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

insistence that she wouldn’t show, Cole went out of his way to prepare for her. He spent hours agonizing over her gifts, finally settling on a cashmere shawl and some shockingly expensive jewelry. I’d expected him to be nervous about seeing her, maybe even angry at my father for inviting her, but as I watched him pick out the necklace and bracelet and matching earrings on the evening of the twenty-third, I realized he was cautiously optimistic. He hid it well beneath a layer of disinterest, but it was there nonetheless. It was like waiting for word from Thomas, fear and hope equally weighted against each other, two sides of the same coin. I pictured it being flipped into the air, turning over and over as it traveled up to the peak of its arc, then falling back down. It spun in the void, alternately flashing bright anticipation and a dark warning of disappointment. Which side would land facing up was anybody’s guess.
    Cole waited for a phone call all through the morning of the twenty-fourth. As the seconds turned to minutes and the minutes to hours, his control began to slip. He fidgeted and went about the condo rearranging the Christmas decorations as if they somehow held the key. He checked the clock often. He was like a kid waiting in line to see Santa even though he was terrified of facing him.
    “She should have called to cancel by now,” he told me in a whisper as we cleared the table after dinner. I couldn’t tell which side of the coin was flashing at that moment.
    The ring of my father’s cell phone reached us from the other room. His words were muffled as he answered, but a minute later, he came into the kitchen to make his report. “Her plane has landed. She’s waiting for her luggage. She figures she’ll be here in about forty minutes.”
    “Oh,” Cole said. Nothing more. He sounded small and lost, disarmingly childlike. He began to wring his hands, looking around the room for something to occupy him. He had far too much nervous energy. Either he could give it rein and drive us all crazy, or I could try to distract him. Sex wasn’t going to work, partly because my dad was standing in the room with us, but mostly because it would take far more time than we had to get him to relax enough to enjoy it. Instead, I poured him a glass of wine.
    “Go sit down,” I said. “I’ll take care of the dishes.”
    When I was finished, I found Cole sitting on the couch with an open book in his hand. It didn’t take me long to realize he wasn’t actually reading it. He wasn’t turning pages. He was simply staring at the words. I suspected it was easier than staring at the clock. My dad was flipping through the channels on TV, undoubtedly searching for something in English.
    I sat next to Cole and put my arm around him. I tried to pull him toward me, to urge him to let go and relax against me, but he wasn’t having any of it. He stayed rigid against the arm of the couch, so I settled for rubbing my hand up his back.
    “Do you need anything?”
    “Stop making a fuss, Jonny. I’m fine.”
    An absolute lie, but I wasn’t surprised. I kept rubbing his back until he gave up the pretense of reading. He closed his eyes. His shoulders slumped. Nothing more than that, but it was the closest I’d get to surrender for now.
    “I haven’t seen her in six years,” he said at last.
    It probably felt like an eternity. I kissed his temple. I searched for something to say, but I had no idea what he needed to hear. That it would be fine? Except maybe it wouldn’t be. That I loved him no matter what? He knew that already.
    The doorbell rang. Cole glared at my dad. My dad stared back at him, a silent challenge in his eyes. It annoyed me, so I solved the problem by answering the door myself.
    I’d never seen so much as a picture of Grace. My mental image of her had been of the ultimate stereotypical rich bitch—tall and regal and stunning, platinum blonde hair and eyes that flashed disdain.
    I was wrong on every count.
    She was older than I expected. Cole and I were both closer to forty than thirty, and yet somehow, my mental image of Grace had always been of a woman not quite fifty. I realized with a shock that she was of course closer to my father’s age, probably almost sixty, although she still looked damn good for her age.
    My next surprise was how very much she resembled her son. Or how much he resembled her. They had the same caramel skin, the same cinnamon hair, the same slim build, and most striking of