Chapter Nine #2
‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ she admitted.
‘I want to talk about our son. But I want you to understand why I’m asking to talk about Isaak now.
I wanted closure too, with my dad,’ she ploughed on.
‘I thought when he died, when my mum died,’ she continued, ‘I would. But I didn’t.
Because I never talked about the things I needed to.
I kept them all inside me. I never told my mum about my dad’s affair.
She died never knowing my father was a liar.
That he spent days living another life, with another family. ’
His gaze narrowed.
Her bottom lip trembled. ‘His other family.’
‘His other family?’
She nodded stiffly. ‘I have brothers and a…a sister. She’s the same age as me.’
‘How did I not know you have brothers? A sister?’
‘Because it’s shameful.’
‘Your dad was the cheat, not you.’
‘But I knew. I knew where he was going, what he was doing, and I never told her.’
‘You were protecting her,’ Konstantinos supplied for her.
‘No. I was protecting myself,’ she confessed.
‘My mum died never knowing I was a liar, too.’ She shrugged a heavy shoulder.
‘I lied,’ she summarised heavily. ‘All my life, my father lied. He used his love as a weapon. My father turned me into a liar by omission, because I wanted him to love me. So I kept his secrets from Mum to not shatter the family I wanted to have. My dad, at home, with me. So yes, I lied for him. For myself. And I hate what I did. I hate what I let myself become. I’ll never be able to beg for my mother’s forgiveness. I will never have closure.’
She was being painfully honest. Too honest. Never had they gone deeper than concise facts about their lives before they’d met. But never did Poppy lie. Unless under duress, he conceded.
Her dad had put her under pressure.
He himself had asked her to return to the spotlight, and she’d told him she wouldn’t lie. Not even for him. Her husband. And he’d pushed her—made her agree.
He’d made her a liar, too.
Guilt snapped inside him like a tightly strung elastic band.
‘It was your father,’ he said, ‘not you.’
‘No.’ Her blonde hair teased at her shoulders with the shake of her head. ‘It was me,’ she corrected, colour heightening her cheeks, hinting at the shame within her.
A shame he recognised. He’d tried to blame his father at first. Blame him for his mother’s death. But he knew, too, it was him.
He didn’t speak. Couldn’t. Because how did he empathise without exposing his own wounds? His own weaknesses? He didn’t want to be weak. Not in the eyes of the public. Not in hers.
‘My relationship with my father, it was the reason I left without asking you for the truth about that photo. But the fact you didn’t tell me about your father, by protecting me, you lied, too, Konstantinos.
You didn’t tell me where you were, or where you were going.
You weren’t open—honest. And that’s why I left. ’
‘That’s why you hated…me,’ he finished for her, clarity forming in his mind.
He felt like a brute. A bully. So heavy-handed had he been with her. So hot had his rage run because of her abandonment. So high had the flames risen inside him when he’d found her and she’d spat her hate into his face.
He hadn’t considered the reasons behind it. He’d only reacted. Let the anger guide him. And he had done it not to protect her, but to protect himself from this. Her pain. A childhood pain, he recognised, that spread its nastiness into adulthood, and shaped the people they’d become.
If you’d let her in, talked to her, you would have known these things about her. You could have helped each other.
He didn’t know how to share his wounds. He didn’t know how to help her with hers.
He stiffened. That was what therapists were for, and he’d employed one for Poppy.
‘I hate liars, because I was the biggest liar, Konstantinos. My mum died never knowing the truth. If I’d confessed, if I’d talked to her, maybe I’d have closure.
Maybe, if you’d talked to your dad, you would, too.
Maybe, if we talk to each other about our issues, our parents, maybe we can talk about our son.
Find closure on our marriage, and move on with our lives. ’
‘I do not need to have a deathbed confession, Poppy. I’m not dying,’ he said, but inside he was.
Her confession, it killed something inside him.
Stabbed a wound so deep, it pained him in a place he couldn’t name.
Some would probably call it his soul, but he knew he’d sold that the day he vowed to change.
To let his DNA flourish and become his father.
But he didn’t feel it flourish inside him now.
He didn’t feel the heat of his rage. His anger. But nor did he feel weak. Soft.
It was an ache inside him. A need for something he didn’t know how to ask for. What to ask for to make it stop.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But we both will. One day. And if you don’t agree to do this, to talk to me honestly about what happened with Isaak, it will never be over. We will never have closure. Isaak, he was the catalyst to all of this. We need to be open about that. About him. We need to—’
‘No,’ he said thickly. ‘I won’t pretend to meet you where I can’t. I cannot talk about…’
He closed his eyes. The confession too close to his lips. Too close was he to telling her he couldn’t say his name. Not out loud. He couldn’t force it however hard he tried.
‘We can’t go on like this,’ she said.
He opened his eyes and met the watery depths of hers.
‘I can’t bear to think when this is over, that if I see you, across the street, if we end up in the same room, we didn’t do this properly. I want to do this—end us—with grace. With honesty.’
Konstantinos recognised it was a stand-off. A new kind of fight. And his wife would accept nothing other than his surrender.
He wouldn’t wave a white flag. He couldn’t give her what she wanted. But he’d give her a little of what she’d asked for. A little of the man he’d been. He’d be…fair. It would be an exchange. A story for a story. What would it hurt to do so?
‘I will,’ he said with a casual laziness he didn’t feel, ‘explain why I didn’t tell you about my father.’
‘You told me,’ she reminded him. ‘In Paris.’
‘I didn’t tell you everything.’
It was heavy in his chest.
This load he was trying to drag up from the depths he’d buried it in.
Her blue gaze narrowed. ‘Everything?’
‘My mother died.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘When you were young.’
‘She died because I couldn’t keep her safe.’ His throat threatened to close. He held it open. ‘My mother died because I couldn’t protect her.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I couldn’t risk it happening again,’ he admitted, and closed the distance between them.
He didn’t sit on the sofa opposite her. He sat beside her, and Konstantinos gave Poppy what he could.
‘I could not risk it happening to you.’