PART ONE GILLIAN
Chapter One
Three weeks earlier
I should have seen it coming—felt the tremors before the big quake.
If I had, maybe I would have been ready to act when the walls came crashing down.
But my behavior was more in line with a flight response.
I didn’t pause to evaluate the situation or choose the best way forward.
I simply took off and drove for hours through the night in the back seat of a yellow Manhattan taxicab.
Part of me had wanted to keep driving all night—all the way to my grandmother’s farmhouse past Hartford—but I didn’t want to show up on her doorstep at such an ungodly hour.
I would have scared my poor father to death, because he lived there, too, caring for Gram.
What would he have thought when he answered the door in the quiet predawn darkness and found me standing there with mascara streaming down my face?
Well…that wasn’t exactly how it happened, but it was easier to say than the truth, because she might have been able to survive the cancer if she’d made it through the treatments. But that was my cross to bear, and bear it, I most certainly did.
Tossing the crisp white hotel duvet aside, I pushed thoughts of Mom from my mind, sat up on the edge of the bed, and rubbed my eyes to try and rouse myself to face this day.
I hadn’t had that much to drink last night—only two glasses of champagne when the toasts were being delivered—but I felt hungover, nonetheless.
Probably because of the all-night tears, mixed with waves of rage.
It was a wonder I hadn’t gotten up and smashed something.
What I needed was a shower. After rising to my feet, I padded to the bathroom, where I was grateful for the sensation of hot water flowing over my body, cleansing away the heartbreaking image of Malcolm with that young blonde.
It was difficult to believe that twenty-four hours ago, my life had seemed almost perfect.
I had been in love with an amazing man, and I had thought I was about to become engaged—that we would start a family together, and I’d be happy at last. But maybe I wasn’t meant to be happy.
Or to be a mother. Maybe the universe was just teasing me, letting me float briefly up to the clouds to enjoy the view from there, only to slam me back down to earth and rub my face in the dirt.
* * *
After my shower, I stood at the window of my hotel room, looking out at the gloomy November sky. The wind stirred a pile of dead leaves into a miniature tornado at the edge of the parking lot, then sent the leaves flying in all directions. It was an apt metaphor for my life that morning.
Pulling my cell phone out of my pocket, I bit the bullet and keyed in my grandmother’s number. My father answered after the first ring.
“Gillian?” I was surprised by a strange fervor in his voice.
“Yes, it’s me,” I said. “I’m sorry to be calling so early. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Not at all. I’m glad you called, actually…because I’ve been up for hours, waiting for a decent time to call you.”
This caused me some concern, because my father wasn’t much of a chatterbox. We weren’t close, and he rarely called unless there was something critical to report.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. “Is Gram all right?”
“Yes, she’s fine. It’s nothing like that.” He hesitated. “But you’re the one who called me. Why don’t you go first? How was the party last night?”
Turning away from the window, I withheld my curiosity and sat down on the bed. “Not great, if I’m being honest.” I paused and chewed on my thumbnail, dreading the idea of telling my father the whole sordid, humiliating account of my devastated love life. “Malcolm and I had a bit of a…disagreement.”
“That’s too bad. What happened?”
“It’s a long story, Dad. If you don’t mind, I’d rather tell you and Gram in person. Could I come and visit this morning? Maybe stay for a few days?”
He grew quiet as he took in what I’d just asked. “It sounds like a serious disagreement.”
“It was.”
There was another pause. “Well, of course you can come and stay.” He lowered his voice to a whisper and spoke close to the phone until the words were almost muffled. “It’s good timing, actually, because I need to talk to you too.”
I frowned. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Maybe I’m overreacting,” he said. “I don’t know. I need your opinion on something. When can you get here?”
I turned to check the time. “Soon. I’m at a hotel in Westchester. I can hop on a train right now and be there in a couple of hours.”
“That sounds good. I’m glad you’re coming.”
I swallowed uneasily, because I’d never heard my father sound so unsettled about anything—at least not since Mom’s diagnosis. “Me too, Dad. Sounds like we’ll have lots to talk about. I’ll see you soon.”
Eager to get to the train station and find out what was going on at the house, I ended the call and packed up my things.
* * *
Something most people didn’t know about me—Malcolm was one of the few—was that I was the granddaughter of an English earl.
I never had the pleasure of meeting him, or any of my English relatives for that matter, because Gram had left the UK not long after the end of the Second World War and immigrated to America.
Before that, she was a war widow after her first husband, Theodore, was killed during the London Blitz in 1940. According to Gram, he was a very important cabinet minister in Winston Churchill’s government, in charge of weapons production. Gram had loved him deeply and was heartbroken when he died.
When the war finally ended, she was a single mother with a four-year-old son—my father.
Though she had been living with her late husband’s aristocratic family on their country estate in Surrey, safe from the horrors of the war, she eventually fell in love with an American pilot who was stationed at a nearby airfield.
That man was Grampa Jack, my father’s stepdad.
He proposed to Gram after the war ended and brought her to America, where he worked as a commercial airline pilot based out of Bradley Airport in Hartford.
So that was how my father came into the world—during a time of war, when every moment was precious.
All he remembered about that chapter of his life was toddling around the English countryside with a nanny in a black uniform who was kind to him.
He recalled only fleeting images of ducks in a pond and stone walls and a gigantic house with servants.
As for his heritage, my father always considered himself to be an American, maybe because the only father he ever knew was Grampa Jack, who was the son of a plumber, born and raised in a farmhouse in Connecticut. The same farmhouse I was heading home to that morning when I stepped onto the train.
* * *
Not long after the train pulled away from the station, my cell phone chimed, letting me know I had received a text from Malcolm. My stomach clenched because I wasn’t ready to deal with him yet. I just wanted him to stay away and leave me alone.
At the same time, I was curious as to what, precisely, he wished to say to me. He probably wanted to apologize, in which case he’d be wasting his time because I wasn’t going to forgive him. Not today, and probably not ever, which meant we were over for good.
I blinked a few times, because that was a sobering thought.
Not only was I heartbroken over his betrayal, but I was also, as of this morning, a thirty-five-year-old single woman with no place to live.
My whole life had just been upended. My boat was sunk, and I was alone, shocked, and bewildered, treading water in the middle of a great big lonely sea.
I took a few deep breaths before I finally tapped the little green icon to read his message.
Hey. Where are you? I’m worried. Are you okay?
I bristled over the fact that he had chosen not to mention his infidelity the night before. As if it had never happened. As if I’d had some sort of personal crisis that had nothing to do with him.
Setting my phone down on the empty seat beside me, I ignored his message and turned my face toward the window, where houses passed by in a fast rhythm that matched the clackety-clack of the train along the tracks.
I tried to relax, but my phone chimed again.
I shook my head with frustration and decided to switch off my ringer and ignore all messages for the duration of my journey.
But when I saw that he had written a much longer text, I couldn’t resist the urge to read it.
I suppose something in me wanted to see him grovel.
I can only assume that you’re ignoring my messages because you’re angry, and I understand.
I deserve to be ignored, or worse. I feel terrible about what happened, and I still can’t believe I was that stupid.
I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am.
I was in hell last night after you left, and this morning it’s worse.
Please come home, Gill, so we can talk about this.
I need you to know that it wasn’t me last night.
I don’t know who it was—some stupid, idiotic fifty-year-old having a midlife crisis on his birthday.
But now the party’s over and you’re not here and I can’t imagine my future without you.
Please respond. Tell me there’s hope, or at the very least, tell me you’re okay so I won’t worry that you’re lying in a ditch somewhere.
Clenching my teeth, I actually growled my frustration out loud.
Then I quickly typed in a reply.
I’m fine and I appreciate the apology, but please don’t text me again. I’m not ready to talk to you yet. I need time to myself. If you text me again, I won’t reply.
I hit send and realized, after the fact, that I’d just given him hope by suggesting that I might be ready to talk to him eventually.
Maybe I would, but only to gain closure, because I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forget what I’d seen the night before. Nor would I be able to trust him again, and trust was very important to me.
* * *