Page 58 of The Island Villa

“Dad...”

“Love.” He said the word quietly but with emphasis, as if he wasn’t sure it was a word she knew. “We’re doing this because we’re in love. I fell in love with your mother when she was eighteen years old, and I have loved her every day since then. And I still love her.”

She wanted to scream with frustration.

Love, she thought, had to be the biggest source of bad decision-making and misery for humankind. It was mystifying to her that people would ever think that was enough. Where was the logic?

She took a breath, and then gave him logic. Facts to puncture fantasy. “Dad, she had an affair and left you. You’ve been apart for two decades.”

“That’s true. And I never said that loving her was easy, or that our relationship has been some sort of fairy tale, but very few things worth having are ever easy. I know you think the divorce was her fault, but I was to blame too.”

She sighed. “I don’t think—”

“It’s true. A child never gets to see the inside of their parents’ relationship, and that’s probably just as well because they’d see that they are as human as anyone else. We’re capable of making mistakes. Big ones. Your mother and I both changed a lot over the course of our marriage.”

“You mean she hit the big time and no longer had room for you in her life.”

“She found her own success, that’s true. But I didn’t handle it well. I no longer felt needed, you see.” He gave a half smile, half-despairing and half-amused by his old self. “I’d supported your mother in those early years. I was the reason she was able to stay home and write, and I felt good about that. We were a team. Then your mother’s career took off. She was the one working long hours. She was in demand, flying all over the world. Her books were everywhere. Studios were fighting over the movie rights to her books. The money rolled in. I should have been grateful for that, but instead I felt unnecessary.”

She frowned. “Unnecessary?”

“It happens sometimes, I believe, when people have defined roles in a marriage and those roles change.” He patted her arm gently. “You’ll know more about that than me, of course. I don’t pretend to be an expert.”

She didn’t feel like an expert either.

She said nothing, but she didn’t need to because her father was still talking.

“The way I saw it, if she didn’t need me for my money, maybe she didn’t need me at all. What was my role? Things shift in a relationship, and we didn’t shift together. I didn’t handle it well, not least because I didn’t much enjoy my job but knowing that it gave your mother freedom to create gave me a purpose.” He paused. “Your mother didn’t handle it well either. We weren’t communicating properly. If I had my time again, I suppose I would have said this is how I feel, but in those days I wasn’t used to talking about how I felt. It wasn’t something I did. I assumed she’d just know. I thought it was obvious, but it wasn’t. If we had been communicating, then maybe when she met Rob that night, she would have walked straight out of the bar without talking to him.”

Was he really blaming himself?

She bit her lip and forced herself to listen as he talked.

“Those years after we divorced were hard,” he said, “but we stayed in touch, as you know. And maybe it was a good thing because I found a new direction for myself. One that made me happy. And now here we are. Somehow, we found our way back to each other. We’ve talked a lot about what happened back then. We both know where we went wrong, took that wrong turn. I can’t believe we’ve reached this point again.”

She couldn’t believe it either. “I wish you’d think hard about it.”

“I have. Life doesn’t always give you a second chance, Addy, but when it does—” his face glowed with happiness and contentment “—well you don’t turn your back on that. You grab it. And that’s what I’m doing. I’m choosing happiness.” The dreamy look in his eyes worried her almost as much as his words.

She wanted to shake him and wake him up.

“You’re choosing misery and heartache, Dad. Just like you did before. It seems great now, but how long before it starts to unravel?”

“There are no certainties in life.”

“I think this is a certainty. She hasn’t stayed married to anyone, Dad.” Although Cassie’s father had died, and even her mother couldn’t be held responsible for that.

“Those relationships weren’t right. It’s complicated.”

“But one of those relationships was you.” What did she have to say to make him see sense? She couldn’t stand this. Already she was picturing the future—her father brokenhearted again, and her picking up the pieces, biting her tongue to stop herself saying, I warned you. “You’re asking me to stand by and watch you be hurt again, and I can’t. I don’t understand how you would even think of putting yourself through this again. It will all go wrong, just as it did before.”

“I don’t believe it will. I hope it doesn’t, but if it does, then I’ll survive it just as I survived the first time.”

She felt pressure in her chest as she thought about the first time. Panic rose and threatened to swallow her.

Maybe he’d forgotten. Maybe he’d blocked it out. People did that, didn’t they, with trauma?

“There were days when you didn’t want to get out of bed. You were in a terrible state.” She felt cruel reminding him, but these were desperate times.

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