I hurl my half-eaten apple into the trees and wipe my hands on my trousers. I want to reach for your hand, to wind my fingers through yours and never let go, but it isn’t a good idea. Not when you’re looking at me with daggers in your eyes.
“I think,” I say gently, “that when one grows up with the kinds of privileges you have, it’s easy to forget that not everyone had such a cushy childhood. It doesn’t make you a brat—necessarily—but it does mean you’re less likely to understand how the real world works. Money has a way of sparing the haves the kinds of trials the have-nots grapple with on a daily basis. There’s nothing you can’t buy or arrange. Nothing out of reach.”
“So after a handful of afternoons together, you know all about my dreams and disappointments, do you?” Your chin lifts a notch. “It might interest you to know that I’d trade every one of my Hampton summers for one shoestring vacation in Bournemouth.”
The heat in your voice, such a departure from the chill you normally exude when piqued, surprises me. I’ve touched a nerve. Not pride. Something else. “I didn’t mean to presume—”
“Never mind. I don’t want to talk about summers anymore.”
“Tell me about your mother, then.”
You go strangely still. “Why?”
My conscience prickles. I’m aware that I’ve wandered into uncomfortable territory. Still, I press on, determined to draw you out. “Because no one ever mentions her. Your father comes up over and over, but you never talk about your mother. What was she like?”
Your eyes cloud and drift from mine. You’re silent for a long time. So long, I think you’ve decided not to respond. Finally, you answer without looking at me. “She was French.”
“Surely there was more to her than that.”
I watch as you deliberate. Am I worthy of your memories, of exposing your vulnerable places? Finally, your face softens, and I see just how badly you want to talk about her——as if you’ve been waiting for the chance to share her with someone. “There was. So much more. She was wonderful and so lovely. Always the most stunning woman in the room.”
“The belle of the ball,” I say softly. “Like her daughter.”
“No. Not like me. Not like anyone I’ve ever known.” Your eyes cloud again, and your expression grows wistful. “She was . . . exceptional. She had this dreamy, faraway quality about her. As if she came from an entirely different world than the rest of us. It’s what I loved most about her. But my father never quite forgave her for it.”
“Because she was French?”
“No. It wasn’t that. Or it wasn’t only that.” You smile then, and for a moment, your eyes kindle with girlish memories. “We had secrets, she and I, from my father and my sister. Stories she only told me and then made me swear not to tell. She used to call me ma toute-petite—my little one.”
“She sounds wonderful.”
“Her name was Helene.” Your face softens when you say the name so that it comes out like a sigh. “It fit her perfectly. She was like a fine piece of porcelain—beautiful but not meant to be handled every day.” The light in your eyes fades and your voice goes flat. “She got sick when I was little.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. And I am. Because I already know what’s coming. I’ve heard things. And not only from Goldie. Still, I have to ask, because you can’t know I know. “What happened?”
“She had a sort of episode one night at a dinner party my father was giving for some important investors. There was an awful scene. The doctor came and gave her something to calm her, but the next day she went away . . . to a hospital. A sanitarium. She never came home. A year later, we got a call that she died.”
Your voice falters and you stop talking. I know there’s more, but I don’t push. Instead, I wait. When you continue, your eyes are bright with unshed tears. “I never got to say goodbye.”
I reach for your hand, watching you closely as I fold your fingers into mine. “It must have been terrible for you to lose your mother so young. And your father—he must have been shattered when the call came.”
“Shattered,” you repeat woodenly, staring at our joined hands. “Yes, I’m sure he was. The talk after she went away was bad enough. A wife losing her oars in the middle of a dinner party is appalling, but dying in a madhouse and having it printed in all the papers was nothing short of a disaster for a man who’d spent most of his life managing appearances. Still, he knew how to play it. Long-suffering husband turned tragic widower. The tabloids ate it up. Most of them, at any rate.”
It’s the first time I’ve heard you utter a word against your father, and the harshness of your tone makes it doubly surprising. “You don’t like him very much, do you?”
You flinch at the question, as if realizing you’ve said too much. “Please forget I said any of that. I was a child and I was hurting. I needed someone to blame.”
“And your sister?”
“What about her?”
“How did she take the news?”
You offer another of your evasive shrugs. “People deal with loss in different ways.”
“Were the two of you close?”
“She raised me,” you say, not quite an answer. “After my mother went away. She had just turned seventeen, but she stepped into my mother’s shoes as if she’d been training for it all her life. She dedicated every waking moment to taking care of my father, running his house, writing his letters, hosting his dinner parties. She became indispensable to him.”
There was something vaguely discomfiting about the description, not blatantly unsavory but not quite natural either. “A little odd, isn’t it? A seventeen-year-old playing lady of the manor? At that age, most girls are worried about clothes and boys, not approving the weekly menu and playing hostess.”
You smile, a brittle smile that leaches the warmth from your eyes. “Cee-Cee was never most girls. She was so driven, even then, willing to throw herself on a live grenade if my father required it of her—which he did from time to time. We were never close—not before my mother died or after—but she took care of me. She took care of everything. It’s hard to fault that kind of loyalty.”
“And yet, something tells me you do.”
“Of course I don’t.”
“It’s just us,” I say gently. “You don’t have to defend her. Or your father. Not to me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I just mean you seem a little protective. You button up the minute I ask about either one of them. And if you do happen to slip and say what you think, you immediately backpedal.”
“Privacy means a great deal to my father. And loyalty. In fact, they’re everything. Family first. Family last. But he has good reason.”
“Does he?”
“My father’s a very wealthy man, and there are people who don’t think that’s okay. They’d love nothing more than to see him taken down a few pegs.”
“Who are . . . they?”
“Business rivals, mostly. And the papers.”