New Milton, Tome 1 : Perfect day

“Joshua?”

Sighing, he turned to find Aunt Ruth picking her way across the gravel in high heels. She looked ridiculous and out of place in her metropolitan chic. “I have to go,” he said.

“But are you alright? I mean about the brother moving here.”

He swallowed hard but didn’t feign ignorance. He didn’t want to talk about it, though.

Ruth tipped her head, touched his shoulder. “Oh, Joshua, still? It’s been eight years, darling. I’d have thought—”

“I’m fine,” he said, looking away from her concerned gaze. “It’s fine.”

“I’m sure he won’t come here,” she said, lowering her voice as if Michael might overhear. As if he’d care, even if he knew. “I’m sure you won’t have to see him.”

Joshua shook his head. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Finn Callaghan again—he did. But he was afraid that Finn wouldn’t want to see him again, and he didn’t know whether he could handle how much that would hurt. “He’s probably forgotten all about me.”

“But you haven’t forgotten him.”

“No.” He dipped his eyes to the driveway, the gravel damp and glistening. “No, I don’t suppose I ever will.”

She squeezed his arm, more hesitant than she’d been eight years ago. Then she’d been so sure, so convinced she knew what was right—for him, for the family. Even for Finn. “I know it was difficult,” she said, fingers biting into his arm, “but I still believe you made the right decision. To give up everything you had—your education, your place in the business, your home —for...for a summer romance, Joshua? And with a man. It would have been foolish.”

Pressing his lips together, he resisted telling her that he’d long ago come to believe that there was nothing wrong with a little foolishness. But he’d learned that lesson too late and he couldn’t blame Ruth for having been cautious. She’d tried to do her best for him, tried to fill the gap his mother’s death had left behind.

“I understand,” he said, offering her the best smile he could muster. “And at the time, staying did feel like the responsible thing to do. But I—I suppose, given how things turned out, I wish I’d made a different choice.”

“How things turned out?” She dropped her hand from his shoulder.

He shrugged. “Well, look at me...” No direction, no ambition, and no career beyond a little peripatetic music teaching—certainly not the glittering future everyone had assumed would follow his Harvard MBA. No money, thanks to his father cutting him off when he finally came out, a year after ending things with Finn. And, while less pressing, no less disheartening, no relationship. Joshua remained chronically single.

“There’s still time,” Ruth said, encompassing his failure at life in one platitude. “Your life’s not over at thirty-one, you know.”

But he couldn’t agree with her optimism; his life had ended eight years ago —the day he chose his family over Finn Callaghan.

The day Finn walked out of his life and never looked back.