Chapter 8: Megan
Three days after the hearing, Megan came to the cottage alone.
She didn't call ahead.
I saw her car pull into the driveway from the sunroom window — her dark green sedan, parking carefully between the two hydrangea bushes as she always did, as though she had always been considerate of the garden.
I watched her sit in the car for almost two minutes before she got out.
I opened the front door before she reached it.
She stopped on the path.
She was dressed plainly — no jewelry, no sunglasses pushed up like armor.
She looked younger without all of that, and more uncertain.
"I wasn't sure you'd open the door," she said.
"I wasn't either," I admitted.
"Come in."
I made tea because it gave both of us something to do with our hands.
Megan sat at the kitchen table and watched me fill the kettle and I could feel her working up to whatever she had come to say.
"I owe you an apology," she said, when I sat down across from her.
"More than one, probably."
"Probably," I agreed.
She wrapped both hands around the mug.
"The night of the party — telling you there was no room.
That was cruel.
I knew it was cruel when I said it.
I think I wanted you to feel it." She looked up.
"I've spent years feeling like a visitor in this house.
Like whatever I did or contributed, it was still yours, and you were just allowing me in.
I resented that." She paused.
"That's not an excuse.
I'm just trying to explain where it came from."
I thought about what she had said.
"You've been coming here for twenty-two years," I said.
"Every summer.
Every Thanksgiving the years we came here instead of home.
I have never once asked you to feel like a visitor."
"I know.
It wasn't anything you did." Megan's fingers moved around the mug.
"It was Robert.
He talked about this place like it was his.
Like it was always going to be his.
And I started to believe it too.
And then when I realized what he'd actually done—" She stopped.
"When I found those two documents and understood what he'd changed, I was so angry.
Not on your behalf.
On mine.
Because he'd made me part of something without telling me what it really was."
"Is that why you sent me the document?"
"Partly." She was quiet for a moment.
"And partly because it was wrong.
What he did was wrong, and I knew it, and I had it in my hands, and I thought — someone should know." She looked at me directly for the first time since sitting down.
"I told myself I was protecting the children.
But I think the truth is I just couldn't hold it anymore."
I poured more hot water into my mug even though it didn't need it.
"Megan," I said carefully, "when you said the sunroom was the first thing going."
She went very still.
"I didn't mean — I wasn't planning—"
"You were planning.
You'd already decided what you would change." I kept my voice level.
"That conversation is what sent me to Patricia's office.
Not anything Robert did.
Not the party.
That one conversation."
Megan's face shifted through several expressions.
Finally it settled into something close to genuine shame.
"It was a horrible thing to say," she said.
"About a room that Henry built." She looked toward the sunroom windows where the afternoon light came through at its long autumn angle.
"I was being careless and unkind and I didn't stop to think about what it meant to you.
Or to Robert, even.
He loved this place because of his father and I talked about it like it was a renovation project."
We sat with that for a moment.
"He built it so there would be somewhere to bring Robert when he was small," I said.
"So he'd have a place that was his."
Megan's eyes filled.
She blinked it back — proud, still, even now.
"I didn't know that," she said.
"No.
I don't suppose anyone told you."
A long quiet stretched between us.
Outside, a gull called once and went silent.
"I don't know what we are to each other after all this," Megan said.
"I don't know if you can forgive me.
I don't know if I'd forgive me."
"I don't know either," I said honestly.
"But you came.
And you said the true thing instead of the convenient thing.
That's a start." I looked at her across the table.
"Emma left three pieces of sea glass on my windowsill last time she was here.
She told me she was saving the best colors for Grandma's house."
Megan's breath caught.
"That child loves this place," I said.
"Let her love it.
Let them both love it.
That's what it's for."
Megan nodded.
Her hands tightened around the mug.
May you like
"Okay," she said softly.
"Okay."
