Chiding himself for wanting to stop, he continued on, steered away from the commercial area and took a right onto Fourth Street. As he headed down it, nervous anxiety took him away from thoughts of Hayley. It had been three days since they were out on the boat and had sex. He’d convinced himself they didn’t make love. She was a goddess, though, with her long auburn hair cloaking her naked body as she rode him.
Suppressing the memory, he went farther down this street and pulled over so he had a clear view of the small two-story where he’d grown up. He knew some of his siblings had bought houses close by. Side-by-side were Jakub’s first, Aleksander’s next and Zofia’s last. Antoni had moved to Virginia and he believed Lena still lived with their parents. They’d be sixty-five now. When he left, they hadn’t even turned fifty.
Paul sat there a long time, and as usual how the split occurred assaulted him…
“What is this?” his father bellowed, waving an envelope.
Shocked, Paul backed away. “Where did you get that?”
“I found it in your dresser. You are giving up the Covitz name when you go to that fancy school?
Ignoring the breach of privacy, Paul tried to explain himself. “Yes, Pa. I’ll…have a smoother time at Yale and in the law field if my name is Americanized.”
Matka, who’d come into the kitchen, started to cry. “You are ashamed of us, syn?”
“No, Matka, never.” He raked a hand through his hair, trying to think of a way to soften what he was about to say. “I, um, I didn’t want you to know about this.” He stopped for a minute because he was getting emotional. “But the kids at school, some of them, call me a dumb Pollack.”
“That is your reasoning?” Pa bellowed. “You can’t tolerate a bit of trouble?”
“I have tolerated it, Pa. But I worked hard to get a scholarship to Yale and I want to succeed there.”
“If you do this, if you become Paul Covington, and denounce your given surname, you are no longer my son.”
“You’re disowning me?” Friends and neighbors in the Polish community uttered the word a lot like they said cancer.
“Do not come back. On vacations or summers. I won’t have you in my house.”
Later, as he was packing, Matka had come to him…
Prosze, syn. Your father, he does not mean what he said.
He disowned me, Matka.
I did not.
You can’t see me. He won’t allow it.
I will arrange to see you. Promise me you will stay in touch.
All right, I promise…
So Paul had packed up his car for college and left without saying goodbye to anyone. He called Matka a few times, but once Pa caught her talking and told him never to call again. Even his brothers, who’d vowed to keep seeing him, had to stop because Pa said he’d disown them too. Though after Jakub moved out, he’d come to see Paul at college.
And now, Paul was a lonely man. He longed for Matka to smooth down his hair, to play catch with Pa, to go to bed and have his brothers all around him. He’d gotten the success he’d sought, but lost much, much more in the process.
* * *
Sipping lemonade, Seth sat across from his cousin, and good friend, on the deck of her lake house in Hidden Cove. She’d come up for the weekend and asked him to meet her here. She didn’t include Alessia, Gideon or Rafe in the invitation. “So, Red, what’s up? You sounded sad on the phone.”
“A little bit sad. Thanks for driving out here to see me.”
“No worries. I would have come to New York if you wanted.”
Seth, a Legal Aid attorney, was the closet Casella cousin to Hayley’s age, which made them playmates for years. After their parents had a big falling-out and split up their families, he and Hayley stayed in contact without telling anybody else. To boot, they’d both chosen law as a profession. They both fought for the underdog.
“Is work bothering you?” he asked, watching her closely. Her face showed some delicate lines around her mouth and eyes, not there the last time he saw her.
“No, work’s going well. Except I spent a night in jail.”
He recoiled. “What?”
She explained the contempt charge and how she’d spent the fourteen hours with her nemesis.
“At least you weren’t in the general population. Is that what’s got you down?”
“Not exactly. Paul and I, well, we were nemeses but we talked a lot that night and got to know each other.”
“I’m shocked. I’ve seen you in the courtroom together.”
“That’s not all, Seth. After the trial, we spent the day…and the night…on his boat.”
“Day and night?”
“Yes, and exactly what you’re implying did happen. We had sex.”
Hayley wasn’t shy about telling him something intimate. They’d learned about sex together, unbeknownst to their parents, when they nagged Ronan and Rafe to tell them that stuff until the guys finally related the facts of life. Seth couldn’t imagine his Aunt Bridget sitting them down for the talk with Hayley and Finn, though later, his own parents gave it to him.
“Are you troubled because you think you did something unethical? Because I don’t.”
“No. I’m troubled because I want to see him again.”
“Doesn’t he want to see you?”
“He does.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“After the jail thing, his boss and mine decided we couldn’t argue cases together again.”
“Then there’d be no conflict of interest.”
“The legal world is small and sometimes small-minded. Seriously, I wouldn’t care what people said if we were suddenly seen around town as a couple. But my boss would. And his bosses. Even the cases we argued might be questioned.”
“That’s an issue, I guess.”
“Yeah, we came to the same conclusion. We can’t risk a relationship. And might as well stop the whole thing before it really begins.”
Reaching over, he took her hand. “Honey, it’s okay to feel sad about that.”
She shrugged. “I wish I could stop thinking about him. And us. Together.”
“That’ll pass. Remember that cute guy at college that you thought was the love of your life? In the end, you were glad he dumped you and you forgot all about him.”
“I suppose.”
“In any case, you haven’t spent much time with him. It’ll be easier to get over than a serious relationship which lasted decades.”
She took a bead on him. “Are you thinking about you and Julianne?” His off and on girlfriend since they were in high school. He’d hurt her, a lot.
“Probably. This time our separation lasted a year.”
“Do you still think about her?”
“Sometimes. Especially when I see her with my mother.”
“The girl-next-door.”
“Yep. And I’m the bad boy. If any of my family knew why we broke up, they’d be shocked.”
“Maybe not. They have their own issues with women. Gideon’s divorced. Rafe was abandoned and never got over Kate. How are they, by the way?”
He went on to describe how his oldest brother, Rafe, and his wife, Kate, recently married and expecting a baby, were faring. He was glad for the distraction from Julianne Ford, the only woman he ever loved.