Penelope felt her heart beating loudly inside her chest. She had not expected him to get this raw with her. He paused, staring into his glass for a moment before taking a slow sip.
“I spent most of my childhood trying not to make mistakes. Because every mistake, no matter how small, returned with consequences I couldn’t see coming.”
She wanted to reach for his hand. But she sensed he needed the space to say it uninterrupted.
“Perhaps that has something to do with why I am the way I am.”
“But I do not understand,” Penelope said finally. “If he controlled every aspect of your life, why do you then try to do the same thing with those close to you?”
“It is not the same thing.”
“But it is a sort of control,” Penelope argued.
“Penelope,” he said in a low voice. “I do not think you understand the sort of man my father was. If you did, you would not be making a comparison as crass as this.”
“Then I misspoke,” Penelope admitted to her mistake. “Tell me what sort of man he was then?”
“You know, I had gone years without talking about him,” Alexander mused. “But then you came along, and now I find myself thinking back to memories that I felt I long forgot.”
“That is how you heal,” Penelope said. “And you are safe to speak with me about anything. It will help you take off the weight you have been carrying on your chest all these years.”
“Do you wish to know why I am not like my father? And why any comparison is unfair?” Alexander said, his voice strained .
Penelope could only nod. She felt the anticipation built up inside of her, though she was also scared of what she might find out.
“I was thirteen,” he said, “And my father had started losing more than money. He was losing control then, over his reputation, his debts, and perhaps worst of all, over himself.”
He didn’t look at her. His gaze remained fixed on the floor or anything that wasn’t her face. But his words were steady, and she knew better than to interrupt.
“There was a man. Dangerous and powerful in the way men become when they learn to wield fear better than fortune. He let my father fall deeper and deeper into debt, as if feeding him rope. Until the moment came when he pulled.”
A gasp escaped Penelope’s mouth.
“My father had nothing left,” Alexander continued. “No land and no leverage. And so he could not pay back debt he owed.”
There was a tightness in his voice . Penelope could tell this was a painful memory for him to recall.
“I had just left my fencing lesson,” Alexander started. “But the carriage never came to pick me. I waited until the sun set, then I began to walk. It was not unusual for me to do this, and I actually liked the view on the way home. I had done it dozens of times before but this time, I never reached home.”
Penelope pressed a hand to her chest.
“What do you mean?”
“They took me from behind in the alley,” he said. “I didn’t scream. I remember having a cloth pulled over my face, and then everything went dark.”
He moved then, as if the act of staying in one place with the memory had grown too heavy. He moved to the window and stood there.
“They kept me in a basement,” he said. “I remember the smell of damp and rotten wood that invaded my senses every day. I was fed water in a rusty tin and they only gave me a single meal every other day. Cold, tasteless.”
“Alexander,” Penelope began to shake her head. She had no idea he had been carrying something so heavy with him all this time.
The thought of a boy, her husband, trapped like that made her ill.
“How long were you there for?”
“I was there for a week,” Alexander said. “No one came, nor did my father bother with paying the ransom that was demanded. He never lifted a finger, actually. I think I was the least of his worries.”
“How could a father be so cruel?” Penelope asked, unable to help herself.
