It was before noon, so he was in the library, which had been designated his office for the summer. He'd been fairly good about keeping work to the mornings and only returning to the city when absolutely necessary since they'd come out here to work on their relationship. She appreciated it, given the catching-up he had to do.
Of course, it would have gone much smoother with the assistance of the last head of Bass Industries.
She enters and sits in the chair opposite his desk. "I want Charles back."
Bart looked up at her, pausing before responding. She wondered idly if he did that in conversations with anyone else, but thought not. He was always so decisive when it came to business, and so quick to judge when it came to his family. She wondered idly whether he wanted her because she was the only one to surprise him.
Bart swallowed. "He's not banned, Lily. Even if this were my house, he wouldn't be banned." The house was hers now. Once her mother's estate was retrieved from that two-bit con artist, she and Carol had to split it up. Fortunately, Carol had never been interested in living in New York, and the independent appraiser they hired was fairly easy to sway, so she hadn't even had to give up very much to keep the properties she wanted.
"But he's not here. It's been two months."
"Serena hasn't been here in two months either. And Eric left six weeks ago."
"Serena knows she's welcome, she's just off having fun, as always. Eric knows you'd love to see him again, especially given how much time the two of you spent together when he was here. Charles only knows how your last conversation went and how little his father thinks of him, so of course he won't come."
"I don't think too little of him, Lily. Maybe you could say that I expect too much, but you always seemed to find his antics amusing. They're not. I left him in charge of a billion-dollar legacy because I knew, despite his grades, that he had the mind for it. Some people have the knack, they know when to move, when not to, how to build, and my son has that. He just...he just never..." Bart trailed off.
"Our son." She gently reminds him. "Our son does have the mind, and the knack, and the skills, and I know you want that to be the focus of his life, as it has been of yours." Bart looks like he's about to object, but she keeps talking. "I understand it, and I appreciate how wonderful you've been this summer, suppressing your natural instinct to work 20 hours a day." She smiles slightly, and his face softens. "But I believe in him a bit more than that. I believe he can find the balance you're just learning to. I believe he can be as good as you in the boardroom, but still have a real life. I want that for him."
"You mean Blair Waldorf."
"I do." She cuts him off again, waving her hand to stop his next comments. "I admit, she's not usually my favorite person in the world, and of late she's been...well, she went through some trauma, so I'm trying not to judge. But he chose her, and when they were together..." She remembers them at her wedding to Rufus. Her take on the younger couple was probably colored by her own emotions at the time, but Blair was radiant that day, and she'd caught Charles staring at her several times, and she knew marriage was on his mind even then. "When they were together, he was so happy, Bart. You should have seen him."
"It's when they weren't together that concerns me. He threw away so much because of her."
"He did," she agrees, because he had made mistakes. "He planned on turning his back on his whole life. He paid a ridiculous amount of money to the Grimaldis."
"And that's just the start. He got conned out of his business by Jack - twice. He nearly lost it to Russell Thorpe. And he only escaped that with luck and by handing half the company over to an outside investor."
"And you think that's his fault?"
"I think he should have known better. I think he let his emotions overtake his good sense."
"And I think I was the one leading BI when outside help became needed. I think he would have handled Russell Thorpe much differently if he'd known the truth about him from the outset. I think he, like everyone, thought his mother had died - in childbirth, no less? Of course her return confused him. How could you do that?"
"I didn't want him to think she'd abandoned him! I thought it would be worse for him to think he was never wanted."
"He thought that anyway!" Bart looked shocked, and though she hadn't planned the conversation to go in this direction, since she was advocating for the truth here, she may as well say it. "You raised a boy so starved, so desperate. Blair was the first person to say I love you to that boy, and convince him it was true, of course he attached himself so strongly to her. And that led to quite a few problems, but he's not to blame for everything you accused him of."
"So it's all my fault. Maybe I haven't been perfect, Lily, but you're not always a shining example..."
"Please don't attack me, I'm not trying to attack you, and I'm not claiming my child-rearing system was better than yours. You remember our house-warming party and Serena's take on me as a mother, I'm sure. What I'm saying is we're parents of children barely out of their teens. It's always at least partly our faults. But you can't just cut off your son like this.
"Did you read about my arrest while you were in hiding?" He nods curtly, still angry. "I threw a party while I was confined to the apartment. At first I thought I was going to be shunned, but then all my friends came. It was wonderful. And then I found out they'd been blackmailed into it. None of them wanted to be there. None of them were my friends at all."
This much he understands, having never had friends in their society, only associates and acquaintances. "It's not easy, finding out something like that."
"No," she agrees, "it wasn't. But that's what our world is. And that's why I want Charles back. Because I learned that all I really have is my family. And, not that a mother plays favorites of course, but..." She gives a sheepish shrug.
Bart actually laughs. "Really? I would have thought Eric."
"I love them all, of course, but Charles is the only child I can look at with no regrets for how I've lived my life. And honestly, Eric makes me feel emotionally incompetent a good deal of the time."
"He is better than the rest of us, isn't he?" He seems a bit far away for a moment, then comes back. "He may have alluded to something while we played squash once. About Chuck."
"That's my boy. And don't think I didn't notice how you tried to replace Charles with Eric while he was here. I know you miss him too."
"I do." She stands and walks over to perch on the arm of his chair, happier now that they've discussed the problem, even if there's no solution proposed yet.
"He's not perfect. I know that. But he's not as imperfect as you seem to think either."
He puts his arm around her waist. "And he's ours."
She smiles at him, glad to have taken a chance on this marriage. "So you'll try? At least make an overture?"
He looks at her, then looks down to one of the photos on his desk. A grinning 7-year-old looks back at him. "I'll try."
So that was fairly quickly written, and it didn't come out totally the way I wanted (I had been planning to put in Blair talking Chuck off a ledge, among other stuff, but it didn't fit). Please note that here, I'm imagining Serena is still in contact to cover whatever downward spiral she's in, so Lily really does think she's off having fun, she's not being callous. And I also kind of wanted to write a conversation that's more about Bart & Lily's relationship, as I actually like it better than that of Lily & Rufus. Sorry if you're a fan, but even though I never really liked Rufus, I couldn't stand the way she treated him sometimes - it was like his comparative lack of money meant he was a child. I really wonder if Lily's had an equal relationship since maybe her first marriage, or if she just got so jaded then that she's always maintained an upper hand. Anyway, that didn't go in here either. Sorry for the long note, and please be kind and review. Thank you!