Page 17 of Better Hate than Never

I frown. “Don’t you? How can you not? How can you not take issue with her living that way, taking on so much risk, even outright danger?”

“When you have children, Christopher—”

I snort skeptically.

“—you’ll understand. They’re your heart beating outside your chest, but there’s no putting it back. You learn to live with the fear, because that’s what it is to love them.”

“That sounds hellish.”

“It can be,” Bill admits. “But what’s truly hellish is seeing your child hurt. And it’s not just Kate I’m talking about. What Juliet just went through, the toll that took on Beatrice, the tollthisis taking on Bea now...”

I glance toward Jamie. “The toll on Bea?”

Peering down at his cuffs, he straightens them. “Well. To put it...” He sighs. “Oh hell, I don’t know how to put it in a way that spares your feelings, so I’m just going to be honest.”

“Please.”

“Bea called me very upset this morning. She said Kate told her things about your relationship, explained it in a way Bea had never picked up on that made her feel terrible. That made her feel like she has to take sides. And now she’s worried it’s going to be how things were with Juliet and Jean-Claude all over again, having to choose between people she loves because of this, creating tension and factions in the friend group, in your family.”

I sit back, wrestling with what I’m hearing. “What did Bea tell you specifically?”

Jamie hesitates, then says, “I don’t feel like I can say that without betraying Kate’s confidence in her.” He glances at Bill.

“In fact,” Bill offers, “I’d suggest thatKateis the perfect person to talk to about this.”

I stare at him, struggling to find a way to convey how impossible that is without revealing myself.

Well, you see, Bill, I’ve been a moth to the flame of your youngest daughter’s animosity for a long time, and I’ve fed it like a wildfire with the fuel of my own frustration. Because I don’t look at Kate and see her how I see your other daughters. I don’t look at her and think “sister.” I look at her and see a tumbleweed who’ll never stay in one safe place, a money-hating hellion who despises what I covet for its stability and power, a fierce, electrifying woman who could send me up in flames if I got too close.

“Whether you talk to her or not,” Bill says, reading my disdain for this idea in my pinched expression, “how you two interact has to change.”

Dread seeps through my system. “Change? How?”

“I need you to make peace, Christopher,” Bill says, holding my eyes. “I know Katerina isn’t the... tamest of personalities, that you and she don’t have the most commonality to bring you together, but I believe you both have the capacity to be kinder to each other. You can get along well enough that holidays and homecomings don’t turn into a war zone with everyone who loves you both caught in the cross fire.”

“Does Kate know you feel this way?” I ask. “Is she getting the same speech?”

Bill adjusts his glasses. “No.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because”—he smiles gently—“I know my daughter. And I know that she cannot be told to reexamine something or changeher perception; she must be shown and... perhaps... led, without her precisely knowing.”

“You mean deceived?”

His smile fades. “Would it be a deception if you were simply gentler to her? Kinder to her? If you tried to make amends? Would it matter who started it, when all’s well that ends well?”

“I can see it mattering to Kate very much.”

He searches my eyes. “Then perhaps you’ll find a way to tell her the truth—that you didn’t know how damaging your dynamic was until others helped you recognize it.”

His words land like a blow to the gut, knocking the wind out of me. It’s never gone that far, has it? Our dynamic’sdamagedher? Feisty, fiery, tough-as-nails Kate? With a few honest words, the natural clash between our personalities, innocuous years spent ignoring her when she was young, then keeping my distance once she was grown up?

I’ve wanted distance from Kate. I’ve wanted to feel indifferent to her. Never to hurt her.

I can’t have hurt her, can I?

“I think you’re wrong,” I tell him.

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