Chapter Eight
Charlotte
To say that dinner was awkward would be a vast understatement.
Hunter arrived at six. He looked like he’d taken care with his appearance—his midnight-dark hair was freshly trimmed and neatly brushed, and he was clean-shaven—but he wisely hadn’t worn a ten thousand dollar suit in a misguided attempt to impress my family, either. Beneath the omnipresent leather jacket, he wore a simple, collared polo shirt with navy and burgundy stripes, and a pair of dark indigo jeans.
Jacob insisted on meeting him at the door, somewhat to my dismay. The last thing I wanted was another fist fight to erupt between them. But the two of them just stared at each other for a long moment, then Jacob pulled open the door all the way and said simply, “Come on in.”
Hunter stepped into the foyer, shrugged off his jacket, and hung it on the coat rack, exactly as he’d always done when he’d visited Jacob in high school. Before he could take another step, my mom came racing from the kitchen, dashed to him, and flung her arms around his neck with her usual complete lack of dignity.
“It’s so nice to see you, my dear!” she trilled in his ear. “You look so grown up and handsome!”
Hunter’s eyes went wide with shock, as if he hadn’t expected to find himself on the receiving end of a mom-hug, but he politely tried to return her embrace. “Um. Nice to see you too, Mrs. Evans.”
He let go of her and sent a hesitant glance at Jacob, whose face had gone murderous. He looked like he might just kill Hunter after all. I stepped between them, took Hunter’s arm, and led him toward the dining room.
He’d eaten at our house many, many times as a teenager, and I remembered him eating Mom’s cooking with tremendous enthusiasm—so much so that I had often wondered if they fed him anything at home. Of course, everyone in town knew his family had a French chef who prepared wonderfully exotic meals for the Kensington clan, everything from filet mignon to escargot, which were then placed onto silver serving dishes and served to the family by an English butler. Hunter must have enjoyed incredible cuisine at home.
But he always seemed to prefer meatloaf.
Mom had remembered that too. When I’d shyly informed her that Hunter would be coming by tonight, she’d instantly dashed for the kitchen and begun making meatloaf. Now she was placing large slabs of it onto every plate, along with generous helpings of mashed potatoes and green beans. We didn’t have silver serving dishes, just the same old Corelle Butterfly Gold dishes Mom had had since the seventies. But dinner still looked like a million bucks to me.
“Set the table, won’t you, boys?” she said.
She’d said that dozens of times when they’d been teenagers, and they’d always rushed to set the table, laughing and talking as they did so. Now the two of them looked at each other blankly, then went to find the forks and knives, which were still in the same drawer they’d been in ten years ago. Moments later the table was set to my mother’s satisfaction, I’d placed Diana on her booster seat, and we were all sitting down to dinner. I saw Hunter blink in confusion as my mother set a full glass of milk in front of him.
“I remembered you always enjoyed milk,” she told him.
I suspected that he was accustomed to sipping Chablis and bourbon with his meals nowadays, but Mom had apparently made the command decision to treat him as if no time whatsoever had passed and he was still a teenager. Which was perhaps just as well, considering everything he’d gone through since then.
We dug in, and despite the awkward silence that prevailed, dinner seemed to go well. Hunter devoured his meatloaf as enthusiastically as if it had been prepared by the finest French chef in existence, and he guzzled his milk down thirstily too.
But no one seemed to have anything to say.
It didn’t take long before Diana decided the prevailing silence was unacceptable and decided to fill it with a long monologue about her day in preschool, which she seemed to be aiming mostly at Hunter. She was difficult to understand once she got going, like any child her age, but Hunter listened to her with every appearance of intense interest and made appropriate remarks, like “is that so?” and “wow, how exciting” and “sounds like fun!”
Watching the two of them together, I couldn’t help but think that he was a much better father than I ever would have imagined. I remembered the two of them dashing around the park together, him laughing as she squealed with delight, and I couldn’t seem to stop watching them interact. I must have been doing the heart-eyes thing, because all at once Jacob shot me a glare of utter distaste and threw his fork down on his plate with totally unnecessary violence. It clattered noisily against the Corelle, and all of us looked in his direction.
“I’m sorry,” he said, standing up so fast he almost knocked his chair over. His face, which was ordinarily amiable and happy, was dark with anger. “I can’t do this. I can’t sit here and pretend that it’s perfectly normal to invite someone like—like him into our house. I just can’t, all right?”
My mother looked up at him, then slowly rose to her feet. Jacob stood an inch over six feet tall, and she was only five foot three, but all at once she looked as imposing as a queen, her round, lined face crowned with silver.
“Sit down, Jacob,” she said, her voice steel-edged.
“I told you, I can’t.”
“You can, and you will. Hunter is our guest and Diana’s father. Don’t you dare walk away from this table.”
Hunter stood up too. “Mrs. Evans, I don’t want to be the cause of any strife—“
“Quiet,” she said sternly, shooting him a glare, and he instantly fell silent. “Hunter, my dear, this is not your fault, and you aren’t going to walk away, either. I don’t know what happened between you all those years ago, but the two of you are going to have to learn to get along again, for the sake of the child.”
“But he—“ Jacob sputtered, and Mom turned her gimlet gaze on him.
“Quiet.”
He fell silent, and Hunter wisely said nothing. Even Diana, who had been engaged in a long, earnest monologue comparing the swings at the park to the ones at her school, subsided into silence. Mom didn’t get angry much, but when she did, no one wanted to cross her.
“The two of you sit down.”
They sat.
“Have seconds, Hunter dear. There’s plenty.” She passed him the tray of meatloaf slices, and he politely took a slice. He hesitated, then passed the tray on to Jacob, who took a slice too.
“Thank you, Mrs. Evans.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“That’s better,” she said, beaming at them. “Have some more potatoes, boys.”
They obediently had more potatoes.
***
A few days later, I found myself whizzing through the narrow streets of Pinecone in a stretch limo. And not just any stretch limo, but a Rolls-Royce. It was a dignified old car that had been driving around the streets of Pinecone for as long as I could remember, ferrying Kensingtons on their various missions around town. Its ebony paint gleamed in the setting sun almost as brightly as the enormous chrome grill on its front end, which was topped with an angel.
It was a car that said class and old money and get out of my way, peons with every softly purring rumble of its engine. I’d never expected to find myself inside it.
Yet here I was, lounging on the soft leather seats and sipping at a Coke I’d found in its refrigerator.
I wasn’t exactly dressed for a car like this. Hunter had texted me, suggesting I come over for dinner, and so I’d come home from work and hastily changed into a pair of jeans and an old t-shirt extolling the Pinecone Peanut Festival, the high point of Pinecone’s summer every year. And then, just as Hunter had promised, the old Rolls had rolled up in front of our house, and the chauffeur had climbed out and stood stiffly by its side, waiting for me.
I’d seen the neighbors staring wide-eyed as I got in. I was already a bit of a scandal among the older neighbors due to having a child out of wedlock. But seeing me climb into the well-known Kensington Rolls while the driver held the door for me as if I were a rich and glamorous socialite instead of an ordinary, everyday waitress seemed to make every front door on the street creak open, and every last one of my neighbors appeared on their top step despite the cold. They’d stood there staring as if the circus had come to town and I was the freak show.
And then I was carried off like Cinderella in her carriage, leaving them all to gossip about me.
The car rolled smoothly through the outskirts of town, and as we rounded a curve, I saw Hilltop.
It was an old mansion, dating from around the 1920s. It had been added onto through the years, and as a consequence it rambled in all directions. At some point it had been painted white to conceal the different shades of brick that had been used over the years, and in the rays of the late afternoon sun, it shone like a celestial temple on top of the hill overlooking Pinecone, looking down over the town in precisely the same way the Kensingtons always had.
I’d never been to Hilltop. I was pretty sure Jacob hadn’t, either. Hunter had always hung out at our house, and I had always had the impression that Jacob wasn’t welcome in the mansion somehow. Which was sad, because they’d been best friends back then, and if Jacob hadn’t been welcome in his home, then who had?
It occurred to me that growing up as a Kensington must have been very, very lonely.
The Rolls made its way up the long, curving driveway and rolled to a stop in front of the enormous double doors. The driver instantly got out, came around, and opened the door for me. I thanked him, then looked up the long front staircase at the doors, which had creaked open.
Hunter stood there, waiting for me.
“Hi,” he said.