“That’s a mother’s job at her age. It’s not my strong suit,” he admitted. Lara liked his honesty, and when he relaxed and let her in, she liked how smart he was.
“You have to wear both hats in your case. You have no other choice.” He didn’t answer. The choice he had made years before was not to engage with Antonia, because she was Fabienne’s daughter, but she was his too. He forgot that at times.
“She seemed very chatty with you,” he commented finally. “She never is with me.”
“Maybe you could spend a little more time with her,” she suggested gently. “I don’t mind if you’d ever like to bring her along with us.” But that wasn’t something he wanted to do. He compartmentalized his life, and it was already a big step that he had brought Lara home, let her spend the night there, and introduced her to Antonia. He didn’t want to get in any deeper than that. And if the relationship didn’t last, there was no point letting Antonia get attached to her. That wouldn’t be fair to her either. Lara could guess that those were his thoughts.
They had a nice time with her guests that night. They were mostly her friends that he had come to like and a few of his. All of his friends were still married, he was the only divorced man in their group. Most of her friends were married too, with a few who were holdouts like her, who had never married. It was a congenial group.
He spent that night at Lara’s, after the guests left, and he knew Antonia would be fine by herself. She sat alone at dinner that night, thinking about Lara. She had enjoyed going to the movies with her, and was interested in what she’d said. Her home life seemed pretty sad as a kid, with her brother dying and her parents getting divorced and her father moving away. But she seemed like a happy person. She wondered if her father was serious about her. It didn’t seem likely. She hoped she’d see her again.
She wrote a story that night about someone like Lara. The story was sad because of her brother dying, but in her story, the father came back at the end, which made it happier. And the parents got back together. She liked the story a lot, and put it in a folder to take to school. She might show it to Lara one day, when she saw her again.
* * *
—
Lara went to the movies with her several times after that. They talked about the movies afterward and Lara was impressed by how sophisticated Antonia was about the nuances of every film. She said something about it to Brandon, and he looked irritated the moment she did.
“I don’t want her going into the movies as a career. Her mother was a wannabe actress, with no talent I might add. That was bad enough. Her ambition and obsession about it ruined our lives.”
“Writing screenplays is not the same thing. And what if she has talent? You can’t force her in a direction she doesn’t want.”
“If you open that door, it can lead to something else, like acting. I won’t let her do that.” He was adamant, unreasonably so, in Lara’s eyes.
“She’s not her mother, Brandon. She’s an entirely different person. And she’s part you. You can’t punish her for what her mother was.”
“Yes, I can,” he said stubbornly. “I don’t want anything related to acting or movies anywhere near my home.” He had never recovered from his marriage to Fabienne, and refused to discuss it further. But he did allow Lara to spend time with Antonia occasionally, and he was always surprised to see how well they got along. They had a relationship that he had never had with her. Whenever Lara was at the house, Antonia seemed much less inclined to disappear, and stuck around to chat with her.
“She thinks she’s invisible,” Lara explained to him one day.
“Invisible? That’s ridiculous. What makes her think that?”
“I don’t know. I get the feeling that she thinks it’s what you want, never to be bothered by her. She’s afraid you’ll get mad at her and send her away.”
He looked shocked. “Why would I do that? I’ve hardly ever gotten angry at her.”
“I think it’s a leftover from another time, when it was safer not to be seen.” Antonia had told her about her parents’ fights, but Lara didn’t share that with him.
“I used to feel that way about Fabienne. I just stayed at the office as late as I could. It’s a habit I’ve never managed to break since.” He worked long hours, as Lara knew too. She had to wrestle with him to get him to leave the office and spend an evening with her.
“She didn’t have that option so she hid, and convinced herself she was invisible. And that way she felt safe.”