Great Big Beautiful Life(98)

“I’ve always liked cemeteries,” Hayden admits.

“Really?” I say. “What about them?”

“I guess just the permanence,” he says. At my look, he adds, “Not the bodies. I know those don’t last. Even the headstones wear down. But the idea of there being one place where you can find the people who came before you. And where you go back to them.”

He misses a step as we crest a hill and come into view of an active funeral, a group of people in black gathered around a grave with their heads bowed.

Anguish splashes across his face.

“You okay?” I ask.

He glances down, pupils flaring at the sight of me, and takes my hand, tangling our fingers. “Sorry. The last time I was at one of those, it was for Len.”

I lean over to kiss his shoulder. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”

As we start walking, he studies me sidelong. “Was your last one for your dad?”

I nod, keep my eyes ahead. “It was kind of weird. He’d been a journalist when he was younger, and tons of people he’d worked with or written about came.”

“That’s sweet,” Hayden says.

“It was,” I agree. “But I would’ve liked something a little more private, I guess.”

“That makes sense.”

I think about Cosmo and Margaret running up the courthouse steps, half the world watching, and still those pictures feel intimate. I wish, for the hundredth time, that I could talk to Dad about it. About everything I spent the night transcribing and fact-checking. So far, I haven’t stumbled on any other lies or half-truths, not since we talked about Nicollet, but I can’t help feeling like Margaret’s still keeping major secrets, and wonder if Hayden’s having the same experience.

She and I have only three sessions left, and some of the very worst things to befall the Ives family are coming up.

The situation with Dr. David. The arrests. The court case. The accident.

I have no idea how Margaret has managed to move through life so isolated, carrying all of this on her shoulders, when I’m only three weeks into cataloging it and wishing desperately to share it with Hayden.

As if reading my mind, he stops walking and pulls me into an embrace, tucking me against his sun-warmed body, his chin resting atop my head. And even though we’re not talking about it, it does feel like some of the load shifts onto his shoulders.

“Did you see the picture,” he says.

I pull back to peer up into his face. It takes a beat for his meaning to set in. “I did. But I don’t know what it means.”

He nods curtly, his eyes narrow and mouth tense.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because you need to,” he says, “before you agree to take this job.”

“So now I’m the one getting the job?” I say.

“You won me over,” he murmurs. “I have to assume you’ve won Margaret over too.”

“Yeah, but I’m not sleeping with Margaret,” I say.

“You’re not sleeping with me either,” he says.

“Yet,” I say. “And whose fault is that?”

He laughs, kisses me once, and then starts walking again, tugging me along by our linked hands. “A cemetery was a good idea.”

“Bright and crowded,” I say. “Or crowded enough, anyway.”

Back at my house after, we make dinner. Green tomato pie, fried okra, buttermilk biscuits—two-thirds of which he’s never had, and certainly never made.

“Your parents didn’t teach you how to cook at all?” I ask as we’re slicing tomatoes side by side.

He shakes his head. “My mom did all the cooking, and she had a weird thing about other people being in the kitchen while she was working.”

“And was that weird thing ‘Mom guilt’?” I ask.

“Maybe a little,” he allows. “But also she told me the kitchen was ‘her church,’ which was confusing since she and Dad also dragged us to First Presbyterian every single week.”

I laugh, go check on the biscuits. They could use a few more minutes.

“I think,” he says, “what she meant was, the kitchen was her nighttime.”

“Her nighttime?” I come back to stand beside him, his large hands still slowly, carefully slicing the plump tomatoes we grabbed from a farmers’ market in Savannah.

“Like how I used to wander, after everyone went to sleep,” he says. “Looking back, I think she liked the privacy and the control.” He pauses for a beat. “I know my parents love each other, but I don’t think she was well suited to be a politician’s wife. No matter how small time.”

“What do you think she was meant for then?” I say, curious.

His shoulders lift. “I don’t know. When she was a teenager, she wanted to be a singer. But she had stage fright. Ended up on a stage anyway though.”

I think of the labyrinth on Margaret’s property, the path that winds all through her workshop. Unicursal. One beginning, one end. Or, depending how you look at it, no beginning and no end—just a journey.

“Do you think we have free will?” I ask.

He lets out a verifiable bark of laughter that lights me up from the inside. “You,” he says, “surprise me more than anyone I’ve ever met.”