The Island Villa, page 18
Cassie gave a laugh. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s a good memory.” But also a painful one. Adeline turned to look at her. “I imagined us growing up together. You loved me unconditionally, and I felt the same way about you. I was going to teach you everything. I was going to take care of you when the world was horrid.” It was the last time she’d let herself feel like that. The last time she’d given her love without reservation.
“I didn’t know.” Cassie’s eyes were shiny. “I didn’t know any of this.”
“You were too young to remember. And then one morning we were eating breakfast together, you and I...” She took a deep breath as she allowed herself to remember that morning. “Maria had made you eggs. I was teaching you to dip toast in them. And our mother suddenly appeared, all flustered, and told me that Kostas was going to drive me to the airport and I was going to stay with my father. I kept saying for how long? How long will I be there? I was upset, because it was the summer holidays and I’d been looking forward to spending all my time with you. I argued with her. I begged her. But she said I had to trust her, and that she was doing what was right for me.” There had been something so strange about her mother that day. A memory flickered into her brain. Something she hadn’t thought about in a long time. “I was crying, but it made no difference to her.”
“Oh, Adeline...”
“It took me a while to figure out that it was permanent. I wasn’t going to live with her anymore. And that meant I wasn’t going to live with you either. That was the part that upset me the most.”
And she’d wanted to be an adult so that she could make her own decisions and not have her life upended for reasons that made no sense to her.
“I don’t remember, obviously.” Cassie blew her nose. “All I remember was those later years when you came to stay, and you were distant and aloof. I wanted you to play with me, but you were never interested.”
“That wasn’t it. After I went to live with my father, I missed you.” Those three simple words, I missed you, didn’t begin to describe the trauma she’d felt. “I was a mess. I couldn’t believe she’d sent me away. I was so upset with her. I had no idea what I’d done to deserve it. It didn’t make sense to me. After that, I withdrew emotionally, although at the time I had no idea that was what I was doing. It was fear, of course.” That most powerful of all the emotions. “I was afraid of getting close to you again. I suppose I thought I could make life easier on myself if I didn’t have those strong attachments. It took me years to understand that I had abandonment issues and everything that came with that. Anger, anxiety, failure to sustain relationships.” Adeline paused and cleared her throat. She understood her issues better than most, but that didn’t make them any easier to handle. If anything, it made it more frustrating that she found it all so challenging. “It was a horrible time. It didn’t help that my father had no idea how to deal with me, and he was struggling too. He was devastated when she divorced him. Crushed. He could barely handle his own emotions, let alone mine. So he did what he always does when he doesn’t know what to do. He called an expert. Fortunately for me, that expert was Tanya.”
“Tanya?”
“She was a child psychologist. The wife of someone my father worked with. I guess he must have talked about how difficult I was to handle. I was a scared person back then. I didn’t allow myself to feel settled because I knew everything could change in a moment. I was braced for it. If Dad left the house, I assumed he wasn’t coming back. If I broke a plate or washed a red sock with his white shirts, I assumed he was going to send me away. I didn’t want to go to school in case he took advantage of my absence to pack up the house and leave.” It had been years since she’d allowed herself to really think about that time, and it wasn’t easy. As well as navigating her own pain, she felt more than a little guilty for what she’d put her father through. “To say that I was clingy would be an understatement. I was so afraid he’d abandon me.”
“But why would you think he would do that? He loves you.”
“But my mother loved me, and she sent me away.” Adeline stared straight ahead. “At ten years old, it seemed like logical thinking. It was Tanya who helped me see that it wasn’t my fault. That I hadn’t done anything. And she talked to my father too, and helped us communicate. We’d both been avoiding difficult conversations, but it turned out that having those conversations made things easier. She was brilliant and she made a huge difference to me. In a way, she saved me. I decided I wanted to do the same job Tanya did. I wanted to make a difference to someone’s life.”
“And that’s why you studied psychology.” Cassie stood up and pulled her sun lounger farther into the shade. “I didn’t know any of this, and I’ve been filling in blanks from my own imagination and getting it wrong. What about my father? Do you remember him?”
It was obvious that her sister yearned for some rich detail, a nugget of information that she could add to the other things she knew about her father.
Adeline felt bad that she wouldn’t be able to give what was needed. “Barely. A few hazy memories. Silly ones. I remember him breaking our mother’s favorite vase and feeling relieved that it was him and not me. He felt awful about it. I remember him saying sorry about a thousand times. And I remember our mother had a fall, and he was so caring. So attentive. He wouldn’t let us in the room to see her because he wanted her to rest.”
“How did she fall?”
“I don’t remember. I only remember that she had a nasty cut on her head and a bruise. You wanted to cling to her, but he wouldn’t let you crawl on her in case you hurt her. He asked me to take you away and play with you.”
“He loved her so much. He was being protective.”
“Yes.” Adeline hadn’t thought about the incident for years.
“Do you remember anything else? I have about a million questions. Shall I make more coffee? Toast?”
Adeline was about to confess that she remembered little else about her first stepfather when she heard footsteps and her own father appeared.
Both of them stopped talking. The atmosphere shifted from the past to the present.
“Dad.” She stood up, all her anxieties rushing back when she saw him.
“Hi, girls.” Her father looked about as uncertain as she’d ever seen him. He also looked different. Younger. He’d cut his hair, she realized. Smartened up his clothes. There was no sign of the paint-stained shirt and old jeans he usually wore when she was staying at his house in Cape Cod. Presumably, that was her mother’s influence.
Adeline felt another rush of hurt that he hadn’t told her, and banked it down. Her own feelings could wait. Right now, her priority was him. Understanding him. Helping him see what a bad idea this was.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Cassie said and disappeared before Adeline could stop her.
And maybe she wouldn’t have stopped her.
There were things she needed to say to her father that she wouldn’t be comfortable saying in front of her sister.
“Sit down, Dad.”
Last night, she hadn’t been able to control her emotions. She’d been transported right back to her childhood, but today she intended to do better. She wanted to understand. She needed to understand. No matter what, she was going to stay calm.
Instead of sitting, he held out his hand to her. “It’s a beautiful morning. Why don’t we walk?”
There was a path that followed the curve of the beach to a village. Off the beaten track, it was popular with locals and with tourists keen to avoid Corfu’s busier hot spots.
Maybe walking would make the conversation easier and more natural. It was something they often did together when she was staying in Cape Cod. They strolled until the sun hit the sea and the sky darkened, talking about anything and everything.
“All right. Let me grab a hat and shoes.” She went back to her room, pulled a hat with a wide brim onto her head and slid her feet into her sandals.
Her heart pounded and she stared at her palms. She was nervous. Her father’s happiness was at stake here. It had never been more important that she say the right thing. She needed to help him see what a terrible mistake he was making. And she needed to do it in such a way that he came to that conclusion by himself.
She grabbed her bag, took a deep breath and joined her father.
“So how’s my girl?” Her father tucked his arm into hers and they started to walk. “It’s good to see you.”
My girl.
Emotion jammed in her throat. She loved him so much. She would have thrown herself into the ocean to prevent him from being hurt.
“Worried about you, obviously.”
He shortened his stride to keep pace with her. “You think I’m making a mistake.”
“Yes.”
“You sound very sure.” He seemed almost amused. “Do you think I’m not old and wise enough to know my own mind?”•
She swallowed, uncomfortable. “Dad...”
“Let me save you the trouble of saying what you want to say.” He stopped walking. “You’re about to list a hundred reasons why this is a bad idea. You’re going to tell me that if your mother and I couldn’t live together before, then we won’t be able to live together now. You’re going to tell me that she’ll break my heart again and that I’m going to regret this. Isn’t that right?”
She’d worried about saying exactly the right thing, and he’d done it for her. It was a relief. “That’s right.”
Even though it was still early, she could feel the heat pressing in on her and the hot burn of the sun on her legs.
Here, close to the beach, the salty tang of the sea mingled with the scent of sun cream.
He eased the brim of her hat back so that he could see her face. “The one thing you probably won’t mention is the most important factor of all. The reason we’re doing this.”
“Dad...”
“Love.” He said the word quietly but with emphasis, as if he wasn’t sure it was a word she knew. “We’re doing this because we’re in love. I fell in love with your mother when she was eighteen years old, and I have loved her every day since then. And I still love her.”
She wanted to scream with frustration.
Love, she thought, had to be the biggest source of bad decision-making and misery for humankind. It was mystifying to her that people would ever think that was enough. Where was the logic?
She took a breath, and then gave him logic. Facts to puncture fantasy. “Dad, she had an affair and left you. You’ve been apart for two decades.”
“That’s true. And I never said that loving her was easy, or that our relationship has been some sort of fairy tale, but very few things worth having are ever easy. I know you think the divorce was her fault, but I was to blame too.”
She sighed. “I don’t think—”
“It’s true. A child never gets to see the inside of their parents’ relationship, and that’s probably just as well because they’d see that they are as human as anyone else. We’re capable of making mistakes. Big ones. Your mother and I both changed a lot over the course of our marriage.”
“You mean she hit the big time and no longer had room for you in her life.”
“She found her own success, that’s true. But I didn’t handle it well. I no longer felt needed, you see.” He gave a half smile, half-despairing and half-amused by his old self. “I’d supported your mother in those early years. I was the reason she was able to stay home and write, and I felt good about that. We were a team. Then your mother’s career took off. She was the one working long hours. She was in demand, flying all over the world. Her books were everywhere. Studios were fighting over the movie rights to her books. The money rolled in. I should have been grateful for that, but instead I felt unnecessary.”
She frowned. “Unnecessary?”
“It happens sometimes, I believe, when people have defined roles in a marriage and those roles change.” He patted her arm gently. “You’ll know more about that than me, of course. I don’t pretend to be an expert.”
She didn’t feel like an expert either.
She said nothing, but she didn’t need to because her father was still talking.
“The way I saw it, if she didn’t need me for my money, maybe she didn’t need me at all. What was my role? Things shift in a relationship, and we didn’t shift together. I didn’t handle it well, not least because I didn’t much enjoy my job but knowing that it gave your mother freedom to create gave me a purpose.” He paused. “Your mother didn’t handle it well either. We weren’t communicating properly. If I had my time again, I suppose I would have said this is how I feel, but in those days I wasn’t used to talking about how I felt. It wasn’t something I did. I assumed she’d just know. I thought it was obvious, but it wasn’t. If we had been communicating, then maybe when she met Rob that night, she would have walked straight out of the bar without talking to him.”
Was he really blaming himself?
She bit her lip and forced herself to listen as he talked.
“Those years after we divorced were hard,” he said, “but we stayed in touch, as you know. And maybe it was a good thing because I found a new direction for myself. One that made me happy. And now here we are. Somehow, we found our way back to each other. We’ve talked a lot about what happened back then. We both know where we went wrong, took that wrong turn. I can’t believe we’ve reached this point again.”
She couldn’t believe it either. “I wish you’d think hard about it.”
“I have. Life doesn’t always give you a second chance, Addy, but when it does—” his face glowed with happiness and contentment “—well you don’t turn your back on that. You grab it. And that’s what I’m doing. I’m choosing happiness.” The dreamy look in his eyes worried her almost as much as his words.
She wanted to shake him and wake him up.
“You’re choosing misery and heartache, Dad. Just like you did before. It seems great now, but how long before it starts to unravel?”
“There are no certainties in life.”
“I think this is a certainty. She hasn’t stayed married to anyone, Dad.” Although Cassie’s father had died, and even her mother couldn’t be held responsible for that.
“Those relationships weren’t right. It’s complicated.”
“But one of those relationships was you.” What did she have to say to make him see sense? She couldn’t stand this. Already she was picturing the future—her father brokenhearted again, and her picking up the pieces, biting her tongue to stop herself saying, I warned you. “You’re asking me to stand by and watch you be hurt again, and I can’t. I don’t understand how you would even think of putting yourself through this again. It will all go wrong, just as it did before.”
“I don’t believe it will. I hope it doesn’t, but if it does, then I’ll survive it just as I survived the first time.”
She felt pressure in her chest as she thought about the first time. Panic rose and threatened to swallow her.
Maybe he’d forgotten. Maybe he’d blocked it out. People did that, didn’t they, with trauma?
“There were days when you didn’t want to get out of bed. You were in a terrible state.” She felt cruel reminding him, but these were desperate times.
“Yes.” He started walking again, his pace slow to accommodate the heat. “And it is one of the biggest regrets of my life that you witnessed that.”
“Don’t worry about that side of things because I’m fine. We’re not talking about me.”
“You’re not fine. And maybe we should talk about you,” he said. “I know you worry about me, but I also worry about you because I know that what you saw, what you witnessed, has affected you deeply.”
They’d reached the road that led into the village. To their right was the beach, already scattered with people. A mother rubbed sunscreen onto the limbs of a wriggling toddler, while a man wrestled with a sun umbrella. There were two young women in the water, splashing, shrieking as they plunged into the tempting shimmer of turquoise blue.
She felt a stab of envy at their total enjoyment of the moment. Whatever else was going on in their lives beyond this beach, right now their world was light and carefree. “Why would you worry about me? My life is steady and predictable.”
“I know. That’s why I worry.” Her father glanced at her. “When did you last do something even though you were uncertain of the outcome?”
She watched as a mother scooped up her toddler. “There is never any certainty in life.”
“True. But you try your hardest to remove it. Particularly emotional uncertainty. Are you still seeing that guy who refuses to meet me?”
She looked at him. “His name is Mark. And he didn’t refuse to meet you. You gave us barely any notice that you were coming, and the timing just didn’t work out.” In fact, Mark had all but refused to meet her father, but she wasn’t going to admit to that.
She really ought to tell her father that she and Mark had ended their relationship, but she didn’t like the way the focus of the conversation had shifted.
Unfortunately, her father wasn’t ready to drop the subject. “Does Mark make you happy?”
This conversation wasn’t supposed to be about her relationship. It was supposed to be about his.
“Can we focus on this wedding? I didn’t even know you and Mom were seeing each other. You didn’t mention it.” And that was one of the biggest hurts of all. Her emotions felt bruised. “When did it start? How?”
“It’s hard to say. We’ve always stayed friends, as you know.”
And she’d always found that part difficult to understand. She found the entire history of their relationship difficult to understand.
“There’s a big shift between friendship and a romantic relationship.”
