Page 112 of Now That It's You
Kyle looked at her. He thought about continuing to pretend ignorance, but what was the point?
“She knows,” he said at last. “For all the good it does.”
“Really?” Cara frowned. “She’s not still hung up on Matt, is she?”
“Not like that, no.” He cleared his throat. “It’s—complicated.”
“The best things usually are.”
She studied him for a moment, and Kyle felt the same prickle of alarm he always used to feel when Cara looked at him for too long. Like she could see straight into his brain, into his heart, into his soul.
None of those things had ever belonged to her. Not really.
As the silence stretched out, Cara nodded toward the sculpture again. “You know I don’t say this lightly when I tell you that’s the most beautiful piece you’ve ever created.”
“Thank you.”
“My vajayjay and I can concede defeat.” She reached out and touched his arm. “If she stirs that kind of passion in you, Kyle, you owe it to both of you not to give up so easily.”
“I’m not the one giving up.”
She shook her head, then dropped her hand from his arm and gave him a swat on the butt. “Then get off your ass and prove it.”
Meg sat in her attorney’s office with a glass of tepid iced tea beside her and a pen clutched in her hand.
“Are you sure about this, Meg?” Franklin looked at her with a concerned expression. At least, that’s what she registered with her peripheral vision.
Meg’s focus was on the pen. She turned it over in her hand, looking at the sturdy, curved shaft and the elegant gold tip. “Do you know where I got this?”
There was no response from her attorney, so she glanced up to see him staring at her like she’d just stuffed bananas in her ears.
“The pen?” he asked. “No. I’m afraid I don’t. Is it significant?”
Meg turned the pen over in her hands, marveling at the weight of it, at the exquisite beauty of something so basic and functional. “It’s a Waterman. Sort of the Ferrari of pens.”
“I see,” Franklin said, clearly not seeing at all. “It’s important to have a good pen.”
“My former-future-mother-in-law gave it to me at my wedding shower.”
“Okay,” Franklin said slowly, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. “If you need more time to think about this?—”
“She gave me a card with it,” Meg said, looking up at him again. “It said the pen was so we’d always have something beautiful to use for signing important documents—our marriage license, maybe birth certificates for our babies someday.” She set the pen down and looked at Franklin. “But do you know what she said to me as she was leaving the shower?”
“I have no idea.”
Meg cleared her throat. “She said, ‘You can use it for other things, too. Maybe someday you’ll be famous and you can use it to sign autographs or something.’”
Franklin frowned and steepled his hands in front of him. “Meg, that seems like further evidence she considered the cookbook your project. If she gave it to you at your bridal shower?—”
“No, that wasn’t my point.” She slid her palm over the pen, rolling it back and forth across the big cherry desk. “The point is that she believed in me. Matt might have seen the whole thing as a joke, but Sylvia didn’t. Not totally, anyway.” She stopped rolling the pen and clasped her hands on the desk while her attorney continued looking at her like she’d lost her marbles.
“It was never just about me and Matt,” she said. “That whole relationship, all ten years of it—it wasn’t just about the two of us. It was more about family. About how we supported each other through lousy stuff and picked up each other’s slack and made up for each other’s weaknesses with our own strengths. That’s what I loved more than anything. It’s also what I missed most these last two years.”
Franklin nodded again. Meg could tell he was trying to look wise and supportive, but instead he looked pained. He didn’t agree with anything in the documents she was ready to sign, but he’d prepared it just like she’d asked. He reached out and rested a hand on the corner of the paperwork, drawing her attention back to what she was here to do.
“What did your agent say about your plans to credit Matt’s estate with such a high percentage?” he asked.
“She wasn’t thrilled.”
