“Oh, Caleb,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry. That must have been so hard for you both.”
“It was hard on Kate,” he corrects, excluding himself entirely. “I wasn’t even there when it happened…I’d gone to this meeting in San Diego and by the time I got to the hospital, it was too late. She went through the whole goddamn thing alone.”
He hasn’t said it directly, but there’s blame in his voice. He’s holding himself responsible for some reason, but then…he’s the sort that would. There are men in the world who blame everyone but themselves. He’s the opposite.
“It wasn’t your fault, Caleb,” I reply. “You know that, right?”
“I should have been there. There were signs I might have noticed. And I wasn’t there for Kate afterward, either. She completely fell apart. I avoided it because work was easy and she was hard. This whole fucking thing, start to finish, was my fault.”
This is why he waited for a woman he hasn’t heard from in nearly a year, a woman who stole from his corporate accounts and God knows what else. Because he thinks he’s the reason she did it.
“Caleb, you were grieving too. Maybe you couldn’t deal with Kate because you were trying to keep yourself afloat.”
He shakes his head. “I wasn’t grieving, Lucie. I just wanted to work. My dad was exactly the same way. Sometimes it’s best to accept your limitations early on.”
“So you work too much. People change more significant pieces of themselves than that.”
“Except I don’t want to change,” he replies. “I’m responsible for a company and I don’t ever want to be responsible for anything or anyone else.”
It seems like a really lonely way to go through life. And I also don’t believe him. He says he didn’t grieve. He says it was hard on Kate. But Caleb cares about things a lot more than he lets on, and there’s no way what happened didn’t hit him hard.
He’s punishing himself with all this enforced isolation, and some ridiculous part of me is already hoping I can change his mind.
19
CALEB
I’ve never minded traveling. Living in a hotel is simple, easier in many ways than living at home. There’s no excess, there are no chores to be done. Your life is stripped bare, and you don’t have to feel bad about how empty it all is because you’re there to do a job, to save your company, and no one can criticize you for that.
But my hotel room in Austin looks out over a parking lot, and I miss the views at home. I don’t wake up excited to see anyone. I miss that too.
For the next three days, as I travel to Houston, then Chicago, then Denver…not a single person makes me laugh. Not a single person has me throwing off my covers in the morning and feeling as if something worthwhile might happen. I’m not going to turn a corner and discover Lucie there in the green dress. I’m not going watch that slow, unwilling smile open wide on her face when I find myself in her path or hear her laughter echoing over the water while I throw a frozen dinner in the microwave.
So what if I miss seeing them? Yes, I thought I wanted complete privacy, but is it a crime that I prefer not being out there alone?
I head to the Denver airport on Friday afternoon. I’m supposed to be in Seattle by seven for drinks with a possible investor.
I open my phone to pull up my boarding pass and then turn around and walk to the ticket counter. “How fast could I get on a flight to San Francisco?” I ask.
This doesn’t mean anything. There’s nothing wrong with a man just wanting to go the fuck home.
I GET BACK to the lake as the sun’s starting to fade. Lucie’s car is in the driveway, but there are no lights on in the house and they’re not at the beach.
My frustration is made worse by the fact that I know I shouldn’t be frustrated, that I shouldn’t care at all. I change into shorts and a t-shirt and head for the path that circles the narrow end of the lake to the north. There’s a little footbridge that lets you cross from one side to the other and Lucie takes the twins up there on occasion. I start jogging in that direction, hoping it’s where she’s taken them now and telling myself to anticipate disappointment when I’d have no right to be disappointed anyway.
Nothing can come of it whether I find her or not.
I hear them before I see them. Sophie is chattering away, and I run faster toward the sound until I come round the bend and find them.
Sophie’s in the middle of telling a story and Henry’s examining a log.