Page 101 of Brewbies
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Then appeared again.
I know.
* * *
Ethan always took the stairs at the Townsend manse two at a time. They were cut for Victorian feet, which were famously smaller than the descendants of Danes (the tallest people in the world) now fed an American diet.
His mother generally existed on the third floor of the Highclere-meets-Charmedmansion, being very busy and very important. So, when he followed his ears to the den at the back of the main floor to catch her watchingHouse Hunters International, surrounded by caramel wrappers and day-drinking the prosecco his father had spent a fortune on in Italy, he almost gave birth to an entire cow.
“What did you say to her?” he greeted his mom.
Pausing a tiff between two finicky gays squabbling over an apartment in the South of France, Caryn Townsend looked up as if his question hadn’t been the one she’d expected.
“Ethan.” She unfolded her legs from beneath her and drained her glass before she stood to face him.
“What did you say to Darby? Did you threaten her with something?”
His mother tucked her ever-ready hair behind her ear as she narrowed assessing eyes at him. “I know why you would assume I—”
“Did you or Roy have anything to do with her putting the Raven Creek property up for sale?”
His mother turned on him, her silken, smooth demeanor replaced with something softer, and harsher. She looked her age, for once…and younger. Younger because of the vulnerability floating in eyes that matched his own. Older because of a soul-weariness she’d apparently been very good at masking.
“That was all your fault, Ethan,” she informed him gently.
Suddenly he wished she were a man, so he could brace for a punch in the face. He’d prefer a good right hook to the quiet expression of pitying disappointment that made it impossible to look at her for too long.
“You two were seen having drinks together,” he accused, though what he was accusing her of, he wasn’t sure. “What did you say?”
“I like Darby.” Caryn set her wine glass down and drifted to the sideboard to pour water from a crystal-cut pitcher, silently expressing how much of his business itwasn’t.“She’s witty, and, despite her vocation, she has class. She’s the kind of clever that can’t be taught, and she knows her own mind…” She took a sip and made a face as though the water was bitter, rather than her next thought. “I wish I could have claimed the same at her age. So much trouble could have been avoided.”
Ethan blinked, taken aback. “What do you mean?”
After an inhale that lasted several concerning seconds too long, his mother said, “The money is gone.” At his shocked expression, she said, “Fortunately, I put so much of it in a trust for you before your father passed, and that couldn’t be touched.Yourmoney is safe.”
“How?”
His mother paused. Chewed her lip. Started to say something. Stopped. Then, “Your grandfather made some terrible investments, and what was left, your father gambled or…fucking gave away.” She slammed the glass down on the table, which was tantamount to an all-out tantrum from his mom.
Holy shit, that was maybe the first time he’d ever heard her curse. He didn’t know whether to laugh or be terrified.
When she approached him, she took his large hands into her small, gnarled fingers. “I should have told you how difficult I found being an outsider in this town. In my own marriage. I should have shared with and educated you, so you wouldn’t grow up to make the same mistakes your father did.”
At that, Ethan jerked out of her hold, incensed. “I’m nothing like him,” he snarled. “I don’t gamble. I don’t cheat. I don’t think of myself and my needs over my family and responsibilities, I—”
“You made that kind, strong, beautiful,vitalwoman feel unworthy, and Ethan, I’m standing here telling you that comes from the same place as did all father’s misdeeds. That place your father, your grandfather, your inheritance, and evenImistakenly installed and encouraged inside of you. The one that tries to contain the illusion that life isn’t messy and laden with mistakes and regret. Who holds everyone to an impossible standard of conduct, yourself most of all.”
Ethan stood stock-still in the center of a room he could fit his entire condo into and gazed at the wall. Powerful emotion glued his boots to the ground.
“I fucked it up, Mom,” he said, voice cracking like it had when he was a heartbroken young man losing his beloved grandpa.
With a foreign sound of sympathy, she opened her arms and enfolded him in an embrace that felt warm and big and enveloping, even though she stood eight inches shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than him.
“Ethan. You’ve always been a good boy. A darling boy,” she said against his chest, before pulling back to look up at him. “You’ve never required much in the way of parenting because you were born with a moral compass so completely well-adjusted that you could be relied upon to be good. And above all, to protect theappearanceof being good, which was what we were all trained to do. But if recent events have taught me anything, it’s this…”
Reaching up, she smoothed a forelock away from his forehead.
“You can’t spend one more second worrying what other people think about your choices… At the end of the day, it’s you who has to live with them.”
