Page 59 of Chasing the Horizon

Chapter Twenty-Three

That afternoon in March, Bethany called Valerie and told her everything she knew. “Dad was at the hospital with a little boy. A little boy of about eleven years. A little boy who,” and here, her voice hiccupped, “who looked so much like him, Valerie. I swear. It threw me for a loop.”

Valerie was cozy on the sofa, still reeling from her difficult exchange with her father and how swiftly he’d run out the door. Just minutes ago, she’d decided to take a break on the book, maybe until after the baby came, maybe forever, and she’d been composing an email to her father that said exactly that. But this “Kade” person threw a wrench in her plans.

A part of her echoed with empathy for her father. A patient of his was eleven years old, a boy who looked so much like Joel that it alarmed Bethany (Bethany, who was never alarmed about anything), and she knew that couldn’t be easy. But was it really necessary for him to bring the boy home with him? Was it really necessary for him to get so much more involved with a difficult patient—when there was so much at stake within his own family?

“I wonder what Mom’s thinking,” Valerie said.

“We should call her,” Bethany agreed.

“Does Rebecca know?”

“I called you first,” Bethany confessed. Probably because she’d known it would affect Valerie the most; Valerie, who’d been thick as thieves with Joel; Valerie, who’d been the most affected by his death because they’d been like twins, facing the world together until he’d been taken away.

But when Valerie called her mother later that afternoon, she heard a version of her mother that she hadn’t known still existed. “Honey, he’s alone in the world,” she said of Kade, explaining the situation with the parents, the sailing accident, and last night’s stroke. “He’s such a darling. You wouldn’t believe it. I really think we should have a big family dinner this weekend. We need to, you know, distract him and welcome him and show him what it means to belong to a big family. It’s messy, and it’s beautiful, and it’s…”

Esme hesitated. Valerie tried to picture where she was and decided she was probably standing in the yawn of the fridge, trying to find yet another snack for the little boy. And was there anything really wrong about that? Was there anything “bad” about her parents giving love and tenderness to this little boy? No. There wasn’t.

But Valerie didn’t know if she could handle it. Not so soon before her baby was due.

She didn’t know if she could see her father with that little boy.

Later that week, she brought all this and more to her psychiatrist. They were sitting in the sun-lit office a few blocks away from the Sutton Book Club, watching a soft spring rain filter through the tree branches out the window. Valerie’s therapist was named Willa Tillman, and she was in her late fifties with a dusting of blond-gray hair and long fingers that, Valerie had once learned, had been trained formally in piano before an arm injury had rendered her fingers incapable ofRachmaninoff and Debussy. Valerie guessed that Willa had never fully gotten over it.

But she was a brilliant therapist. She was kind and empathetic and eager to dig deeper into Valerie’s emotions.

And when Valerie told her about her father and Kade, about how she wasn’t sure if she could see them together, about how hurt she still was about the past, Willa told her to be kind to herself and to draw boundaries where she needed to.

“Tell your father you can’t write the book with him any longer,” Willa suggested. “You have enough money coming in. You have four weddings this autumn and another ten next summer. You have the baby coming. And didn’t you say that Alex secured even more funding for his documentary?”

Valerie nodded, feeling a wave of pride for her husband roll through her. He was going to finish that thing. He was going to put it out on the documentary circuits. It was going to sell for a great deal of money, yes. But it was also going to propel his art career into the stratosphere.

Valerie just knew it.

“I do want to mend things with my father,” Valerie told Willa, told herself. “I want to sit with him and tell him everything I feel. I want him to tell me what he’s feeling, too. But I don’t think we need to do that with a book. I don’t think we need to do that in public, on a radio station, or by going viral.”

Willa nodded. “You’re brave, Valerie. You’ll know when the time is right.”

Valerie went home and put on a big sweatshirt and sat on the porch with a book and a cup of tea. Alex was bundled up in the corner, wearing headphones as he edited through another few scenes in his documentary, and in the distance, seagulls swooped and cawed over the Nantucket Sound. Valerie told herself that someday soon, she’d find the time to sit with herfather and make sense of everything. She told herself that she would mend their relationship.

Her father would hold her baby in his arms.

Her father would love all of them—and know how to show that love properly.

They had to find a way forward.

But not now. Valerie was too tired to fix everything right now.

Eventually that night, Valerie and Alex ordered pizza and ate it outside, watching the spring evening fade to blue darkness. Valerie chewed a bite of black olive, cheese, and crust, mulling over everything that had happened, and finally asked Alex, “Do you think there’s ever a right time to do something?”

Alex raised his eyebrows. “I think everything in life is about timing.”

“That’s what I keep thinking,” she said. “Music. Film. Conversation. Everything needs to follow a unique flow. And we can’t be too hard on ourselves when now it’s the right time.”

Alex nodded and touched her hand. After a long time, he asked, “Are you thinking about your dad?”

“Is it that obvious?” Valerie tried to smile, but it fell off her face.

---