“A name is a crown,” he says and I hear the slur in his voice. Another stint that didn’t take then. “Did you enjoy watching him renamemyisland while you smiled like a paid porcelain doll?”
The insult slides off carefully constructed armor. “You lost the right to claim it as yours a long time ago, Harrison.”
“Ah,” he murmurs. “You’ve learned to say my name like a stranger. How modern of you. Tell me, do you say his like a prayer? Or the password to his bank account?”
“Why are you calling?”
“To congratulate you on the stunt.”
“What do you mean stunt?”
“Come on, girl. People talk, especially the help. And hallways have ears.”
“What does that even mean?” I whisper, urgently glancing over to the open doorway to the terrace where Vasso and his mother are waiting for me to join them.
“All it took was a few calls to get the picture of the man strutting into your grandfather’s place a few weeks ago is suddenly your husband. All very shotgun hasty? You’re not pregnant, are you?”
“No!”
My denial is too hasty, too visceral, born entirely of the image suddenly shoved into my brain. An image that triggers a very secret, very sacred yearning. “Look, I don’t know what you heard but this is all new and?—.
“And all fake? I know. Which is why, since you didn’t bother to invite your dear old dad to your wedding, I’m calling to request a wedding gift.” The tone lightens—chilling. My throat closes before I can point out that that’s not how it works.
Then I decide to save my breath. “You’re not rushing to deny it? Good. That diamond necklace plastered all over the papers. It’s lovely, if provincial. How about you lose it so I can find it?”
My hand goes to my bare throat, horror dredging through me at the thought. “No.” My mouth is desert dry.
“You will.” The temperature drops ten degrees. “Or my old friend at the trust will hear that your ‘marriage’ is a marketing strategy with a shelf life. Would be a shame if the lighthouse fund suddenly stalled, hmm?”
My fingers go numb. He can’t prove— He can guess. He can seed. He can poison wells like a pastime. And it will achieve the same horrible result for Vasso. For Vecchio.
The project will hit the skids before it’s even taken off.
I grip the sink until my knuckles threaten to pop.
“You can’t prove it isn’t… permanent,” I say, before I can stop myself, the truth slithering out like a snake I thought I’d bagged.
He pounces, pleased. “You just did that for me, sweetheart. But there’s no reason why we can’t both enjoy your unexpectedly bumper year, Princess. Not when your husband can more than afford it. Send the necklace to the address I’ll text. If you don’t, I’ll chat to a journalist about staged mergers and vendettas in linen suits.”
“Is this what you’re reduced to, blackmailing your own daughter?”
“What daughter?” he sneers back.
I hang up because I have to, because if I keep listening I will throw the phone at the wall and he will still be on the other end. My reflection in the bathroom mirror looks like a pretty liar. I press both hands to my face until the heat in my cheeks cools enough to pass inspection.
When I step back into the kitchen, Vasso’s mother glances up from a pan of lemon chicken. Her eyes flick to my mouth, then my hands, then the place where my pulse lives in my throat. Shesays nothing as she sets a sprig of rosemary on the cutting board in front of me.
Dinner is simple and perfect. Potatoes and chicken and good wine.
Vasso sits, glass in one hand, the other resting at the top of my chair, trailing his fingers through my hair.
Eleni, graciously mellow, asks me about the lighthouse vows idea and I find myself talking about how the island could invite people to write their own vows to themselves and lock them into a barrel that opens in five years, how commitment can be civic as well as romantic. She makes a small approving sound without letting it become a smile.
“Harrison. Your father cost us years,” she says later, as she pours me the last of the wine I should refuse but don’t. It’s the first time she’s said his name to me. It lands like a pebble in a pond, its rings widening the horror the call earlier started. “Bitter, difficult years.”
Vasso’s fingers press gently into my nape. Support or something else?
I choose support. “I can’t give those years back,” I say, setting the glass down because my hand shakes once and shows me; I set it down again, steadier. “I can stand where I should have, now.”
