by Sarah Morgan
“She knows she can talk to me!” He was bruised, insulted by the suggestion that he’d been a less than perfect father and she felt him withdraw even though neither of them had moved physically. And all her instincts made her want to reach out, and say something that would bring the warmth back into their relationship.
She hated confrontation. It made her palms sweat and her heart race. She was eight years old again and standing in front of her aunt. She wanted to say whatever needed to be said to diffuse the tension and keep things the way they were, but that wasn’t going to happen this time. She pictured Izzy’s face and stood up a little straighter.
“She doesn’t know that, Jack. You can’t talk to someone who doesn’t want to listen, and you don’t want to listen. You’re so sure that she doesn’t have a problem, but I can tell you she has a big problem. There is a lot worrying her. And maybe she’ll be mad with me for telling you this and never forgive me but I’ll take my chances on that because this is more important than anything.”
“Becca was five months pregnant when we met. I was there when Izzy was born, when she took her first steps, started school. I’ve been there for her whole life. She knows I think of her as my daughter.”
“But she also knows she’s not your daughter. And she’s feeling lost and terrified.” Why couldn’t he see it?
“She isn’t lost and terrified. I have kept a really careful eye on both girls since Becca died. I made sure they both saw a therapist, although both of them chose to stop pretty quickly. Izzy said she didn’t need it. She has held it together better than any of us.” His voice wasn’t quite steady and he seemed so upset she almost didn’t tell him the rest of it.
It had been hard on him, too. And she hated to say what needed to be said because it was kicking him when he was down, but she knew she had to say it.
“Yes, she’s held it together, not because she was doing great but because she was desperate for you to still need her around.”
“What?” He dragged his hand through his hair, impatient. “Of course I need her around.”
“She is anxious that now her mother has gone, you no longer have a reason to give her a home.”
The only sounds were the relentless patter of rain and the rustle of leaves.
His hand dropped to his side. He looked stunned. “That’s not— I have never—”
“You told her you could manage fine without her and that she should leave and start living her life.” She saw him mentally rewind everything he’d ever said to Izzy and saw the exact moment he recalled those words.
“I didn’t mean it that way. You know that.”
“I do know that, but those words fed the fear Izzy is already feeling. I think it might have been the timing rather than the words. When we first met you told me Izzy had really stepped up. You said she was your little star. That she was coping better than any of you.”
“She was.”
Flora felt water slide off her hair and down her neck. She was almost as wet as she’d been when she’d fallen in the lake, but she wasn’t going to end this conversation until she had the outcome she wanted. With this new information, the whole thing was falling into place in her head. “I don’t think she was coping. I think she was trying to make herself indispensable.”
“But—”
“Did she ever complain? Did she have moods or tantrums? Was she ever difficult?”
He shook his head. “Barely ever.” He ran his hand over his face, clearing droplets of rain. “That’s not normal, is it? I missed that. Damn, I missed that.” He went from defensive to humble in the blink of an eye and if she hadn’t been so upset with him she would have been impressed that he could admit his mistakes so willingly and openly.
“I’m no expert but I’d guess no, it’s not normal. She thinks she’s a burden, so she has been trying to make herself useful to you. It was desperately important to her to feel loved and needed. I threatened her feeling of security by bonding with Molly, because it seemed to her that Molly no longer needed her, either.” It was difficult to imagine how hard it must have been for Izzy to see Molly crawling all over Flora. And she could see it clearly now. As her relationship with Molly had deepened, so her relationship with Izzy had become more fraught. “Her behavior makes so much more sense now.” And while part of her was relieved that her relationship with Izzy had taken a giant step forward, another part of her was aware that her relationship with Jack wasn’t what she’d thought it was. Maybe her aunt had been right. Maybe she expected too much of relationships.
Jack was still processing. “It still doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve been her dad for seventeen years. Why would she think she doesn’t have a place here?”
“I don’t know.” That part didn’t make sense to her, either. “It seems to have something to do with Becca. She thought that with Becca gone, you wouldn’t want her.”
“So all that stuff about not going to college—”
“I’m guessing it’s all linked.”
“I had no idea all this was going on in her head. You’re right, I should have talked to her more about her mother.” He gave a groan. “I guess I don’t find it easy to talk about and so when she didn’t seem to want to talk either I was relieved rather than worried. I tried so hard to give the girls the support they needed, and I’ve totally messed it up. It’s no excuse, but it’s tough doing it on your own.”
She wanted to point out that he didn’t have to do it on his own, that she was here and willing to be part of it and that if he’d involved her maybe, just maybe, she might have been able to help. But was she deluding herself? Perhaps he didn’t want that. Perhaps she was always going to be on the edge of his family and never fully a part of it.
An outsider.
She felt numb. Empty. The pain would come later, but for now she just needed to keep the focus on Izzy.
“I think you’ve done a great job, Jack, but you do need to talk to her.”
He stared across the lake and she could almost feel his mind working. “When did she tell you all this? Why did she confide in you all of a sudden?”
“It doesn’t matter.” This wasn’t the time to talk about her trip across the lake. “And I don’t understand it either, to be honest. Unless—” She hesitated, torn between the need for confidentiality and her anxiety for Izzy. “Did Izzy and Becca fight a lot?”
“Fight?”
“Was Izzy often mad at her mom?”
He gave a brief shake of his head. “No more than the average teenage girl is with her mother. Why?”
“Did she—” She hated asking because it felt intrusive. “I remember once overhearing my aunt on the phone to someone just after I went to live with her. She was talking about how this wasn’t what she wanted but she was making the best of it. She said she’d been left her sister’s baggage.” She stepped back when he reached out to pull her into his arms. She couldn’t let him hug her. Not right now. If she couldn’t be fully part of his family, she wasn’t sure what the future held for them.
He looked shattered. “Flora—”
“Did you and Becca have a fight? Something Izzy might have overheard that would have worried her?”
“No.” He seemed shaken by her rejection. “No fight.”
“Then I don’t know why Izzy would feel so insecure. Perhaps there was no reason.”
“There could have been a reason.” Jack’s voice was hoarse, and his skin had turned ghastly pale. “We didn’t fight, but there were other things.”
She wanted to yell What things? She’d wondered, of course, if it was something more than grief that had kept him silent on the subject of Becca, but she hadn’t wanted to think it. And yet now she had the confirmation. Here was something else he hadn’t shared.
Her heart plummeted. Fractured.
“Go and talk to her, Jack.” Her lips were stiff and her legs felt shaky.
“Flora—”
“Go, Jack!”
He looked torn. “You and I need to talk. Th
ere are things I need to tell you, but you’re right I need to see Izzy.” He glanced at her face and then back toward the house, weighing his options. “Just tell me we’re not over. I can’t let that happen.”
Couldn’t he see that their relationship couldn’t be separated from his family? She’d started to feel like part of that family, but it was obvious she wasn’t.
Where did that leave their relationship?
Unable to answer his question, she walked back along the trail to the garden. Her shirt clung to her skin and her hair curled wildly. She knew she probably looked a total mess.
As they emerged from the trees she noticed that the rain had stopped and sun was peeping through a gap in the clouds.
Someone emerged from the house but it wasn’t Izzy, it was Clare.
Her face was devoid of color. Either she’d received a terrible shock or was about to deliver one. “Jack. Where have you been? Goodness, the pair of you are soaked! I’d suggest you go and dry off, but we need to talk.”
“Later.” Jack was already striding past her toward the Lodge. “I need to find Izzy.”
Clare reached out and caught his arm, her grip so tight her fingers whitened. “It’s important, Jack.”
“If it’s about Izzy then I already—”
“It’s about Becca.”
The air left Flora’s lungs in a rush. Clare wanted to talk about Becca?
Now what?
20
Clare
This was the conversation she’d been dreading. The conversation she’d decided not to have. But it seemed she was having it anyway. The last hour with Izzy had convinced her of that, although deep down she’d known for a while that this moment would come.
They went to the boathouse, scene of so many intimate and private conversations.
She grabbed a towel from the bathroom and threw it at Jack, wondering what he and Flora had been talking about that was too important for them to seek shelter.
He rubbed his hair, draped the towel around his shoulders to absorb some of the water in his shirt and then surprised her by pulling two glasses out of the cupboard along with a bottle of malt whiskey.
He set it on the table outside on the deck and for a moment she wondered if he’d misunderstood. Did he think this was social? Two old friends catching up?
“I had no idea we had whisky here. Where did that come from?” She sat down, hands in her lap to hide her nerves, wishing she’d taken the time to change and apply some makeup. She didn’t feel together and for a conversation as important as this one she needed to feel together.
“It was left by your previous occupants. Todd and I discovered it a few days ago.”
“James and Alysson McGuivan.” They’d booked a few days on their way from Scotland to London. They’d paid the going rate without a whimper of protest and left the place as pristine as it had been when they’d first moved in. She wished all the people who rented it were as thoughtful.
“Well the McGuivans had excellent taste in malt whiskey and were generous enough to share the love. Perfect for emergencies.”
“What makes you think this is an emergency?”
“The look on your face.” He sloshed whiskey into both glasses. “Drink, Clare.”
Without even bothering to sit down, he knocked it back.
She didn’t touch hers. She knew the courage she was seeking had to come from within, and she needed her head straight for what would undoubtedly be the most difficult conversation of her life. She pressed her hand to her stomach, feeling physically sick. How should she put it? Would the order of the words make a difference to the impact? How did you soften something so harsh?
Jack put his glass down on the table. “It’s not fair that you should do this, so I’m going to do it. You’re trying to find a way to tell me Becca was having an affair.”
She looked up at him. “Jack—”
“And after you’ve told me that, you’re going to tell me she was leaving me.”
A heron swooped, skimming the water close to them but neither of them noticed.
At that moment her whole world was him. “You knew?”
“Yeah, I knew.” His shrug was all pain. Hurt. Raw. “I knew.” He stood up, and she pushed her chair back and stood up, too.
“Oh Jack—” It hadn’t occurred to her, not for a minute, that he might already know. But why not? She was fairly sure she’d know if things weren’t right with Todd.
She couldn’t find the right words so instead of speaking she went to him, wrapped her arms round him. She’d never punched or done physical harm to anyone, but if Becca had walked onto the deck at that moment she would have knocked her out cold.
She felt his arm close around her shoulders, comforting.
“I’m sorry, Clare.” He held her. “So sorry.”
She pulled away. “You’re sorry? Why would you be sorry?”
“Because you were caught in the middle of this. You’re a kind, decent person. If I’d had the slightest idea that you knew, I would have said something a long time ago.”
“She told me during that last vacation, on the last night. We were barely speaking when you all left. And then she wrote me a letter—” She clung to him, this man who had married her friend and then become her friend. Yet again she was questioning all the decisions she made. “I didn’t know what to do. She was dead, Jack. I didn’t see the point of hurting you and the girls by telling you. It didn’t occur to me that you knew.” But perhaps it should have done, because Jack had always known who Becca was. Right from the beginning.
“I’d known for a while.”
“A while? How long had it been going on?”
“Not sure. At least six months. You didn’t know that part?”
“No. Not until the end. And you stayed together?”
“I’m not one to give up on things, you know that. It’s a flaw.”
“Loyalty—and sticking with something—isn’t a flaw, Jack. It’s a quality. One of your many qualities.”
“Maybe if it had been just me—” He shrugged. “Who knows? But it wasn’t me. I had the girls.”
The girls. Those two beautiful girls. Clare thought about Aiden, about Todd and their happy, settled family life.
“I’m so mad at her right now.” She stepped away from him and closed her hands over the rail. A family of ducks skittered away, perhaps sensing danger. “She made some crazy decisions in her life, but this—”
“You know Becca. She needed to win, whether that was in business or in love. She needed more, bigger, better.”
“They don’t come better than you, Jack.”
“But she already had me. That was probably why it collapsed. I should have kept her uncertain, unsure, but that isn’t who I am. I admired her strength and her focus. I loved the wildness and the restlessness. I understood it. But all qualities have a dark side, don’t they? In the end, that wildness and restlessness drove her to leave.”
“Did you—” Was she going to make it worse by talking about it? “Did you try to stop her? Did you see someone? Get therapy?”
“No.” He pulled off the towel and draped it over the rail. “I wanted her to go, Clare. The children weren’t aware, but I knew that probably wouldn’t last. I didn’t want them growing up with that. I wanted them to have stability. They deserved that. And I made a rule for myself after the first time. That was it for me. I set boundaries, and she knew what they were.”
“The first time?”
“She left me before.” He turned to look at her. “The first time was when Izzy was three months old.”
“That can’t be true. She would have told me.”
“She told no one. She came back. I don’t know why. There was Izzy, of course, but I like to think it was because she loved me.”
“She did. Oh God, Jack, she did love you.” I met a man. “I know she did.”
“I think she did, too, in her own way. But it wasn’t enough. The other part of her, that damaged insecure part, was s
tronger. Always pulling at her, pushing her away from the safe and secure. Maybe she didn’t know how to be if she didn’t have to fight and strive. It was easier when she was dancing because she threw everything into that, but after the injury things went downhill. We had a brief time when things seemed stable— Molly was a result of that time.”
“I always wondered why you didn’t have children right away.”
“I wanted that, but she didn’t. It scared her, the sense of responsibility. She didn’t feel she was a good mother. She talked about you constantly, Clare would know how to do this, I wish I was more like Clare, you should have married someone like Clare.”
Tears stung her eyes. Never once had Becca said those things to her. “There is no one version of a good mother.”
“I told her that. But after she came back I think she was a little shocked herself that she’d left her child. No one even knew, but she couldn’t forget that she’d done it. She didn’t trust herself. And it was tough on me, too. I wondered if it was possible for her to settle with one man and a home, but she assured me she could. And for a while it worked. Then she started seeing a man she’d met through her work.” He turned away again, so that all she could see was dark hair and strong shoulders.
“And she was going to leave again.”
“I told her to leave. I didn’t want to draw it out, and have the kids suffer. I wasn’t going to chase after her again. No more trying to glue something that just couldn’t be stuck back together. We were going to tell the children together, but then she—well, it was all taken out of our hands and in the end I was telling the children their mother was dead. They didn’t need to know the rest. I decided it was better to leave them with the memories they had.”
Clare felt the sun on her face and a faint breath of wind lift her hair. He thought the conversation was over, but she knew the hardest part was yet to come.
She wished she didn’t have to say it, but she had no choice.
“Izzy knew, Jack.”
“What?” His voice was harsh. “What are you saying?”