He remembered Annika telling him what he was sure he already knew on some level, but could see with such unfortunate clarity now. That obviously this display was why he put such stock in good breeding, good manners, and the trappings of civility. Like proper dress, as if allowing so much as a tendril to break free from a chignon signaled the end of civilization.
Because, after all, that was what he knew. Anything could set either one of them off, and then they were here again. In this swamp of accusation and threat, insult and anger.
His childhood in a nutshell.
“Ranieri,” his father all but bellowed. “You really must give me a few moments of your attention. Have you no head for business?”
“Ranieri,” shrieked his mother, not to be outdone, “what kind of unnatural son are you, to hate your own mother so much that you would not only bar me from your wedding, but ignore me in your own home?”
And he felt something inside him, like a cracking. Maybe it was a shattering.
Whatever it was, it was as clarifying as it was unpleasant.
Across from him, it was as if Annika could read what was happening. As if she alone could readhim, when he would have sworn no one could. She stood, smiling at Paola and Giuseppe in turn.
“How wonderful that you could come to catch up,” she said smoothly, as if that was something either one of them would ever think to do. “I’ll have a light lunch put together, so we can all enjoy each other’s company.” She nodded at Giuseppe. “Why don’t you stay here and have a little chat with Ranieri. This is the perfect time.” Then she smiled encouragingly at Paola. “I’m not ashamed to say this is a bit overwhelming for me. Maybe you can come and show me how it’s done?”
His mother looked back and forth between them, as if deciding whether or not she was winding up to pitch a larger fit. But her sense of her own magnificence won out, as it usually did. Because she enjoyed nothing more than telling others how they were doing things wrong. He imagined she would enjoy it even more than usual, here in his house.
Ranieri wanted to pull Annika to him. He wanted to kiss her mouth again and lose himself there, because he had the sinking feeling that kisses like that were limited. More limited than he might have imagined before his parents had turned up here today.
Instead he had to settle for her smile as she led Paola away.
He had to watch her leave him, looking wholly at her ease, as if she could think of nothing better to do than spend time with a woman so toxic that Ranieri had never known her to have a single friend. Not one. If he had not seen the photographs of his mother when she was young and almost ethereally beautiful, he would have assumed that she’d somehow blackmailed his father into marriage.
The truth, he knew, was worse. They had been mad for each other, but all that heat had turned into hatred.
It was a lesson Ranieri had no desire to learn.
After the door closed behind the women, his father launched into his latest ridiculous pitch, but all Ranieri could think about was Annika.
Because he understood now that he had no choice. He needed to end this.
It had already gone too far.
Later that evening, he waited for her in the small sitting room off their bedroom, a bright sanctuary he remembered from his childhood. This cottage had been his refuge. Here, his grandmother was an interested yet soothing authority figure—a far cry from his parents. His grandmother had liked to sit here to catch the afternoon light on her needlework and he’d always joined her, when he was still small enough to lie before her on the floor, or pretend to read his own book at her side.
I wish I could live here forever, he had said, more than once.
But she had always responded the same way.It is true that home is where you make it, she’d replied.But sometimes we are drawn to places because they permit us to hide.And she had looked at him, her brown eyes so wise.But we are Furlans, you and I, for good or ill. Much as we might wish to hide forever, we know we can’t.
Ranieri had remembered those words his whole life. He had used them as a guide.
He hid from nothing. He faced everything head-on, always.
Or he had, until Annika.
So there was no one he could blame this on but him.
Perhaps that made him colder when Annika finally came upstairs after the interminable dinner with his mother was finally done, and Paola had been packed off to a car that he hoped would take her far, far away from here.
His father had left in a rage much earlier, after Ranieri’s typical, inevitable refusal to invest in anything he brought to the table. The good news about that was that it had left one fewer parent to remind Ranieri of his own shortcomings. The bad news was that the remaining parent was Paola.
And even though he could have recited her many litanies of victimization by heart, every word she’d uttered had seemed like a nail in the coffin of Ranieri’s marriage. One after the next, all evening long. Because his mother managed to pollute a place as impossibly graceful as his grandmother’s house with her usual poison. He didn’t think she had even been trying all that hard. It was that easy for her.
What made him think that he wouldn’t do the same thing, given time?
How could he imagine that he could hold on to something as clean and bright as Annika? He knew what would happen if he did. He would be the one to get his grubby fingerprints all over her. He would be the one to turn her around, taking all that bright defiance and greedy need and turning it sour.