“Does he tease you or does he just give you a taste of your own medicine?” She raised a critical brow, a smile playing on her mouth.
I rolled my eyes. “A bit of both, I guess.”
“It keeps you on your toes.”
I nodded reluctantly, keeping my eyes on the darkening silhouettes of the marshland. A Great Blue Heron picked its way through the water near the shore, its neck crooked as it scanned for frogs. Sighing, I tucked my feet beneath me, pulling the blanket over my legs.
“So how are things going with Viktor?”
I shrugged, unsure how to talk with her about it if she didn’t know who Viktor was and what he did. She noticed my hesitation and shook her head.
“I have a pretty good idea of what he is,” she said carefully. “Your marriage is arranged, not a marriage of convenience, isn’t it?”
Relieved, I nodded. “I wasn’t sure how much you knew.”
“I guessed a lot,” she said. “He’s there one day, gone the next. He has a lot of money, but who knows what he does to get it. But it wasn’t that that tipped me off.”
“What tipped you off then?”
She tapped her temple. “Men who do things like he does, they have a look in their eyes.”
“What look?”
She laughed. “Like he knows he can get away with anything because he always has.”
I smiled, nodding in agreement. “He does have have that look sometimes.”
Her face sobered and her eyes grew distant. “I told you that I had someone once. He…he was like that. Confident that nothing could touch him.”
I studied her face as she nursed her wine, sipping it slowly. “What was his name?”
“Gathii,” she said softly. “My family used to travel overseas every year and when I was sixteen, I met Gathii in Kenya. He grew up in Cape Town, but he was there in Kenya to visit some relatives. Anyway, I noticed him right away and I was so in love. He was almost eighteen and he wanted to be a lawyer.” She paused, smiling a little despite the heaviness in her eyes. “I used to tease him because I thought that was the world’s most boring profession. He would tease me right back about everything. I miss it.”
I watched her lashes flutter and then she brushed something from her lashes. Feeling a little awkward, I moved closer and put my hand on her elbow.
“Hey, are you okay?”
She shrugged. “Yeah, it was a while ago. I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to talk about him if it makes you too sad.”
“No, I think it’s therapeutic for me.” She laughed ruefully. “We got married and moved here so he could go to law school in Charleston. I stayed at home and took online courses to get my degree. And then…he died.”
I stared at her wet face, a heavy lump in my throat. She was such a sweet person and she didn’t deserve to go through something like that.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
She nodded, wiping her nose. “He was taking a trip to see his family and something happened. They said it was an explosion in one of his brother’s warehouses. It killed everyone there and I buried an empty coffin. They never were able to recover the bodies. God, I forget how much it hurts to think about it, even after all this time.”
A cold pit formed in my stomach and I took a long sip from my wine, keeping my eyes down. “I understand that.”
Magnolia glanced at me, a flicker of confusion crossing her face.
“It’s nothing, we’re talking about you right now,” I said quickly.
“No, what were you going to say?” she said, her brows pushed together in concern.
I swallowed, my throat feeling dry. “I…when I was fifteen, my parents and I were on a train. It was a freak accident too. The train derailed and crashed. My parents died, but…but I had part of the seat fall on me and protect me from the rubble. I was fine, I had a sprained wrist. But my parents died before they got to the hospital.”