I hung up with Daniel, touched up my lipstick, and went back out to dinner with my parents.
We’d just ordered, and our drinks had arrived while I was gone. We were at Sycamore in Minneapolis. It was a high-end steak place that looked like the inside of first class on the Titanic. It was dimly lit, with crisp linen tablecloths and stately paintings of important white men on the walls.
That always annoyed me, that the white men got the stately paintings. Even at Royaume, the hallways were lined with them. All the men throughout the history of the hospital who’d made significant contributions. Mostly from the Montgomery family, but still.
I was going to request stately paintings of all the marginalized people who had contributed to the hospital’s success over the last hundred and twenty-five years.
I’d been thinking a lot about what I wanted my contribution to Royaume to be. Maybe I’d start a weekly free clinic for low-income patients, get some donors to contribute to new programs for financial aid.
These last things had never felt as important to me as they did now.
Every time a patient came to the ER in their own car because they couldn’t afford the ambulance ride or they put off care until they were in such bad shape it was an emergency room visit, I thought about Daniel.
Most people in Wakan were barely making it as it was, and a hospital stay would ruin them.
I always tried to help my patients when they couldn’t afford care.
Last week a man came in with a simple perforated eardrum, and I saw him in the waiting room and wrote him a prescription without checking him in so he wouldn’t be billed for an ER trip. When I could, I coded procedures so they fell under a wellness visit or I sent a patient to their primary care physician where it would be cheaper instead of giving them a treatment that could wait. But I was starting to feel like it wasn’t enough. I was starting to feel like I could be doing more. And now I was in a position to.
There were definitely perks to being a Montgomery. Maybe I should start to use them.
Mom and Dad stopped talking as I slid into my seat and put my napkin in my lap. Dad leveled his eyes on me. “So what was this announcement you wanted to make?”
Mom waited patiently.
I’d been the one who’d made this dinner date. They’d been wanting to talk to me about the quasquicentennial, and I’d been turning down all their invitations to do it, mostly because they all included Neil. So I’d booked the reservation myself and told them we could talk about the event over dinner, and I added that I had something I wanted to tell them.
I smiled. “I’ve put my bid in for chief.”
Dad’s brows drew down. “Of course you’ve put your bid in for chief, I expressly told you to do so. What kind of announcement is that? What about Neil?” he asked, looking confused.
“What about him?” I asked, looking back and forth between them.
“You’re not getting back with Neil?” Mom said, her eyes darting nervously to Dad.
“What? No…”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Alexis,” Dad said. “What was the point of this dinner?”
I blinked at him. “I…I thought you’d be happy. About the chief thing.
You wanted me to run. I’m officially running.”
“Bringing us here to tell us you’re doing what you should have been doing in the first place is not worthy of a dinner announcement,” he said.
Mom licked her lips. “Sweetheart, we were under the impression that you were getting back with Neil.”
I pressed my lips together and let out a slow, patient breath through my nose. “Mom? Dad?” I put my hands on the table. “I am never getting back with Neil.”
“Why the hell not?” Dad snapped.
It was so loud, people from other tables turned to look at us. I gawked at him in shock.
He pointed a finger at me. “You’ve given that relationship about as much effort as you’ve given your career. You’ve done the bare minimum, and you wonder why it isn’t successful.”
Mom put a hand on his shoulder. “Cecil…” “No, Jennifer, she needs to hear this.”
His face was red.
“That man deserves your respect. You don’t even return his text messages. He’s made every attempt possible to make amends with you— and if you don’t want to make them, that’s your business. But until you’ve exhausted couple’s counseling, do not sit here and act like you’re not part of the problem.”
I felt my face growing hot. “Dad, he was abusive—” “Did he hit you?” Dad asked. “Call you names?”
A lump was forming in my throat. “No—”
“Did that man ever lay a finger on you?”
I felt tears welling in my eyes. “No.” I swallowed. “He was mean, Dad.
He’s still mean. He acts differently when you’re not there—”
“He’s probably just frustrated with you, and frankly I don’t blame him. Honestly, I don’t know what we did to deserve children like this. I really don’t.”
Mom was rubbing his shoulder. “Let’s just calm down—”
“We coddled them, Jennifer. They’ve never had to work for anything.
Lazy.”
My mouth fell open. “I was valedictorian. I graduated first of my class at Stanford. I’ve worked my ass off to get—”
Dad jabbed a finger at me. “Don’t you dare take that language with me, young lady. I have had about enough of this back talk from you. So help me, Alexis, I will cut you off like I’ve cut off your brother. I have zero tolerance for this disrespect.”
I blinked at him. “What do you mean you’ve cut off my brother…”
“Your brother has made his choice,” Dad said. “He’s not welcome in our home until he’s rid himself of this woman he’s run off with.”
I gaped at him. “That woman is his wife!”
Dad’s nostrils flared. “That’s no daughter-in-law of mine. And you’ll be careful to remember that. This family isn’t some greasy diner that you can stumble into with some tattooed junkie you’ve picked up. I will not have our name associated with—whatever the hell she is.”
Mom couldn’t even look me in the eye.
I shook my head, incredulous. “You’re disowning your own son because you don’t like his wife,” I said slowly. “Who you’ve never even met.”
He leaned forward. “I don’t need to meet her. Her reputation precedes her. She has a goddamn sex tape, for Christ’s sake.”
The unfairness of this made my jaw go tight. Lola Simone’s sex tape was no different than the pictures Daniel and I had just sent to each other.
“She trusted someone, and they betrayed her,” I said. “That’s not her fault.”
“I would rather go to my grave never breathing another word to your brother than acknowledge the embarrassment he’s invited into this family. He owes every single one of us an apology. Marriage should be dignified. Neil is dignified. You may not have been married to him legally, but you were married to him in practice and you better damn well start to act like it.”
The server came to the table with our food, and Dad stopped talking and sat back in his seat with a clenched jaw. We sat there, silent, as plates were placed in front of us.
When the server was gone, Dad began eating, cutting his steak angrily, like he’d given up getting through to me and just wanted to get dinner over with so he could leave.
It took everything I had in me to muscle down the urge to cry.
Mom picked up a fork and just hovered it over her plate, staring at it. I recognized that look. I’d worn it myself. It’s the look you have when you’re too tired to carry on the fight.
It’s the way you feel before you accept the quiche.
I got up and fled to the bathroom. A few moments later Mom came in behind me.
I went into a stall and ripped a piece of toilet paper off the roll. “How could you let him do this to Derek?” I wiped at my eyes. “That’s your son.” “And what could I do about it, Alexis?” She threw up her hands. “Your father is your father. I’d have more luck moving mountains than moving that man. And your brother knew exactly what he was doing. He knew your
father would never approve, that’s why he got married in secret. You can blame me all you want, but your brother is a grown man, and he made his own choices knowing very well what the consequences would be.”
Mom turned slowly and dropped onto a tufted chair in the corner of the bathroom like her body weighed a million pounds.
“I am a seventy-three-year-old woman, and I am tired. I love your father. He is brilliant and wonderful in so many ways, but he is a difficult man, and that’s never going to change. You take him as he is, or you get nothing at all. Your brother picked nothing—but he did pick.”
I sniffed and looked away from her.
“Alexis, your father has lost everything that matters to him in the last two months,” she said. “His career is done, and his vision is going. The future of the legacy is uncertain, Derek is gone, you left Neil. He’s almost eighty years old, and his entire life is out of his control.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and leaned on the sink.
“He’s an old man. I don’t know how much more time we’ll have with him. Try and meet him somewhere in the middle,” she begged. “Please. What’s a few counseling sessions with Neil? You can’t know if it’s salvageable unless you try to salvage it. And if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out.”
I opened my eyes and stared at her, incredulous. “Did you not just hear me say that he was abusive?”
She threw up her hands. “What is going to happen with a therapist sitting there watching? For heaven’s sake, maybe Neil will learn something. It’s only one hour a week. Give your father what he wants, so he can get over it and move on. Show him that you respect his opinion. He needs that right now.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. She wasn’t asking me to do this for Dad. She was asking for herself. Because Dad would be unbearable if I didn’t. He probably already was.
I couldn’t even respond. There was no point. She was right. My father was my father.
Derek…
He would never be at Thanksgiving again. He wouldn’t be at Christmas. He wouldn’t be at our parents’ birthday parties. He’d probably never even see the house he grew up in again.
I didn’t for one second doubt my dad’s ability to hold on to his hate until the bitter end. He’d had a petty falling-out with his sister fifty years ago and he’d never spoken to her again. Not even on her deathbed.
My heart broke for my brother and my mom. And it broke for me too.
I don’t think I’d truly, truly processed the impossibility of me and Daniel until just now. Not really. I knew fundamentally that it could never work. The distance alone. But now the incompatibility of our lives glared from every angle. From above, below, and beyond.
Daniel wanted to meet my parents, like any boyfriend would. But Daniel could never be at a table with my parents. Not in a million years.
My dad wouldn’t just dislike him. He’d forbid me to be with him. And Mom was too weak to disagree.
Daniel would be my Lola. He couldn’t be my date to the quasquicentennial. He couldn’t come to a family barbeque or the birthday brunch they did for me every year.
Dad couldn’t even know he existed. Dad would never be happy with anyone who wasn’t Neil.
I wasn’t even allowed to be alone. Me choosing to be alone instead of with Neil was an insult to his injury.
Daniel would be under constant attack the second he stepped into my world. And this dinner just proved it. It was hard enough for me to be a part of it, and I belonged here.
So what was the point in dragging it on with Daniel? Getting more attached? What was the point in saying I miss you, like that mattered at all in the long run? Bri was right. I should set him free. Let him find someone else who could be with him the way he deserved. Someone whose parents would be happy to meet him—because these things mattered. They mattered to him and they mattered to me too.
Daniel was wonderful. He just wasn’t wonderful for me.
I didn’t want to go home after dinner. I felt like Neil knew I’d been ambushed and a second ambush was waiting for me when I walked in the house, like he and my dad would have coordinated their attacks.
So I went to Bri’s.
When she opened the door, she opened it talking, even though I hadn’t told her I was coming.
“Uh, I was just texting you, because what the hell is this?”
She held out her phone with a photo of a tabloid magazine on the screen. A picture of Lola Simone and my brother was on the cover with the headline “Secret wedding!”
Well, I guess that’s why Dad was so triggered at dinner…
I rolled my eyes. “At least they used a good picture of him,” I mumbled. “He’ll be happy.”
I edged past her into her living room.
“So it’s true?” she asked. “Was this the NDA thing?” “Yup,” I said tiredly, flopping onto her sofa.
She looked at the cover again. “Damn. No wonder he fled the country.
Your dad probably has a hit out on him. Or her.”
It didn’t even surprise me the story got leaked. With the way Dad had been throwing the Lola news around, it was only a matter of time. At least the happy couple had gotten a few weeks of privacy before it hit the gossip mags.
She tossed her phone on the sofa and sat next to it. “So why are you here? I guess the dinner didn’t go well?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “My dad disowned Derek.” She blinked at the side of my face. “Like, actually?”
I let out a long breath. “Like in every sense of the word. Derek’s dead to him.”
She sat back into the sofa. “Wow,” she breathed. “That’s so medieval.” “And I think I have to go to couple’s counseling with Neil.”
“Eww, why?!” She looked horrified.
“Because if I don’t, Dad’ll never let it go.”
She scoffed. “He’ll never let it go anyway. Nothing short of getting back with Neil is going to be good enough. Your dad will just keep moving the goalpost. It’ll be all ‘well, you didn’t go long enough’ or ‘you didn’t take it seriously enough.’ Your dad’s a monster. Why don’t you just tell him no?”
“I can’t. It’ll just make it worse for Mom.” It would make it worse for me.
“And? Did it ever occur to you that your dad is just as emotionally abusive as Neil? That maybe you learned to put up with Neil because from the earliest age you were taught that to be loved you had to placate an asshole?”
“He’s my dad, Bri.”
I shook my head, staring wearily into the room. “Imagine never seeing your parents again because you fell in love with someone,” I said quietly.
“Do you think Derek knew this would happen?” she asked.
I nodded. “I do. I think he married Lola knowing exactly what he might be giving up.” I let out a breath. “I think you’re right. I need to stop seeing Daniel.”
She studied me. “Are you okay?” I shook my head. “No. Not really.” We sat in silence for a minute.
“I don’t really know what to say to you right now to make you feel better,” she said. “All my ideas are scary.”
I snorted.
“I’m serious. I’m a wartime consigliere. All I have for you are detailed revenge plots and alibis. But I’m telling you right now, if we kill Neil, you’re the one digging the hole. I’ll lie for you in court, I’ll help you move the body, but I did not put myself through med school to dig.”
I laughed dryly.
“By the way,” I said, “Daniel finally sent me a dick pic. A really good one.”
“Ooooooh, can I see it?” “No, definitely not.”
She jabbed a finger at me. “See?! You do like him! That was a test and you failed!”
“How did I—because I won’t show you a penis sent to me in trust?” “Dick pics are community property unless you’re staking a claim on the
guy who owns it. You’ve got a little flag that you just planted on Daniel’s peen, it’s waving in the breeze and it says Ali on it.”
I was laughing now.
“You can see alllll my dick pics. Those boys throw ’em around like ‘And you get a penis, and you get a penis, and YOU get a penis!’”
I choked and we both laughed for a minute. Then I sighed. “Why is everything so hard?” “Because you have too many fucks to give.” “Ha-ha.”
“No, I’m serious. Give up some of your fucks and see how much easier things are. You’re just spending all your time trying to please everyone else, and it’s making you miserable.”
I shook my head. “How am I supposed to not care if my parents ever speak to me again? Or if my dad thinks I’m a complete waste of his DNA? I’m already the weakest link in Montgomery history. I have to give a fuck. I have no choice.”
She shook her head. “Imagine being a whole-ass doctor and having your family be like, ‘why are you so disappointing?’”
I blew out a tight breath. “I mean, it’s not like Daniel was going to work out anyway. Everything you said earlier was true. I can’t move, he can’t move. My dad is just the icing on the cake. Ending it was inevitable. I just don’t understand why ending something that hopeless feels so shitty.”
“Because it’s not on your terms. None of this is.” I wiped under my eyes.
She scoffed. “You’re gonna hate sitting in couple’s counseling with Neil.”
I groaned. “A thousand dollars says he has the therapist completely fooled.”
“You should make him go to yours. That way she can call bullshit.”
I picked my head up and looked at her. “You know what? That’s actually genius.” I smiled. “I just got an idea.”
She grinned. “What?”
I pulled out my phone and dialed Neil. He picked up on the first ring. “Ali?”
It annoyed me how much hope was in his voice. “Hi, Neil. We’re going to do a little trust exercise.” “Okay…” he said.
“For the next four months you’re going to see a therapist. My therapist. You. By yourself. You’re going to tell my parents that I’m going with you
—”
“Why would I—”
“Shhhhh! I’m talking and you’re listening. I’m going to give her permission to talk to you about anything I’ve talked to her about, so you’ll have all the insight you need into why we’re not together. You will tell my parents that we’re in couple’s counseling. And at the end of the sixteen weeks, provided you haven’t thrown me under the bus to Dad and you’ve gone to all sixteen sessions—and I will need proof that you’ve gone to these sessions—I will agree to start going to therapy with you.”
He was silent on the other end.
“You want me back so badly, this is your big chance. And it’s also my final offer.”
More silence.
“Okay,” he said. “Yes, I agree. Thank you.” “Fine.”
I hung up on him.
Bri was looking at me with wide eyes. “WOW. Maybe you’re the wartime consigliere.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe he agreed to it.”
“He had to. He’s lost control. His other strategies aren’t working,” I said. “Do you think he’ll actually do it?” she asked.
“I have no idea. I’m leaning toward no.” “And if he does?”
I shrugged. “Then Mom and I get a four-month mental health break? And then I end up doing what I think I’m going to end up having to do anyway, which is to pretend to work on our relationship?”
She let out a resigned sigh. “Oh, Ali.”
“It’ll be good for him if he goes,” I said. “He needs therapy.” “What he needs is Jesus.”
I laughed. Then my smile fell.
“You know what’s weird? Daniel is only twenty-eight and he has his life figured out. Shouldn’t I have my life figured out by now? I should, right?”
“I bet his life isn’t figured out either. Nobody’s is. I thought mine was, and look how that turned out.”
I peered over at her. She was looking at her hand, twisting a ring around her pinky finger.
“Are you doing okay?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Define okay. Benny’s getting worse. I can’t do anything to help him. My marriage has failed, and I can’t even find a guy decent enough to have casual sex with. I’m bored and alone all the time, living in my mom’s crappy house.”
She went quiet for a moment. “I just want one of us to be happy. Why can’t we be happy?”
I sighed. “What does happy even look like, Bri? I fall in line and do what’s expected of me, give up Daniel, but I get to keep my family? Or I give it all up, become the shame of the Montgomery legacy, lose my dad, devastate my mom, but I get the boy I like? Which one is happy?”
She shrugged. “It’s easy. It’s whichever one you can’t live without.” She looked at me earnestly. “But I’ll be there for either scenario. I’ll always be
there.”
I studied her face gratefully.
Bri was amazing. She didn’t deserve what happened with her ex or what was happening with her brother. She deserved everything and more.
“Maybe we should both quit Royaume,” I said.
She laughed. “Quit men too. Move in together and start a YouTube channel where we day drink and rate bread.”
I laughed and leaned over and hugged her. “I love you,” I whispered.
“I love you too,” she said with her chin over my shoulder. “But I’m still not digging the hole.”
