CAMERON
In Italy, four summers ago, before YouTube changed everything, Cameron had been broke as broke could be. So he’d agreed to work for room and board for this absolute asshole of an artist. He was a glassblower high in the hills of Tuscany. And Cameron had worked like a dog for Carlo in his sweltering hot workshop and then ended up having to cook for the guy, too. Which wasn’t such a chore—the guy pressed his own olive oil and he had chickens and goats, and lemon trees and rosemary grew wild in the yard.
One afternoon, after the ovens were turned off and the hills had cooled down, and Carlo had finished his second, or more likely third, bottle of wine, he’d grunted at Cameron to accompany him.
With another bottle of wine and the juice glasses Carlo like to drink from, they gathered up the week’s successes—the glass pieces Carlo hadn’t smashed off the blow pipe—and carried them in their arms up the crumbling stone steps to the top of the hill behind the house. Lizards scattered and grasshoppers bounced out of their way.
The air had smelled like rosemary and sunshine, and the light was syrup poured over the hills, and it was—for a moment—worth the burns and the work and the crap mattress in the guest room.
And then Carlo, taking a great swig of wine, started tossing the glass over the side of the hill onto the flat patio stones below where they shattered. Spectacularly.
“What are you doing?” Cameron had asked.
Carlo explained—in a voice that was passionate but slurred—that the glass was not perfect. And therefore worthless.
Carlo lit a smoke and reached for the pieces in Cameron’s arms. Cameron, exhausted and burned and a little drunk on the Tuscan sunlight, but just figuring out who he was as a chef and a man, tried to hold onto the lime green squiggle pieces in his arms even harder.
Because he was realizing that perfection was cold. And destructive. And he was about the imperfect. The messy and flawed. The welcoming and warm.
But the old man did not give up and there was actually a tussle. One of the pieces slipped out of Cameron’s hands and fell onto the rough stones they were standing on, and for one second it really seemed like it wasn’t going to shatter.
It held its shape despite the awful cracking noise.
Phew, he remembered thinking. I saved it.
And then it collapsed into pieces.
The scene in the Riverview was exactly like that moment.
No one said anything.
No one moved.
No one was even breathing. They were frozen.
And for a second it was like this wasn’t even happening at all.
Am I dreaming this?
Josie, standing near the door, looked like she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole, and he understood that desire so well he nearly said something about it. Nearly made a joke. Like everything that had happened between them hadn’t, and they were just the kids they’d been.
But then she turned away as if looking at him was too damn hard.
And he felt the echo of the slick shame he’d spent years dealing with. Faint, sure, but there all the same.
And Helen—who, it was good to see, was actually pregnant and not just throwing that card around willy-nilly, winced and lifted her hand in a tiny wave.
And the room absolutely exploded.
“Cameron!” Everyone was talking at once, yelling, running toward the door. Of course Alice was there first. He’d counted on that. Like walking into hostile territory and seeing one familiar face.
“What…what are you doing here?” Alice asked, holding onto him so hard he could feel the knuckles of her fingers wrapped in his shirt.
“A pregnant blackmailer was involved,” he said, smiling at everyone lined up over Alice’s shoulder.
“I can’t believe it,” Alice whispered, and he could feel her tears building in the hitch of her shoulders. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Come on, Alice,” he whispered in her ear. “This is hard enough.”
She sucked in a breath and stepped away, nothing but smiles. Helen was next. Delia. Patrick and Iris. The kids, none of whom were really kids anymore. Gabe. Jonah and Daphne. Garth, a teenager, tried to help him with his backpack.
“It’s heavy,” Cameron warned him.
“It’s a backpack,” Garth said with all the assurance of a teenager. Don’t tell me what I don’t know. Cameron remembered that feeling so well.
“All right,” Cameron said and shrugged out of the bag, which immediately toppled Garth over the edge of a chair.
“Holy crap, what’s in that thing?” Garth asked, wrestling it down to the ground.
“My whole life,” Cameron answered. Which sounded dramatic and like an exaggeration, but really wasn’t.
There were more hugs and some tears. With every hug, he found himself pulling deeper inside of his skin. Farther away from anyone’s touch.
An old survival skill.
But then there was Max.
And there weren’t enough survival skills in the world to handle Max.
“Son,” he said in a low murmur, and Cameron flinched just as Max came in for a hug. And the flinch froze Max in his place and maybe…well, maybe that was fine. For the best.
They were men now, no matter how much Max might want to “son” him. And what had happened between them in the past made it a little hard to hug the man now. He still remembered the taste of shame in the back of his throat, the way he’d been unable to look Max in the eye that night.
Shit.
He was a man now, and the choices that had been made were all his own. And truthfully, he was grateful in a lot of ways for how that whole thing had shaken out.
But the memory was still a bad one.
He was doing his best to squash an older survival skill. Learned in his father’s house. From his father’s fists.
Anger. Anger at all of them. At himself. If he could just be angry he wouldn’t feel ashamed about that night. Or pained by the years. Or shocked at all the silver in Alice’s hair.
Or pierced right through the gut by Josie.
He was trying not to notice her, where she lingered on the edge of the crowd of Mitchells. The place she’d occupied for a long time. Hovering at the periphery but never pushing her way inside. It was one of the things that had bound them together when they were kids. Belonging, sure. But not really.
Stop.
He took a deep breath so he could let go of the anger.
Nope. No way. That way lies madness.
It seemed crucial that he treat her the same as he treated every other Mitchell, but that was so difficult he found himself ignoring her. And that was easier. In so many ways.
So he stopped giving himself a headache watching her out of the corner of his eye, but he could still feel her. Like there was a string stretched between them, and he felt the tug and pull the further away she got.
This was a feeling he had forgotten about. The feeling that dogged him the first few months after he left, before he headed for Europe, putting Josie, the Riverview, and that night a million miles behind him.
It had taken a while before the first thought he’d had upon waking up was not about Josie. Or the Riverview. These people.
But it had happened. He’d moved on.
“You came,” Helen said, smiling up at him.
“You made it pretty clear I had to.” He looked down at her belly. “How are you feeling?”
“Great.”
“Where’s Evan?” He’d met Helen’s guy a while back. They’d all been in Washington, DC, at the time. They were doing some lobby work and he had been in the city to interview an urban farmer, but then ended up staying because he and the urban farmer had fallen into her bed for about a month.
Cameron liked Evan as a person and he really liked him as a partner for Helen. He was a grounding force for that girl, whose natural state was electric.
“He’s been delayed,” she said. “But he promises he’ll be here by Christmas Eve.”
“He better,” Cameron said. Alice was back from the kitchen bringing piles of food, bright eyed but not crying. She set down the serving bowls and then grabbed him, ushering him toward the table. Her arm around his waist like a steel girder.
Her message was clear—you are not getting away from me.
“You must be hungry. Are you hungry?” she asked.
It was the question of his teenage years. God, the food she’d fed him. Stuffing him with potatoes and fresh green beans and plums and cheese and cakes made from scratch with love. He’d eaten it all. Every bit. All the time.
So used to starving he hadn’t even realized how hungry he was.
“What…happened here?” he asked, looking down at the messy table, serving bowls on their sides, forks on the floor. Total mayhem.
“There was a squirrel in the tree,” Alice said, pointing at the giant Christmas tree in front of the windows.
“Oh my god, it’s the racoons all over again,” Cameron said, remembering the racoons that had invaded the party tent the night before the very first wedding ever held at the Riverview.
“What a night that was,” Alice said.
“I don’t think it was that bad,” Gabe said with a smile just for Alice.
He had a physical reaction to Gabe and Alice, same as when he was a kid. A tension down his back, his hands curling into fists. As a teenager in constant survival mode, with nothing but anger and fear to feed him, the love and respect they had for each other had seemed fake. And it had literally made him angry. And when that love and affection had been spread his way he fought it with every part of his being.
Until Max somehow convinced him it was real. Something he could count on.
And he didn’t regret giving up that fight, but perhaps—if he hadn’t let them all the way in—he might have been able to protect himself a little bit better.
“Well, it probably won’t be the last wild animal loose in this place,” Max said, coming to stand next to him. Cameron stepped away just enough that he didn’t feel Max there. Couldn’t see him out of the corner of his eye. Could, in fact, pretend he wasn’t there at all.
His father had had the good grace to never be a decent man. Much less a father. But this guy? Max? He’d taught Cameron everything he understood about being a man.
Josie stepped up to the place across the table from him.
And he made the stupid mistake of looking at here. Right at her. It was like staring into the face of the sun. The girl she’d been was still there. Still recognizable. The freckles. The green eyes. Her wild red hair had changed to auburn and it caught the light behind her and made her glow. She was still tall and thin, and he wanted to ask if she still ran road races every spring. He’d done that with her for a few years because the training runs were such a good chance to be close to her. God, what a fool he’d been. He hated running.
She was wearing black jeans and a silky black shirt, and he’d seen that New York uniform every time Netflix or YouTube brought him into their offices. She was in television somewhere in the city. And every time he’d said yes to those visits, he’d had to force himself not to imagine running into her on the subway. Or in some bodega getting coffee. And he hadn’t. All day he’d walk around not thinking about her.
But at night he would dream unhinged dreams about her.
Dreams that made him uncomfortable. Dreams about anger and sex.
He’d wake up hard and grieving.
And angry.
He felt it now as he sat across the table from her. The attraction and the loss and the anger. Wanting something he couldn’t have. And shouldn’t even want anymore. Wanting something he’d hurt.
He took one last glance at her face, to memorize the grown-up version of the girl he’d been so wild for.
She was crying and trying to hide it.
She was crying and trying to stop.
She was crying.
Because of me.
And he would have stayed no matter how uncomfortable he was. How angry and resentful. How hurt.
But he wasn’t going to stay and hurt her.
Shit. Just…shit.
He looked at Helen. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
And he turned and left.
The Mitchell family was quiet behind him. Speechless. The reverse, maybe, of the shattering glass of before. He’d leave—again. And everything would go back the way it was supposed to be.
And he grabbed his winter coat, swung his heavy bag over his shoulder, and headed outside. He’d rented a car for this trip, thinking in the back of his head that he would need a getaway option.
And it sat at the side of the road, a nondescript dark sedan. He’d never been so happy about the decisions that past him had made.
He fished the keys out of his pocket and hit the fob.
There was the sound of feet behind him and he didn’t turn to see who had followed him.
Helen, maybe. The instigator.
Alice? He’d write her an email, explaining everything. She’d understand. For a long time she’d had her own sharp edges that kept people from getting too close.
Josie?
He hoped not. Couldn’t imagine it. He’d spent the first year of his exile imagining her finding him in his tiny apartments and hectic jobs. In Baltimore and Wyoming. San Francisco and Vancouver.
All while deleting pictures of her from his phone. Ignoring her emails.
He’d had to leave the continent to leave that daydream behind.
“Cameron?”
Jesus. It was Max.
Cameron sighed and stopped. Not because he wanted to talk to the guy. But because he knew Max wasn’t going to let up and this whole thing could end with Cameron running him over with the car or some bullshit.
He turned to face Max. “Max, I think we can both admit it was a mistake for me to come. I never should have—”
Max just kept walking. Not stopping, and Cameron felt the way he had that night, like Max might hit him. And he wasn’t a boy anymore, and if it was going to come to that, to a god damn fistfight with his old mentor, then—fine. Weirder shit had happened.
He shrugged out of his backpack and changed up his stance. Max was still big and strong, and he had that ice-hard I’ve-killed-a-man edge to him that had always frankly terrified Cameron, but Cameron had been broke and homeless on the streets of Bangkok on more than one occasion.
He knew how to handle himself.
“Jesus, Max!” he shouted as the old guy got close, and he threw out an arm, a loosely gathered fist because, honest to god, he didn’t want to hit the man. But Max grabbed him by the shoulders, his dark eyes searching Cameron’s, and Cameron tried to step back but Max wouldn’t let him.
“I’m so sorry,” Max said, and wrapped his arms around Cameron.
He held himself still—shades of the glass breaking—before pushing at the guy’s chest.
“Max—”
“I’m so goddamn sorry, and if I was a better man—”
“Stop!” Cameron said, but Max just kept hugging him and talking. Cameron could only stand there and take it.
“I’ll leave,” Max said. “Just come back inside. Alice is ready to burn the place down and Helen is crying. I’ll make myself scarce.”
Cameron slumped in the man’s embrace, enough that Max must have gotten the sense that Cameron wasn’t going to fight him anymore and let him go.
Cameron looked over Max’s shoulder at the inn. Alice was standing in the doorway. He could see how anxious she was. He could feel it, practically. She was the only mom he’d ever known, really. Anything good that grew in his life, he could trace the roots back to her.
To Max, too, in a lot of ways.
It wasn’t comfortable. But there it was.
“It just seems…”
“Like a lot?” Max finished.
Cameron huffed. “You guys are always a lot,” he said. “But this maybe…maybe it’s just too much. It’s Christmas, and I think I’m a bad memory—”
Max sucked in a breath. “I’m so sorry you think that.” He shook his head, and to Cameron’s total and utter shock the former cop seemed to be about to cry. “Because you’re not.”
“That night is,” Cameron said. He would not be put off by platitudes. He wanted to say Josie is in there crying. But he couldn’t even say her name.
Max shook his head, so sad. “Not…for the reasons you think. Everyone regrets what happened. All of us. And if you come in…”
“We’re going to be one big happy family?” Cameron asked.
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t part of the family, Max. I was an employee.”
“You were much more than that, Cameron. So much more. And even if you don’t remember that, I do. Alice does. Everyone in there does. Josie—”
Cameron lifted his hand and Max, thank god, shut his mouth.
Cameron glanced up at the tops of the trees, the slate-gray sky above them. There was going to be snow soon. He could smell it. Max had taught him that. How the air changed in advance of weather. It had felt, learning it, like a stupid thing. But in his life on the road it had become a superpower.
I owe them so much.
“It’s Christmas, son—”
“Stop,” Cameron said. “Stop. I’ll come in. I’ll stay for dinner. Past that…we’ll go meal by meal, okay?”
Max blinked back his tears. “Meal by meal sounds familiar.”
“But you don’t call me son. Not ever again.”
Max nodded solemnly, like he understood it was the price of the past.
Cameron reached down for his backpack, but Max got there first.
“Good god, no wonder Garth fell over. What do you keep in there?”
“My home,” Cameron said. Max looked at him like he was joking, but he wasn’t.
He’d lost the only home he’d ever had, really. The only family.
He lived his whole life now making sure he didn’t have another one to lose.