The Wedding Letters Read online

  Thirty years, he thought. Thirty long years.

  Matthew extended his business trip to DC by two days and drove his rental car to Woodstock. He laid the truth and his heart on the same kitchen table where he and his siblings had poured through thirty-nine years of his father’s letters. He sat in the same chair where Malcolm had learned of his mother’s rape and the anguish that followed.

  Samantha felt stung by the word divorce. Of her brothers, to her Matthew had always been the most like their father, Jack. Hearing that his marriage to Monica was over was something she couldn’t have predicted in one hundred lifetimes of family meetings.

  Across the room, Rain cried and admitted that, though her loyalty was always to Matthew, a man she loved more like a flesh-and-blood brother than an in-law, some of her tears were for Monica. “She wasn’t here a lot, I know, but I enjoyed her so much when she was.”

  Malcolm did not remember the last time he had seen his older brother become so emotional. Even with his parents’ death and during the intense drama of the week that followed, Matthew had been calm. He was the patriarch.

  “I felt like I needed to take charge when Mom and Dad passed. Like that’s what Dad would have wanted.” Matthew arranged and rearranged the red, white, and blue place setting in front of him. “And you made that easy, Malcolm, you always did. You were the one with the issues. The one who needed saving time and time and time again, right?”

  Malcolm looked at his brother’s tired profile. “And you did a pretty amazing job, didn’t you? Every tangle I got into, you got me out. Really, Matthew, you stepped out there in the fire so many times for me. I’m only here because you were there for me every time. Every. Time.”

  “Thanks,” Matthew scratched out the word and cleared his throat. “There’s something else I think you should know.” Matthew took a long breath and looked down at the Kleenex in his hands.

  The Inn fell into that sense of silence that worried Rain and Malcolm.

  Still staring down, Matthew uttered the words he still couldn’t believe himself. “I had an affair.”

  The response came in concert from around the table. “What?”

  Samantha gasped. “You were unfaithful?” Her tone was more surprise than question.

  “I was.”

  Rain spoke next. “How old is she?”

  “She’s thirty-eight.”

  “Does Monica know?” Rain asked.

  Matthew looked down and nodded. He waited for more questions, concerns, to be judged or ridiculed, but when nothing came, he continued. “All these years,” he began slowly. “Not only was I the oldest child, but I was the level-headed one . . . College. Job. Marriage. While Mal was the ladies’ man, the renegade, the troublemaker. I was the dork. I handled the taxes, the investments, all of it for Mom and Dad and this place . . .” His voice cracked. “And now I’m a mess. What’s happened to me?”

  Malcolm stood up and walked behind his brother’s chair. He rubbed his shoulders and leaned down. “Don’t worry, you’re still a dork.”

  Matthew snort-laughed, and Samantha slid a box of Kleenex across the table.

  “But none of that matters, brother. We still love you. Married, divorced—it doesn’t matter. You loved me when I was broken, and we’ll do the same for you.”

  With tears dripping from Matthew’s eyes, the others joined Malcolm on their feet and surrounded their penitent brother. Embraces, kisses on the cheek from Rain and Samantha, whispered words of encouragement.

  When Matthew had composed himself, he looked at Rain and his sister. “Do you think I could have a moment alone? With Mal?”

  The ladies hugged him again at the same time and excused themselves to the kitchen.

  Matthew gestured to the chair Malcolm had been occupying and they both sat. “This is the worst,” Matthew said. “I feel like such a failure. You can’t—”

  “Come on, brother, have you met me? This is all stuff we can get through. If you’re in a better place, if Monica is in a better place, then you’ll get through this all. LJ is grown; you and Mon both have resources and careers. It’s going to be all right. I’ve been through worse, you know.”

  Matthew hadn’t heard any of it. He was practicing the words: “It’s gone.”

  “What’s gone, Matt?”

  “My money.”

  Malcolm felt his stomach twist and shrink in half.

  “I’ve lost almost everything I’ve made. Some of it mine and some of my clients. I got wrapped into a scheme. I don’t know why. I don’t know why, Malcolm. It was risky stuff, I knew that going in, but it ended up being a complete scam.”

  Malcolm stood up and walked to the opposite side of the table. “What about us?”

  “You’re all right. Mostly all right. And I had Mom and Dad’s money someplace else, too. So that’s fine. But we’d already lost quite a bit. You know, since 2005 the value has been dipping almost quarterly. It was so stagnant, Mal. I tried something. And it was bad. Not bad, awful.”

  “Are you in trouble? Legal trouble?”

  “No. But others sure are. Or will be . . . But I’ll never see this money again. A lot of my clients are gone, Mal. A lot of money is gone, too.”

  “What do you need from us, Matt?” He knew the answer but asked the question anyway.

  “I just need funds, short-term, to climb back out. I’ve got to save the firm. There isn’t a lot left, but what’s there is the family’s.”

  Malcolm gripped the edge of the kitchen table.

  His brother stood and rounded the table. “I am so sorry to ask. You can’t know how sorry I am. How ashamed I am to be in this position. I know it’s been tight here, too, and this couldn’t come at a worse time. But I’ll take what we’ve got left, what Mom and Dad left behind, and I’ll get it all back. As much as I can. I promise I will, Mal.”

  As a younger man, Malcolm would have replied with a profane jab about turning the tables or the mighty falling. If he were one of the unlikely clients with nothing left, he might have considered a real jab, too. Perhaps a right hook like the one that had leveled Nathan Crescimanno in a dark alley years before.

  “Send me the forms,” Malcolm said as he walked past Matthew.

  He walked out the door, got into his car, and drove to one of his favorite places. The place where the world told him everything would be all right, even when he knew it was sometimes a lie. The Woodstock Tower.

  Chapter 11

  July 1, 2011

  The month that followed Matthew’s dramatic visit to Domus Jefferson passed in a flurry.

  During the last week of June, Malcolm sent an e-mail calling for a family meeting at the Inn. He invited everyone: Samantha, Shawn, Matthew, Noah, their long-time family attorney Alex Palmer, and A&P, who’d been an integral part of both the family and the Inn. Rachel was invited, too, at Noah’s discretion, if for no other reason than to meet the rest of the gang.

  Matthew and Malcolm hadn’t spoken much in the month since Matthew had broken the news about his shattered life and had asked to borrow the family investments in an effort to turn it around. They’d exchanged a few e-mails, and Malcolm posed important questions about the whats, whys, and hows of Matthew’s ill-placed investments.

  As a thank-you, and without informing his brother or sister-in-law, Matthew arranged to run two full-page ads for Domus Jefferson in Bed & Breakfast America, a popular quarterly magazine. And though he knew it wasn’t going to solve anyone’s problems, he sent a long e-mail to his Facebook friends inviting them to become online fans of his family’s historic inn. It might have been the most passionate thing he’d ever written.

  Matthew also continued winding down his marriage to Monica. Their attorneys squabbled over details large and small, and the process had worn everyone out. During one of their heated settlement conferences, Monica’s attorney asked if Matthew was involved in another relationship.

  “You know that I am,” he answered. “And so is she.”

  Then, acting on a hunch,
the attorney asked, “Is she pregnant?”

  Matthew’s face drained white. “Not anymore.” Monica remained poised and perfectly still, though she felt as if she were drowning. Unable to ensure another second of the brutal, awkward silence, Monica scribbled something on her attorney’s legal pad. Then she gathered her things and politely excused herself.

  The last words she spoke to Matthew were a broken, “I’m sorry.”

  Later that night Matthew wrote her a letter apologizing for not telling her himself and avoiding the embarrassing surprise.

  She did not reply.

  Noah and Rachel’s relationship continued to grow and ripen sweeter by the day. Rachel had parted the curtains of her romantic past and confided that Noah was, by far, her most serious relationship. She had dated little in high school or since and seemed to have myriad excuses why. “There’s always been something wrong with me, I guess.”

  Noah doubted that and couldn’t understand how any boy or man would ever let her drift from his life.

  Noah asked about Rachel’s friend and future coworker, Tyler, and whether their friendship had ever been more. “No,” she answered, “not really. I don’t think he’s ever liked me that way.”

  Noah doubted that, too.

  Rachel had also shared bits and pieces about her unusual childhood and her parents’ separation. “Less a divorce,” Rachel said. “More like he left us.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. He’s turned his life around. At least I think he has.”

  “You’re in touch?”

  “In a way. . . . He sends me an occasional postcard. One or two a year from somewhere in the world.”

  “That’s cool then, yeah?”

  “Yes, it is. He’s slowly been putting his life together. But I still haven’t seen him. Don’t know if I ever will.”

  Noah hadn’t yet met the man Rachel called her stepfather, and when he asked about him, Rachel said she wasn’t sure anymore where he was most of the time. He’d done well in international business and spoke five languages fluently. He made a lot of money and lived very well, whether with the family or on the road, but hadn’t been a consistent part of her mother’s life for several years.

  Rachel missed him. “He was on the road more and more the older I got. When he was home, he tried to be a calming influence, a provider. He made us feel safe. He took care of us.”

  Noah learned that Rachel received a BMW on her sixteenth birthday. She went on every extracurricular school trip. She studied in France for a semester. When a school needed new uniforms, or new instruments, or new laptops, her stepfather’s checkbook was only a phone call or an e-mail away.

  It was obvious to Noah that Rachel and her stepfather were not as emotionally close as Rachel would have liked. But it was also quite obvious that she was grateful to him for the safety and financial security he had provided to Rachel and her mother.

  Rain prepared for the family meeting by setting out yet another new place mat and matching napkin set and making enough appetizers to feed a reception of fifty.

  “Dear, we’re not hosting an Amway recruiting meeting,” Malcolm said. “Relax a little.” But that proved much easier said than practiced and Malcolm spent the morning fiddling in his workshop and worrying about the most important family meeting they’d had since Jack and Laurel died.

  Samantha and Shawn arrived first, and A&P soon followed with mutual friend and attorney, Alex Palmer. Matthew walked in half an hour later with regrets from his son, LJ. “He hates missing a Cooper family meeting, but you know college kids. It’s all nonstop.”

  Noah and the uncomfortable but supportive Rachel arrived last. After the requisite chitchat and how-have-you-beens and thank-you-for-comings, Malcolm invited everyone to get comfortable in the living room.

  Rain and Malcolm sat side by side on the hearth in front of the fireplace as the others scattered around the room, increasingly curious about the evening at hand.

  “Hi, everybody. Thanks for coming. I know everyone is busy, so thanks, really, for making the trip.” Malcolm produced a manila envelope from a briefcase at his feet. “First, let me say how difficult this is. If you had asked us twenty-five years ago if this day would ever come, Rain and I would have assured you that it would not. This place, this home, this business, because it is still a business, has been more important to us than anything else in our lives except for one another. Taking over after Mom and Dad passed has been the greatest honor of my life.” Malcolm turned to Rain. “Our lives, right?”

  Rain started to speak but quickly lost her voice, then her will.

  Matthew sensed he knew what would come next. He looked into the faces of his siblings, at Noah, and even A&P, and wondered if they also knew.

  “It’s been tough for a while. I think most of you probably understand already. Things never quite recovered since the slowdown began back in 2001, 2002. There were months when we thought we had moved out of the worst, but then a month or two, or three or four, or more reminded us that we had not.”

  Malcolm looked at Rain. “It is also no secret that Rain and I are getting older.”

  Without looking up, Rain jabbed him in the leg with her index finger. “Speak for yourself.”

  “It’s true we’ve been doing this a long time. The family has been doing this a long time. We’ve considered a change before, and the finances are only part of that consideration. A big one, yes, but not the entire picture. There are things we want to do. You know how long I’ve wanted to go to a writers’ conference? Or better, one of those retreats somewhere?”

  Everyone in the room seemed to acknowledge the question with their eyes, but no one answered. Malcolm continued. “You guys remember our first night here at the Inn?”

  Matthew nodded.

  “Sam?”

  “I do,” she said. “I recall how scared I was sleeping out in the guesthouse, just me and you. That idea was really exciting before we actually moved in, remember? But back then I was terrified.”

  Shawn took her hand and interlaced his fingers with hers. Then she went on. “I remember we went to our separate tiny rooms, mine more like a closet, and I lasted five minutes—”

  “If that,” Malcolm corrected.

  “Before I came in and tried to climb into my big, brave brother’s bed.”

  “Aw,” Rain cooed.

  “And then you put your foot in my ribs and gave me one big shot to the floor, do you remember that, big, brave brother?”

  Malcolm looked at their attorney and said, “I have no recollection of any such thing and do not believe any such thing occurred.” Malcolm turned to his sister and continued. “I remember that first night so well because I saw something in Dad’s eyes I’d never seen before. Now I don’t remember Dad’s job down at UVA in Charlottesville as well as Matthew probably does, but I know that it was just a job. A job that Dad left every night when he came home to his family. But that first night here I’ll never forget dancing around the living room with Mom and seeing Dad sitting right over there.” Malcolm pointed at a recliner across the room. “He sat there with a smile so big, so content, that it spread to his eyes, his forehead, everywhere. It said, I am home.”

  Rachel whispered something in Noah’s ear and rested her head on his shoulder.

  Malcolm opened the envelope and pulled out a thick stack of papers gathered with a black binder clip. “This is it. We are selling Domus Jefferson.”

  A&P gasped and covered her mouth with both hands.

  “We have been over it and over it and over it. We met with Alex, we prayed about it, we ran the numbers, and we simply decided that the time was right. It’s time to move on.”

  Samantha was the first to respond. “First, I’ll say that I am not completely shocked. I have heard the hints and seen a few signs living as close to you as I do.” Her voice had a professional edge to it. “But why? Why isn’t this a family decision? Before anything is sold, shouldn’t we discuss it as a family? Shouldn’t Matthew
and me, and Mom and Dad’s grandkids, be involved in a decision that affects us all?”

  Rain folded her hands across her lap and appeared to close her eyes.

  Malcolm answered. “Sam, you’re right. If we were all living here, if we were all running the business, if we were all going to the Chamber of Commerce meetings, the Rotary meetings, answering the phone at 1:00 a.m., checking in guests at all hours of the day no matter how many times we tell them on the phone we’re not a Holiday Inn. But we’re not all doing those things together. I respect that this Inn has been a part of all of us. No question. But when Rain and I took over for Mom and Dad—and remember it wasn’t our dream to do this—we jumped in feet first. We were the only option. So we raised a child here. Built a marriage here. We have lived in this home, this Inn, this town for about as long as Mom and Dad did.”

  Malcolm softened. “Sam, you have been a huge help to us through the years. There are not enough ways to thank you for what you’ve done for us. I mean that. But Sam, Matthew, this is our decision to make. It is our names on the business license, and it is our names on the tax returns. We are the ones who wake up every morning and pray for the phone to ring with reservations. I run ads for the website, I troll Facebook looking for potential customers like a desperate sixteen-year-old looking for friends.” Malcolm paused and began flipping through the stack of paperwork.

  “Mal,” Matthew said. “I think what Sam is saying is that we want to help in any way that we can. That’s it. We want to help; we have to help.” Matthew looked to Samantha to reinforce his thought, but she was busy wiping her nose.

  “Are you interested in running this place?” Malcolm asked him.

  “Well, not really, no, because I have a life someplace else.”

  Malcolm turned to his sister. “Sam? Shawn?”

  “You know we can’t,” Shawn spoke for them both.

  “Son?” Malcolm said.

  Noah looked at his mother and father. “There was a time, yes. But not anymore. My dream is somewhere else, something new.”

  Matthew took the lead. “Guys, we love this place, too. And, of course, I never lived here. This was never really my home because I was older and moving on with the rest of my life by the time we left Charlottesville.” He weighed his words before pressing on. “I don’t know how much you’ve told Sam or Noah about the family finances, but I can reverse some things if I need to, help you get your hands on some of the cash. That’s all anyone is asking for. A chance to look at every option on the table before we sign or sell anything.”