Chapter 28
ALEXEI
“Oh, my God, this looks amazing!”
Sophie clasps a hand to her chest as she steps into the dining room, clearly taken aback by the sheer luxury on display here. From what Cara told me, she has been living paycheck to paycheck for years, and this is more than she could ever have laid hands on herself.
Not that Cara didn’t go above and beyond in making sure that there was everything she could possibly ask for as she joined us for dinner.
It seems as though she is trying to make a good impression, and I can’t blame her.
Given everything her sister had to say about me when she first discovered who I was, it’s in her best interest to show her as much of a good time as possible now that she has managed to convince her to visit our home.
“You didn’t cook this, did you?” she asks Cara, who laughs as she stands in the doorway, looking over the laden table and the bottle of wine just opened in the center. She shakes her head.
“God, no,” she replies. “Marsha helped me with it. You know I would never have been able to pull off something like this by myself...”
“Oh, yeah, I do,” Sophie laughs, as she takes a seat at the table. “But still, this is...” She raises her eyebrows, shaking her head slightly as she takes it in. “It’s a lot, that’s all.”
“In a good way?” Cara asks, clearly a little nervous as she perches on her seat at the head of the table. Sophie hesitates for a moment, but then nods.
“Yeah,” she assures her. “In a good way.”
I join the two of them, and, beneath the table, I reach for Cara’s hand to give it a squeeze and ensure her there’s nothing she needs to be worried about.
She has been fussing about this dinner all week, ever since she convinced me to let her sister come by to visit; seems like Sophie has been insisting on meeting me, since Cara revealed the pregnancy to her and her intentions of sticking around a while longer.
I can’t say I blame her. If it were my sister, I would have been interrogating her new partner to within an inch of their lives to make sure that they were worthy of her, and I expect the same from Sophie tonight.
I pour her some wine and push it across the table, and Sophie takes a sip, closing her eyes as the flavor spreads over her tongue.
“Oh, wow, that’s so good,” she sighs. “Better than the five-dollar bottles I get with my groceries...”
I chuckle. “Help yourself,” I reply, gesturing for her to indulge. “I’ve another couple of bottles of this in the cellar, if you want it.”
“Don’t tell me that,” she laughs. “I’ll drink you out of house and home before you know it...”
But, as she sips again on the wine, I can see her starting to unwind slightly, some of the tension in her beginning to unfurl at last. I can only imagine how difficult it was for her to wrap her head around what her sister had told her, that she was going to stay with me, that she was going to raise her children at my side, but Sophie seemed to have approached it like any good journalist and met with the subject rather than judging outright.
And I’m sure she has a hell of a lot of judgement to aim in my direction, though she seems willing to at least keep most of it under wraps.
From what Cara has told me about her relationship with her sister, the two of them were basically a lifeline for one another, a connection when everything felt like it was going to fall apart.
They had been there for each other when nobody else had.
“And this food looks amazing,” she continues, as she serves herself up some pasta from the large dish before us. “I’m not much of a cook, but you’re going to need to give me the recipe...”
“You know, I think there’s some garlic bread still in the kitchen,” Cara fusses as she rises to her feet. “I should grab it before it gets cold.”
“Sit down,” I tell her. “I can handle it.”
“No, I’m on it,” she insists, and she heads out of the dining room, suddenly leaving her sister and I alone together. We lock eyes for a moment, and I can see her studying me, trying to get a feel for me.
“It’s really good to finally meet you,” I offer her, breaking the silence that has settled over the room. “Your sister has told me so much about you—”
“Look, I’m going to be honest,” she cuts me off, before I can go any further. “I know who you are. And I know what you’re involved with. And I…” She pauses for a moment, pressing a fingertip to her temple like she is reminding herself to be careful of what she says to me.
“And I also know everything that my sister has said about you,” she continues, a little quieter now. “About what a great father you are, and how you’ve been trying to get better about allowing her and the kids some more freedom. And I get that it can’t be easy for you, but...”
She pauses for another moment, her gaze almost cutting right through me.
“You have to understand that my sister has already been through so much when it comes to people trying to control her,” she tells me.
“I’m sure she’s already told you a whole lot about the way the two of us grew up, and trust me, sometimes I wish that I could leave it behind.
But we can’t. It’s still there, in both of us, even if she wants to pretend it isn’t, and I know that there’s a part of her that struggles to stand up for herself when it comes to stuff like this. ”
I smile slightly. “If it’s any consolation,” I tell her. “Your sister has never held back on telling me what she wants or needs since she’s been here.”
Sophie returns my grin. “I’m glad to hear it,” she replies, lowering her gaze to the glass before her as she takes another sip.
“But I know she’s pregnant again, and I know she wants to raise that child with you.
And I know she’s going to be busy when the new baby comes along, you both will, and I just don’t want her to get sucked back in to that same life she had before.
When she was stuck living by the rules someone else made for her, even when they didn’t work. ”
She falls silent, and I watch her, giving her a chance to speak. Whatever she has to say, it’s clearly of the utmost importance to her that I hear it, and I don’t want to interrupt.
“When I was first... when I was first going through everything with my parents,” she continues, her voice lowering further.
“She was the only one who was there for me. The only one who made me feel like there was any hope at all of getting through the mess of shit my parents had dumped on both of us. If it hadn’t been for her, I would never have gotten out.
And if it hadn’t been for Nina...God, she made me feel like I had family when everything else was falling apart.
I don’t know what I would have done without them. Without either of them.”
The love for her sister and her niece is written in every word she speaks, such sincerity that it almost catches me off-guard.
She’s clearly protective of Cara, and I can only imagine how much the two of them have been through together, the weight of everything that presses down on their heads even since they have escaped the worst.
“I just want you to promise me that you’re never going to try and force her to live by the rules you make,” she finishes up.
“Even when she has the baby, even when things get tough. I need to know that she’s still going to be free in all the ways she fought for. The ways we both fought for, actually.”
I inhale deeply, letting the words settle on to my mind.
This isn’t the kind of thing you can just wave a hand at and hope for the best. No, she wants to hear me understand it, make sense of the pain that they have suffered, the pain that they both escaped, and swear to her that I’ll never put her through anything like that again, as long as she lives.
“I promise.”
She smiles again. Small, but enough to tell me she’s starting to trust me.
“Well,” she murmurs. “Then I guess I have nothing to worry about, right?”
But before I can respond, Cara appears in the doorway once more, carrying the garlic bread that is delicious with a fragrant warmth. She comes to join us at the table, and she glances between us, no doubt sensing the slight weight in the room.
“Everything okay?” she asks, and I nod.
“Just fine.”
“Yeah, we were just gossiping about you,” Sophie jokes, and Cara laughs, landing a slight slap on her sister’s arm before she takes her seat next to me again.
“Come on, let’s eat before it gets cold,” she announces, as she reaches for her plate.
And, as I watch her dig in, her sister’s words dance through my mind, all the possibilities of the freedom I can offer her stretching out before me. And, as my head starts to tick with new ideas, I know that there is still so much more I can give Cara…
And so much more I want to.