Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Street

“Patrick?”

Patrick hangs up the phone and turns around. His mother is standing in the doorway.

“Are you okay, honey?” she asks.

Patrick hasn’t talked to his mother about any of this because he didn’t want to ruin her Christmas. He was happy to see her, but having her here also puts a finer point on his shame.

He shakes his head no. She closes the door behind her and comes down the front walk toward him, even though she’s only wearing sweats she borrowed from Ava and a pair of Kelley’s Irish-knit socks.

“I messed up, Mom,” he says.

She puts her arms around him. “Your father told me, sweetheart.”

He starts to cry. He has cried more in the past two days than he has in the rest of his life combined. “I really messed up. And Jen is gone. She won’t answer my calls, and I don’t blame her. It’s going to be in the newspapers. It’s going to publicly humiliate her and the kids… and you.”

“Oh, honey,” Margaret says. “Please don’t worry about me. I’m a grown-up. I can handle it.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Patrick says. “I let you down, I let everybody down. One idiotic decision, and the whole house of cards falls.”

“I’ve seen it again and again and again,” Margaret says. “John Edwards, Tiger Woods, Eliot Spitzer, Lance Armstrong, A-Rod, Mark Sanford, Arnold Schwarzenegger-the list goes on and on. People are fallible, Patrick. People make bad decisions every second of every day. Do you want my advice?”

“Yes,” Patrick says. He expected advice from his father the night before, but, although his father was empathetic, he offered little in the way of practical help.

“Hold your head up high, admit what you did wrong, apologize, and accept your punishment.”

He nods. “Okay.”

“I have the name of a very good lawyer,” she says. “The best. And he owes me a favor.”

“Okay,” Patrick says.

Margaret hugs him again. “I know it feels pretty awful right now. But your father and I know you’re not a bad person. We love you unconditionally.”

“Okay,” he says.

“Do you know what ‘unconditionally’ means?”

He nods, but he wants to hear it anyway.

Margaret says, “It means no matter what. ”

Margaret and Patrick are out in the front yard, and Ava is in her bedroom, so it’s the perfect time to ask.

“Dad?” Kevin says. “Since Isabelle is pregnant and everything, we were wondering…”

Kelley leans forward, his hands tented. He says, “Yes?”

“We were wondering if…” Kevin can’t quite figure out how to say what he wants to say, despite having rehearsed it.

“If we can take over running the inn,” Isabelle says.

Kelley laughs. “Where were you twelve years ago?”

Kevin isn’t quite sure how to respond to that. Twelve years ago, he was still married to Norah, living in their cottage, working at the Bar.

“Isabelle already knows how to run the inn,” Kevin says. “And I can learn.”

“I’m selling the inn,” Kelley says.

He actually forgets about his conversation with Eddie Pancik the night before until Kevin and Isabelle ask if they can take over the running of the inn.

“I’m selling the inn,” Kelley says, and for the first time ever, it isn’t just an idle threat. As soon as Eddie Pancik and his wife, Grace, walked into the party, Eddie was upon Kelley. First he gave Kelley a dozen organic eggs, which was not an insubstantial gift. Mitzi insisted on buying eggs from Grace Pancik, and they sold for eleven dollars a dozen, another reason Kelley is going broke. Kelley then thought to broach the topic of selling the inn with Eddie, but, as it turned out, Eddie had seen Kelley’s Facebook post. FSBO. $4M.

He really is Fast Eddie.

Eddie said, “Are you serious about selling this place? Because I know someone who would be interested.”

“As an inn?” Kelley said.

“No,” Eddie said, “as a private home.”

This felt a little funny to Kelley. The house was built in 1873 by a grocer, but it had been operated as an inn since the turn of the century. Kelley and Mitzi had always honored this history. Even as they did their renovation, they were determined to preserve all the interior historical elements. If Eddie Pancik sold it as a private home, walls would be knocked down and cathedral ceilings installed; it would become one more showstopper of white bead board and custom-painted floors.

But-Kelley is too broke to be a preservationist.

“Call me on Friday,” Kelley said to Eddie Pancik. “I’m serious. I’d like to sell it as soon as humanly possible.”

Kevin and Isabelle appear thunderstruck at Kelley’s pronouncement.

“Where are you… we all… going to live, then?” Kevin says. “If you sell it?”

“ When I sell it,” Kelley says. “It’s happening. Someone is already interested.” The kids are looking at him like he just gobbled down the last potato before the famine, and it dawns on him that he’s basically just evicted Kevin and fired Isabelle-and on Christmas Day, no less! When they are so happy about their own news!

“We’ll buy something else,” Kelley says. “Something smaller for me, and maybe I can help get you kids set up with something of your own.” He throws the “maybe” and the “help” in there to emphasize the conditional nature of his offer. Because, although he feels guilty about dismantling their lives in one fell swoop, Kevin is thirty-six years old and still living at home. Isabelle is a smart cookie; once she marries Kevin and gets her green card, the sky is the limit. It’s a tough stance for a parent, but what the two of them may need is a kick in the ass, right out the door of this inn, so that they are given sufficient impetus to go out and improve their lives.

Still, the expressions on their faces are difficult to ignore.

“It will be fine,” Kelley says, hoping this is true. “Everything will be just fine.” And with that, he heads back to his bedroom and his computer so he can e-mail Bart.

After she and Ava stick the standing rib roast in the oven and trim the asparagus and wash the spinach, Margaret checks her phone.

She has one text, from Drake.

It says: I can’t believe how much I miss you. Will you marry me?

She laughs! Proposed to, at the age of fifty-nine, by text message! My, how the times have changed.

Probably because she is with Kelley now, floating in some kind of nostalgic bubble with him, she instantly remembers when Kelley proposed.

New York City, May 18, a year in the last millennium. Kelley was about to graduate from Columbia Business School, but Margaret had one more semester at NYU before she got her master’s in communications. They were so poor -when they had been dating for six months, Margaret gave up her room in the NYU dorms to save money and she moved in with Kelley uptown. They cooked pasta during the week and treated themselves to pizza and a movie on Friday nights and Chinese delivery on Sundays. Margaret got the occasional job doing voice-overs for WQXR, and when those checks came in, she and Kelley blew them on shows at CBGB or something fancier, like dinner at Tavern on the Green or drinks at the bar at Beekman Tower.

On May 18, however, Kelley had just gotten a job offer from Prudential Securities, a job that paid nearly six figures a year-but Margaret didn’t know this yet. On May 18, Margaret was at jury duty, a fate worse than death, because that week in May was absurdly, unseasonably hot, and the air-conditioning in the courthouse was on the blink, and Margaret didn’t have time for jury duty! She had papers and exams, and she was trying to get an internship at the local CBS affiliate.