Chapter Thirty-Eight

As requested, Adam sits on the opposite side of the table from me. Heddy sits at one end, my father on the other, everyone else piled in between.

Having my father around changes the energy of the group. We've been having such a nice time together and we've been so comfortable, but his stern, quiet aura keeps the rest of us tense. Francesca seats Alice and Grayson on either side of him because they're the only ones not scared.

When he came inside, Adam gave Heddy a hug and my father a firm handshake. I did not mistake those cold eyes landing on me, between us, and I sense them as we eat, like lasers, dragging back and forth.

"Why didn't you girls answer my phone calls last night?" he asks.

Francesca freezes. "Sorry Daddy, we just missed them. The kids were up late, and we had just listened to Adam play, so they were wired."

"You went to a concert?" He takes a sip of wine.

Grayson says, "Grandpa, we went to this huge mansion." He illustrates with his hands. "They had a garden and a put-put place and cats were walking around and a big fire. That's where Adam played his guitar."

We're met with confusion.

David explains, "Adam has a friend with an inn about thirty minutes up the road. We went up for the night."

Maggie says, "Adsy was telling us about it. It sounded so beautiful. Diego and I will go for a stay next time we're up here. I heard how romantic it was."

I choke on a piece of turkey.

"Romantic, huh?" My dad says, watching me sputter and cough. He shifts in his chair. "So, Adam …"

I guzzle down water and watch Adam's easy, passive expression shift. He slowly meets my father's eye.

"How is it being a successful musician?"

"It's the dream," Adam responds. "Just like I knew it would be."

"Did you struggle?

"At first. But I didn't give up."

My dad blinks. "And how did you kids all find yourselves back here together again? What a coincidence. Was it a coincidence? Or was this some kind of planned thing?"

I flash my eyes at him, knowing what he's insinuating and begging him to stop.

Francesca leans back and says, "Wait, Daddy, how did you know that we'd met Adam before?"

He takes a bite of Diego's stuffing. "Heddy filled me in in the car."

Heddy smiles wide with raspberry lipstick and munches on her food.

Then, it's quiet.

I wish someone had put music on or left a Christmas movie on the TV. The only sounds we hear are scraping metal and poured wine, chewing and drinking, Alice humming to herself.

Francesca instructs, "Alice, don't just eat bread. Try some of these green beans. They're really yummy."

"Everything's delicious," Maggie offers.

"Fran prepared the turkey," David says.

"What's for dessert?" Caroline asks.

I swirl my fork in cranberry sauce. "Pie."

"Pecan?" Kate begs.

I nod. She cheers.

It's quiet, again.

Grayson blurts out, "Adam loves Auntie Vee."

Silence.

I freeze, my forkful of sweet potato casserole hanging in the air.

That must have been some kind of conversation he and Adam had.

While everyone else remains silent, Francesca immediately laughs and says, "Grayson, what?"

"He does nice things for her." Grayson repeats, "He loves her."

"What are you talking about?"

She's the only one who makes a sound and it's loud – her hand covers a snort. I can't tell if she's uncomfortable or being mean, acting as if the whole idea is ludicrous. She finally shakes her head at the rest of us, like what a crazy kid.

"He wrote songs about her," Grayson says. "Like when you make up songs about us at bedtime. He was singing words about Auntie Vee."

She sighs and looks at Adam apologetically, "Grayson –"

Grayson insists, "He did. Those songs were about her." He looks at Adam for confirmation but doesn't get anything beyond pursed lips and a steady gaze.

I haven't moved. I'm waiting to see how far this will actually go.

Francesca chuckles. "I'm sorry, really, it's just." She shakes her head and tries, "Grayson, Adam did not write those songs about Auntie Vee any more than Elmo writes songs about you."

"Yes, he did!" He sits up on his knees. He doesn't like being talked down to. "He said that he loves a girl who likes strawberry ice cream and doesn't read books. Auntie Vee doesn't read books!"

That's not a personality trait I'd like my five-year-old nephew to know.

"I read books, Gray," I argue.

Francesca looks at him seriously and says, "A lot of people like strawberry ice cream. I like strawberry ice cream! So do you . Adam is not in love with your Auntie Vee, Sherlock."

He presses his hands into the table and snaps, "He said he carved a rock, in his song, and he actually did do that." He gets up from the table.

David calls to him, "Grayson, sit down, you were not excused."

My nephew returns, holding the little stone he found on the bookshelf beside the television, and hands it to his mother. She raises a brow, turning it over in her palm. Her mouth presses into a pacifying smile, her eyes drifting to the rest of the table for help.

Adam stares at his plate. David looks away, drinking his wine. Heddy inspects her mood rings. Kate and Caroline eat with unconcerned expressions. Diego whistles to himself – actually whistles – and Maggie scratches at a spot on her sweater. Even my father, for the first time in a long time, doesn't remove his beady eyes from mine.

Oh God, they all know. How do they all know?

A sound escapes from Francesca. She circles her eyes back around the evasive table and scoffs, "What is this rock, Vienna?"

I nod, slowly. "It's a rock."

"What. Is. It?" She holds the carved heart with a straight arm. Diego leans out of the way.

We're not going to make it to the pie.

"Adam made it," I answer.

Her eyes rival my dad's for attention. She growls, "Why did he make you a rock with a heart in it?"

"Because he wanted to."

Adam finally looks up. He fights back an amused smile, shaking his head. He can't believe I'm going to tell her. Right now.

She demands, "Are you two hooking up?"

Initially, I answer, "No." Then I fix, "Well, actually, yes."

Metal falls against a plate and Caroline covers a gasp with her mouth.

Francesca looks like she might be having a medical event. Her jaw hangs. She smooths the stone in her hand and pauses on Grayson.

"That song is years old," she realizes. "That can't be about Vienna."

My dad exhales and raises his eyebrows, dropping his napkin on the table. He throws his hands up to Heddy, saying, "For the record, I didn't bring this up. She did."

"Bring what up?" Francesca's eyes go wide. "Adam?" She holds the rock out for him to see.

He furrows his brow. "I did make that. And I did write those songs about her."

She screeches, gobsmacked, "When?"

"Fourteen years ago."

She's a robot malfunctioning. She's completely on the fritz, blinking and twitching, until she finally sputters with a short, creepy laugh, " The fuck ?"

David pushes out of his chair. "Okay, kiddos, let's go get some dessert."

Maggie says, "Yes, we will, too."

She and Diego hurry from the table. Caroline pops a roll in her mouth and takes her plate, while Kate picks up her wine and Alice's hand. They're all nearly gone from the room when Francesca finds the words.

"When did this –" she points angry fingers at us both "– happen and how long have you been keeping it a secret from me?!"

I exhale. I feel Adam's shoe bump against mine for support.

"It started that summer," I answer.

"Oh my God!" She shakes the table when she violently stands. She charges out of the house, slamming the door.

Heddy begins, "I'll talk to her."

"No," I say, stopping her with my hand. "I will."

I leave Adam and Heddy with my Dad, something I'll apologize to him later for, and go outside. I glance at my coat, but figure I'll be fine without it. As worked up as Francesca is right now, her heat will warm me.

She paces in the back yard. The heels of her boots stab the grass.

I stand just at the bottom of the stairs.

Francesca glowers at me. "So, you lied to me."

"About?"

She holds up her fingers to be ticked off. " One , that night they came over for dinner, I asked if you two were fucking that summer and you said no."

Before I can explain, she holds up a second finger. " Two , when you said you didn't know where Adam was this morning, you did know, didn't you? Because he was in the room you were keeping me out of."

"Yes." I walk toward her. "I lied to you."

She spits, "I knew something was going on when he kissed you. That was a comfortable kiss, not the way you kiss someone because of a mistletoe dare. It almost knocked you over. And the way you skirted around the whole, oh it's not our first kiss, bullshit."

"Fran, just stop walking in circles, please."

She does, just to get up in my face and say, "And what was going on that summer? Huh?"

"We were seeing each other in secret." She's an inch away, close enough to spit on me, but I feel lighter after saying that short sentence. All secrets and hiding, all the pain I carried afterward, is gone. I continue, "At night. In the morning. When you and Dave weren't around."

"Ugh." She backs off and makes a disgusted face. "Did you do stuff on our couch ?"

"No, it wasn't like that. We weren't doing anything," I insist.

"I don't want to know what you were doing."

"Fran, we got to know each other and…I fell in love with him."

"You were eighteen!" she cries.

I insist, "It was real."

"You had a perky butt and smooth skin, and he was hot and played the guitar. That was lust , Vienna, not love."

Just to get it all out in the open, I add one final pebble to the unsteady stack of boulders she's trying to process. "He asked me to marry him on my eighteenth birthday."

She teeters, her eyes moving on the ground, thinking. " You were the girl he was engaged to. How did I not know about this?"

I glance back at the house, hopeful that another fire isn't brewing inside there. "Dad came to get me before anything happened. I asked him not to tell anybody. I was embarrassed to leave, to hurt Adam, to make Dad so angry. I didn't see or talk to Adam again until this week."

Her teeth grind together and her nose squints. It's the pullback of a trigger, the wiggle of a big cat ready to pounce on its prey. I prepare for her attack.

Calmly, she says, "I can't believe you didn't tell me."

I exhale. "I couldn't Fran. I thought you'd be mad."

"Like I am now?"

"You told me not to go out with him, so we were meeting in secret. I liked not having you and Dave around to judge us or watch."

She pinches the bridge of her nose. "Why do you think I would even care?"

"You clearly care." I gesture toward her.

"I would not have cared, then ," she snaps. "You were too wimpy to tell the truth, so you're just trying to blame it on me. You always blame me for stuff I didn't do."

I make the sound of disbelief. "You told me it was our ‘special sister summer'! If I had told you about us, you would have blown your lid!"

"If I said that, I didn't mean it seriously." She looks at me with pathetic disgust.

I swallow. "You give me orders and boss me around and expect things of me. I'm always so worried about your emotions that I do whatever you say! I have sacrificed so much of myself for you. I could have missed out on loving that man!"

"That's right, I'm demanding , I forgot that's how you see the world."

I try to remain as calm as possible, but anger bubbles up anyway. I throw my hands out and yell, "I shouldn't be expected to find your kid when you can't see him! Or take him to the bathroom when you can't be bothered! Or come on a family vacation because you're too scared to be around your husband!"

She mirrors my movement, but she's full of pure confusion. She doesn't even know what I'm talking about.

I continue, "I only came that summer because you told me to. You made me cancel my cruise!"

"Okay, this narrative is getting old, Vienna," she says dismissively.

"And I'm only here this week because you asked me to be here ," I beg her to understand. "But it's not just your fault, I should have stood up for myself a long time ago and stopped pushing away my needs to protect you."

Her nostrils flare. "How in the world do you protect me ?"

I swallow a lump in my throat. "I don't think you ever ask me how I'm doing. When mom died, I comforted you because you needed that, but you didn't comfort me back. You didn't even see that I was hurting."

She blinks away tears. "My mother had just died."

"So did mine," I whimper.

Francesca looks away, shaking her head, and wiping her nose.

I say, "I'm not going to apologize for my relationship with him, or for keeping it a secret. It has nothing to do with you."

She stares at me, clenching her jaw. Then, Francesca pulls her foot out of the grass and stomps off, toward the road.

I see the sun but can't feel it. I hear the water moving, but I don't listen to it. I've said things well overdue and instead focus on the shake of my body, the softness in my heart, the easing headache. I don't want to fight with Francesca, but if I had never said those things, we'd always be in a little bit of a fight, a resentment. I'd be fighting myself too.

Oh God, Adam's still in there with my dad.

I return to the house, hearing raised voices in the dining room that the television can't drown out.

Adam yells, "I'm sorry, when did she hop into a time machine and become seventeen again? She's thirty-two! She doesn't have to listen to you anymore!"

Cautiously, I enter the room, and they're all sitting exactly where I left them, only Heddy's visibly tense, my dad grips his knife with white knuckles, and Adam's face is red.

My father argues back, "She's my daughter. I won't let her be subjected to a scoundrel musician who's never home and is going end up sleeping with any pathetic woman who's available after a night of booze and drugs."

"Okay, everybody calm down," I interrupt.

Adam shouts, "Who do you think I am? A member of Nirvana?"

I stand in the doorway and say, "Dad, you don't know anything about Adam. He's not like that."

"You don't know him either, Vienna," he argues. "A couple of months fourteen years ago and a few nights this week? Please ."

Adam leans forward on the table. "First I wasn't good enough for her because I was never going to make it as a successful musician. Now I'm not good enough because I did."

"You're not good enough, period," my father seethes. He stands up, pointing to me with a violently shaking finger and my heart stops for a moment. "You go through with this, and I'll never speak to you again."

"Really, Dad?" I say.

"Really." He kicks his chair in and smooths back his silver hair. "I told you that all those years ago. You go off with him , and we are done."

He storms out of the door, and I watch him go with the heart palpitations of a nine-year-old.

That year I had gone three hundred and sixty-four days without seeing him. He didn't show up or call for birthdays or holidays. He never checked on us. Then, one day he came in the door while Francesca and I watched TV and the nanny, Anna, made us a pork roast. He ate dinner with us, worked on his computer while we watched more TV and was gone in the morning.

I had a panic attack, Anna took me to the doctor. I remember thinking, I'll never see my mom again. What if I never see my dad?

Adam shakes his head. "Can you believe that?"

"I need to talk to him," I say quietly, imagining he's already grabbing the keys to his car.

"What – no ," Adam says. "You've got to be kidding me."

"I don't want him to leave without talking this through."

He lets out a gasp of surprise. "There's no way to reason with a guy like that. He's a dick!"

"Please, Adam, just let me fix this with him," I urge, taking a step toward the door, looking through the glass for a car rolling down the driveway.

Adam comes around the table. His hot hands rest on the sides of my neck, pulling my attention back to him. He's shaking, I'm shaking. We're both hot and upset for two different reasons.

He says calmly, "There's nothing to fix. Let him leave."

He'll never understand why this is important to me.

I cry, "You didn't have to come to dinner tonight. I told you, you didn't have to come!"

"So, it's my fault that he's an asshole? And ruined Thanksgiving?" Adam drops his hands, dejected. He reads my expression, and his fingers dig into his scalp. "I thought, all this time, that you left with him because he had some hold over you. Money, whatever. But now…" He rubs his face. "You chose him over me."

"Of course I did!" I shout.

Adam looks at me like I just slapped him in the face.

I explain, "What was I supposed to do? He's the only parent I have left."

He stands silently, swaying slightly, grabbing the top of my chair for support. He nods at Heddy, who sits very quietly and mutters, "No. He's not."

I look at her with a fast apology, then watch Adam walk out of the room. I follow him, but he stops at the back door and stops me with a hand. "Don't follow me, Vienna. I can't talk about this right now."

"Everything will be fine. I'll come over later –"

" No ." He looks down at my boots by the door. "Just give me time. Leave me alone." He glances out the door at my dad's car. "You'd better hurry or you won't have time to salvage a one-sided relationship with a man who doesn't give you the time of day."

The door slams behind him.

I fight the urge to run out after Adam, to tell him to wait, that all of this is a stupid misunderstanding. Francesca will calm down; my dad will calm down. Everything will be fine in the end.

But I don't.

He always respected my boundaries. I need to respect his.