“Now explain to me about why you want to be invisible,” he said as they ate dinner. “What’s that about?”
She told him about her mother and her father, her father’s bitterness, and how unwelcome she had felt in her own home all her life, and how terrified she had been, and terrorized by her mother before she left.
“I was always afraid that they would get mad at me, and they usually did. It got to be much easier to disappear, and become invisible. It worked for me, and it still does. I was always the intruder in their home, the unwelcome guest. My life went much more smoothly when they didn’t even remember that I was there.”
“How sad,” he said, and she could see that he meant it. He took her hand and kissed it.
“I told my father about the scene I was going to do in the movie, and he called me a tramp and a slut. He hated my mother with a passion by the time she left. I do remember that, and she hated him. They fought constantly. I lived in a war zone, so I used every kind of camouflage to hide from them. Being invisible was the best one.”
“You’re grown up now,” he reminded her. “They can’t hurt you. Your mother is gone, and your father sounds like a bully and a cruel man, but he can’t do anything to you now. They have no power. I don’t want anyone to hurt you,” he said. He had been watching her since she arrived. There was something so enchanting about her, so innocent and pure, that it tore at his heart. She was like a little bird that needed protection, but she was strong too, stronger than he knew, but he could sense that in her as well. She had endured a great deal of silent abuse and deprivation for her entire life, and had been punished for her mother’s crimes.
They talked about the movie then, and other things. His travels, and hers. He explained that he came from a simple background, in an industrial part of England. His grandfather had been a coal miner and died young, and his father had worked hard to provide for his son as a teacher and taking on odd jobs, and had died young as well. He said his mother was a remarkable woman who kept the family together as a nurse when they had no money, and managed to feed and clothe him and his two brothers. She made everything. She had provided all her children with a good education, and she had lived long enough for him to spoil her. She had worked as a private nurse for a wealthy old lady, a countess, who had left his mother some money when she died. His mother had turned it over to him immediately, so he could make the movies that he dreamed of. She had made his career possible. And now he could afford whatever he wanted, and had bought his mother a beautiful home before she died. Her final days were her happiest, decked out like a lady, living in a home with beautiful things.
Antonia said that she had been well provided for. Thanks to her father’s success in business, she had lacked nothing materially and was grateful for it. But there was no love in their home. Her father was a bitter man, filled with rancor and hatred for her mother. Lara had done all she could to turn Brandon around, Antonia knew that now. But Antonia had come to believe that it was impossible. Brandon would never forgive Fabienne, or Antonia by association. She had finally given up. She hadn’t said goodbye to him when she left, or even sent a message to him. She wasn’t sure when she would see him again, but she was in no hurry to. Her visits with him were too painful, the results too far reaching. It sounded tragic to Hamish that a girl with so much beauty, brains, charm, and love in her, should be striving to disappear to avoid her loveless home and angry parents.
She told him about trying to find her mother, with no success.
“Why would you even want to?” he questioned her. “She abandoned you, what is there left to say?”
“Maybe I just want to know why, and hear it from her, not my father’s version, and know if she’s dead or alive. As long as she’s living, I’ll keep hoping that I’ll see her again someday. I need to put that hope to bed for good, and throw it away. I have a good life without her, and I need to give up on my father too. We’ll never have a decent relationship, he won’t allow it. The deck is always stacked against me with him, so I’m done.”
What resulted from Hamish’s conversation with Antonia was that he wanted to take care of her and protect her, but he was more than twice her age. He was almost forty-four, and she was not quite twenty-one. He couldn’t see a way to shield her from harm if they were not together as a couple, and he didn’t think that was fair to her. He had feelings for her he hadn’t expressed and didn’t want to admit, and he was trying to keep them to himself. It was getting harder and harder to conceal. He didn’t want to burden her with his feelings, so he was staying at close range but not crossing any lines or bridges, yet. He was a perfect gentleman, particularly with her.