Chapter 8 #2
“Tell me what you know about your father,” he invited, taking comfort from the familiar act of pouring two glasses of wine.
She stood very still, and then, when he handed a glass to her, smiled her thanks and took it without touching his fingers. She was being as careful as he was—aware that one wrong move could send them up in flames, and they’d both been burned enough for a lifetime.
“Very little, unfortunately. I have the photograph, and on the back, my mother had written the location—in LA. Between that, and his name, I was able to find a Facebook profile, but it hasn’t accepted my friend request, or responded to my message.
But his profile picture showed a restaurant. That was my starting point.”
“He worked there?”
“No. No one at the restaurant knew who he was or why he’d posted that photo. But there was a comment from someone I could see, who mentioned him being a good neighbour, so I reached out to them, and eventually heard back. That’s how I know he moved to New York.”
He sipped his wine thoughtfully. “You could have done a lot of this from Australia.”
She sighed. “I know. It was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, to come over here. I guess…I guess I really wanted to find him.”
“You don’t want to be alone anymore?”
She bristled visibly, sipped her wine. “I have no issues with being alone. But he’s my father.
” She tried to grasp the thread of what that meant.
“He’s a part of me, and I don’t even know…
what his voice sounds like, or his laugh.
I don’t know what he eats or thinks—is he religious?
Cynical? Funny? Kind? I look at myself in the mirror and don’t know who gave me what.
My mother, father, grandparents. I’m a muddle of pieces and I just, I want to understand myself better. ”
His sympathy for her surprised him. Sympathy was akin to softness and Roman refused to give into that.
Only, hadn’t he already? Hadn’t he felt a surge of protectiveness for Kate from the moment they’d met?
Protectiveness though was a hard emotion.
But if it was underscored by sympathy, by concern and compassion, what did that mean?
Suddenly, Roman was a muddle of pieces he couldn’t understand, just as Kate had described.
“This is delicious.”
She sounded self-conscious. He watched as she drank the wine, then sipped his own.
“What about your parents?” she asked, eyes hooked to his.
He stared right back, as though he wasn’t at all fazed by the question. As though Kate asking him about his parents didn’t make his chest spasm with a gripping pain. “What about them?”
She lifted one shoulder. “I signed your contract,” she pointed out. “Isn’t that so you can talk to me, without being worried I’ll sell all the tawdry details of your life?”
His smile was without humour. Tension flooded his spine. “Something like that.”
“So?”
“What do you want to know?” He heard the reluctance in his tone, felt his jaw tighten.
She sighed. “You don’t want to talk about it.”
He compressed his lips. “Not particularly.”
“You’re not close?”
“No.” He sipped his wine again, trying to appear more relaxed than he felt.
“Unlike you, I have a vivid knowledge of both my mother and my father. I look in the mirror; I see what each gave me physically, and I know what they gave me emotionally, and I wish it was nothing. I hate the parts of myself that are like my father, or my mother, for that matter. I would do anything not to have their biology in me.”
“Then you wouldn’t be you.”
“That wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”
“Roman,” she reacted immediately, shaking her head. “Whatever else, they made you, and from everything I’ve seen, you’re a pretty incredible person.”
He stood very still, doing his best to ignore the effect her words had on him. To ignore the way her reassurance was like a balm he hadn’t known he needed. Refused to need—anything from anyone.
“Do they live in the city?”
“Not so far as I know.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“A lot of places.”
“You moved around?”
He dipped his head.
“With Tia?”
“Some of the time.”
“How did that happen?”
He thought back, remembering the way they’d bounced around from trailer park to trailer park.
“Were your parents close?”
“It was more that they were falling down the rungs at the same time.”
Exasperation tightened her pretty features. “What does that mean?”
“We were broke, Kate.” He didn’t mean to sound as frustrated as he felt, but the past wasn’t something he particularly liked to discuss.
There were no words that could do justice to how much he’d hated every day of his life, his childhood.
“My parents were out of work drunks and low-level criminals. They stole, they cheated. We stayed in a place just long enough for them to piss everybody off, and then we moved on. More often than not, Tia would end up in the same trailer parks as us—her parents were not unlike mine.”
Kate nodded slowly. “And you’re close to her.”
He ground his teeth, as an image of Grace and Tia slammed into his mind. How they’d been as girls, running around together, all long legs and big smiles, hair tangled and shining in the sunlight.
“Yes.”
“Amazing that you both ended up living in New York.”
“Not really. It was always the plan.”
“To live in the same city?”
“To come here. This is where we told ourselves our futures would be made.”
“And they were.”