She rested her chin on the back of her hands, looking at him thoughtfully. “No. You didn’t. But then, I never asked you about anything before I met you either. Or really anything that you were experiencing after we met.”
“True.”
“Well, I went back to New York. Because in many ways it always felt like my home. But also on a slightly pettier note, I wanted to know what it was like to live there when I was part of the other half. We grew up in a studio apartment. It was tiny, and my mom did her best to keep it clean. She worked on the Upper East Side. Sometimes in the summer I would ride the subway with her. And spend most of the day outside on the playgrounds there. Sometimes I would wander around the Met by myself. Or the natural history museum. Air-conditioned. Nice. During the school year I would get myself to school. And usually I would cook dinner so that she would have something when she got home. She didn’t ask me to do that. But I wanted to. It was us against the world.”
“And then my father put out a ridiculous ad for a housekeeper after he and my mother had a fight.”
“What?”
“Did you not know that? It came about because of a fight that they had. My mother was constantly chasing cleaners away by nitpicking their work. And my father said the only way that we would be able to get someone new is by finding them outside the country. And that once he did, my mother was not permitted to engage with the new cleaner. He also said that he would have to pay more than handsomely for them to keep the job. That is how that job posting ended up being the way it was. So generous that of course your mother would never turn it down.”
“He fell in love with her at first sight,” Heather said, looking down at her hands.
Romeo was about to respond to that when the waiter came in with a charcuterie, an array of meat and cheese. A glass of wine for him, and sparkling water for Heather.
“Did he?” Romeo asked. And he found he wasn’t as angry as he used to be.
“Yes. He wanted to give her everything. That was why he offered to send me to the private school. He wanted…he wanted her to notice him the way that he did her. But he wanted to be careful because he was her boss. My mother worked for a lot of rich men. She didn’t have relationships with them. And she didn’t trust them just because they were rich and men. She knew better than that. It wasn’t like it was a pattern with her or anything like that.”
“I don’t really know what I thought. It feels…salacious on the surface.”
“Yes. It does. But it wasn’t.”
He nodded slowly. “I did see that. In the fullness of time. That what they had was real. It didn’t ease anything, though, because it only made me feel all that much more protective of my mother.”
“Why wouldn’t it? It’s a tangle.”
“It was never your fault, though.”
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”
He very nearly laughed.
Their main courses came out after that—perfectly seared steaks and buttered vegetables. And he was gratified to see that Heather was enjoying the food. When she had first come to tell him about the pregnancy she had looked pale and unwell.
Now she seemed much better.
Taking care of her was…satisfying.
He had always felt a strange sort of possessiveness over her. It had been, initially, that she was the woman he hated more than anyone else in all the world.
But now she was his. In a different way.
It made him want to do things differently. Behave differently.
To treat her differently.
“What was it like growing up in your house?”
“I told you. Contentious.”
“You said war zone.”
He nodded slowly. “They were not a good match. All they did was make each other miserable. My father was rich. My mother was beautiful, and volatile. He didn’t know what he was getting into, but they married each other. Based on my math, I assume it’s because she was pregnant with me. I was the reason. And therefore, I’m responsible.”
“For what?”
“For keeping her happy. At least as happy as she can be, because all of her misery is because of me.”
