‘I know, but with your friend arriving back in town today I thought you might be busy catching up.’
He stood at the edge of the pool and tilted his head up towards the sky. I heard him exhale slowly, as if releasing stress from his body. ‘I’ve just left her actually.’
‘Everything OK?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Your tone seemed… weary.’
‘You’ve known me twenty-four hours and you can pick up on my mood just from my tone? Impressive.’
‘I’m an empath. I pick up on the small clues people often don’t realize they’re dropping.’
‘Hannah’s fine.’ He sighed. ‘It’s just hard for her. She’s struggling, without Alex.’
‘I bet. It must be awful, being widowed so young.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Want to talk about it?’
‘Not really.’ He dipped his toes into the water, then gently lowered himself in, exhaling again as the water embraced his body. ‘I needed this.’
‘Better than any expensive spa, right?’
‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not exactly a spa kind of guy.’
‘You’ll just have to take my word for it then.’
He smiled, his teeth bright in the moonlight. ‘I guess I will.’
I swished my arms gently through the beautiful clear water. In the day, it was a gorgeous blue and you could see right through to the bottom. But at night the water was pitch-black, with only the reflection of the stars above. It had always been my secret place. An escape from reality. ‘I used to think this pool had magical powers.’
‘You did?’
‘Yeah. When I was a kid, and my parents would argue, I’d sneak out of the house and come down here. My mom would have killed me if she’d known; I was only eight or nine at the time.’
‘You swam down here by yourself in the dark when you were a kid?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m beginning to understand why you weren’t scared of me last night.’
‘I used to swim under the stars and wish that I was a mermaid so I could go anywhere I wanted. Failing that, I’d wish that my dad would leave us. Leave my mom alone. And then one day he did.’
‘I take it he wasn’t a nice guy.’
I shrugged. ‘I used to think that, but now I realize he was just human. Had flaws like we all do. I think he was just miserable with his life, and so he took it out on us.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘I know. But plenty of people make the wrong choices, right? Choose a career because it pays well, but secretly hate it. Or marry someone just because they’ve been together for a few years and it’s the logical, generally expected next step. They don’t stop to think about whether spending the rest of their life with that person is actually going to make them happy.’
‘Is that what happened with you and Adam?’
‘No.’ I pulled a face. ‘Thatwas a disaster right from the get-go. Doomed in fact, from the very moment of its conception.’
‘Wow.’
