Coming Home to Greenleigh

Chapter 15

That reckless glass of wine was followed by a second, and then Christine insisted that she couldn't drink another drop, so he finished off the bottle with a third. Fortunately, even without the aid of a gym, there was enough muscle and weight to him that he knew he'd be able to get them home in one piece, as long as he lingered over dinner and had two cups of coffee afterwards. But his head swam a bit as Christine chattered and laughed her way through the meal. It probably hadn't been smart to take that third glass, but he couldn't bring himself to throw out the remains of an expensive bottle of French wine.

Christine was a nice person, he decided. There was something a little odd about her, but perhaps it only seemed that way because he had that bit of inside info on her—a Harvard Law graduate who had clerked after graduation wasn't a fool, but she fell into the goofy, rich blonde category so easily, he knew it had to be a practiced act. He also remembered her a little better now, and realized that he'd never met her during their law school days because she was chronically rushing around in her ponytail and sweats, off to train for another marathon.

He knew her type, the chronic overachiever who wasn't satisfied with being a school genius alone. In a way, she was too busy being a star in so many categories of her life, she was flying below the radar of her school community. He had no idea who her friends were or what she had spent her law school years doing—other than running marathons.

She said her father was a lawyer, so perhaps she had never had any doubt about what she wanted to do in her life or how she wanted to do it. Shawn himself had no guidance, no direction on this score. His dad was not a college graduate. The family business was several generations old, and there was no need to go to college when you grew up in the business. He'd spent his childhood reading in a corner of the factory, ready to jump in and help if his dad or his granddad needed someone to fetch, carry, or decipher a manual. It had not occurred to him that by allowing him to go off to school, his dad was signing the death warrant for the business, but it was a fact. There would be no more Mountainview Wool Company after his dad was gone.

This wasn't a source of melancholy or even regret in their bachelor household. It just was. Sam did his thing. Shawn did his thing. The future was the future. It would take care of itself, with no further intervention. Shawn had chosen his path, and that was that. Any desire his dad might have had to interfere in his destiny had never been a topic of discussion. Ever. End of subject.

Shawn sometimes felt a little bad about it. But he mostly felt irritation that he couldn't get his dad off the factory floor, even after a heart attack. He felt irritation that his dad had barely ever left New England, and certainly had never taken a vacation anywhere. What kind of life was that? Why didn't he behave like normal old people everywhere? Why didn't he take it easy and nag about grandchildren?

No—no, that wouldn't be good, actually. Because at the moment, children were simply not a part of Shawn's future, and he didn't know if they ever would be.

Shawn tried to focus on Christine's face, but the firelight was not quite enough to light the room, and Christine had her back to the fireplace anyway. The snow outside wasn't piling up after all. It seemed to be hitting the slushy road and deciding flake by individual flake whether to melt or accumulate, so there was only minimal streetlight reflected off the wet road and slippery walk outside. If there had been a dump of snow, the streetlamp might have cast a sickly gray light into the window, but instead, it was dramatically dark, the occasional car headlight slanting across the road.

He could see that she was slightly flushed from the effects of her cup of Irish coffee, as she explained cheerfully that she had to give up marathons after chronic joint pain had threatened to turn into a hip replacement. She was very pretty, he acknowledged to himself.