Page 128 of Trusting You
Her words are harsh, but the worry is obvious in her expression.
“If it helps, I’ve already yelled at him,” I say.
Astor smiles, but it’s wane at the corners. “Good girl.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“Not yet, I…” she trails off and fidgets with her ring. “I fucking hate hospitals. Want to get a coffee in the cafeteria? Locke’s sleeping and I don’t want to wake him, so…”
“Lily needs the rest, too. Okay, let’s go.”
I follow her to the cafeteria a few floors down, where we pour ourselves some old, syrupy coffee. I sweeten mine with a ton of cream and sugar, hoping that’ll make it taste better. I notice Astor does the same.
“I worry about him, you know,” Astor says as we find seats. Being this late at night, the cafeteria has maybe two other people. I don’t need to ask her who she’s talking about. “All the time.”
“I haven’t known him long,” I admit, “But maybe ‘reckless’ should’ve been the rest of the R in his middle name.”
It makes Astor smile. “Instead of Robert? I’m sure he’d take it in a second.” Then, she looks back down at her coffee. “Ever since we were kids, he was always such a risk-taker. Being the first to sled down a hill full of snow, right onto a busy road. The only one to jump off a bridge into the water with unknown rocks below. He was…unstoppable. All the time. It’s exhausting.”
“I can only imagine.”
“I was always the cautious twin. The logical one.” Astor rolls her eyes. “The smart one, because I wasn’t dumb enough to risk my life on a daily basis. Until one moment managed to cut everything loose and prevent him from ever taking risks again. Losing his knee.”
I chuckle darkly. “Or so you thought.”
“Exactly! For him, trading bone for metal only meant he should be doing more. I understand he thinks it’s for Lily— he's strong and tough and unbreakable because that’s how he believes fathers should be.”
I nod along because that’s precisely what I’d yelled at Locke.
“But with a dad like ours, how could he think that? Our childhood was all about Mom because our dad was never around. And when he was, it was always to push. To be perfect, to never show your faults. Whereas Mom…” Astor’s tone cracks. “She was the softness. She cried in front of us, lost her shit at us often, broke things in the house, mended us when we needed it. She was our everything. And she was human. Unlike Dad, who thought any sort of flaw was a weakness. You can guess who Locke took after.”
I take time to allow Astor’s words to sink in. “You said was. Your mom was.”
“Yes. She died when we were twenty-one.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. “What happened?”
“Cancer,” Astor says blithely. So quickly, I’m barely given time to stiffen. “Ovarian. She endured about four years of treatment before she died.”
“Locke…” I’m doing all I can to get the words out. “Locke never told me.”
“No? Well, he wouldn’t.” Astor’s gaze drifts off, but she’s still speaking. “It was a really tough time for our family. He didn’t do so well when she died. That’s about the time he started to become more successful than he’d ever dreamed and also the moment he discovered booze. Dad loved it, of course. Both of them loved throwing themselves into anything that didn’t require grieving over Mom.”
“God, Astor…” I’m listening to her, but I’m thinking about Paige. How often I threw her cancer in Locke’s face, how many times I said he didn’t understand. How many times did I say it?
“It’s fine now, honestly. Mom wasn’t…she wasn’t okay in the end. But you know that, with Paige. I think it was the first and only time I understood death to be the better choice.”
“Yeah,” I say. Astor brings a lot of memories to the forefront. Of Paige, frail in bed, unable to hold Lily anymore, but reaching for her anyway. Of the moment Paige said good-bye to Lily, the real, forever good-bye, because Paige knew before anyone else that it would be her last moments with her daughter.
I love you, Lily-belle, I love you so much. And I’ll be with you, always. Carter can be the mean one to yell at you and discipline you. I get to be your angel.
Paige was trying to make me smile with those words, but instead, she made me sob.
And Astor, I’m sure, has similar memories rocketing through her mind.
“Locke fell out with me at that time. Preferred his friends instead. Shit, they were such assholes. All of them, all throughout college. The women they banged…the bets.” Astor pauses to take a sip from her coffee, grimaces when she remembers where it came from. “I tried to chalk it up to Mom, to how he dealt with the grief, but no one can be that much of a dick and think they can get away with it.”
“Did you confront him?”