Tor turns to Tobin. “I apologize for your mother. She isn’t herself tonight. Would you mind putting up your old dad? Renata needs a supportive mattress, but you two could camp out on the sofa bed. For family’s sake.”
Marijke pauses her grand exodus at the kitchen door.
Tobin’s intake of breath whistles in my ear.
No,I chant silently.No no no no. Say NO, this one time, for the love of innocent boob cakes.
He doesn’t say it.
Tobin’s whole upbringing was about pleasing this awful man. His mom better not be pissed that, after a lifetime of grooming her son to make himself irresistible, Tobin doesn’t know how to resist.
The back door slams furiously behind Marijke. Barbra Streisand—the perennial soundtrack when Tobin failed yet again to be the thing that kept his father around—blasts through the open window.
I add her name to my murder list.
“That’s settled, then. Renata and I will—”
“NO.”It’s a crime to shout down Barbra, but one does what one must.
Tor’s brow wrinkles with the beginnings of confusion. “Son! I am very surprised at Liz. What kind of person would ask Renata to sleep in her car, in her condition?”
“Of course—”
“NO!” I interrupt before Tobin blunders into Tor’s extremely obvious web.
It stings to have to say it. I already agreed to push back our anniversary celebration—the first one we’ve ever planned, thanks in no small part to this man, who unsurprisingly hasn’t remembered the date or wished us any happiness. We should already be drinking champagne and losing interest in a candlelit screening ofPride and Prejudicebecause we can’t keep our hands to ourselves. I refuse to give this moment away for Tor, again. It’sours.
I turn in Tobin’s arms. Someone has to say no. If it’s me, he has to back me up. He has to be with me, or he has to do this without me.
His golden skin is ashen. His lips tremble. But I know when my husband’s giving me the green light. We don’t need words or movements or even a blink-once-for-yes code.
“That won’t work for us, I’m afraid. No need to sleep in the car; I’m sure there are thousands of hotel rooms in Grey Tusk available for cash. Come on, Tobin.”
I pull him the first few steps, then we’re both running down the narrow driveway. By silent agreement, we head to my car (charged this afternoon; almost like I saw this coming).
It’s been fifteen minutes of some of my best angry driving when the first low, animal sob comes from beside me.
It’s not too late to slam on the brakes and cut hard into the mountain bike park entrance. I hug him awkwardly across the console, but it’s not enough for the huge, tearing grief that pours out of him.
I get out, pulling him from the passenger side. We stand together, holding tight, the pain in his voice mixing with the wind in the trees and the rush of glacial melt down the sheer mountainside.
“None of it mattered. Nothing. All these years,” he says, the words dull and dead.
I hug him tighter, his breath shuddering under my hands. “I’m sorry, Tobe. You didn’t deserve any of it.”
“Thank you,” he whispers into my dampened hair.
He’s so good, and so broken, and I’m an asshole for thinking about myself. For wanting to tell him how the wind is banging an unlatched door inside my chest, howling through the rooms of my heart.
Saying no can’t be only my job. I can’t be the bad cop to his good cop.
That’s not fair. That ends with vomit on the sidewalk at Disneyland.
If it doesn’t end long before that.
Tobin lets go, wiping his nose on his tie before tearing it off and throwing it in the bear-proof trash bin on the way back to the car.
“Why didn’t you take my name?”
