Enter The Black Oak: Chapter 24

“WELL, I’M VERY HAPPY that my grandson brought you here, darling. And I’m even happier to see that you two are friends again. It was very hard for him after you got married and you, well, drifted apart.”

Lottie’s dulcet tones flood me with light as we stroll arm in arm around the grounds of Redwood the next day with the sun flitting in and out of clouds on this early afternoon. Cameron had already left by the time I woke up a couple of hours ago, to run some errands apparently.

A fresh salty breeze drifts over from the bay on the other side of the house which stands proudly on the northern shore of Long Island. You’d be forgiven for not realizing that Redwood’s huge back garden, framed by deep thickets of noble trees, is just a stone’s throw away from the ocean. We amble leisurely, watched over by the sumptuous mansion, a stunning brick and wood construction, large enough to easily accommodate eight overnight guests. Cornflower blue shutters brighten the windows, bordered by bold branches of ivy that snake up the side of the house. On the other side is a veranda which looks over the choppy ocean around one of the more secluded spots near Oyster Bay. The interior is decorated with the same measured elegance that typifies all O’Neill properties, though with lighter pastel tones than some of the wood and leather-heavy Manhattan and Connecticut residences.

“Well, I’m happy too,” I respond, smiling at this soulful woman who radiates warmth in vibrant rays.

“The whole family was upset when you fell out. Typical Cameron—he never explained what happened.” Lottie raises an eyebrow, clearly fishing for some insight into our falling out.

I briefly contemplate explaining what happened; explaining how it had become impossible to even be around her grandson without him trying to break up my relationship with Jack; explaining how violently he opposed my relationship while refusing to even give a valid reason; explaining how the anger and frustration had built up to the point that being in the same room as him had become nigh-on impossible. But that story is not one I want to dwell on anymore.

“Well, at least we’re talking again,” I say. “That’s a start.”

“Do you think you can work things out with Jack? Last time I spoke to your mother she said that things were wonderful,” she says innocently, but with a question mark hanging in her voice.

I study the lush grass under my feet. Lottie knows that Jack and I have had some kind of fight, but neither she nor Cameron knows what’s really going on. I certainly don’t want to drag her into sordid tales involving Alexandra Frost.

“Maybe,” I mutter quietly.

“Hmm.” She scrutinizes my face with an all-knowing look. “Marriages are hard, Jessynia. God knows, I was married for forty-five long years. And despite what it may have looked like from the outside, it wasn’t always easy. I loved Cameron’s grandfather dearly, but sometimes taking a few days out would have done me the world of good.”

“Were you happy with your husband—Edward, right?”

“Oh, yes. Eddie was a wonderful man. You know a strange thing happens when someone dies—all the anger, all the hurt, all the pain they caused you, it all vanishes in an instant, and you’re left remembering all the wonderful things they did and wondering why you didn’t see them before. When Eddie died, it was like a cloud lifted and I saw him for the devoted and loving and hard-working man he was, and the little indiscretions and all those selfish things that men do that cause us so much pain, they just vanished into the ground with him. I just wish I could have let them go long before.”

Her words are comforting, though I know that hearing them will encourage me to do the one thing that I most fear myself doing, and that is to rationalize Jack’s behavior as being part of the deal when marrying a man so rich and so stunning; to convince myself that I should look past it, see the love he has for me and to forgive him; to blame it on some deep-seated need of his to self-destruct and rush back into his arms in order to save him, spending the rest of my married life closing my eyes to his infidelities. The problem is I can’t live like that. Part of me wishes I could, but I just can’t.

“Honestly, Lottie, I wish I could bottle your wisdom,” I sigh, feeling so grounded around this sage woman whose presence is as soothing as a glass of mulled wine.

Lottie laughs, her thin, perfectly coiffed silver hair shining brightly in the afternoon sun. “Oh, don’t wish that, darling. By the time wisdom comes, it’s often too late to use it. It brings you peace as you approach the end of your years, and you just hope you can pass a little on to your loved ones in the hope that they learn from your mistakes.”

I smile and squeeze her hand as we watch a heron fly over the garden in the direction of the woods behind the house.

“You know…”

“What, sweetheart?”

“Cameron seems different from the way he was at college,” I respond.

“He’s grown into quite a man, hasn’t he?” She bumps her shoulder against mine and smiles, the skin over her cheeks crinkling in gorgeous ripples created by years of laughter.

“He never had such a confident air about him like he does now. He seems much more like a man than when we were friends. It’s taking some getting used to it.”

“Well, he’s stronger, more confident, more experienced. He went through a hard time in his early twenties before you two met. Did he tell you about it?”

“No. I mean, I knew he was struggling with some issues, but we’d only just met. We never really talked about it.”

“I don’t know the full story either. I know there were some bad people around him and he got sucked into a world he shouldn’t have. He told me many times that you were the one who pulled him out of the dark place he was in.”

“Well, I didn’t do that much.”

“Well, it was enough apparently,” she says, squeezing my arm. “The family has always been very grateful to you.”

“I’m just happy he’s doing well. It was hard. Us falling out, I mean.”

“Cameron was devastated about it for a long time. He’s got a lot stronger this last year, but the year you got married, he was not doing well at all.”

“Yeah, it was hard on both of us. I just wish he’d made more of an effort to accept Jack, for my sake. I still don’t know why he hates him so much. I mean, they were like brothers at one point.”

“I’m not entirely sure either, darling. That’s the type of thing only men can understand and something only Cameron or Jack can tell you.”

“Hmm. I won’t hold my breath.”

“Well, you know Cam. He’s somewhat of a deep well. It’s a mystery what will come to the surface.”

“I heard he was dating some oil heiress last year?”

“Mmm, girl called Camilla. That’s been over for a while, thank the heavens. She was just awful—very beautiful to look at, but the grace and manners of a pig. Actually, no, that’s quite the insult to pigs.”

I sputter at Lottie’s no-bullshit commentary.

“New money—it’s always the same story,” she continues. “She’d spend her days shopping or getting some poor animal’s hairs glued to her eyelids. She had some unfortunate assistant she used to bark orders at like a dog. Say what you want about our family, but I’m hoping you can’t say we lack manners.”

“Well, I can certainly confirm that, madam.”

Lottie is right. The O’Neill dynasty are old money, raised with wealth and privilege for generations. They are spunky, smart and outgoing, but behave with grace, manners and wit in public. Ostentatious displays of wealth are most definitely not their thing.

“I don’t think my grandson ever had any serious feelings for her.”

“That doesn’t sound like Cam. Why on Earth would he date someone like that?”

“Well, my theory—and I’m always right as you know—is that it was his way of not having to risk being in pain again. You know, date someone so dreadfully awful that your heart won’t be broken when it’s over.”

“Because of what he went through with Olivia?”

Lottie’s pale eyes meet mine sharply. “Maybe.”

“Does he still hear from her?” I ask, enquiring about the girlfriend he had for more than half of the three years I knew him at college.

Olivia is a stunning long-haired blonde with legs up to her ears. She and Cameron were inseparable for a long time, breaking up shortly after I got together with Jack. I spent quite a bit of time with her at one point. In fact, it was Olivia who told me that Cam was, in her words, an “insatiable freak in the sack.” I’d heard rumors that she dabbled in drugs and I saw first-hand that she had some anger-management issues which made their relationship volatile at times, but I’d always assumed they would work things out.

“No. She didn’t take the breakup very well at all,” replies Lottie.

“Really? I thought it was more of a mutual thing?”

“Did my grandson not tell you what happened?”

“No. I was with Jack by then and things had got so strained between us that we were barely telling each other anything about our lives.”

“Hmm. Well, I think it hit Olivia very hard when he ended things. I know at one point Cam thought about changing his number because she was calling him so much.”

“Do you know why they split up?”

“I’m not sure. He talked about it with his mother a lot, but you know Cameron. He can be very private about his feelings.”

I nod, wishing the well wasn’t always so deep.

As we walk around the elegant grounds, the crunch of gravel signals the arrival of Cameron’s Audi. Lottie and I smile at each other as we walk towards the driveway.

“What a handsome boy my grandson is, hey?” she enthuses. “He’s going to make some lucky undeserving broad very happy one day.”

Cameron gets out of the car dressed in grey Levis and a navy polo shirt, his athletic arms ripped and golden, and his chocolate brown hair glistening in the sun. There’s something about the way his clothes casually cling to the hard curves of his body that’s indecently sexy.

“Hello, girls.”

“Hello,” we sing in unison.

“Did you get everything done, darling?” Lottie asks him.

“Just about.”

“Jessie and I have been having a wonderful time together,” she enthuses, her arm still looped through mine. “I’m glad you’ve finally brought a young lady around that I can have a decent conversation with.”

“Tsk. Oma,” Cameron admonishes warmly.

“You’d better bring her to see me more often, young man.”

His eyes collide with mine and hold them causing my core to tingle and my breathing to quicken. “I’ll try.”

“Good. Well, I think I’m going to have to get going,” Lottie says.

“Oh, so soon?” I moan.

“Yes, unfortunately. I have an important luncheon tomorrow and I like Fred to drive very slowly,” she says, referring to her elderly driver and constant companion who is loading some bags into the trunk of an old black Bentley in the driveway as we speak. “And at my age, with my bladder, I may need a bathroom break every half hour until we reach Manhattan and I don’t fancy getting back in the dark…”

Forty minutes later she’s donning the vintage salmon-pink Chanel jacket that Fred has brought out to her. “You look after each other, okay, children? And my darling, you stay as long as you need to,” she coos at me as she hugs me goodbye.

An electric charge prickles between Cam and me as we find ourselves alone in the driveway watching Fred drive Lottie away. The sense of peace I had while with her is dissipating and I feel a knot form in my stomach as I think about Jack and the fact that I’m now alone in this house with a man he despises. In addition to the dread I feel, the constant awareness I have of Cameron and his capable limbs is leaving my body humming with nervous energy.

I clear my throat. “That is one hell of a grandmother you’ve got there.”

“Yeah, she’s a force of nature, alright.”

I look up at my friend. “Cam, I think I’d better go. It’s already nearly three o’clock.”

“Where are you going to go?”

The truth is that I have absolutely no idea.

“I’ll stay with Maddie, or go to my parents’ place, or a hotel.”

“And have Jack turn up on your doorstep the second you arrive?”

“There are things I need to sort out.”

“It’s Saturday. There’s nothing you can sort out today. I want you to stay here for the weekend—get your head together. Monday you can sort out lawyers, moving stuff.”

“Cam, I don’t want you involved in this. And I don’t want to outstay my welcome.”

“Outstay your—?” He lets out a sigh of exasperation. “Listen, how many times did you let me crash at your place when I had a fight with Olivia or was too drunk to walk home or locked myself out for the eight time?”

“Yeah, you lost your keys a lot,” I tease, half-laughing. “What was up with that? Some secret locksmith fetish I didn’t know about?”

“Oh, sure. I love those locksmiths,” he jests.

“Do you still lose your keys?”

“No,” he responds firmly.

“You know…”

“What?” he asks.

“Sometimes I don’t recognize you from the way you were at college. You seem different—more worldly or something.”

He raises an eyebrow and a hint of a smile forms around his eyes. “I’m not sure if I’m being insulted here, so I’m going to take the deflection as a compliment. Will you stay?”

I pause for a moment and nod. “I need to call my parents again so they don’t worry. Can I use your phone?”

“If you ask again, you’ll be in trouble, Avery.”

“Mom, I just need a few days to myself. Everything’s fine,” I repeat for the umpteenth time, hoping to spare her from hearing the gory details of the breakdown of her only daughter’s marriage. The truth is I can’t face telling her that the relationship is over, that the son-in-law she dotes on has been cheating on me with at least two women, and that while coming to the Hamptons to reconnect and put the affairs behind us, I saw him being blown by a woman who has been fucked by half the property magnates in Manhattan. I don’t want to tell my parents that I feel humiliated and empty and broken and lost. I want to tell them I feel great even if I don’t, and that all is just wonderful even if it isn’t, like you’re supposed to tell your parents so that they can relax and feel good about life.

“Jack’s been calling,” my mom says, her tone a hair away from admonishing. “He came to the house—drove all the way. We told him that you needed a few days to yourself and that you wouldn’t tell us where you were. He sounds like he’s going out of his mind.”

“God, mom, I’m sorry. If he calls again, just tell him I need to be by myself for a couple of days and I’ll call him on Monday. I just really can’t face talking to him now.”

“What on Earth happened?”

“I can’t talk about it right now. Please, you have to trust me. I need to be alone for a few days, figure things out.”

“Well, you need to let him know. He sounds like he’s in terrible pain. I hope you realize what you’re putting him through, Jessynia.”

I prickle at her assumption that Jack is the injured party. My mom loves Jack. I don’t know a woman that doesn’t. The man is charm, beauty and humor personified—and strength, power… and sex. Every second spent with him gives you a hit of adrenaline that leads to wild, heady dreams of sweet submission and delicious domination. I’ve seen eighty-year-old women melt at the sheer sight of him.

When I first told my parents things were serious between us, they spent months getting to know him. They would invite him all over town, just the three of them. They would take short day trips together, take him for coffee, go to plays together. They even went kayaking once. Jack indulged their every overbearing request graciously until they became so enamored with the man that after a couple of months, my mother, the radical anti-establishment intellectual who’d never been seduced by money or power in her life, decided that this ambitious Wall Street banker was the most wonderful man that had ever walked the Earth.

The irritation I feel at my mother’s assumption that Jack is the victim of some reckless whim of mine is tempered by the fact that I know it’s going to break her heart to know the truth, partly for her daughter, but also because of her love for Jack. Letting my parents know that I’ll be divorced at the age of twenty-four would be more bearable if I hadn’t spent my young adulthood vowing to never, ever get married, only to make an about-turn after falling ill and being nursed back to health by this amazing man who made me feel so safe.

“Mom, I have to go…”

Twenty minutes later, after saying a protracted, blood-pressure-raising goodbye to my mother, I find myself lying on the floor with the cordless phone in the crook of my arm in Redwood’s unlit study, looking through the veranda window at the choppy, silvery ocean off the northern coast of Long Island. The shimmery violet-gold sky and lapping waves of the bay do little to soothe my torment as I think of Jack’s face, his brutal body, his love for me, his pain. It’s dysfunctional and pathetic and self-destructive, but the thought of his anguish makes me want to rush to him and help him.

Despite what I saw Jack doing yesterday, I still believe that what we had together was real. I know it was, no matter what anyone tells me. Ours was a love as intense and beautiful as any I could imagine—the way we felt together, the electricity that would run through my skin whenever he touched me, the way we would laugh, the way his eyes devoured mine. It’s like some magic spell was cast and the love I felt became as big as the universe.

And now it’s just over? Just like that?

A knock on the door snaps me out of my morbid thoughts.

“Fancy building a fire, Avery?”