Page 67 of Now That It's You
“I was actually thinking of you the other day, Kyle,” Cara said.
“Oh?”
“I was cleaning out the office and found a box of your things. Nothing important—mostly junk—but I didn’t want to throw it away without you seeing it first.”
“That’s nice of you,” he said. He felt his mother nudge him under the table, and he looked over to see her giving him a meaningful look. She was trying to telegraph some message of instruction, but he had no idea what it might be. Maybe he was supposed to offer to pick up the box, or perhaps she wanted him to invite Cara to join them.
But Kyle didn’t feel like doing either. His heart wasn’t in it. Truth be told, his heart was somewhere in a commercial kitchen over on Oak Street.
He looked up at Cara again and she gave him a small smile. Her eyes were kind, and her dark hair was shorter, just a little below her ears now. She was still beautiful, but nothing inside him stirred. His heart didn’t flop like a fish in his chest the way it did when Meg smiled.
“I’ll text you,” Kyle said. “About a time to swing by and grab the box.”
“Okay.” Cara offered a hopeful smile. “We could also just meet for a drink and exchange it.”
“Sure.” He had no intention of doing that. “It’s great to see you again, Cara. You’re looking good.”
“So are you. Really good.” She smiled again and took a step back from the table. “Well, I won’t keep you. It was nice running into you.”
“Nice to see you, too, dear,” Sylvia said. “Say hello to your mother.”
“I will,” she answered. “I’m sorry again for your loss. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
“We will,” Kyle said, wondering why that was one of the things people said to grieving family members. He’d heard it at least a dozen times these last three weeks, along with “My heart aches for you,” and “He’s in a better place.” Phrases Kyle knew were well-intentioned, but which had started to grate on him lately.
Cara gave him one last long look, then turned and walked away. Kyle’s mother watched her go, twisting her hands in her napkin. When Cara turned the corner at the end of the sidewalk, Sylvia turned back to Kyle.
“I always liked her,” she said, setting the napkin down.
“She’s a nice girl.”
“But not the girl for you?”
There was a note of hope in her voice, and Kyle hated to be the one to dash it. But he couldn’t lie to his mom, either.
“I’m afraid not.”
Sylvia nodded, resigned. “You know, with every woman you brought home, I always wondered, ‘Could that be my future daughter-in-law?’ Cara was the only one that made me think ‘Maybe.’”
“What about Meg?”
The question seemed to startle them both, and he watched his mother’s eyes widen, then narrow.
“I meant when Matt first brought her home,” Kyle added, not wanting her to get the wrong idea. Or the right one. “Didn’t you say you thought from the very beginning that she was like the daughter you always wished for?”
His mother’s mouth tightened, but then she gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Yes. I did say that. She was like part of the family for a long time.”
“That’s true,” Kyle said carefully, not wanting to say too much, but also not wanting to drop the subject of Meg. Just saying her name made something glow warm inside his chest. “I always thought it was odd how quickly we erased her from our lives after everything fell apart.”
Sylvia pressed her lips together. “Meg Delaney made her choices. When she did what she did two years ago, and when she did what she did with the cookbook—those choices made it clear how little regard she had for Matt. For this family.”
Kyle opened his mouth to argue, to say Meg’s choices might have had nothing to do with the family and everything to do with Meg’s need for self-preservation. “Matt wasn’t completely innocent in that, you know,” Kyle said softly. “In the fact that Meg called off the wedding.”
“I know that,” his mother said, closing her eyes for an instant. “Matt was no saint. But he tried to do the right thing. He tried to come clean so they could start their new life together.”
“That’s true.” Kyle looked down at his water glass, not wanting to say too much.
“I’ll never forget the look on Matt’s face when she stood up there at the front of that church and said those words. ‘I can’t.’ He looked like she’d reached into his chest and pulled his heart out. He loved her so much, and for her to humiliate him like that in front of all his friends and family?—”
