by Jane Kindred
A light bloomed in front of me, momentarily blinding. “Jesus, Millie. You scared the crap out of me.”
“Lukas?”
He shoved the door closed against the wind that was driving rain straight across the porch into the entryway. “I came to see if you guys were okay.”
“Pappa! I want to go home!”
Lukas’s pointed the flashlight in Konstantin’s direction, illuminating his frightened face. “The electricity will be back on soon. Let’s get you some light in the meantime.” He glanced at me. “What happened to the fire?”
“It stayed pretty warm in here after it burned down, so I hadn’t gotten around to building another.” Somehow, I felt like I was defending myself. “I looked for flashlights and candles in the kitchen, but I couldn’t find any.”
The beam from Lukas’s flashlight fell on the coffee table—and the flashlight I’d brought from the house that was sitting right on it.
I sighed and picked it up, switching it on. “Okay, I feel dumb now.”
“We have hurricane lamps around here somewhere.” Lukas went to the kitchen and opened the pantry, revealing a top row stocked with lamps and oil, candles, Sterno, a big box of matches and more flashlights.
“And now I feel extremely dumb.”
Lukas started taking things down. “I’ll get some of these set up. You go keep Konstantin company. He really hates the dark.”
I nodded, meeting his eyes as he glanced over, and the knowledge that this was my father’s brother with whom I’d been extremely intimate hit me in the gut. Brownie-cake for dinner suddenly seemed like a bad idea. His brow furrowed at the look I must have been giving him, and I made my escape to the living room.
“Hey.” I sat down next to Konstantin and handed my flashlight to him. “Here. Why don’t you take this one while your pappa lights the lamps.” He held it in both hands, looking grim. “How about you shine that over by the fireplace while I light a fire?”
Konstantin nodded wordlessly and I got up to get the fire started while he pointed the beam for me.
Lukas returned to the living room with one of the lamps, standing behind me so quietly I finally turned to look up at him, unnerved. “Need help with that?” he asked.
“No, I’ve got it.” I finished up, and Konstantin relaxed a bit as I rose and took the flashlight from him to go wash my hands.
Lukas was hovering at the end of the hallway when I came out.
“You know, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
I steeled myself against the shaking that threatened in my limbs. “Know what?”
“Millie.” My name sounded unbearably sad on his tongue. Lukas took a step toward me with his hand out, and I backed up against the frame of the bathroom door.
“Go away, Lukas.”
His hand dropped to his side. “Jesus. You’re scared to death of me.” He scraped one hand through his hair, the oil lamp he held in the other casting deep shadows on his face. “You have to understand. I didn’t know.”
I screwed my eyes shut. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“We have to talk about this.”
My eyes opened and focused on him. “We didn’t have to talk about it eight years ago.”
Konstantin whined from the living room. “I want to watch my movie.”
I pushed past Lukas and called down the hall. “You know what, hon? I’ve got my laptop upstairs all charged up. We can watch on there.” I dashed up the stairs, the hairs standing on the back of my neck at the thought that Lukas might be right behind me, but he stayed where he was until I brought the laptop down and set it up with Konstantin’s DVD.
The fire was crackling brightly now, and Konstantin was happily curled up in a blanket on the couch watching the little screen on the coffee table. It was all very twenty-first century Norman Rockwell. Everything was fine. Except my uncle, whom I’d committed incest with, was still standing in the entrance to the hallway with a look of stubborn determination. He wasn’t going away until I talked to him.
Chapter Seven
I didn’t want him upstairs, and I didn’t want Konstantin hearing what he had to say. I opened the door to the tower that he’d forgotten to lock and shined my flashlight up the stairs. “I bet it’s really something up here during a storm.”
“Probably not the safest choice right now,” Lukas objected.
“But you fixed the stairs.” I started climbing before he could stop me, my heart thudding so hard, I expected to hear it echoing from the close walls of the staircase. Lukas heaved a sigh and followed, and I climbed faster, as if I could escape him, escape this conversation, if I went fast enough. Maybe I’d climb right through to another world. Please, God, let me climb right through to another world. I didn’t believe in a god, but I was willing to pray to one anyway on the off chance I might wake up from this nightmare. How did he know? When did he know? This couldn’t be happening.
I’d climbed so quickly, I was winded when I reached the top, unable to speak when Lukas stepped up onto the deck on the opposite side of the housing, the Fresnel lens between us sparkling like a massive diamond in the light of his lamp. Rain battered the walls of glass and pounded on the roof.
Lukas’s expression was solemn. “Not a great idea leaving Konstantin alone down there again.”
“Where else do you want to have this conversation?” I gasped as I caught my breath. “He’s watching New Moon. And the door is locked.” I wasn’t this out of shape. This was panic. Dammit, I wished I’d taken a pill.
Lukas came around the lens housing. “Millie—”
“Emilie Petty,” I said on a long exhalation from the deep breath I’d taken.
“Petty?”
“My mother’s name. Beverly Petty. You didn’t know her?”
Lukas shook his head. “No, I…I just knew Sebastian was…” He seemed as reluctant to voice it as I was.
“When did you know?” My heart was hammering sickly in my chest.
For the first time since I’d come the Strand, Lukas’s eyes had the gentle warmth I remembered as he looked at me sadly. “When do you think? I lost it, Millie. I didn’t know what to do.”
“So you decided to leave me wondering whether you’d been murdered in a ditch somewhere—instead of telling me what I had a right to know, to know where I came from. Did you know I tried to file a missing person’s report? The police wouldn’t let me.” I uttered the rest with bitter irony. “I wasn’t family.”
Lukas flinched. “I think on some level, I wanted to hurt you, because I was hurting so badly, and it seemed like you were the cause. And of course you weren’t. And I am so, so sorry.”
I bit down on my tongue to keep from crying. “And Aravella’s pregnancy?”
“Happened later. I’d been engaged to her before. Sort of. It was kind of an arranged marriage—wealthy landowner to wealthy landowner. All very medieval. I was supposed to marry her to make certain parties happy, and I didn’t want any part of it. So I left and I went to San Francisco, and—fell in love with you.”
I looked away from him, out at the wildness of nature battering around us. The coast was visible below, just whitecaps against churning darkness as the waves hit the rocks. “You just happened to meet me,” I said.
“No.”
I looked up, panic building again as my adrenaline spiked. I’d never been able to handle anxious feelings like a normal person, going from zero to sixty at the first niggling twinges of it. “No?”
“Aunt Clara sent me to find out about you, but she didn’t tell me who you were. She said the daughter of a friend of hers had given you up for adoption and she’d tracked you down. She’d promised to tell her friend how you were doing.”
Anger overtook my anxiety. “You just said you were fleeing an arranged marriage so you came to San Francisco. How many versions of this story are you going
to tell me?”
“I did. I’m telling you the truth. Aunt Clara found out I was going to San Francisco and she asked me to look you up. And the other story I told you was to keep you from having to know…what you know.”
“Aunt Clara.” I glanced at my pocket where (idiot) my cell phone—that had a flashlight app on it and Lukas’s number for emergencies when the landline didn’t work—was tucked against my thigh. “Then she’s the one who sent those messages.”
“Messages?” Lukas frowned. “What messages?”
I took out my phone, clicked on the message thread and passed it to him. Lukas shook his head, thumbing up to read them in reverse. “I asked her if she had anything to do with you being here that first night, and she pleaded ignorance. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing. I’m sorry, Millie. I’ll tell her to stop.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I said, letting out a breath to steady the waves of competing emotion. “Someone sent me an anonymous email with my birth name and the physical therapist ad in it, promising to tell me more. I didn’t know anything about it being the Strand Winery or you being here.” I drew my hand down over my mouth. “Oh my God. What the hell is going on here? Did she know about us?”
Lukas handed the phone back to me. “No. I’m sure she doesn’t.”
“Does anyone else?”
He started to shake his head, looking down at his feet, and then his head shot up and his eyes darkened to a dangerous flint. “Aravella.”
“You told her?”
“I told her I knew you, when you arrived. That we’d had an affair. She doesn’t know who you are.”
“An affair?”
“Christ, Millie, I didn’t know what to say.” He started pacing angrily. “But she seemed to know already. Goddammit. That bitch.” I flinched at the vehemence of the word. “I’m not sure it’s Aunt Clara sending you these messages.”
“Fuck.” I thought of Aravella finding out about me from Clara, putting two and two together about Lukas’s time in San Francisco. She was using me to get back at Lukas for something—and Konstantin was getting caught in the middle of it.
“I’ll take care of it.” Lukas’s voice was hard, and a little scary.
The reality of what had happened between us eight years ago, something I could finally understand, hit me with a heavy weight of sorrow. “How did you find out?” I asked. “How did you learn of our…connection?”
Something flickered in his eyes, something more he wasn’t telling me. “I ran a background check on you.”
“You what?” In the back of my mind, an alarm went off that this didn’t make sense, but my outrage overshadowed it.
“I’m a wealthy man, Millie. I couldn’t take any chances. I was going to ask you to—” Lukas stopped, a mixture of horror and misery on his face. To marry him. Holy shit.
I couldn’t cope with one more thing. Not this thing. Tears spilled over the rims of my eyes and I turned away to look out at the rain though I couldn’t see it. To my horror, I felt Lukas behind me, and his arms slid around mine, locking in front of me.
“Fuck, Lukas! Don’t!” I tried to break his hold with a jerk of my arms, but he held fast, and pulled me back against him.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered with his chin against the top of my head. “This isn’t our fault. We didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not fair. It’s just life. It’s cruel.”
I wanted to hate him, to blame him for doing this to me, to hold on to those years of hurt and anger over the way he’d left me, but my defenses crumbled like a castle in the sand under a deluge of rain. I hooked my arms over his and shuddered with the tears I was trying to hold back until Lukas turned me around, held me to his chest and let me cry.
“We’ve been up here too long,” I sniffed at last, trying to get myself together. “And I’m ruining your shirt.”
“You always did know how to ruin a shirt better than anyone.”
I laughed and started to step back as he loosened his arms around me. And then he kissed me.
I was too shocked to stop him, dazed by the rush of déjà vu at the taste of his mouth and the smell of his skin. It was only a second or two that our mouths were in contact before he let go of me and jerked back, his eyes wide with dismay, but it was long enough.
“Oh Jesus. Shit.” Lukas wiped his hand against his mouth as if he’d touched poison. “I didn’t mean that, Millie. It was just a reflex. Things seemed so familiar. I’m sorry.”
“I can’t stay here,” I said, feeling numb. “I can’t be here with you.”
“I’ll stay away,” he said emphatically. “I’ll keep to the house. You won’t have to see me.”
“You can’t stay away from your own son.” Konstantin. We’d left him too long. “Dammit.” I turned and swept down the stairs before he could stop me, the claustrophobic twist of the spiraling staircase yawning before me in the beam of my flashlight like a slow-motion Hitchcock zoom.
I nearly stumbled when I reached the bottom and the little set of stairs on the other side of the door that were slightly closer together.
Konstantin looked up from his video as if just noticing I’d been away. “Are we going to eat dinner for dessert, since we had dessert for dinner?”
I laughed, grateful for child logic. “Hungry already? Of course we can eat dinner.”
“You let him eat dessert for dinner?” Lukas stepped down behind me with a scowl of disapproval after locking the door.
“We were being indulgent,” I said stiffly and turned to the kitchen.
“Are you going to stay, Pappa?” The please, God, no that jumped into my head at Konstantin’s hopeful plea gave me a twinge of guilt.
“I’m afraid I already ate.” Thank you, Lukas. He picked up his raincoat from the back of the chair he’d draped it on and grabbed his flashlight off the table. “You can text message my number if you need anything,” he said to me and caught my eye, giving me a look that said this conversation wasn’t over.
I nodded and set to warming up Konstantin’s dinner while Lukas said good-bye to his disappointed son. How could I possibly stay here if it meant keeping Lukas from his own child? It wasn’t fair to Konstantin. On the other hand, how could I leave Konstantin to Lukas’s desire simply to be rid of him? Perhaps I was being unfair to think Lukas would do it. The conversation certainly wasn’t over.
I gave Konstantin his meal, but skipped having my own. I was in too much turmoil to eat, and after letting him finish his video, it was off to bed for him with one of the lanterns at his bedside turned down low, while I reluctantly got out my phone to finish the argument with Lukas.
A message was already waiting. I promise you, nothing like that is going to happen again. It was an emotional moment. And we kind of deserved some closure, don’t you think? Because I hadn’t answered that one, written as soon as he’d left the cottage, he’d texted again. Talked to Aunt Clara. She claims the messages weren’t from her. Seems a little freaked out that you’re here, actually. Says she was afraid to talk to you, but she’s going to stop by tomorrow.
I didn’t know what to think about that one. I wanted to know about my parents. I had to know. But why hadn’t Clara contacted me eight years ago when she found me instead of sending Lukas to scout me out and causing so much heartache? Why hadn’t she pursued a relationship with me as her—what, grandniece?—after Lukas had returned from San Francisco?
The phone beeped with a third message. That leaves Vella. Like I said, I’ll take care of it. But please just stay until she gets back. For Konstantin. You won’t have to see me.
I sighed and sent an answer. Your SON needs to see you. We don’t even know how long she’ll be gone.
The phone rang just after I’d hit Send. I thought about sending it to voice mail, but I wanted this to be over. I pressed Answer and couldn’t find my voice.
“Millie? You
don’t have to talk, I just—this is so fucked up. I’m fucked up. It messed with my head for a long time. And I’ve had a long time to process it, while it’s brand-new for you. But please don’t let Koste be the one to suffer for a mistake that wasn’t even our fault.” I realized I hadn’t heard him use Konstantin’s nickname before. It was Aravella who usually called him Koste, while the name Lukas used was the one Konstantin adamantly insisted on being called. The poor kid wanted his father’s attention so badly.
“Don’t use Konstantin to blackmail me.” I kept my voice as low as I could. “I’m not the one who messed him up.”
Lukas let out a long, heavy breath as if he was counting to ten. “He seems different with you. You’re helping him.”
“Do you care if I help him?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You know what you told me about him.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “You can’t even stand to be around him.”
Lukas sighed. “That isn’t true. But if that’s the way it seems to you, then it probably seems that way to him. It’s just hard having an attachment for someone who might be taken away from you at any moment.”
“You think Aravella will…?”
“I think she’s with her lawyers right now in Thessaloniki trying to find a loophole to the damned prenup.” His voice was hard. “She would have left me a long time ago if it weren’t for the estate.”
I thought about that for a moment. “So you’ve distanced yourself because you don’t want to be hurt.” That was something I could relate to.
There was a long silence. “Yeah,” he said at last. “I guess I have.” He sighed again. “I suck at being a father. You said…yourself…suck at being…husband. The only thing I…right is the grapes.” The static on the line was getting bad, and it took me a moment to piece together what he’d said. “You still there?”
“Yeah.”
“I want you to stay…you to help Konstantin. This thing happened to us, Millie. We didn’t do it. And I treated…like shit when I learned the truth, telling myself I was protecting you when I was really —ting —self. I hope…forgive me some— but you…things you don’t…just keep…and…promise.”