Chapter 4: Forty Years of Silence
Breakfast at Serenity Shores was served on the east terrace from seven until ten.
I arrived at seven-fifteen.
I chose a corner table with a view of both the garden path and the terrace entrance.
Old habit.
I had always preferred to see who was coming before they saw me.
The server, a young woman named Delia, brought coffee without being asked.
She had worked here for two years.
I knew her name because I made it a point to know the names of everyone on staff.
Delia, whose mother was in a care facility in Sarasota and whose sister had just started college.
"Morning, Mrs.
Harrison," she said softly.
"The usual?"
"Please."
The terrace was quiet.
A retired couple near the fountain.
A man alone with a newspaper.
Two women in walking shoes who had clearly been up since sunrise.
I had my coffee and watched the garden path.
Mark appeared at eight-forty.
Alone.
He was in golf clothes but he didn't have his bag.
He stopped at the terrace entrance and scanned the tables.
When he found me he stood very still for a moment, the way he used to as a boy when he had done something wrong and was trying to decide how to approach it.
He was eleven years old the year his father p@ssed.
I had not thought about that for some time.
How he had stood in the hospital corridor in his school uniform, tie slightly crooked, face completely still.
Even at eleven he had not known how to cry in front of other people.
He crossed the terrace and sat down across from me without asking.
"You didn't call me back," he said.
"No.
I didn't."
Delia appeared.
Mark ordered coffee and waved her away before she could offer anything else.
"Amber was upset last night," he said.
"Was she."
"Mom." He set both hands flat on the table.
"What is going on?
What board meeting?
What legal team?
You told me you had a few small properties up north.
A couple of inns."
"I told you they were performing well.
That was true."
"That's not an answer."
I picked up my cup.
"No.
It isn't."
He stared at me.
There was something working behind his eyes — not quite anger, not quite fear.
Something between the two that I recognized from the night before a difficult thing, the face a person makes when they feel the floor shifting under them.
"How much," he said carefully, "is a few small properties?"
I set my cup down.
"Seventeen."
His mouth opened slightly.
"Across three states," I said.
"Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas.
The company has been incorporated for twenty-two years.
It currently employs four hundred and eleven people."
The retired couple near the fountain laughed at something.
A bird landed on the rim of a planter near our table and tilted its head at Mark's untouched coffee.
"Four hundred —" He stopped.
Started again.
"Mom.
Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I needed to know something first."
"What?"
I looked at him directly.
"Whether you loved me or you loved what you might eventually inherit."
The bird flew away.
Mark didn't move.
"That's not fair," he said finally.
"Maybe not.
But I've watched you for six years, Mark.
Six years of marriage to that woman.
Six years of watching you shrink every time she spoke, agree with everything she said, look the other way every time she was cruel." My voice stayed level.
I had rehearsed none of this and yet it came out quiet and clear.
"Six years of watching my son disappear."
"She's not —" He stopped.
"She called me the maid in front of the entire lobby."
"I know.
I should have —"
"You laughed."
That landed.
I watched it land.
His jaw tightened and he looked down at the table.
"I didn't mean to laugh.
It was —" He shook his head.
"It was reflexive.
I didn't know what to do."
"You knew exactly what to do," I said.
"You chose not to do it."
A long silence.
Delia came and refilled my coffee.
She glanced at Mark's untouched cup and retreated without a word.
"She treats you terribly," I said.
"And you let her.
That worries me far more than whether you knew about the properties."
"I love her, Mom."
"I know you do."
"That has to count for something."
"It counts for a great deal," I said.
"It doesn't excuse everything."
He was quiet for a moment.
When he looked up there was something raw in his face that I hadn't seen since he was very young.
"What was in the envelope?" he asked.
"The one the girl brought to you by the pool."
"A letter about Thursday's board meeting."
"What happens Thursday?"
"The company restructures into a family trust.
Your share is already in the document, Mark.
It has been for three years.
I've been waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
I looked at him for a long moment.
"For you to be someone I could give it to."
He closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them they were glossy, though nothing fell.
He was still that eleven-year-old boy in the hospital corridor.
Still didn't know how to cry in front of another person.
"Does Amber know?" he asked.
"She knows something is happening.
She doesn't know what."
"She'll want to know."
"I expect she will."
He picked up his coffee finally.
His hand was not entirely steady.
He looked out over the garden and we sat in silence for a while, the way we used to when he was young and we would eat breakfast together on the front porch of the inn and he would ask me questions about the guests — who they were, where they were going, what their lives were like outside of the two or three days they spent with us.
He had been a curious boy.
Gentle.
Somewhere along the way that gentleness had been trained out of him.
"What do I need to do?" he said at last.
"That depends," I replied, "on what Amber does next."
He looked at me.
I lifted my cup.
Neither of us said anything further.
But across the terrace, at the edge of the garden path, a figure in a cream silk wrap dress appeared and stopped when she saw us sitting together.
Amber.
Standing at the entrance to the terrace, watching.
She had heard none of it.
But she could see that something had changed between us, and her expression shifted into something careful and cold and very deliberate.
May you like
She smiled and walked toward our table.
And I thought: here we go.
