Page 53 of Truth and Temptation
As I heat up some leftovers, frozen who knows how long ago, my phone beeps with an incoming message.
MOM: Hi honey, welcome home. If you’re up for it, join your father and I for dinner tonight? I’ll make cannelloni.
On cue, my stomach rumbles. I haven’t had a home cooked meal with my parents in months, and Mom knows I can’t resist her cannelloni.
WYATT: Sounds good. Be there in an hour
The leftovers go into my fridge for tomorrow, and instead of eating, I head downstairs to my building’s gym and pound out a few miles on the treadmill before going over to my parents’ house. I need the endorphin rush to clear the post-travel fog. Hopefully, it’ll also give me the energy to put on a good enough front with my parents so they don’t see right through my bad mood the way Jacob did.
But when I walk in the front door of their house in Point Grey, one look at Mom’s face is all I need to know she isn’t going to go easy on me. I’m about to catch hell for avoiding her ever since coming back from Dogwood Cove. I didn’t acknowledge her attempts to reach out on Ryder’s anniversary, and when I had to go to the office to grab what I needed for Toronto, I was careful to avoid both her and Dad’s office. Which means Mama Crawford is about to lay it on me.
“Wyatt. So nice to see you at last.” Her hands are on her hips, and despite the calm look on her face, I can sense the hurt, worry, and disappointment brewing underneath.
“Hey, Mom. How are you?” I walk over and kiss her cheek before handing her a bottle of the La Lune Rouge Meritage we enjoyed when they were on the island.
“Oh, I’m fine. The real question is, how are you?”
With that cryptic remark, Mom turns and walks into the kitchen. I guess I’m expected to just follow her, so I do.
“Hi Dad, Toronto went well.”
My father turns from the cabinet where he’s pulling down wine glasses. “Great. Thanks for taking care of that.”
Huh. Weird. Normally he would have a lot more questions for me, questions that would come across as thinly veiled critiques of my work. Gingerly, I sit down on one of the tall bar stools that line the kitchen counter as my father wordlessly opens the bottle of wine I brought, pours three glasses, and slides one to me after handing the other to my mother.
I take a sip of wine, savouring the rich flavour. Finn knows his shit when it comes to making wine, that’s for damn sure.
“We went to Dogwood Cove to look for you. Your mother desperately wanted to be with you on the eighth.”
The wine goes down the wrong way, courtesy of my shock at hearing my father actually reference the date of Ryder’s death. Has he ever done that? I honestly can’t remember. And it would seem there’s not going to be any small talk tonight, we’re getting straight into it. I clear my throat and shift on my seat. “Yeah, I heard. Sorry I wasn’t there.”
“Care to share where you were? Your friends seemed just as disappointed by your absence as we were.”
I don’t even try to hide my wince. “Who did you speak with?”
Mom comes and sits down on the stool beside me. “Paige. And another woman, Mila. But Paige seemed particularly upset by your leaving. She’s who you were talking about before, isn’t she? When you said you wanted to stay in Dogwood Cove for a while?”
There’s no sense in lying now. “Yeah, she was.”
“What happened, son?” I lift my eyes to meet my father’s, and I’m stunned to see nothing but compassion.
But opening up to them is not that simple. I’ve forced down my personal feelings for too many years, keeping my focus on trying to be a good son, to try and make up for the fact that Ryder is gone.
“Why do you think something happened?” I say, half-heartedly trying to avoid the question.
“Because we aren’t blind, or stupid, even if it has taken us this long to realize just how unhappy you really are.” At Mom’s sharp tone, my head twists around to look at her. She reaches her hand out to rest on my leg. “I’m so sorry, honey, we’ve wasted too many years looking the other way, believing you were content, when this entire time you’ve been hurting far more deeply than we realized.”
My entire body slumps down as tension I’ve been carrying for years dissipates. I let out a strangled laugh, my head falling back so I’m staring at the ceiling. “All I wanted was for you guys to not worry about me. To try and make up for the fact that you lost one of your sons. Sounds impossible, now that I say it out loud.”
“Wyatt James Crawford, you fool. We’re your parents. Worrying is what we do best.” My mom sniffs tearily as she stands up and pulls me into her arms. “Hug me, son. Not because we lost your brother, but because we still have you. And you are enough, just the way you are.”
I let myself collapse into her embrace, feeling it infuse me with the love I’ve pushed away for too long. My dad’s hand comes to my shoulder and squeezes gently, and his support flows through as well.
“I don’t want to work for Crawford Books,” I mumble into my mom’s shoulder.
“What?” she asks, pulling back slightly. I take a deep breath. It’s now or never. I’m doing it, Ryder.
“I don’t want to work for Crawford Books. I never have. I did it because I knew you wanted the company to stay in the family, but I’m sorry, it’s not for me. I just can’t see myself working in an office for forty more years without going fucking insane.”
