Page 81 of When You Are Mine

“No, I don’t know if I’ll…I don’t know if there will be time, Martin.” The finality of that pronouncement sat like lead in the room, weighing the air with pending grief.

Martin moaned, lowering himself to the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. He crawled up beside her and behind her, spoon fashion.

“No, Kris. Don’t go. I’m so lost, Kris. Don’t go.”

“Listen to me.” She turned with great effort to face him, her headscarf slipping to reveal the front of the smooth scalp beneath. “Just listen, sweetheart.”

The endearment sliced Walsh down the middle, reinforcing that secret truth that had lain beneath his parents’ years-long enmity. They had loved each other all these years, been separated all these years, seemed to hate each other all these years, and she had thought of him as “sweetheart.” Walsh tasted the bitter irony that he could have known a family, healthy and whole, instead of the broken dysfunction of being shuffled between two snarling combatants, who loved each other deeply all along.

“Just listen,” she said again. “It’s Walsh.”

Walsh stifled a whoosh of breath, shocked to hear his own name introduced into this moment. He felt like a character written in as an afterthought, or an understudy being called unexpectedly to the stage.

“What about him?” His father’s voice became wary.

“You are his father, Martin,” she said, her voice choppy with pain. “Not his trainer. He’s your son. Not just some heir or successor. He needs you.”

“Sometimes I think he hates me,” Martin finally said after a long silence.

Walsh squeezed his eyes shut, twisting the delicate cashmere slippers between his fingers. His father was right. There had been times when he’d looked at his father, ruling his sprawling business kingdom, so self-satisfied, so arrogant, and he’d hated him. Hated how he’d hurt his mother. Hated that his father had always been more concerned with grooming him than raising him. And that hate warred with an insoluble love that refused to be diluted by his father’s careless disregard, unreasonable expectations, and exacting standards.

He’d always thought of him as a cold man surrounded by barriers, impenetrable even by a young boy’s desperate need for affection. But when Walsh peered through the crack into that fantastical land where his parents still loved each other, it was not the face of a cold man he saw. It was a man tortured, anguished with regret and horrified by what his mistakes had cost him.

“No, Martin.” Kristeene shook her head slowly, sadly. “Just the opposite. He loves you so much and wants to please you. Don’t youseethat? You and me, it’s too late for us, but—”

“Don’t say that, Kris.”

“I don’t have time left for us, Martin, but you and Walsh. You’ve still got time to make that right.”

“I don’t…I don’t know how.” His father sounded vulnerable for the first time in Walsh’s memory.

“Yes, you do.” She reached a bony hand up to caress the back of his neck. “Think about it. He needs you to get this right. Promise me.”

“I promise, Kris,” he said, not sounding sure, his voice thickening. “But don’t leave me.”

Walsh saw her reach up and kiss his father, chastely at first, a mere brush across his lips. But then long-denied passion seemed to swell between them, making them oblivious of Kristeene’s shining, bald pate, ravaged body, and lips chapped with illness. There was no self-consciousness, no consideration for the cancer or the years of malevolence stretching behind them. Only a long-checked hunger that seemed to consume them. They kissed like it was the first time, like it was the last time. His mother held his father’s head still, kissing him as if she’d take the taste of him on her lips into eternity. As if he were the wine at her last supper, a final indulgence to be savored and swished in her mouth like liquid luxury. An interloper, Walsh averted his eyes from the deep kisses and urgent, desperate caresses.

“Kris,” he heard his father say, his voice drained of passion, urgent. “Don’t leave me. Don’t go.”

Walsh glanced up, tears setting his throat on fire at the sight of his father holding his mother’s limp body in his arms. Tears ran unchecked down the lean, handsome face, so like his own.

“Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Don’t go. Don’t leave me. So lost, Kris. So lost.” Martin wailed, clutching her tighter, pushing the scarf back completely from her head to look unflinchingly on the proud, ruined beauty of the body that remained behind. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

Walsh must have heard his father’s anguished litany a hundred times before he finally dragged himself to huddle against the wardrobe wall, sitting down among his mother’s shoes, wearing his father’s face, streaked by his own silent tears.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

How would she make it through this day?

Kerris planted herself in a corner of the Walshes’ elegant living room, watching an old camp counselor monopolize Cam across the room. Kerris felt so alone, though dozens of people surrounded her, chattering about what a lovely service it had been, and Kristeene’s remarkable legacy, and how much she would be missed. She genuinely mourned Kristeene personally, but she knew the weight she felt was for Cam and Walsh. Both despondent. Both grasping for an anchor as they negotiated the unfamiliar waters of unfathomable sorrow. Especially Walsh.

She would keep her distance. She couldn’t trust herself with him, especially not today, when all she wanted to do was drag him over the grassy hill to the gazebo, where she’d felt healed in his arms once upon a time and wanted to do the same for him.

She stood too quickly and the room twirled. She reached blindly for her chair. Feeling nauseous and short of breath, she walked out into the foyer on rubbery legs. Jo was speaking in low tones with Mrs. Quinton about food for the reception. Jo looked at Kerris, raising her brows like a queen considering a peasant, silently inquiring why she would have strayed from the herd of mourners grazing on heavy hors d’oeuvres in the living room.

“Can I help you, Kerris?” Over Mrs. Quinton’s shoulder, Jo’s eyes remained chilly.

The easy affection that had existed between Jo and her was gone, maybe forever. Jo saw her as the bone of contention between Walsh and Cam, the one who had broken up their tightly knit triumvirate. Since the night of Walsh’s party, the warmth she’d become used to from Jo had been replaced with coolness, overlaid with a light coat of polite disdain.

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