Page 60 of Rootbound
He smirks, but gallantly tries to hide it. “You really do have a thing for bathrooms, don’t you?”
I stutter step down the hallway, ready to throw myself in. I fling open the door, and step into… confusion.
A hospital bed. An oxygen tank. An end table with a basket full of pill bottles.
The bathroom isn’t in the same location as the one in my cabin. This is the converted room.
My mind starts spinning before I can stop it.
“What the fuck?” I say out loud.
“Tait?” Henry calls, and I hear him heading this way. I can’t force myself to move fast enough to close the door and pretend my oversight never happened.
He comes to stand beside me, putting his hands on his hips and looking down before I feel his gaze on the side of my face.
“Henry, when you talked about getting over someone by having them be dead to you… did you… um… did you mean that you have an ex thatactuallydied?”
“Tait, no—”
“Because that’s pretty fucked up. Were you just, like, mocking me mourning my cheating ex the whole time, meanwhile you actuallylostsomeone?”
“Tait, what? No. I wouldn’t compare loss like thatanyways. Being left by choice isn’t necessarilyeasier.” He has the good grace to wince when he says that, at least.
“Jesus, Henry, are YOU dying?”
“TAIT. Let me explain this to you. Calm down.”
“It’s just weird that you never mentioned any of this, and that you kind of hid this room. Is this going to be some weirdJane Eyrething? Do you have a hidden wife?”
He must realize that I’ll continue to spiral out loud, so he shakes his head “no” to my badgering and approaches me like a skittish horse, eyeing me gently, silently, waiting until I breathe.
“Jesus, I’m insane,” I say, starting to calm. “You don’t owe me an explanation for any of this anyways. I—I’m sorry.”
“Can we sit?” he says with a sigh. He looks so forlorn that I squeeze my hands into fists to prevent myself from reaching for the poor man and holding him.
Especially since that would directly contradict the self-righteous badgering I just subjected him to. I feel my face wince in embarrassment.
“My mother,” he says as his intro. My eyes meet his. “… I know I told you she died. And she did. But I never told you… She left when I was three. Took off where no one could track her down, or at least my dad never tried to. Abandoned us to escape my father.”
I think I hear my heart crack for him—this kind man, who probably seems like a cranky asshole to any outsider, but wholivesfor the ones he cares about. Grump he may be, but I’d love for him to bemygrump. He’s already become my favorite friend.
I have a friend again—friends, plural, I realize.
“I have to do this in bullet points and just fill in the blanks later, okay?” he says, and I nod. “Well, she—my mother—was dying.Ovarian cancer. And her caregiver, Gretchen, decided to track me down. Gretchen and I became close. She’d had a hard life, had grown up in foster care. She basically lived a parallel life to mine, but more the cautionary tale of what mine could have been if not foryourfamily. Mom and Gretchen moved into that—your—place, but then we all started getting close, and Gretchen was staying here so much that we just decided it would be easier to spend the rest of Mom’s remaining time together here. So that’s when I set up that room. Remodeled so that her view was of the mountains. And my time with my mom… Our time was so short, I still am angry at myself. The first half of it I wasted, still resenting the hell out of her for leaving in the first place. And Gretchen… Gretchen bridged that gap. By the time my mom passed, seven months later, Gretchen and I were… engaged. I asked Charlie to find her somewhere on the ranch to work then, and he did for me. And… well, she… God, she fucking stole a ton of money from them, Tait. And, I should have picked up on it. I think she tried to tell me what she was doing, talking to me about where we could move, always talking about travelling—because she knew that was something I wanted to do, too—but she wanted to actually live abroad, move to another country, at least another state—someday.”
“You do?” I ask, sad that I didn’t realize this.
He frowns, confused. “Do what?”
“You want to travel?” I ask, sheepishly.
He sighs, running a palm over his face. “I’d love to see new places, but this ishomefor me, Tait. I need that to be clear. I… I love this place.” He searches my eyes, waiting, so I nod my acceptance.
“And yeah, then she left. She either was setting up forthe long con the whole time, or building her own parachute, knowing she wouldn’t get me to leave. Charlie and Grace and the family wouldn’t press charges or go after her without me, and I fucking couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to drag that shit out for a moment longer, and it was honestly fucking embarrassing. I’ll never know if any of it was real, but I do know she helped me get that time with my mom.
“The only thing I was hung up on was that I wanted to make sure she wasn’t some grifter trying to take advantage of other families with ill relatives. I hired a PI a few years back to make sure, and no, I guess she’s part owner of a diner out in Rhode Island and used the money to set herself up with a hunky-dory life,” he finishes.
“Henry…” Jesus, I really don’t know what to say. I feel indignant for him. How could someone do this? Especially to someone with more loyalty and generosity in his pinky finger than five average adults put together.