Chapter 6: The Son at the Door
He knocked at 10:52.
I had made tea — one cup, then reconsidered and made two.
The apartment was the same as it always was.
A small sofa.
A lamp with a slightly crooked shade I had never bothered to fix.
Forty years of a life lived practically, without apology.
Reid stood in the doorway in his dress shirt, jacket gone, collar open.
He looked the way he had at seventeen when he'd backed the car into the neighbor's fence and stood in the kitchen unable to find the words for it.
"Come in," I said.
He stepped inside and stopped in the middle of the room.
His eyes moved across the apartment — really moved, slowly, the way they hadn't in years.
As if he were seeing it for the first time instead of the forty-seventh.
"You've lived here for nine years," he said.
"Yes."
"I always thought—" He stopped.
"What did you think?"
"That you were here because you wanted to be modest.
Because you didn't want to show off." He looked at me.
"You weren't showing off.
You were just — living."
"Yes," I said.
"Sit down."
He sat on the sofa.
I handed him the second cup of tea.
He held it with both hands the way he had as a boy.
"She didn't come," he said.
"Tessa.
She went to her sister's."
"I know."
He looked up.
"You know?"
"I expected it." I sat across from him.
"She needs somewhere to be angry that isn't in front of me."
Reid was quiet for a moment.
"She's not — she isn't a bad person, Mom."
"I didn't say she was."
"But she did a bad thing tonight."
"Yes."
He wrapped both hands tighter around the cup.
"I did a bad thing too."
"Yes."
He flinched.
Maybe he had expected me to soften it.
I didn't.
"I've been — she has opinions.
Strong opinions about how things should look.
About our position, and what that means, and who belongs where." He stopped.
"I let her have those opinions.
I thought it was easier."
"Easier than what?"
"Than arguing.
Than reminding her every time that—" He stopped again.
"That you matter."
The lamp threw a warm, uneven light across the room.
"How long has it been like this?" I asked.
He didn't answer immediately.
He turned the cup in his hands.
"Three years, maybe.
Gradually.
You know how things shift gradually and you don't notice until you're somewhere you never intended to be."
"I know exactly how that happens."
"She has this idea of what our life is supposed to look like." He looked at the wall.
"And I think somewhere along the way I started performing it with her instead of questioning it."
"And tonight?"
"Tonight she went too far." His jaw tightened.
"And I sat there.
With a fork in my hand.
And I did nothing." He looked at me directly for the first time since he'd come in.
"I don't know how you walked out of that room the way you did."
"Because I knew something she didn't."
"The sale."
"No." I shook my head.
"I knew that her opinion of me had no power unless I gave it some." I picked up my cup.
"I stopped giving it power a long time ago.
I should have helped you understand how to do the same."
Reid set his cup on the table.
Leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
His eyes were wet, though nothing had fallen yet.
"The calls you made," he said quietly.
"Douglas Crane.
The interview."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you needed the confidence more than you needed the gratitude."
He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth.
Held it there for a moment.
"There's something else," he said.
His voice had shifted.
Lower.
Careful.
"Something I need to tell you.
May you like
About Tessa." He looked at the table.
"Something I should have told you a long time ago."
