“He felt guilty?”
“I know he did. He bore the brunt of it. This secret had the ability to bring all he worked for crumbling down around him.”
“But if you had just admitted to it—”
“He didn’t want to take the chance.”
“I don’t understand why.”
“Because he didn’t want anyone to know about us.”
“So, you were his dirty little secret?”
“No, my love, you and I were his biggest fear. I knew he was a cold man. I knew he was ambitious in his business dealings, but I didn’t know he had others keeping close tabs on him. He’d made enemies with old business partners, and he didn’t want anyone knowing.”
“So, you fought because you were pregnant?”
“I wanted you. He didn’t. And I didn’t fully understand why until three months after you were born.”
She blows out a breath.
“Your father came to see you for the first time that night. I can’t tell you how hard labor was alone, thinking he didn’t want to have anything to do with us, didn’t care enough to see you come into this world. He ignored my calls, my pleas for him to come, and I truly hated him for it, but I had you as consolation. You were everything beautiful about us before things got ugly. The day you turned three months old, I fell asleep in your rocker after putting you in your crib.” Her eyes are somewhere in the past as she speaks as if she can see it vividly. “I woke up in the middle of the night to see Roman standing and staring into your crib, and there was no denying it. His eyes were so full of love. And that’s what it was for him, something I experienced myself the day our eyes locked the first time. It was love at first sight for the both of us the minute he saw you. I stood and went to him, and it was the first time since the fire he let me in and see him. That moment was beautiful, and I’ll never forget it. He stared down at you with so much reverence, Cecelia, a father’s love. But it was when he reached for you that he went pale.” She looked over to me and swallowed. “When he pulled back the blanket to hold you for the first time, there was a loaded gun in the crib next to you, situated in an unmistakable way.”
“A threat?”
“A warning of retribution.” She looks out to the lake and back to me. “I went ballistic when I saw that gun, and I checked you from head to foot. I’ve never in my life been so terrified. It was then I knew he was distancing himself from us for my protection and yours. He didn’t want you because he knew having you made you a target. That was when I realized just how much he’d been hiding from me. As careful as he was, I knew immediately who was responsible for that threat.”
“Delphine.”
Mom nods. “I killed her family with my foolish mistake. But not once had it occurred to me that she was capable of anything like that. I assumed her grudge was my connection to Roman. And so I told him. He was furious.”
She takes another steadying breath.
“That night, he held you for the first time in his arms for hours before he looked up at me and point-blank told me we were over and that he didn’t want us anywhere near him. I fought him on it, but with that image of that gun in your crib, it didn’t take much to convince me.
That night, we agreed that I get a court-ordered paternity test and take legal action in order to gain child support. He said it would look more convincing if you seemed an obligation on paper, in essence making you seem like a bastard child. Since we’d already been discovered, he was sure the best thing we could do was to try and make it seem convincing. He’d hired the best lawyer possible so he would have to dole out as little as possible.”
“And you agreed to it?”
“There was a loaded gun pointed at my baby’s head. Of course I agreed to it. I let him break my heart. I let him treat us like his dirty little secret. I let go of him and all ties because he was a dangerous man to love. And we were dangerous for him to keep. That was our deal.”
“So, you moved us here, and never spoke to him after?”
“I didn’t hear from him for three years. Not a word. And every conversation after was about you and negotiated visits. Roman made it a point to be as cruel as possible in our exchange. He was paranoid. He refused to even look at me the first summer I dropped you off.”
“That’s why he sent me to camp on my first summers with him?”
She nods. “He hired men to watch us twenty-four seven. We were under constant surveillance. Do you remember Jason?”
I nod. It was one of my mother’s longer relationships that ended when I was in middle school.
“He was one of them?”
She nods. “It just sort of happened.”
“How convenient.”
“It was. I felt safer with him there. But my reasoning for starting it was entirely selfish.”
“You wanted a reaction.”
Mom nods.
“One I never got.” She frowns. “Something must have happened that last summer you spent with him. Another threat, I assume. He caught wind of something and refused to take you again until he took you in. And even then, he’d made it seem like a business transaction.”
“That’s why he contacted me by email?”
She nods. “A paper trail to anyone watching.”
“Why, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it kept you safe.”
“Why did you go back to him after all that time?”
“Because for nineteen years, I loved him. For nineteen years, I pined for him. For nineteen years, I paid for my mistake, and I just had to know. I had to know if he regretted it. If he at all felt the same about me. He cruelly turned me away when I went to him, but at your graduation, a few months later, I caught him looking at me. Timothy was by my side, holding my hand, but Roman looked at me in a way I knew I wasn’t alone in what I’d been harboring. It was still there, between us, the man I fell for was still in there. And I knew. I just knew. A woman knows these things. And it was when he looked at me like that…it felt worse than not knowing. It destroyed me. But it was all he had left to give. Just those few seconds in the crowded stadium.”
“Jesus, Mom.”
“I thought about that look every day. I still think about him every single day. Was he a good man? No. But he is the man I’ll die loving.”
“And you think that’s fair to Timothy?”
“It hasn’t been fair to any man, and sometimes the guilt eats me alive, but what would you have me do? Timothy lost his first wife, and I know at times he feels the same guilt that I do. We all don’t end up with the one we hoped to. He doesn’t resent me no more than I do him. We’ve made peace with it. And we’re happy.” She turns to me. “We are happy. We’re content.”
“Content is not love.”
“It is our version of it. I don’t think Roman would have made me happy. In fact, I know he wouldn’t have. Doesn’t make my feelings for him less crippling.”
“This is…”
“Roman loved you, Cecelia, he did. But he was a hard man to love and be loved by. Impossible. And it wasn’t just my mistake that cost us. It was his. He needed to own a piece of the world. There was some insatiable drive inside him, and it was his ambition that made him enemies, that cost him his family. All of his wealth wasn’t protection enough for him and the damage he’d already done.”