Caleb + Kate (23 page)

“I can see why Caleb is taken with you.”

I'm not sure how to respond—does he mean it, and if so, why? We've hardly talked and he's so quickly assessed me?

Perhaps he will like me enough to accept Caleb and I being together. Because one thing I know, I will not be the reason that Caleb's future is ruined.

CALEB

Grandfather takes Kate's hand and I want to race over there and hit the old man. He holds it with his two hands and then kisses the top of it.

She's free from him then, walking toward me with a nervous expression on her face. Grandfather stays behind a moment and then turns toward the picnic area, where the family welcomes him in, handing him a plate and gushing over him, as all family members do with Grandfather.

“It was no big deal,” Kate says when we reach the Camaro. I can't get her inside and onto the highway fast enough.

“Everything is a big deal with my grandfather. What did he say to you? Tell me everything.”

She retells the conversation. I ask details she can't remember, wanting everything exact and wishing I had been there to read his slightest expressions.

“I'm sorry. I've never been good at sequential and exact details. I can't tell the synopsis of a movie without bouncing all around. Please don't be annoyed with me.”

And I was getting frustrated with her. “I'm sorry. Grand-father makes me a little stressed, and I'm sorry for taking that out on you.”

Her smile softens every jagged edge within me. I want us to just run away, pack up the Camaro and all the money we can find and disappear for forever and a day.

“He asked about your father's hotel chain?”

Grandfather hasn't been to the mainland in thirty years. He hates Oregon, he hates the Monrovi family, he hates my father, and now he hates me.

So why is Grandfather here?

Chapter Fifteen

This above all: to thine own self be true.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
(Act 1, Scene 3)

CALEB

Monica manipulates me like a puppet master. Guilt is used instead of strings. “Get up and get ready,” she says over the phone, waking me from a perfect sleep.

I yawn and stretch my legs. “Why?”

“We've hardly talked since prom. I've decided to go out with Anton this summer.”

I sit up in bed and wince from the soreness in my muscles from one of Caleb's recent climbing adventures. “When did you decide that?”

“You would know, if you ever talked to me. But I'll tell you today. You are blowing off church and your Hawaii boy because you need some time with the girls in the happiest place on earth.”

“The mall is not
my
happiest place on earth.”

I hear another voice in the background. “Skip church, Mother Teresa, and let's go shopping.”

“Why so early?” I say, trying to come up with some excuse. I want to see Caleb later and go to church with him tonight. I can see myself becoming one of those girls who once annoyed me because they stop hanging out with their friends and only want to be with their boyfriends. Now I understand those girls much better. Everything outside of time with him holds little attraction.

“Susanne's dad is flying us up to Seattle. He has some business, and so the plan was hatched.”

I'll be gone the entire day then. A day of clothes, shoes, gossip, meaningless chatter—it sounds horrible. Then I remember that I do need some better shoes for hiking with Caleb . . . as long as the girls don't see me buying hiking boots. I can probably pull that off. And I do need to see my friends once in a while.

“Okay, what time?”

Caleb doesn't respond to my text for nearly an hour. When he does, he says a guest drove a golf cart into the pond and he was towing it out and taking it back to the maintenance building.

He writes:
I'll go to church in the evening. Grandfather wants
to meet me for dinner in Portland anyway. You have a great day in
Seattle. It's good for you to see your friends
.

It makes me sad.

Perhaps I want him to say that he'll miss me, or even be upset that I'm going. But why would he? It isn't as if we expected to spend every day together. But the disappointment weighs on my shoulders. When Susanne's dad pulls up and the girls pop their heads out the windows cheering and excited about our day of shopping, I try putting aside my longing for Caleb to enjoy the day with my friends.

Another text comes through my phone:
I'll miss you
.

It makes me want to cry.

I type back as I smile and hop into the back seat of the Cadillac Escalade.
What's wrong with me? I don't want to do anything
with anyone else. I just want to be with you
.

C
ALEB
:
Can't say that I don't love hearing that. But have
fun. Know I'm missing you all day
.

M
E
:
I'll miss you all day too
.

As we ride to the airport, I try to laugh at the jokes and act involved in the conversations. Monica squints her eyes at me and shakes her head.

“Pathetic.”

Once the small plane takes off, I can cut the act. I stare out the window with the headphones covering my ears. The world is all green edged with blue sky and water. The pine trees are a deep green, with the open fields an almost-lime, vibrant with the newness of spring.

I wonder what the future will be. Flying off for a one-day shopping trip isn't a rarity, though of course I know it isn't the norm for most people. But our kind of people don't think twice about it. It's what we know, it's who we are—well, not really who we are. But I think I could live the normal suburban life or whatever my life might turn into if Caleb and I are together forever, couldn't I? If Caleb loses everything because of me—I wouldn't ask that of him, though—but what if that was our life? Could I do that? I try to drop myself into Caleb's family, but does that mean changing all I've known?

Maybe we could run away. It sounds romantic to be poor together. But poor in reality means not having money to do anything—not flying to Europe or Fiji for the summer, having to work jobs we hated, or two jobs each, so that we could see each other in our exhausted few hours off. My father might help us.

Then I think that maybe Caleb's grandfather wanted to meet him tonight to give his blessing. No, I'm jumping to conclusions beyond what Caleb and I have talked about. But if I truly am his real love and he is mine, Caleb won't have a future in his grandfather's business, and we'll be poor.

Would I give everything up for him?

I know the answer without question. I might someday regret it as my sister Kirsten has warned, but I would give up everything for Caleb now. Isn't love all about sacrifice anyway? “Hey, have you seen Oliver?” Monica asks me as we walk down the boarding stairs to the tarmac. A crisp breeze blows, making me shiver.

“He wasn't at school Friday, and now that I think about it, he didn't answer my text.”

“I think he's going to need rehab if he doesn't watch it,” Emily says from behind us. I glance at her and then to Monica, who shrugs as if she agrees.

Susanne's father takes one sedan, and we hop into a limo waiting to sweep us away to downtown Seattle.

“Did you hear that my cousin in LA was approached about doing a reality show?” Emily says as she pops open a Coke from the icebox.

“What kind of reality show?” I ask, but care very little about the answer. Before this would've been exciting news—what is wrong with me?

“Sort of similar to
The Hills
or
Laguna Beach
—one of those.”

“Really?” Susanne asks with the enthusiasm I might have had a few months ago. “Is she going to do it? Maybe you could get on, and then we'll come shopping with you in LA.”

My mind starts zoning out, though I try to pretend to listen to Susanne, Monica, and Emily.

“She's in film school at UCLA, so they'd do the show about her friends and life in college.”

“That's cool.”

“Someone said they were talking about doing one set in a prep school—we should try getting it at Gaitlin.”

“They'd probably want one in New York.”

“You never know.”

The conversations continue. I realize that I've been checked out of all of this since meeting Caleb. But then, I remember how empty I was feeling even before meeting him. Church and my faith have always filled that emptiness for the most part, but I still lived a mostly meaningless life. Now I want more. What that means, I haven't figured out—only that I hope it includes Caleb.

“I hate being poor,” Susanne cries while we're trying on clothes. She stands in front of a mirror, holding one then another coat in front of her.

“What do you mean, poor?” Monica rolls her eyes.

“Daddy will only let me have two credit cards—he made me choose. Before this recession, I could buy whatever I wanted.”

“I would just die,” Emily says, and I nearly burst out laughing.

I haven't told my friends that the hotel business isn't doing so well and that probably a lot of their family companies are struggling. I overheard my parents saying Monica's father has lost millions in real estate in Dubai and in an investment scandal that involved a lot of celebrities and businesspeople. Now Monica stares at Emily with contempt. But none of us really understand what it's like to live frugally.

“You know, people are losing their houses and living in tent cities around the country.” The three of them turn and stare at me like I've lost my mind.

“Yeah, but that's, like, in the South,” Emily states as if she knows.

“No, in Sacramento.”

Susanne shrugs. “California is the new Katrina.”

“It is not,” Monica scoffs.

“Well, Seattle is the new California.” Emily makes a twirl in a dress she's tried on.

“It's been the new California for a decade or so.”

Emily sets her hands on her hips. “Nothing can be the new California. Without LA, our country is lost. Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, Hollywood. The first Disneyland was started in LA. Everything entertaining and beautiful pretty much starts in LA.”

No one responds to that. It was somewhat true.

“Shoe therapy!” Emily says as we walk into a shoe store.

I'm not planning to buy new shoes, but then I see a pair that would look perfect with a summer dress I ordered from Anthropologie.

By the time we meet Susanne's father back at the plane, we have a hard time finding space for all the bags.

For some reason, after a day of mundane conversation with the girls, a feeling of insecurity about Caleb rises in me. Maybe it's all the guy talk, or being immersed in the world of the rich again. But a nagging fear follows me home.

“Never ignore the warning signs,” Susanne said at lunch, when she was telling about her Harvard boy who broke her heart.

The worry grows. What if he wasn't really meeting his grandfather tonight? What if he meets someone more like him, perhaps even at church tonight? What if Caleb is just one of those guys who has a great line, who knows how to get a girl to fall in love with him—hook, line, and sinker—and then moves on to the next? It doesn't seem possible, not Caleb, but I knew enough girls who'd believed the same things and gotten hurt.

“I should have known,” Susanne often said, and really, we did all agree with that one. She was in Cancún on spring break—what did she expect? Well, she expected what we all expect—honesty. We crave it as much as we crave love and attention and to be the sole object of desire in a man's eyes and heart. But was it realistic to expect that?

I decide that it is. I'm just not sure that Caleb will meet my expectations.

Chapter Sixteen

Doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but
never doubt I love.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
(Act 2, Scene 2)

CALEB

Grandfather summons me, and it irritates me that I'm answering his call. We're meeting for dinner at the hotel restaurant where he's staying in Vancouver, Washington, across the Columbia River from Portland.

The hostess directs me to his table. Grandfather looks up from taking a sip of his drink and sets it down as I arrive.

“Caleb, good to see you.” He stands and we embrace; he pounds me hard on the back.

“Grandfather.” I sit across from him, and I'm surprised to see that he really is getting old.

“Do you know what I drink?” he asks, touching the glass.

“You drink scotch.”

“Yes.” He seems pleased that I answer correctly. “When he and I were friends, Augustus Monrovi introduced me to the pleasures of scotch. Read up on the history of it sometime, it's interesting.”

“Okay,” I say, wondering why we're discussing this.

“I ordered for us already. This is a nice hotel, I've been happy with it.”

I glance around the restaurant. Candles flicker on the tablecloths and the windows open to the Columbia River.

“I considered staying at the Monrovi Inn . . . but maybe next time I'm in town.”

“I know what you're trying to do.”

He leans back in his seat. “What is that?”

“You made an offer to buy the inn.”

He nods. “I did. And I was turned down. The first time. I think that Reed Monrovi might be a reasonable man. My second offer is very generous, especially at this time in our economy.”

“You really think he'll sell it to you?” My stomach contracts and I think of Kate.

“Why not? He needs the money. His other properties are in trouble, deep trouble. It would save his company.”

“And you'd finally get what you want.”

“It does feel rather empty now that it's on the table after all these years.”

I don't know what to say. The Monrovi Inn wasn't just a hotel to the Monrovi family—it was more their home than their house was. Their entire lives wrapped around that particular hotel—the first in their chain, and the only one that they loved. My father loved that land too. He loved it for the memories and the sacredness once bestowed on it. And Grandfather wanted it to win some old grudge that he wanted me to continue.