“That’s it? We’re done talking? Is it over?” The anxiety in her voice made his heart ache.
“You make it sound like dental work.”
Most women he knew loved talking. Vanessa did. Naomi had loved it.
Fliss made it sound as appealing as a visit to a tax attorney.
“We’re done.” For now. There was plenty more he wanted to say, needed to say, but it could wait.
“I’m not that hungry.”
“You will be when you’ve tasted what I’m cooking. It’s an Italian recipe handed down from my great-grandmother. A Sicilian caponata.”
“I have no idea what that is, but I’m sure it’s delicious.” On the outside she looked fragile. Her face was slim, her features fine and delicate. The outside bore no clues that she was as tough as Kevlar.
He threw steaks on the grill while she carried the rest of the food to the table on the deck. He’d positioned it to make the most of the sunset and planned to spend every free evening out here until the temperature dropped too low to allow it. He told her about the construction. The thought and work that had gone into transforming the house.
“The view is incredible.”
“I love it. Are you missing Manhattan?”
“Strangely enough no. It’s a pleasant change to wake to the sound of sea and surf rather than blaring horns and dump trucks.”
“You always did love the sea. I wasn’t sure how much of that was because it was time away from your father.”
She didn’t flinch. “That was an element, but it was more than that. I loved the feeling of being right on the edge of the land.” She took a mouthful of food and gave a moan of pleasure. “This is delicious. Do you remember that time we played beach volleyball? There was a crowd of us and we all tumbled into your house and your mom produced all this food. It was one of the things I envied most about your family.”
“The food?”
“Not the food exactly. More what the food represented. Family mealtimes. It was a time to spend quality time together. All those people. Laughing. All helping. Hand me the salt. Pass the sugar. Bryony, can you fetch the ham from the fridge? It was like choreographed happy families. I used to think about it when I was back in New York.” She spooned more food onto her plate.
“That’s what you thought? That we were the perfect happy family? I seem to remember Bryony and Vanessa fighting at the table over something most days, and my mother getting more and more exasperated with them.”
“I remember that, too, and it was one of the things that seemed so enviably normal to me. We never argued with each other at the table,” she said. “We never used to talk at all.”
It was the first time he could remember her ever offering a glimpse into her family life.
“Talking was considered rude?”
“No.” She paused, her fork in her hand. “Talking was considered a risk. Whatever you said, there was a chance it would set my dad off. None of us wanted to do that, so we sat in silence. Apart from my mom. She kept up a stream of false happy chatter that drove Dad insane. I mean I could literally see him boiling. His face would go from pale to puce in less time than it took her to serve a slice of pie. I wanted to tell her to stop talking, to leave him to simmer in his bad mood, but I was almost always in the firing line so there was no way I was putting myself there on purpose. But I could never work out why she tried so hard. I mean, why didn’t she just stay silent like the rest of us?”
“Maybe she wanted to keep trying.”
“That’s the conclusion I reached. She loved him. And no matter how much he made it clear he didn’t feel the same way about her, she just wasn’t willing to give up on that. No matter what he did, she stuck with him. Soothed. Placated. I guess some people would think that was good. Not me. Watching it drove me insane. I couldn’t work out where her pride was. He clearly didn’t love her, so why didn’t she just accept that instead of working so hard to please him?”
It was more than she’d ever told him before, and he wondered if it was because she was talking about her mother’s feelings rather than her own. Her mother’s marriage, rather than their short-lived car crash of a relationship.
“She never thought of leaving him?”
“In fact she did.” She hesitated, as if making up her mind whether to elaborate or not. “Daniel told me Dad threatened to take us. Which surprised me, frankly, because the way he acted made it pretty clear he didn’t want us around.
“Our mealtimes were so tense it was easier to cut the atmosphere than the food.” She finished her drink. “We weren’t allowed to leave the table until everyone had finished eating. The three of us ate so fast we used to give ourselves indigestion. Didn’t make a difference, because if my father hadn’t finished none of us moved. Mom was so nervous she invariably dropped something. That would set him off. There—” She sent him a look. “You say I never talk about things, and now I bet you’re wishing you hadn’t said that.”
That wasn’t what he was wishing.
“You never talked about this before.”
“I didn’t want people to know. I hated the thought of people talking about us, especially here, where we created our own little world every summer.”