Tommy pressed his lips together. “I’ll be sure to do that,” he said. He had gray at his temples. His shirt was badly ironed and his tie had only a perfunctory knot. That last detail was horribly familiar—God only knew how many times Everett had tugged Tommy behind the chapel or into a stairwell and insisted on making sense of his tie. Now he was old enough to understand that Cabots could get away with sloppiness. He also understood that letting Everett fuss over him had been part of Tommy’s game. He had let Everett have those proprietary touches, had let Everett believe that whatever existed between them actually mattered. Tommy was a Cabot, born with a silver spoon and the unchallenged conviction that he could have whatever he wanted; back then, he had wanted Everett, and hadn’t ever stopped to consider what harm he might be doing.
“I see a parent I ought to speak to,” Everett lied, and left Tommy standing alone.
* * *
Tommy needed a drink. He also needed a nap, and possibly to lie down on that hideous carpet in his living room and stare at the ceiling and cry. Nobody had told him how much of his late thirties would involve lying on floors and crying.
He watched Everett stalk across the lawn. The man looked exactly the same as he had the last time they had seen one another. His battered wire-framed glasses had been swapped out for a heavy black pair, but they sat crookedly on his nose the way they always had. His pale brown hair had been combed into submission and neatly parted on the side, but Tommy knew that all it would take was a stiff wind to reveal its curls. Everett still had the same air of brittle rigidity, as if his collar had been starched three times over. But now it was as if that starch had been baked into his bones. Tommy had used to love coaxing Everett out of his stuffier moods, teasing and cajoling until Everett finally gave in and laughed. The man he saw now looked like he hadn’t smiled, let alone laughed, in years.
But Everett still had the same smattering of freckles on his nose, and that too made Tommy want to cry. To be fair, everything made him want to cry these days. That, he supposed, was what came of resolutely refusing to experience human emotions for the better part of a decade. They wound up making a huge mess when they finally did come out, like a suppressed sneeze.
Tommy still found it hard to accept how thoroughly Everett had walked away from him fifteen years ago. It had taken five unanswered letters for Tommy to get the picture that Everett didn’t want to hear from him. He had even asked a mutual friend whether there was something wrong with postal service in Oxford, and in response got a peculiar look and the intelligence that Everett was writing to people, just not, it would seem, to Tommy. It made no sense at the time. Everett had been his best man, much to the confusion of his brothers. Everett had been rock-solid during the ceremony, remembering everything from the rings to all the names of Tommy’s aunts. And then he and Pat came back from their honeymoon and discovered that Everett had put an ocean between them, without so much as a word.
That had been his first real loss. He had lost friends in the war, but that was the first time he had wanted to draw the curtains and grieve. He had asked Pat—not once, not twice, but almost daily for months—if he had done or said something unforgivable the day of the wedding. But then his oldest brother had won a seat in Congress, and Daniel had been born, and suddenly his days were busy, if not exactly complete. He had thought that would be enough, and for a while it almost was.
Seeing Everett today was just another reminder of how far Tommy had fallen, of how little was left of the man he had wanted to be. Fifteen years ago, Tommy had a bright future and a loving family; now he was alone and unmoored.
He crossed the lawn to say goodbye to Daniel, who was with a few of the younger children, all of whom looked like they were about twenty minutes away from becoming feral. He went to shake Daniel’s hand, but Daniel pulled him into a hug. “It’ll be all right, Dad,” he whispered. Tommy managed something about seeing him the following weekend and congratulated himself on not weeping all over his son’s shoulder in front of the kid’s classmates.
As he made his way toward the road that led into town, he saw Everett clustered with a group of parents. His back was straight; his hair still hadn’t gotten mussed. Fifteen years was a long time, and maybe there wasn’t much left of the Everett he had loved. Maybe that had all been in Tommy’s head in the first place. Mere boyish antics. Experimentation, as his psychoanalyst had suggested. Maybe Tommy had driven Everett away by being too—too bent, too effusive, too selfish, too much.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, which would probably ruin his suit, but it wasn’t like he had much use for hand-sewn suits anymore. He made his way down the road, and when he finally looked over his shoulder, the peaks and towers of Greenfield had disappeared into the autumn foliage.
Chapter 2
The rest of October was an exercise in patience. Whenever Everett stepped outside, Tommy Cabot was there. He arrived at the school every Friday afternoon to pick up his son, sometimes wearing an alarming pair of denim trousers. Once he made an appearance at the high table during dinner, evidently as the guest of the provost. At that point, Everett decided to become intensely interested in a conversation about the World Series that was happening among some children who had evidently smuggled in a wireless. By the end of the meal, he had accidentally invited the children to his office to listen to the game without the burden of rule breaking, so for six evenings he had a crowd of children packed into his office. He didn’t even like baseball. Nor, he was becoming increasingly convinced, children.
Worst of all were the football games. Tommy was at every home game, a flesh and blood ghost haunting the bleachers. Everett liked football, damn it. He had missed it in England. All he wanted was to sit in the stands, a muffler wrapped around his neck, a copy of The Economist open in his lap to peruse during the lulls in the game. Instead he hardly noticed what was happening on the field. He saw Tommy, still so handsome despite his careworn air, sitting next to his son. He saw Tommy exchange cordial greetings with parents and faculty, flashing the smile that won the Cabots Senate seats and judgeships. He saw Tommy and every time he was struck by the utter wrongness of Tommy being over there and Everett being anywhere else in the world but by his side. For years they had sat in these stands together, two halves of a whole, and now this distance felt unnatural.
But Everett had put distance between them for a reason. Staying in Boston would have meant getting his heart broken every time Tommy showed up and slung his arm around Everett’s shoulders, every time Tommy acted like a kiss or a grope or even more didn’t mean anything. He put himself out of Tommy’s range, and after the initial misery of separation, he learned to live outside the context of his friendship with Tommy. He wasn’t the same person he had been all those years ago; he had made a life for himself, something safe and sane and quiet. Something with no room for Tommy Cabot. What Everett felt when he looked at Tommy was only nostalgia, that was all.
Well, he was going to have to get over it and his current strategy of staying away from Tommy wasn’t working. It was only tricking him into thinking he missed things he certainly was better off without. At halftime, he made his way to the empty seat beside Tommy.
“May I?” he asked, hearing the stiffness in his own voice.