He’s standing near the sofa when I return, flipping through the photo album Rory made for me. I jerk it out of his hands. “I’d rather you not touch that.”
“They both look so much like Thia.”
For an instant, there’s a tenderness in his face that belongs to the Anson I used to know. “They look like you,” I say softly. “Especially Rory.”
His lips curl briefly, an uncomfortable smile that fades almost immediately. “I always imagined our daughter would look like you. I guess nothing worked out the way I thought it would.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Nothing did.” I put down the album and hand him his shaving kit. “This belongs to you.”
He takes it, turning it slowly in his hands. Finally, his eyes lift to mine. “You’ve had this . . . for forty years?”
“You know exactly how long I’ve had it,” I tell him flatly. “I would have returned it sooner, but you were dead.”
“Soline . . .”
I turn my back, weary of sparring, but he catches me by the wrist, pulling me around to face him. For the first time, he seems to register the fact that my hands are not bare. He goes still, his face unreadable. “Why are you wearing gloves? What’s wrong with your hands?”
“There was a fire,” I say, forcing myself to hold his gaze. “Four years ago now. I was trying to save a dress, and my sweater caught fire.”
“You were . . .”
“Burned. Yes.”
The lines around his eyes soften and I feel his grip relax. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
The warmth of his fingers is bleeding through my glove, making it hard to think. I pull my hand free. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”
“Soline . . .”
“Oh, please, won’t you go?” It comes out like a sob, desperate, broken. “You’ve said what you came to say and done what you came to do. What else do you want?”
“I want to know why you kept my shaving kit.”
“We had an agreement. Remember?” My throat is full of broken glass as I force myself to meet his eyes. “You came here tonight to hold up your end, and now I’ve held up mine. C’est fini. Finished.”
“Is it?” he asks softly. “Is it finished for you? Because it isn’t for me. I wanted it to be. When I came home and found you gone, when I saw the pictures of you with another man and thought . . . I would have given anything for it to be done.” His breath comes hoarsely, and a tiny pulse has begun to beat at the hollow of his throat. “I tried to drink you away, but that just made it worse. You were like a poison, your face, your voice, running in my veins. Even now . . .” He breaks off, raking a hand through his still-damp hair. “There hasn’t been a day in the last forty years that I haven’t thought of you, Soline. Haven’t wondered if there wasn’t a way—”
His voice breaks then, and he closes his eyes, as if taken unaware by a sudden sharp pain. When they open again, they’re red-rimmed and dull. “Before, when you asked what happened to me, I told you about lying in the road, waiting to die. I said I made my peace, but I didn’t say how.”
My throat tightens. I don’t want to hear any more, don’t want to imagine him bleeding and broken—afraid. “Please, Anson . . .”
“I pulled the rosary out of my pocket and said your name over and over, out loud, like a prayer, until I could see your face. Because I wanted it to be the last thing I saw. If I could just see you, it would be okay. I could . . . let go. When I came to in the hospital, the rosary was lying next to me. And it felt like you were too. That’s why I kept it all these years. Because as long as I had it, I felt like I was still connected to you, that what we had in Paris never really ended. When you handed me this . . .” He looks down at the shaving kit and shrugs. “I thought maybe you’d kept it for the same reason.”
My eyes are dry in the wake of his declaration. I want to believe him, to trust him. But the pain of forty years remains lodged in my chest. “Why did you never come to me, Anson? I was here. All that time, I was right here, learning to make a life without you. You say you wanted to see my face, but you never saw my heart if you believe I could betray your memory with another man. There was never anyone but you. Not then, not now, not anywhere in between. We could have been together, but you let your father win. He wanted you to hate me, and you did.”
“No. I never hated you. I wanted to. I tried to. But I did hate myself. Who I became after the war and the hospitals. Bitter. Hard. Lost in a bottle most of the time. You were right when you said I was like him. I let that happen. I used the war as an excuse—and you. Until I looked in the mirror one day and saw him instead. Everything I hated about him staring back at me. That night I went to my first AA meeting. I’ve been working my way back ever since.”