Page 35 of The Sea-Mist Cottage Inn
It’s so weird how it affects you—or me, at least—when you learn that something you thought was a secret, a bad thing that happened to you that you thought no one knew, was actually an ‘open secret’—which is a really fucked-up term, by the way. It means all of the shame but none of the protection. First, there’s the shame of realizing that people knew you were a victim. There’s also some relief, to know that your tormentor had been seen for who she was. But then there’s the understanding that people knew. Theyknewand yet no one saved you.
Since I’d been back in town, I’d had a vague, broad sense a few times that people knew more than I’d realized. But that sense had been dinged a few times as well. Until this dinner, I was still pretty sure people thought my mother had simply been particularly strict with me.
Maybe that was all Roman meant now.
“What about my mother?” I asked.
There must have been something in my tone to warn him he’d waded into waters infested with shrieking eels. I noted a shift in his expression, too subtle to identify the location of the shift, but apparent nonetheless.
“Nothing in particular,” he began, “but everybody struggled with Marilyn, Leo. We all knew she was difficult and demanding, and nobody thought it was easy to be her daughter. Carla pointed out to me that you seemed to buy things for yourself, even food, and not in the recreational way most teenagers spend money on themselves. It was her idea to hire you to watchGabriel—I thought you were too young to be trusted with our son. But she was right. You were great with him, and we were glad to help you out financially.”
“This is very much not feeling like a date,” I said when I could no longer keep my head up.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Would it help to change the subject?”
I forced myself to look at him again. “Yes, it would, but I don’t want to. How old are you, Roman?” My suddenly intensely ambivalent feelings gave me the power to be more direct. I didn’t care quite so much in that moment if Roman wanted to date me.
He smiled, unaffected by the rudeness of the question. “I turned forty-eight in May. And you’re thirty-seven. Is that too big a gap for you?”
Micah had been more than six years older than me, so really, eleven years wasn’t much. Especially as we were both in the range of middle-age. “If you hadn’t known me as a kid, I’d say it’s not a problem at all. But—”
“But it is a problem because I did know you?”
“No, you didn’t let me finish my sentence. But it’s a problem if your interest in me now is in any way because you feel protective of the teenager I was, or guilty because you didn’t do more to help me.”
He frowned deeply. “Did you need more help? Would you have taken it?”
Of course, Dustin arrived then with our antipasto platter.
Great timing, kid.
FOURTEEN: It’s a Date
When Dustin had departed again, as Roman and I started in on the antipasto, I contemplated the question that had been hanging there between us like a pregnant spider.
I had to answer it; I was the one who’d forced the conversation in that direction. Iwantedto answer it. But an entire young lifetime of shame grabbed my tongue in its fist and squeezed. I had tried so hard to be normal. I’d been so afraid people would know what life in my house was really like. Even Jessie and Erin didn’t know it all.
For almost all of my childhood, well into adolescence, I’d believed I was the reason my mother was unloving at best and cruel at every chance. I was unloved because I was unlovable. I believed the only reason I had friends, the only reason people were ever nice to me, was because I’d hidden the truth from them. Honestly, believing it was my fault was probably a survival mechanism—at least then my mother made sense. At least there was a reason.
I’d tried to keep my reality a secret, and I’d believed I’d done a decent job. That was why I’d been so worried about how my return would be received. But also, paradoxically, I’d become bitter toward Bluster in my time away. Growing into a woman with a family of my own, and working with children as a profession, I’d begun to wonder how the people here could not have known.
They must have at least suspected the truth, despite the camouflage, yet they’d done nothing. Now that I was home again, some of that resentment lingered—and some of the shame had reawakened.
But could I really blame people for not seeing what I’d tried so hard to prevent them from seeing? What my mother had also hidden from them? Roman was sitting right before me, looking into my eyes, and telling me he hadn’t known things were as bad as they’d been. Moreover, and maybe more to the point, he’d asked if I would have accepted help.
And I don’t think I would have. I think I would have been too ashamed.
So that was what I answered. “I don’t want to get into details tonight, but yes, I needed more help. But no, I don’t think I would have taken it. I was really ashamed of how I lived. I would have denied it.”
Most people would look away in that moment, but Roman didn’t. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice so quiet it was almost a caress.
I did look away. That kind of eye contact was like having him rooting around in my chest. Busying myself with stacking prosciutto and cheese on a slice of bread, I said, “I like you, Roman. I’d like this to be a date. But I don’t want to date somebody who sees me like a kid he felt sorry for.”
He reached across the table and set his hand before me, palm up. An invitation to put mine in it.
I studied his hand—large, well-formed, the pads of his palms and fingers thick and marked with several scars—but I didn’t take it.
He left it resting there before me. “I don’t see you like it’s twenty years ago, Leo. I see you now. Beautiful, charming, and strong. I enjoy being around you. So I’d like to be around you more.”
