickering is foreplay for me and Miller. I was too young to realize it at the time…and maybe he was too young to realize it as quickly as he should have.

But when he did, he left, because what else could he possibly do?

As I put it together, none of it surprises me. Miller, above all else, is a good man. He wouldn’t want to hurt Maren, and he wouldn’t want to hurt me, and the way to minimize the damage was to let us both believe that he’d suddenly turned into a selfish dick, which he continued allowing us to believe for another decade. All while changing routes in Tanzania to protect me, and giving up his safari to keep me from getting sucked into a tragic mistake. He’s been giving and giving in the ways that were available to him for years while I’ve been...flipping him off from across the room and accusing him of stalking me at the start of our climb. I press my face to my hands.

Oh, God. I don’t want to cry here. In public. With my mother’s society friends watching us from across the room, with at least a dozen people here who’ve got a gossip columnist on speed dial.

“It would always be weird, though,” I say quietly, once I’ve pulled myself together. “I mean, if I dated him, it could never go anywhere. Think how awkward every family event would be. And people would gossip.”

“Indeed,” he says, nodding. “It would be very awkward for a very long time.”

We both sit in silence for a moment. He eats, and I push my food around. Nothing he’s said is wrong—I’m not taking something from Maren, and men like Miller are once in a lifetime. But it could mean fucking up so many other parts of my life to make it happen. And it would definitely mean hurting her.

“You know, when you were a toddler,” he continues, “we bought this book for the nanny. Controlling Your Strong-Willed Child . You couldn’t even read yet, but you got the gist of it, I guess because she’d open the book and then quote it to make you behave, so you attempted to flush it down the toilet. And for a long time, you remained that same kid. You entered every room and every conversation primed for battle, but it also turned you into someone who had to get everything right—and you fell apart when you didn’t.”

We exchange a look. He’s talking about Rob.

“You haven’t been happy for a long time, and you also stopped fighting to correct course until you got back from Africa. That’s where you regained a little of that spark. You wouldn’t have run off before the proposal if you hadn’t. You wouldn’t have told off your mother at the hospital, the way Charlie claims you did. So fight for the things you want. Be willing to hurt some people so that you don’t hurt Miller or yourself. It’s time to become the kid who flushed a book down the toilet again.”

I look around the expensive restaurant, at all the people who don’t seem happy—staring at their phones rather than listening to the person across from them. How many of them are like that because they gave something up, because they settled for an okay ending instead of a happy one? They are Tuesday people, just like I’ve been now for years.

Going for the things I want most isn’t guaranteed to turn out well. Miller and I might not last; Maren might never forgive me.

But…I know I’d get a life that held more Fridays and Saturdays than mine does now, until it ends.

And even if it doesn’t work—even if it’s woefully brief—I’m willing to fight for a few more of them with him.

* * *

I walk through Central Park. It’s one of those early spring days that tricks you into thinking winter might be over. The trees drip; the snow is turning to slush in the grass. Rob loved days like this. Rob loved a lot of things, and that’s why being around him was such a joy: because he reminded me why I should love them too. He had so many wonderful qualities, but I think what initially drew me to him was the way he reminded me of Miller—that he had a lopsided smile and the same broad shoulders, that he was the type of guy who wouldn’t leave a friend behind or even allow a girl who was terrible to him to risk her life hiking Kilimanjaro. I loved the way he embraced the world and tried new things and wasn’t scared to walk away from all the privilege he was raised with.

But I loved Miller first. I know that now. I loved him from the moment he entered my mother’s dining room, and it never fully went away. I just pushed it down, as far as it could go.

I think maybe all my grief these past few years was less about Rob than it was what he represented. He was the last time I felt hopeful about the future, the last time I truly felt happy, and I didn’t want to let myself forget that had existed.

But I remember it now.

I cut across to the Central Park boathouse. Maybe it’s not the perfect place to say goodbye and maybe Uhuru Peak would have been better, but he’d have liked it, I think. He’d have liked to leave a small imprint in the place where he took my hand and said I was the person he wanted to end up with.

I’m not entirely sure about the legality of spreading these ashes here, but if I’m going to return to being someone who takes risks, I guess this is a good place to start.

I clutch the cup to my heart and I hold it there, tight.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry I fucked it up. I wish you’d gotten to live every last day between then and now, and I know you’d have made the most of them. I can’t take it back, but I can’t keep being broken by it either. I love you, Rob. I hope you knew that. I hope you still know it. I love you, but I really want to live again.”

I’m crying as I empty the cup over the lake’s melting ice.

When my eyes open, the ashes are mostly gone, and that makes me cry harder, but Rob’s the last person who’d want me standing here, wondering if I’d made a mistake. Just like Miller, he’d want me to go ahead and live a big life for us both.

I plan to try.

When the last of the ashes is gone, I pull out my phone to embark on the next step of that big life I really want.

“Hey, Mare?” I ask when she picks up. “Can I come over?”