Coda Books 06 - Fear, Hope, and Bread Pudding (MM)

around who watched over me. I scoffed at it for years. After all, they were only housekeepers and accountants and nannies. They were being paid to care. And sure, my mother took me in after he died, but I was angry and childishly determined to be misunderstood. Meanwhile, Angelo was being shipped from one foster home to another with nobody to watch after him at all. I wish I could go back in time and slap myself for being so self-centered. I suddenly feel the need to contact every nanny I ever had and thank them.
    Maybe someday I will.
    As for my mother?
    Well, sweets, that brings me back to Angelo again. He’s been reading a lot, and he mentioned this quote by Mark Twain:
    Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
    Those words made me consider the future. I imagined what it would be like to be eighty or ninety years old (still more than twenty years away, thank goodness). Grace and George will both be gone. When I look back on my life, am I likely to say, “Boy, I sure regret trying to get to know my mother after my daughter was born”? Probably not. But, “I wish I’d made peace with my mother when I had the chance”?
    That’s something I don’t want to take to my grave.

    I N EARLY February, Cole and I celebrated our one-year anniversary. Grace was due in the next day. We of course no longer had a spare bedroom, so I assumed she was staying in a hotel. It was with no small amount of derision that I learned she was staying with my father.
    “Jesus, Dad! You barely know her!” I snapped.
    “I know her well enough.”
    “What, after one week of screwing like kids in Munich?”
    “It wasn’t like that.” He winced. “Not completely.”
    “Do you love her?”
    “Not the way I loved your mother, if that’s what you want to know.”
    “So, what? It’s just sex?” Funny to be having this conversation. I remembered clearly having him ask the same questions about Cole.
    My father sighed in exasperation and rubbed his forehead. “Not that it’s any of your business, Jon, but I like to have help with the crosswords, okay?”
    I decided to drop the subject. I couldn’t help wondering if the crossword thing was some kind of euphemism, but I decided I’d rather not know the details. Besides, it was probably much as mine and Cole’s relationship had been when the conversation had been reversed. Not love. Not merely sex. Something in between.
    It usually is , my father had said at the time, and he was right.
    Grace’s flight didn’t get in until 7:00 p.m., which made the day feel longer than ever. I was impressed at how calm Cole was about the whole thing. Partly, his conversation with Angelo had helped him reframe his expectations of his mother, but what really helped was simply hope. Hope for the future. Hope of being a father. Hope encapsulated in the bright, sunny room at the end of the hallway. The door was open. We were ready for a new life to begin.
    It gave him all the strength he needed.
    My first thought when I saw Grace again was how different she looked. She’d traded her upscale pantsuits for jeans. Her sweater was undoubtedly still expensive and a bit overstated, but it was casual. She also had her hair down. Her resemblance to Cole was unnerving.
    Cole dodged her hug much as he’d done in Munich and kissed her cheek instead. “Come in,” he said. “Sit down. I’ve opened some wine. Are you hungry? You must be after that flight. They never feed you anymore if it’s not an international flight, and I’m sure those pretzels didn’t do you any good. I have some olives and cheese, or if you’re really hungry, I could make you a sandwich—”
    “Cole,” my father said, sounding both amused and exasperated. “For heaven sake, son, sit down. The first thing we’re going to do is have a little talk.”
    “But it will only take me a minute.”
    He disappeared into the kitchen, and my father sighed and sank into a chair. Grace smiled at him shakily. “Wine might help, actually.”
    Cole came back out with the glasses in one hand and an open bottle in the other. I noticed that he took as long as he possibly could to hand them out and fill them up. Then, despite my father’s protests, he went back for the cheese and olives. I suspected even Grace could tell that he was stalling on whatever “little talk” my father had planned. But finally, he had no more excuses. The food sat on the coffee table between