And then once I’ve asked it, as if in answer, she turns downward and sees me. Neither of us says anything; we let the recognition pass between us like bathwater—it moves, changes direction. It flows both ways now. It always has.
“Hi,” she says. She’s cautious but not angry, not exactly.
“I thought I’d find you here,” I say.
We are both sweaty and sun-beaten. I feel the exertion of the stairs now that I’m no longer in motion. I drop my hands to my knees and exhale.
“Are you all right?” she asks me. “You look a little white.”
“Just out of breath,” I say.
She nods. She folds her arms across her chest. “We can sit.” It’s not a question, and we do.
Carol plops herself down on a step. I sit on the one below her. Here, high up, there is no one around. We’re totally and completely alone. It occurs to me that, with the exception of Adam, I’ve never seen another soul on this hike the entire time I’ve been here.
We sit in silence for a moment. I take a long drink from my bottle of water. Finally, when my breathing slows, I start.
“I’m angry,” I tell her. I try and keep my voice level.
“I know.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t think you do. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I wanted to. But we’d just met, and all you knew was this fun summer girl. I wanted to be that fun summer girl. I thought you’d judge me, but maybe not as much as you did. I just didn’t know how to bring it up.”
“That you have a baby?” I look down at my feet. They’re covered in dirt. “I don’t think you know what you’re doing to her. I don’t think you have any idea what this means.”
“I didn’t leave,” she says.
I look up at her, but her eyes are down at the marina, the ocean. Somewhere else.
“Not exactly, anyway. I always wanted to come back to Italy, it was my dream for so long, and… I got pregnant so quickly after meeting my husband. Three months, we barely knew each other. I don’t have a career, I’m still an assistant at a gallery—”
My stomach squeezes—she only knew my dad for three months? I thought they were together for over a year. She wants to redesign the hotel—will she stay? Does she want to stay? But I say nothing, I let her talk.
“We got married because we love each other, but sometimes I wonder if we would have if I hadn’t gotten pregnant.”
“But you did get pregnant,” I say. “You have a daughter.”
“And I love her, too. More than anything. But when she came, I felt like I lost… like I didn’t know who I was anymore. It’s like my old life was gone. I was gone. I used to be the woman you knew before you found that photo, and I’m still her, it’s just that no one sees that anymore. Maybe I don’t see it anymore. I just wanted to recapture a little bit of that. A little bit of who I was, or who I thought I’d be.”
“That’s why you came here?”
A long beat passes between us. The wind picks up and lifts the sweaty hair up and off the back of my neck.
“At home,” Carol says slowly, methodically, like she’s placing every word down, arranging them in one of her famous floral bouquets, “I’m defined by this role. I have a feeding schedule and a shopping schedule, and on Saturdays I clean the house. My work…” Her voice trails off. “He doesn’t mean to, but I know he doesn’t think it’s as important as his. And I don’t blame him. I barely make any money at all.”
I think about my mom, in the kitchen three years ago, talking about how she wanted my dad to retire. I think about the way his work became hers, how I never knew it wasn’t what she wanted, how I never even asked. How too often my father and I treated her design work like a hobby. Why?
“Listen,” I say. “I know this won’t make sense to you, and I’m sorry about last night, I really am, but you have to believe me. You need to go home. You’ll work it out, you’ll figure it out, and you’ll get good at it. You’ll be good at it.”
She looks at me. Her eyes are wide. I see the water there, threatening to run. “I’m not a monster,” she says.
And then, for only the third time in my life, I watch Carol cry.
She drops her head down into her hands. Her shoulders shake in small, staccato bursts.
I put an arm around her. I lean my head down on her shoulder. I hold her like she’s held me so many times before.