Chapter Nine #3
They were in one of the small dining rooms of a converted four-hundred-year-old residence. The high ceilings wore decorative gilded plaster. Intricate tapestries covered the walls, and intimate light glowed from wall sconces and dripped from crystal chandeliers.
The staff had greeted Axel by name and welcomed her warmly, not giving them menus and bringing champagne without being asked.
“What do you want to know?” he asked, seeming to withdraw several degrees.
That was something she’d become very familiar with.
“I don’t know,” she mused.
She had learned a few incidental things.
He didn’t care for seafood and rarely had more than one or two glasses of alcohol.
He didn’t need much sleep. Twice, she woke to find him out of bed in the night, working.
He had a villa on a Greek island, a vineyard in Portugal, a pied-à-terre in London and a unit in a Singapore building that he had helped design, getting in on the ground floor so to speak.
“I guess I’m curious about your childhood. What was it like?”
“Impoverished,” he said with a twist of his lips. “Is that not obvious?”
“No, I mean, you told me that’s why you were ambitious and why you wanted to live like this.
” She waved at the amuse-bouche. It was a single bite of puff pastry that turned out to be cheese.
It melted in her mouth and made her next sip of champagne explode with flavor on her tongue. “But what were your parents like?”
“Young. Too young,” he added with a dismayed curl of his lip.
“They were both born in East Germany. When the wall fell, my mother’s family moved to Berlin for work.
She was thirteen at the time. My father was sixteen and left his family in Leipzig, also looking for work.
After a few years, my mother’s parents went back to Dresden.
By then, she had a job in a café and was finished with school, so she stayed.
She and my father went on a few dates and… ” He motioned at himself.
“She was eighteen? Nineteen?”
“She turned eighteen two days before she went into labor.”
“Oh. That is young. Especially when you don’t have family nearby. Your grandparents weren’t supportive?”
“They weren’t in a position to help. Reunification was a difficult time.
There was a lot of unemployment, prices went up.
Everything my parents had known growing up had changed.
They married because it seemed like the right thing to do, but they didn’t have much between them beyond hormones and a baby they weren’t ready to parent. ”
Everything in her went still, concerned about what that meant. Afraid to ask.
“They weren’t abusive. Not intentionally.
” He spoke conversationally but seemed to have retreated a million miles into himself.
“They tried. And argued because they failed. My father did whatever he had to, to keep us fed. Stole. Sold drugs. My mother took them, trying to cope. She’s sober now, but after my father was killed, that was a dark time. ”
“Axel, I’m so sorry.” She put out a hand on the table, but he ignored it, face looking carved from granite.
After a moment, feeling spurned, she slowly pulled her hand back into her lap. “Were you ever put into care?”
“A few times. I didn’t like it.” He grimaced in distaste. “It was too regimented. I’d been raising myself since I could walk. I didn’t trust their charity and didn’t want to answer to anyone. I didn’t want their pity. I hated their judgment.” He picked up his wineglass.
Joy had experienced something similar. Not often, but she knew the quizzical look that searched for the flaw that explained why her birth parents had failed to look after her.
“But you still see your mother?” she asked gently. “How is your relationship with her now?”
“She lives in a house I bought for her in Dresden. We talk every week or so. I told her about you and said we’ll visit as soon as we can.
She tries.” His shoulder jerked. “She made amends with me a few years ago, acknowledged her shortcomings and asked me to forgive her. I do. I can see that she was set up to fail, being so young, but…” His brows lowered in dismay.
“She wants me to feel the kind of love a child is supposed to have for their parent, and I don’t.
It’s not a grudge. I just learned that it didn’t matter if I loved her.
Loving someone doesn’t mean your needs will be met.
All it does is make you feel like you owe them something. ”
Joy’s heart took that like a punch. She wanted to argue that maybe, if his parents had loved each other, things might have been different for all of them.
But maybe they wouldn’t have. How could it be proved either way?
“I can’t say Otto was a father figure to me.
It was never like that, but once he began recognizing my efforts, I was able to leave struggle and instability behind.
So I felt some loyalty and obligation. I’m furious with him for tricking me, but much of my anger is with myself.
I let myself believe in him when I already knew I’m the only one I can count on. ”
She had thought she was cynical. The hardness in his expression sent frost creeping through her chest.
“That’s why I can’t let him get away with cheating me,” Axel continued grimly. “There were too many times in the past when I had to accept the insults, the theft, the beating. What I’m after isn’t vengeance, Joy. It’s justice.”
She nodded, understanding, but stunned with hurt over what he didn’t spell out—that he would never give up his heart. Not to her or anyone else. And didn’t want hers, either.
It’s only one year, she thought for the millionth time.
And, paradoxically, also thought, That’s not enough.