Always Alchemy: The Ever After Book (Alchemy #6)

12. Loving Without Fear

12

LOVING WITHOUT FEAR

LAUREN

D ex is such a good boy.

Just like his sister. She’s such a good girl.

They’re both wonderful human beings, and they live these big, open-hearted lives full of things I never knew to want. Things I was always taught were sinful and unnatural and wrong.

Lord, do my beautiful children make them look natural.

They say our children teach us more than we teach them. I sit here at a table overflowing with food and wine and love and friendship, celebrating the wedding of a child of mine for the second time in the South of France, and I reflect on how true that is.

Neither Belle nor Dex had a ceremony that the Church would recognise as a sacrament, yet both my children married in rituals so overflowing with love and meaning, so unmistakably committing themselves to the people they loved, that it would be a stony heart indeed who didn’t accept their version of what it means to wed .

And now, my daughter is serenely content as she leans her body against Rafe’s, my perfect granddaughter sleeps upstairs, and my darling, darling son is at the centre of this wonderful party, radiantly alight with happiness.

I always worried more about Dex than Belle. Belle was always such a sweet, compliant teenager. She seemed to accept without question the belief system we’d handed down to her, having swallowed it whole ourselves in turn.

I now know that she had many questions, many resentments, that came to a head when she met Rafe. I know she always found her father’s particularly hardline approach a tough pill to swallow. But she subjugated herself and she toed the line—outwardly, at least. I wish I’d known to reach towards her more. I wish I’d known to tell her that it was fine, more than fine, not to be the good girl all the time.

Dex has always been a model son by anyone’s standards. He’s never gone off the rails, never outwardly rebelled. But his move to New York as soon as he graduated, his insistence on putting serious space between him and us for years and years spoke volumes to me about his views on the lifestyle, the beliefs, his father and I upheld.

I wouldn’t have guessed he was queer—not with the false constraints of my Catholic blinkers, anyway—but he was certainly always a sensitive boy, withdrawn and intense. He was sporty and good-looking and good-natured enough to have plenty of friends, and I suspect that athleticism and popularity saved him from more introspection, more withdrawal, than might have been good for him during his teenage years.

The future I now see for him, streaming with colour and love and joy and authenticity, is absolutely not the future I would ever have imagined or wanted for him, and that knowledge makes me sick to my stomach .

Max has wrapped up his beautiful speech to great applause. He’s an extremely impressive man, confident and assured, but it’s clear his words just now came from the heart. I’m not the only one in the audience dabbing at their eyes, although I suspect my emotions are a tad more complex than most people here.

With that shot of pure joy comes guilt: guilt that Dex’s father isn’t here to witness this; that he’s chosen his faith over his family once again; that Dex (and Belle, for that matter) have found their place in the world despite, rather than because, of what we gave them.

I tell myself there was a time when an elite education and a devout faith were the greatest foundations a parent could give a child.

I tell myself that Ben and I lavished upon Dex and Belle the exact riches that our upbringing and our culture had taught us to value.

But I’ve also had to tell myself some harsh truths over the past couple of years, ever since that terrible, terrible row Ben had with Belle when he discovered she was dating Rafe. And those are essentially that what we saw as frameworks and moral codes were arguably more like constraints and skewed reference points.

We Catholics are terrified of false gods. We renounce them every chance we get when we renew our baptismal vows. But I can honestly say, after the upheaval and devastation and conflict of the past two or three years, I’m utterly at a loss to what’s false and what’s real anymore.

So yes, there’s guilt. A great, heavy weight that aches so much it feels like I’m winded, somewhat.

But somewhere between all that guilt on one hand and joy on the other sits a third emotion, and that is the most curious sense of liberation. It’s girlishly thrilling to have defied Ben for a second time and found that the sky has not fallen. Of course, he’ll argue that I’ll get my comeuppance in the next life, a stance whose wonderful convenience lies in the impossibility of disproving it.

I’ll take my chances, just like I took my chances last time when I opted to come out to St Tropez and not only give my daughter away to the man of her dreams but host the wedding breakfast. Now that was terrifying. Ben was so angry and purple I thought he might have an aneurysm.

But there are times to concede and fawn and pander, and there are times to stand the hell up for oneself, and the weddings of my beloved children are quite clearly two of those instances.

Catholicism is at its heart a highly sociable religion, one that places family at its centre and embraces all generations in its rituals, in its cultures. But as one grows more extreme, as one allows that insidious sense of us and them to develop, to grow its nasty, choking tendrils, that family-centric view can slip—and even flip.

Families are as messy and human and flawed as the individuals they comprise. Of course they are. And while I still adore and value the families I see at our local parish church, I’m confident I’ve made that shift from wanting, needing, that model for my own family, for relying on it as a benchmark of success, if you like, to understanding that families are allowed to look different. That my children have their own visions for their futures and their families, and that it’s okay to lean into those.

My husband is not leaning into any alternative family systems. He’s leaning out. He’s isolating himself more and more, increasingly angry with and worried about the world he lives in, increasingly unable to see Christ at work in it, and increasingly lost .

And I don’t know what to do.

Max has crouched down between Darcy and Dex’s chairs. She’s kissing his temple, while my son has his hand on Max’s shoulder and is murmuring fervently to him. While the table is too rowdy for me to hear what they’re saying, I don’t need to. They’re praising him. Thanking him.

Loving him.

I’m sitting between Darcy’s parents, Malcolm and Audrey, and Max’s father, Charles. Like me, he’s here on his own, although for very different reasons. Tragically, Max’s mother passed away from breast cancer several years ago.

That poor woman, God rest her soul, missed the opportunity to attend this wonderful occasion, and my bloody husband chose to stay away. I could throttle him sometimes, I really could. Although, If I’m honest with myself, it’s a relief to have watched the events of the past few hours and days unfold in the peace of Charles’ company rather than Ben’s judgement.

I know too well how I’d feel if it were Ben sitting next to me now, radiating tension, infecting us all with his disapproval and counting the minutes until he could escape to a church somewhere and atone for the abundance of sin he perceived.

On the contrary, Charles has been a wonderful companion, these past few days. It’s been quite fun being each other’s unofficial plus-one, actually. Malcolm and Audrey are very sweet, even if one suspects they’re very slightly at a loss to understand how their youngest daughter has ended up marrying two men. But Charles has been a most welcome ally.

With three parties in the wedding and Max having insisted on paying for everything, it was mutually agreed that the oldies would resist inviting hoards of their friends. Alas, most of our friends from the church are absolutely not capable of embracing a union like the one my son is making, so I’m more than happy to revel in their absence and in the open-hearted camaraderie of the younger generation.

One excellent exception is Verity, who’s here with Justin and on flying form. The night before last, we were treated to a blind wine tasting at this lovely hotel. We could see the colour of the wine in each glass, but the labels on the bottles had been covered up.

Unbeknown to us, Max had instructed the sommelier hosting the tasting to dye one bottle of chardonnay a convincing claret colour, which had us all scratching our heads when we tasted it. Charles was the only one of us to click, and boy did he lord it over his son for the rest of the evening. Those two are peas in a pod—both highly competitive alpha males, I suspect. I’d hate to see them take each other on at Monopoly, or any game, for that matter. What’s struck me most about their interactions is that they feel like equals—two grown men who think the world of each other.

The only time I’ve seen that dynamic between Ben and Dex has been when they’re talking shop. Otherwise, their relationship has always been far more patriarchal on Ben’s part and more deferential on Dex’s—on the surface, anyhow.

Charles is surprisingly young, too, given Max is a decade older than Dex. Apparently, he fought in the Falklands and knocked Max’s mother up pretty promptly after that when they were both at the ripe old age of twenty-two. Or something like that. We had that conversation during the wine tasting, and my memory’s a little hazy. In any case, he’s only sixty-four to my fifty-eight. We’re both spring chickens.

‘It’s really something to watch them together, isn’t it?’ His low voice says in my ear now, and I shift in my chair so I can face him. I find it so hard to have a conversation with such a din around us. As I turn, I don’t miss the appreciative way his gaze slides over my face and torso. I’m in a sleeveless Chanel shift dress, and I have to say I’m rather pleased with how flattering it is.

Verity and I had quite a chat about our new friend Charles last night. He’s certainly very dashing—tall and fair, and with that wonderful posture that tells one he’s a military man. He’s even taller than Ben, and a single glance at him tells one exactly where Max got those wonderful blue eyes from. Verity made some observations about his physicality that are absolutely too lewd to repeat but were highly amusing all the same.

I smile at him. ‘It really is.’

‘Those three can teach us all a thing or two about life and love, can’t they?’ he muses, his blue gaze shifting to where his son is still crouched between Dex and Darcy.

I sigh at the sight of the three of them, all young, all impossibly beautiful and vibrant. ‘It turns out, we know nothing at all. That’s how I feel, anyhow.’

He chuckles. ‘I fear you’re not wrong.’

He has such a warm, lovely laugh. It gives me the confidence to ask something I haven’t asked him yet. But now, basking in his happiness rather than the oppressive weight of Ben’s judgement, it feels easy. The stakes feel lower. I can tell, somehow, that I don’t have to weigh my words as much with Charles.

‘Can I ask, did you… see this coming?’

He raises his eyebrows. ‘The three of them? Oh dear God, no. Not a clue! You could have knocked me down with a feather.’

I nod slowly. ‘That is the world’s greatest understatement. But you took it well? It’s none of my business,’ I add hastily.

‘I took it on the chin, I suppose. If you know my son, you’ll know he never asks permission. He wants something, he goes after it. Or them. Just as he said. He’s a strong-minded devil, but it all comes down to the fact that he has absolutely lashings of integrity, and therefore I trust him. When I pushed him on this whole… threesome business and asked if he was sure this was what he wanted for life, do you know what he said?’

‘What?’ I ask, my eyes wide.

‘Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!’ He slaps his hand on the table and laughs heartily, and I laugh, too. ‘Well, I told him I’d rather take his word for it. A threesome! Can you imagine?! It would finish me off, I’m sure. Not sure my old ticker could take it.’

I’m giggling hard now. Charles’ reaction of shock and utter acceptance is oddly reassuring. I suppose that’s what happens when you don’t walk through this world laden down with dogma. You take new, unknown concepts ‘on the chin’, like he said, and you assess the integrity levels of the person who’s experimenting with such concepts, and you evaluate the situation on its own merits.

How refreshing. I suppose that’s what living authentically means.

He reaches for the bottle of excellent St Emilion next to us and refills my glass, then his. I’ll have a dreadful red wine hangover tomorrow, but I find I don’t care.

‘While we’re asking each other dreadfully personal questions,’ he says, the hesitation audible in his voice, ‘might I ask how you’re feeling about your husband’s absence?’

I laugh, but it’s not grounded in humour, and twist my wedding rings on my finger, looking down at the sparkles my diamonds make in the candlelight. ‘How long do you have?’

‘I have as long as you need me to listen,’ he says in a voice that’s slightly gruff. All I hear is sincerity. Generosity. And when I look in his eyes, I see no judgement, only concern.

I give him broad brush strokes, because I already know he’s aware of the details. He’s aware that Ben hasn’t ever welcomed Max or Darcy into our home. I outline the tenets of Ben’s faith as it stands today. His decision to take the side of praying for our children’s eternal souls over celebrating their unions in this life. The increasing extent to which he’s isolating himself. And finally, I admit that it’s probably for the best that he’s not here.

‘I wouldn’t be able to relax for a moment,’ I confess. ‘I’d be viewing everything through his eyes, just waiting for him to blow up and then go horribly, coldly silent.’

He’s quiet for a moment when I’ve finished speaking, and then he pats me lightly on the back. ‘I’m sorry for him. I’m sorry for what he’s missing out on—not just tonight, but in general. But Lauren, all I see when I look at Dex and Belle are two happy, beautiful human beings, who’ve chosen to stay true to themselves.’ He pauses, and his gaze is so grave. So intense. ‘And I see their mother, who raised them to be these wonderful people and who has chosen to support and celebrate them in the face of not insignificant emotional obstacles.’

I press my lips together, blinking furiously to hold back the tears. I’m not sure I can take any credit at all for the people Dex and Belle turned out to be. I’m not sure I even deserve to be here.

‘That’s very sweet of you,’ I tell him, ‘but I’m not sure… ’

He shakes his head sternly. He looks so like his son. ‘Nonsense. All of our children have found a way to love without fear, and that’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.’

I glance over at Dex, who’s now standing, his arms around both Max and Darcy. His head is bowed, his face soft with love.

Charles is right. There’s no fear there.

‘Thank God they have,’ I say.

Loving without fear.

Now there’s a thought.