Chapter Four #2
“What happened—seven years ago—we’re not going to agree on. I can’t make you confess, and you, you can’t make me back off. So—” he inhaled heavily, eyes holding hers “—we’ll just have to set it to one side. Try and…make progress…despite it.”
His mouth compressed. “If we disagree about the past, at least we can agree on one thing. We both know that. Both accept it. That the only person who is important right now is Dan. He is all that matters.”
He saw her swallow, saw her hands tighten their grip on each other. She said nothing, so he said it for her.
“We have to make this work, Laurel. We both wish the other one to hell, but we cannot take Dan there with us. For his sake—” he took another breath “—we have to find a way forward. Put the past aside.”
He looked at her, held her eyes. “Do you agree?” he said.
She swallowed again, but her hands loosened their grip on each other. “Yes,” she said.
He felt the tension leach out of him. Some kind of barrier had been dissolved.
Some kind of way marker passed. A sense of relief—was that what it was?
—went through him, and he leant back, flexing shoulders he hadn’t realised had been so tensed.
His mouth twisted, and he took a deep breath, as if he needed it.
He looked across at her, his expression changing.
“This may sound crass, but I could do with a drink,” he said. “Maybe you could too.”
He didn’t wait for her answer, only frowned slightly. “I think I included a bottle of wine with that grocery delivery,” he said. “Where did you put it? I’ll go and fetch it.”
“It’s okay, I’ll get it.” Laurel stood up. He had the impression she was glad to escape. She walked swiftly but stiffly and returned shortly, handing him the bottle, depositing two glasses and a corkscrew on a side table by the sofa he was sitting on.
Xander opened the wine and poured generous measures into each glass, holding one out to her. She took it carefully, clearly avoiding any chance of contact, resuming her place on the sofa opposite him. Her expression was still drawn, eyes veiled, face pale.
Xander lifted his glass. “Yammas!” he said. An automatic murmur.
Something flickered across her face. He didn’t know what it was, but it was gone as soon as it was there.
He took a mouthful of the wine. It hit the spot, and right now he needed that.
He took another large mouthful, replacing the glass, suddenly hungry.
The mac and cheese for Dan’s tea seemed a long time ago.
“Is there any of that mac and cheese left?” he asked. “It was very good.”
“There’s a bit,” said Laurel.
She set aside her wine and got up before he could do, and disappeared into the kitchen again. Xander heard the microwave ping, then she was coming back with a bowl of the leftover portion, handing it to him. He got stuck in. It hit the spot too. Washed down nicely with the red.
“You’re not having any?” he queried.
She was back sitting on the opposite sofa, but leaning back now, propped by cushions, wine glass cupped in her hands. She took a sip every now and then. Her expression was still veiled. She shook her head.
He glanced at her again. “It won’t make you fat, you know,” he said dryly. “Your figure’s just as knock out as it was seven years ago. Even in those rubbish clothes—”
He saw her expression change. Wished he hadn’t mentioned her figure or her clothes. But it was too late now, so he waded in more. What was there to lose after what had happened this evening?
“Buy some new ones, please, Laurel,” he said. “On me. Use your new credit card. You’re too beautiful not to have beautiful clothes—”
Her expression changed again. “I won’t have you spend your money on me, Xander,” she said. She spoke quietly, but there was no anger in her repudiation. Only calm resolve.
He held up his free hand. “I thought we’d agreed we weren’t going to argue again?
” He kept his voice light, eyebrow quirking.
It felt strange to be talking to her like that, without any jab of hostility.
He hadn’t spoken to her like that since before the moment he’d thrown open her suitcase in his cabin.
“Then we must stick to subjects that aren’t controversial,” she replied, again without any edge to her voice, only that calm composure.
Xander backed off. He wouldn’t risk the cautious, careful rapprochement they seemed to have achieved.
“I daresay we’ll find some,” he answered dryly.
He drank some more of his wine, finishing his mac and cheese.
Both wine and pasta were having an effect, a good one, distancing him—and her?
—from the precipice they’d plunged so disastrously over with their vicious attack on each other, hurling such vitriol.
Had it lanced a festering wound, their raging at each other? He didn’t know, but if it had, maybe that was, as he had said, to the good.
He set aside his empty bowl, sat back, and let his eyes go to her. Her gaze was resting on the play of flames behind the glass of the wood burner. What he had said just now was true. Her beauty was undimmed.
He let himself watch her, his eyes half closed, her face reposed, it seemed to him.
As beautiful as I remembered her.
A sense of regret filled him.
It ended so badly.
But what if it hadn’t?
In the wood burner the logs crackled. The warmth of the room embraced him, created an atmosphere around them.
It was very quiet. Laurel had left the door to the hallway slightly ajar, presumably to hear if Dan should call out.
It was strange, sitting here like this. With his son upstairs, the mother of his son opposite him.
Like we were a family.
The thought was in his head—disturbing, mocking.
For their son’s sake they were now trying not to be at each other’s throats, but that was for Dan, not each other.
Whatever had been between them, whatever it was, had ended seven years ago.
Ended with the glint of diamonds and rubies in her suitcase. How could it have done otherwise?
A great wash of weariness went through him.
He wanted to let it go, that weight he’d carried for seven long years, that he’d had to pick up again as Dan had come into his life.
The son he’d never known he had, who had been deliberately hidden from him, thereby compounding, a thousand times over, all the anger and fury he’d felt at Laurel as he’d stared down at Olympia’s bracelet in Laurel’s suitcase.
He took another mouthful of his wine, wanting to let that weariness wash from him. Letting the quietness of the room, the warmth, the crackling of the logs, lap around him, his eyes still resting on Laurel as she went on sipping her wine, looking into the flames.
“Laurel?” He had said her name before he realised he’d said it.
She turned her head to look at him. Her expression was strange. That guarded look in her eyes again. He didn’t want it there. Did not know why he did not, only knew that he didn’t.
“We’ll make this work,” he said. His voice was low, his eyes holding hers.
“We’ll make it work, for Dan.” He paused, his eyes not letting hers go.
“He needs us both. I won’t…rebuke you any more for keeping him from me, but that time is gone.
He has us both now, and we must be, as best we can, the best parents we can be to him. ”
He paused again, took one more mouthful of his nearly finished wine.
“You asked, this evening, how much time I would spend with him. It will be as much as I can, but there are, yes, complications. Not Olympia. She’s now gone, and I am glad of that for many reasons, but most of all because of Dan.
Laurel, he won’t—” his voice was intent, he wanted, needed, her to understand this “—be my ‘secret son,’ as you called him, but you must accept—” he caught himself, moderated his words “—please accept that I am feeling my way here. I will not promise what I cannot perform, but what that is I don’t yet know. ”
He took a breath, said what was difficult to say. It did not come easily to him to say it to the woman who had proved a liar and a thief, who had deliberately, knowingly, kept his son from him, but it needed to be said.
It’s part of the way forward we have to find—
“In the car, outside his school that morning,” he said now, never letting go her eyes, her head turned to his, her expression impossible to read, except that he knew he did not want that guarded look in it, “when I confronted you that I now knew about Dan, you asked for time. I ask for it too. We both need it, Laurel. So…so let’s just give ourselves time—take things… slowly. Find that way forward.”
He paused again, took another breath. “We’ve made a start—this evening—here, and now, like this, haven’t we? And it’s a better place for us to be than the place we were before.” He stopped. Letting what he’d said rest between them.
Slowly she nodded. She didn’t speak, but something had changed in her expression. The guarded look had gone again.
As if she’d been protecting herself.
“Then that’s good, isn’t it?” he said. “We can…go on…from here. Go forward.”
For a moment longer their eyes met and held. A veil of some kind was still over hers, but different now.
“Yes,” she said.
He nodded. Some kind of resolution had been reached…achieved. For now it was enough. Draining the last of his wine, he glanced at his watch, got to his feet.
“I’ll leave you now,” he said. “I’ll be here again at lunchtime.” He paused a moment. “If that suits you?”
She nodded again, making to get to her feet too. Xander stayed her. “No, don’t disturb yourself. I’ll see myself out.”
He paused yet again, standing there, then nodded, as if bidding her goodnight, then walked out into the hallway, glancing up the staircase. The landing light was on, and he could see Dan’s door slightly ajar. For a moment he just stood there as emotion filled him. Protective. Guilty.
How close they’d come, he and Laurel, indulging in their own rage, to devastating their own son…
But we’ll do better now.
He felt resolve filling him—relief. Thankfulness.
With a lighter step, resolute, he let himself out of the house and headed for his car.
Behind him, Laurel heard the front door close, and then the sound of Xander reversing the car out of the driveway.
Her eyes went to where he had been sitting on the sofa, the cushions still indented, the empty glass and pasta bowl on the side table.
For a moment her gaze lingered, then she pulled it away.
She felt drained, exhausted. But something more as well, though she didn’t know what. Perhaps it was best to let it be.
Fragments of what he’d said flickered in the firelight. She’d been wary—so very wary—instinctively guarding herself from what he might say to her, yet all he had said, in the end, was what she was glad of, if gladness were even a term to associate with him.
One thing, though, she could feel he was being different towards her. He’d asked her to agree, not told her. Not ordered her. It was not conciliatory, but it was at least not that constant knifing hostility he’d treated her with from the moment he’d hauled her into his car outside Dan’s school.
From the moment he found that bracelet in my suitcase…
The change from the man she’d known, had come to know, those blindly blissful weeks together in their carefree cruising of the Aegean had shocked her to the core. She’d retaliated. How could she not have? But it had been defensive, unable to believe that he could believe so instantly in her guilt.
Her expression changed. He still did believe it; he’d admitted as much even as he’d declared they had to find a better way forward for dealing with each other, for Dan’s sake.
Could she live with that, cope with that, knowing he still thought her a liar and a thief?
Heaviness pressed on her, then, with a breath, she pushed it away.
She would have to live with it, cope with it.
As he had said, and with which she could not possibly disagree.
The only person who was important was Dan.
For Dan’s sake I can cope with still being thought a liar and a thief.
Xander had said they should put it aside. What other way was there for them now?
The question hung, finding no other answer.
It will have to do.
She gave a sigh, still feeling drained and exhausted, but perhaps, too, something else, though she still did not know what. Instead, she reached for the TV remote, flicked it on, wanting something, anything, to divert her thoughts.
Tomorrow would bring Xander back again, and she and he, she supposed, would take it from there.
What else could they do? Upstairs, their son slept, peaceful now after the trauma of the evening.
For Dan I can do this. For him.
And Xander must too.
She found a news channel and leant back, reaching for her unfinished wine. She let the news wash over her, let the fire die down, let her mind go numb.