Page 67 of Falling for You Again

Kaye looks from him to me, then back to her son, and she slowly smiles. This one isn’t a warm smile. “He hasn’t told you?” she asks me.

“She doesn’t know yet,” Aaron answers.

“Told me what?”

“Mother,” he says, terse. “Let me tell her on my own time.”

Kaye turns to me. “He was fired.”

Shock ripples through me.

“Is that true?” I ask Aaron. It would explain why he offered to go into business with me. He lost his job. “Why did she fire you?”

“You didn’t sign the postnup,” Kaye answers for Aaron. “I told you to be wary of the consequences if you refused.”

Dinner spirals from there with Aaron announcing he’s done for the night. He thanks his mom and tells her that we’re leaving. As if she timed it, like I suspected she’d timed her arrival at Artisant with the email Uncle Bear received about the Savant House’s retracted offer, Kaye receives a call that pulls her away from the table. I look at Aaron and my head spins. His own mother fired him.

He’s practically shaking with pent-up rage. He stands abruptly. “Will you give me a moment? I need to take a walk.”

“All right.” Worried for him, I don’t request that we just go home, and I watch him leave the screened-in porch and cross the yard. I would be outraged too. This whole dinner was a setup for her to humiliate him in front of me.

At a loss for what to do while I wait, I clear the table, which is more than Kaye deserves. I rinse the plates and put away the food, then return to the porch. Aaron has returned. With his hands in his pockets, he stands at the patio edge where the bricks meet the lawn. He stares up at the sky. I join him and look up. The stars are more vivid here than in the city.

“Beautiful night,” I say.

“It is,” he says, and after a moment, “I’m sorry about her.”

“It’s not your fault.” No more than it’s my fault for how my parents treat me.

“She hasn’t cooked fried chicken since Liam died. It was his favorite.”

“Aaron.” I touch his back.

“That picnic table?” He thrusts his chin over his shoulder. “It’s from when we were kids. He loved eating at that table with the family.”

My mouth moves around silent words. I don’t know what to say to make him feel better other than, “I’m sorry.”

“Pretty pathetic, if you ask me.”

“For her to do that to you? It was obscene.” Not to mention disgusting, repulsive, shocking, and abusive. I could go on but I don’t need to share what we both already know.

He stares at the sky. “It’s nothing compared to what I did.” He glances down at me with a wan smile. “She was different before Liam died. She used to be a good mom. Fun. Hard to believe, but we were close once.”

“Why didn’t you tell me she fired you?”

His throat works. “It happened at Mount Holyoke,” he says as if he didn’t hear me as he stares into the woods bordering the yard.

It takes me a second to realize what he’s talking about. “Where Liam died?”

He nods. “It was my fault.”

“No ...” He can’t take the blame for that. But as I think it, I wonder if this is what Charlie was talking about when Aaron told her we were getting married. If so, he’s been holding on to this blame for so long.

“We grew up hiking there. Sometimes we went free-climbing. We never made it that far up any route. They weren’t well marked and we weren’t very good. But that one time ...” He speaks slowly, looking beyond the trees. “I talked him into a route he wasn’t keen on. Told him I’d do his chores for the month if he went up with me. He’d do anything to get out of cleaning the fish tank.” A dry, hollow laugh. “Wemade it above the tree line when a loose rock under my foot gave way. I panicked and threw an arm out, knocked Liam in the shoulder.” Aaron roughly swallows. “He lost his grip and fell into a tree.Snap-snap-snap.That’s all I heard, the branches breaking as he went down. He didn’t even yell. Not a sound from him.”

The snapped branch on his tattoo.

“Aaron.” I am crying. I reach for his hand.

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