Page 111 of Accidental Groom
I come up behind Elena, my hand settling protectively at the small of her back. He looks… older, somehow, from the last fewweeks, like something fundamental in him cracked during the weeks he vanished. “I called him,” I say softly to her. Her gaze flicks to me with visible confusion. “I was going to tell you when you came back upstairs. Didn’t think he’d show up that fast.”
“He told me he’d finally explain what happened,” George mutters. “With my mom.”
“Oh,” Elena says, blinking quickly. She goes to take a step back, but I hold her in place. “I should give you guys some space to talk.”
“No. I’d — I’d rather you stay, if that’s okay. Talk about it as a family.” My fingers dig in a little on her back, not enough to be painful, but hopefully enough to say,I don’t want to talk about her alone.I glance at George. “If that’s okay with you.”
George grimaces slightly, but doesn’t argue. “Yeah. Sure.”
I tip my head toward the stairs, gesturing for them both to follow, and lead.
It’s been weeks since I stepped into Geraldine’s room — not since that night with Elena. But nothing’s changed. The glass I was drinking out of is still sitting on the table beside her portrait, the lights still low.
George hesitates at the doorway. “I, uh, I haven’t been in here since.”
I turn, halfway across the room, Elena clinging to my arm. “Does it bother you?”
“I don’t know,” he admits.
“We don’t have to talk about it in here,” I offer. “I just… this was her favorite spot. If I’m doing this, I’d rather do her the service of doing it here, if you’re capable.”
He takes a deep breath in through his nose, then steps inside. “It’s fine,” he says. “Still looks the same.”
I take a seat in Geraldine’s chair, extending my arm toward what used to bemychair, the same one Elena had sat in before.“I kept it as it was,” I explain. “Thought she’d haunt me like a poltergeist if I changed anything.”
George cautiously lowers himself into my chair. I can’t imagine what images flash behind his eyes — it could be the same ones I have, but from his own perspective, a much smaller version of him running around in here with his toy airplanes or teddy bear, causing havoc while I try to wrangle him, or it could be absolutely nothing. Just being in here with him feels like stepping both backward and forward in time.
I exhale heavily, feeling Elena’s hand come to rest on my shoulder over the back of the chair. “I should’ve told you a long time ago,” I say carefully.
He stares at me. “Yeah. You should’ve.”
I meet his eyes, willing myself to speak. “I need you to understand that I didn’t is because she didn’t want you to know. She didn’t wantanyoneto know, but most of all, you. She didn’t want to hurt you.”
His brows knit. “You listened to that over letting me know what happened to my own mother?”
“I listened and followed my dying wife’s wishes,” I say, the words sharper than I mean to. “Sorry. I didn’t — I didn’t mean to snap. This is just difficult for me. I regret that choice, nearly every day.”
The anger that simmers in him, buried deep but just barely visible, flickers. But he waits, watching me with that same hard stare that mirrors his mother’s when she was furious.
“She had cancer, George,” I say quietly. “Stage four. You can ask Dr. Frasier, he was handling most of her treatment. She hid it for a long time, from you until now, and from me… from me until a month before she died.”
George blinks, something I don’t quite recognize flashing across his face, but it’s gone before I can decipher it.
“She was always private, but this was different. She didn’t want anyone to know. She didn’t want sympathy or pity. And she desperately didn’t want you to see her like that.”
His jaw works, but he doesn’t speak. Elena’s hand tightens infinitesimally.
“I begged her to fight it when she told me,” I rasp. “She refused. She said she wanted control over how she went, that she’d watched her mother suffer through chemo for nothing and didn’t want to do the same.”
George blinks. “So you’re telling me that the official report ofsuicideis true?”
I nod, slowly. “Yes.”
“But you helped her.”
“No,” I say, wincing. “I know the image you saw of her in those last few weeks wasn’t exactly the most convincing when it comes to that. I was terrified and already grieving, and she was… god, she was holed up in here or in our bedroom almost constantly. It looked like she was depressed because, honestly, she was. She felt awful, could barely do anything she wanted to. I’m surprised she hung on as long as she did.”
George stares me down. “You knew, then.”
