Page 56 of The Island Villa

Cassie sat a little straighter. “You did?”

“Yes. And no one was more surprised than me. Before you were born, I resented you.” It felt strange, voicing thoughts she’d kept to herself for so long. “I believed that you and your dad were the reason my family had been blown apart. That if she hadn’t had you, my parents would still be together. Not true, of course, but eight-year-olds don’t have a sophisticated understanding of adult relationships. I was ready to hate you, but then there you were in your crib with your fuzzy hair and your big eyes.” She smiled, remembering. “You were such a cute little thing.”

“You thought I was cute?”

“You were cute.” Adeline glanced at her. “I swear you were born smiling. Instead of wanting to smother you, I discovered I wanted to hold you and cuddle you. I did that a lot. You were the reason I started to accept this new life and my parents’ divorce. You did a lot to calm my stress levels.”

Cassie let out a long breath. “I always assumed you blamed me.”

“How could I blame you? You were a baby. Even eight-year-old me knew it wasn’t your fault. Before you were born, I didn’t feel too much goodwill toward you, that’s true. But afterward? The world seemed like a better place after you arrived.” She rarely allowed herself to think about that time, but she did it now, and in doing so, she felt the emotion form a solid lump in her chest. “Once you started crawling, I rarely left your side. I made sure you didn’t get into something you shouldn’t. I was there when you took your first steps. You managed three, and then you fell on my lap. Your first word was Adda.”

“The first thing I talked about was a snake?”

“Not adder.” Adeline smiled. “Adda. You were trying to say Adeline but you could only manage Adda.”

“Adda.” Cassie smiled as she repeated it. “I like it.”

“Our mother didn’t. She kept trying to get you to say Dadda instead. I suppose she thought your father would like it. You loved books, although back then you mostly chewed them. My favorite book was Matilda. I still have it. It has tooth marks in one corner.”

Cassie gave a laugh. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s a good memory.” But also a painful one. Adeline turned to look at her. “I imagined us growing up together. You loved me unconditionally, and I felt the same way about you. I was going to teach you everything. I was going to take care of you when the world was horrid.” It was the last time she’d let herself feel like that. The last time she’d given her love without reservation.

“I didn’t know.” Cassie’s eyes were shiny. “I didn’t know any of this.”

“You were too young to remember. And then one morning we were eating breakfast together, you and I...” She took a deep breath as she allowed herself to remember that morning. “Maria had made you eggs. I was teaching you to dip toast in them. And our mother suddenly appeared, all flustered, and told me that Kostas was going to drive me to the airport and I was going to stay with my father. I kept saying for how long? How long will I be there? I was upset, because it was the summer holidays and I’d been looking forward to spending all my time with you. I argued with her. I begged her. But she said I had to trust her, and that she was doing what was right for me.” There had been something so strange about her mother that day. A memory flickered into her brain. Something she hadn’t thought about in a long time. “I was crying, but it made no difference to her.”

“Oh, Adeline...”

“It took me a while to figure out that it was permanent. I wasn’t going to live with her anymore. And that meant I wasn’t going to live with you either. That was the part that upset me the most.”

And she’d wanted to be an adult so that she could make her own decisions and not have her life upended for reasons that made no sense to her.

“I don’t remember, obviously.” Cassie blew her nose. “All I remember was those later years when you came to stay, and you were distant and aloof. I wanted you to play with me, but you were never interested.”

“That wasn’t it. After I went to live with my father, I missed you.” Those three simple words, I missed you, didn’t begin to describe the trauma she’d felt. “I was a mess. I couldn’t believe she’d sent me away. I was so upset with her. I had no idea what I’d done to deserve it. It didn’t make sense to me. After that, I withdrew emotionally, although at the time I had no idea that was what I was doing. It was fear, of course.” That most powerful of all the emotions. “I was afraid of getting close to you again. I suppose I thought I could make life easier on myself if I didn’t have those strong attachments. It took me years to understand that I had abandonment issues and everything that came with that. Anger, anxiety, failure to sustain relationships.” Adeline paused and cleared her throat. She understood her issues better than most, but that didn’t make them any easier to handle. If anything, it made it more frustrating that she found it all so challenging. “It was a horrible time. It didn’t help that my father had no idea how to deal with me, and he was struggling too. He was devastated when she divorced him. Crushed. He could barely handle his own emotions, let alone mine. So he did what he always does when he doesn’t know what to do. He called an expert. Fortunately for me, that expert was Tanya.”

“Tanya?”

“She was a child psychologist. The wife of someone my father worked with. I guess he must have talked about how difficult I was to handle. I was a scared person back then. I didn’t allow myself to feel settled because I knew everything could change in a moment. I was braced for it. If Dad left the house, I assumed he wasn’t coming back. If I broke a plate or washed a red sock with his white shirts, I assumed he was going to send me away. I didn’t want to go to school in case he took advantage of my absence to pack up the house and leave.” It had been years since she’d allowed herself to really think about that time, and it wasn’t easy. As well as navigating her own pain, she felt more than a little guilty for what she’d put her father through. “To say that I was clingy would be an understatement. I was so afraid he’d abandon me.”

“But why would you think he would do that? He loves you.”

“But my mother loved me, and she sent me away.” Adeline stared straight ahead. “At ten years old, it seemed like logical thinking. It was Tanya who helped me see that it wasn’t my fault. That I hadn’t done anything. And she talked to my father too, and helped us communicate. We’d both been avoiding difficult conversations, but it turned out that having those conversations made things easier. She was brilliant and she made a huge difference to me. In a way, she saved me. I decided I wanted to do the same job Tanya did. I wanted to make a difference to someone’s life.”

“And that’s why you studied psychology.” Cassie stood up and pulled her sun lounger farther into the shade. “I didn’t know any of this, and I’ve been filling in blanks from my own imagination and getting it wrong. What about my father? Do you remember him?”

It was obvious that her sister yearned for some rich detail, a nugget of information that she could add to the other things she knew about her father.

Adeline felt bad that she wouldn’t be able to give what was needed. “Barely. A few hazy memories. Silly ones. I remember him breaking our mother’s favorite vase and feeling relieved that it was him and not me. He felt awful about it. I remember him saying sorry about a thousand times. And I remember our mother had a fall, and he was so caring. So attentive. He wouldn’t let us in the room to see her because he wanted her to rest.”

“How did she fall?”

“I don’t remember. I only remember that she had a nasty cut on her head and a bruise. You wanted to cling to her, but he wouldn’t let you crawl on her in case you hurt her. He asked me to take you away and play with you.”

“He loved her so much. He was being protective.”

“Yes.” Adeline hadn’t thought about the incident for years.

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