Reality sank in. Not only did no one want me to take on the project of Nathaniel’s memoirs, no one even believed I could do it.
Nobody except Nathaniel, and maybe Edward.
And, as it turned out, my dad.
“Stop. All of you.” Dad came up and put an arm around my shoulders. I stared up at him in surprise. I don’t think I’d ever heard him sound so stern, so commanding, in my whole life. My dad wasn’t the one who argued, who shouted, who got involved. He was the one who brought biscuits.
Apparently there was a side to my dad I’d never expected.
“Nathaniel left this choice to Saskia and Edward, correct?” Dad looked over at Pat Norris, who nodded. “So it’s up to them to make it. Not you, not me. Them.”
“Tony, really. You don’t understand,” Mum started, impatiently, but Dad stopped her.
“I understand perfectly, Sally. You’re all angry with the wrong person. You’re all furious with Nathaniel for deciding to write his memoirs, and for leaving the job to Saskia and Edward – not to mention dying in the first place. But shouting at them isn’t going to change anything. Nathaniel wanted his memoirs published. He wanted those stories out there. And however scared you all are about facing the consequences of your history, of seeing your secrets down in black and white, it’s out of your hands now. It’s not up to us. It’s up to them. They’re adults, capable of reason and sensibility. So I suggest we sit back, let them talk about it, and wait for them to tell us their decision. Okay?” There was no room for argument in Dad’s tone, and when no one spoke, he nodded, and placed a kiss on the top of my head before letting me go. “Good. Now, who wants a biscuit?”
“I suppose any decisions should wait until after the funeral, anyway,” Mum said, and the others nodded their agreement.
“Great,” I said, my palms still sweating, despite my father’s faith in my adulting abilities. “Then we can just… wait. That sounds good.”
I might not be able to put the decision off for ever, but right now I’d take what I could get.
“Then, if we’re finished discussing this point, there are a few more bequests to discuss,” Pat said, as calmly as if it had been a small debate about a porcelain figurine, or something. “Mostly smaller items, left to family and friends who particularly admired them, plus a few charitable bequests.”
While the rest of the room settled down to eat biscuits and listen, I caught Edward’s eye and tipped my head towards the door. He gave a small nod, and followed as I slipped out into the hallway. As the door shut behind us, I head Isabelle exclaim, “Why would he leave anything to her!?”
“How long do you think this will go on?” Edward asked, as we took up familiar positions on the staircase and listened to the noise through the closed door. As much as I didn’t want to be in the room, I also didn’t want to be so far away I couldn’t step in and separate people if it started to sound like Mr Norris’s life was in danger.
“No real way of telling,” I said, looping my arms over my knees. “We’ve never actually been through something like this before.”
We listened in silence for a few more moments to the muffled discussion beyond the door. I doubted Isabelle really objected to anything else in the will. Any anger from her now was just misplaced from the memoirs. I wasn’t fool enough to believe that Dad had defused that bomb for good. Still, out here, with Edward, everything felt calmer, as if the pressure weighing down on me from my family had been lifted, just for a time. Just while Edward was there to carry some of it.
“You knew, didn’t you? Nathaniel told you what he’d done?” I tilted my head to look up at him as I waited for a response.
Edward sighed. “Not exactly. I knew he wanted you to work on the project with us. I thought he was planning to ask you while you were home.”
“He didn’t.” At least, not in so many words. But when I looked back at our conversations…I could see every one of them leading to this moment.
“He should have done.”
“Yeah.”
More silence, punctuated by the odd exclamation through the door.
Then, “What are you thinking?” Edward asked, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his breath tickling my ear.
“We should have brought the brandy with us.”
He laughed almost silently, a huff of warm air against my throat. “I meant about the will. About the memoirs.”
Ah. A slightly trickier proposition than whether or not to just get drunk and ignore everything else.
“I’m not sure,” I answered, which was at least honest. “On the one hand, it was practically his dying wish. But on the other…”
“Everyone will hate you,” Edward guessed.
Not just hate me. I’d be an outcast again, even more than I already was. Deciding to take on the memoirs with Edward might mean giving up any hope of ever being welcome at Rosewood again.
“That’s definitely part of it. Plus the fact that I still can’t be sure if Nathaniel didn’t only want to have his memoirs published to piss everyone else off.”
Edward laughed again, louder this time, a short, sharp bark of a laugh that felt like he cut it off just in time to make sure that none of the family heard and came out to physically attack him. “Yeah, I could see that,” he said, quieter. “But I don’t think that’s why. I worked with him for over a year on this. He wanted this story to be told for it’s own sake, I think. Like all the stories he told before. He wanted other people to be able to know it.”
I twisted around to face him, leaning my back against the hard wood rails of the banister, feeling them press against my spine. “You say he told you he wanted me to work on the memoirs with you. What about the will? Had he told you he was going to do this?” My voice was still calm and quiet, I realised, despite the bubbles of confusion and frustration and anger that were bouncing around inside of me.
“No.” I must have looked disbelieving, despite the strength in his voice, because Edward went on. “Honestly, Saskia, I didn’t know he’d done this. I thought… I thought that maybe he’d have made some arrangement with his publisher, that maybe they’d want to hire me on to finish the job, but I really didn’t expect…”
“Okay. I believe you.” I sat straight again, fixing my eyes on the drawing room door.
“Is it… Are you worried that it will be awkward, working with me?” Since it appeared from his voice that it was awkward for him to even ask the question, I wondered how much of his concern also applied to him. “I mean, after… Well, you know. The other night.”
“Edward,” I said, stopping him before it got more excruciating for either one of us. “I assure you that I am much more concerned about my family’s collective mental health than I am about working with a man I almost slept with.”
“Oh,” he said. “Good
.”
“That said,” I carried on, turning back to face him again. “I am glad you’re still here. I wouldn’t want to have to do this without you.” For some reason, my voice came out a lot softer than I’d intended, and my hand found its way to Edward’s knee, ostensibly just for a quick, reassuring pat. But somehow his hand was covering mine, and the warmth and reassurance seemed to be flowing the other way.
What would I have done if Edward hadn’t been here? If Nathaniel had left this responsibility only to me, and I’d had to make these decisions in the face of family uproar? If they’d all had one more reason to hate me?
As he held on to my hand, I let myself accept for the first time how really very glad I was that Edward was there to share the misery with me.
I looked up as the drawing room door opened, but Edward didn’t let go of my hand until Ellie was already out of the room in the hallway staring at us.
“Right,” she said, sounding pretty much done in. “Sorry.” And with that, she turned and walked out of the front door into the summer afternoon.
“Damn it,” Edward said, mostly under his breath, and got to his feet. “I’d better go see if she’s… See where she’s gone, anyway.”
My jaw felt suddenly tight, and I realised I was gritting my teeth at the reminder that Edward was Ellie’s friend, first. He wasn’t here for me – he was here for Nathaniel, for Ellie, for the family, for the work. I was just incidental.
In a few long strides he was down the stairs and on his way out the door. I stayed where I was, arms wrapped around my knees again, listening to my family tearing itself apart in the other room.
“Are they nearly finished in there?” Caro appeared in the doorway from the kitchen dressed in a pair of yellow shorts with flamingos on, pink glittery shoes, and a T-shirt that announced to the world that, tomorrow, she planned to be a mermaid. In her hand was a bare cupcake. “Only, Dad said he’d help me decorate these later.”
I looked at the plain cupcake, then at my little sister. Maybe I couldn’t fix my relationship with Ellie, and maybe I was about to destroy my relationships with the rest of my family too, if I chose to take on the memoirs.