Page 95 of The Island Villa

“And I couldn’t tell you without revealing the truth to Cassie, and I couldn’t do that. You had a close relationship with your father, but she had no father. Only a memory that I created.” Catherine looked at Cassie. “As you grew older, I occasionally thought about telling you the truth, but I couldn’t do it. You were happy and optimistic. You had such faith in people, and I didn’t want to take that from you. And what was the point? Rob was gone.”

Cassie sat without moving.

She’d always felt lucky that she had such a close relationship with her mother. Her friends had envied her. Your mother is so cool. And when they’d moaned and bitched about how their mothers nagged about everything from their hair to the state of their bedrooms, and how they never listened, she’d said nothing because her mother always listened. When she’d been debating which colleges to apply for, her mother had helped her think it through. And when she’d admitted that she hadn’t known what career path to follow (because she hadn’t wanted to mention her writing ambitions), her mother hadn’t tried to push her in a particular direction, she’d simply said take your time. Maybe she only had one parent, but she had the best. Or so she’d thought.

It was hard to get her head around the fact that her mother had been lying to her for her whole life. That her past was as much a work of fiction as one of her mother’s stories.

In her mind, she saw her life as a book with pages torn out. Part of it was just wrong. It was like an editor saying you need to delete this chapter.

It was true that she hadn’t lost her ability to trust. She’d never had a boyfriend cheat on her, and her friends were a tight-knit group who might be occasionally annoying, but were never toxic. Sure, some people were more complicated than others but that was what made them interesting. She’d had life easy up until this point. She knew it and had been grateful for it. But that didn’t mean she was naive. She knew life could be tough. She’d assumed it would be tough for her one day. That her turn would come. Ups and downs. That was how it went. If you were lucky, you had more ups than downs.

But never before had she considered that her life had been easy because she’d been shielded from the bad stuff. And it was true that by not knowing, she hadn’t lost her faith in people as Adeline had done, but how much worse was it to have lost faith in your own mother? What else had she lied about?

“You could have told me,” she said. “You could have been honest. You could have told me the truth and I would have handled it.” Was that true? She didn’t know, but she hoped it was. Generally speaking, people coped with what came their way in life. Maybe, if asked beforehand, they would have said there is no way I’d be able to cope with that, but what was coping except getting out of bed every morning and getting on with things?

Did her mother not think she would have kept going?

“Maybe you could have handled it, or maybe I would have forever regretted telling you something you didn’t have to know. Once you say something like that, you can’t unsay it.” Her mother sounded tired. “Or maybe part of me thought that with Rob gone I could delete the past. Maybe I was doing it for me too, so that you didn’t ask questions I didn’t want to be forced to answer. I wanted to put it behind me. I suppose I thought if I lied to you, and lied to myself, I could pretend it had never happened.”

By writing her book, by using what she’d thought was her parents’ blissful relationship as “inspiration” for her novel, she’d forced her mother back to that time.

“If it hadn’t been for my book, would you ever have told me?”

It was a moment before her mother answered.

“Probably not.”

And she would have gone through life not knowing the truth. And maybe that would have been better because certainly the truth was hard to handle.

“You said I wasn’t like him. Was that a lie too?”

“It wasn’t a lie. You are nothing like him, in appearance or personality.”

Questions crowded her brain, queuing up to be asked. “What happened after Adeline left?”

“Things deteriorated. You missed her.” Her mother was still looking at her. “You became clingy, and Rob became more and more impatient. I couldn’t leave you alone with him, so I canceled all my engagements. Whenever I had to leave the villa for something, Maria took you.”

“This isn’t...” Adeline pressed her fingers to her head. “This just isn’t the story I had in my head. It’s as if you’ve changed my history.”

Cassie’s history had been changed too. How many times had she talked about her parents’ love story? They embodied everything she believed about love and relationships. She’d wanted a love like theirs. She’d envied it. And now here was her mother telling her that none of it was real.

She felt numb.

“How often did he hit you?” Her lips were so stiff she could barely voice the question.

“Sometimes we’d go months without incident, and I’d think that maybe he really meant it when he said he would never do it again. And then something would set him off. It was my fault, he said. It was always my fault, and spun so cleverly that I believed him. And each time was a little worse. It felt as if it was escalating.”

“Why didn’t you leave him?”

There was a long tense pause.

“Because of you.” Her mother’s voice was barely audible. “He threatened to take you, and I was afraid he might hurt you.”

Cassie felt a pressure building in her chest. Her mother’s anguish was raw and naked.

“His death...” She was almost afraid to ask. “Did that happen the way you told it?”

“He fell down the stairs. We’d been out for the evening and he’d had too much to drink. I’d left my shoes at the top of the stairs and he tripped.” Her mother looked directly at her. “Those are facts. They’re in the police report.”

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