He hums, silently assessing me. “Where is he now?”
“London,” I mutter, taking a sip of my wine, my mouth feeling dry all of a sudden. Andreea gives me a sad look across the table and I do my best not to cry.
“He left you alone to deal with the media?” Dad asks, fingers curling into fists next to his plate.
“No, it’s not like that.”
“Then why’s he not here?” my dad counters, voice hard.
When I don’t say anything, Andreea snaps, “Oh, for fuck’ssake, you’re both acting like children. Would it kill you to talk to each other?”
Max bites his lip to keep from smiling as he looks between mine and my dad’s stunned expressions. The traitor is enjoying this.
“Maggie, Dad is asking about your life. He wants to know why the man you’ve been in love with for ten years is not here,” Andreea says, talking to me like I’m a child. “Dad, Maggie thinks she’s not good enough for Rowan. She watched your divorce with Mom unfold in the media and she’s terrified she’s going to make the same mistakes. So instead of telling Rowan this, she just dumped him. And frankly, some of that is on you for making it so hard for us both to trust the men around us.”
My sister takes a big breath and slumps back in her chair. “Wow, that was a lot,” she says, fanning herself. “I’m going to take a nap. You two better talk about this by the time I come back,” she says, pointing a menacing finger at each of us in return.
“Um, should I come with you?” Max asks, already half out of his chair.
“No, baby. I love you, but you have dishes to do.” Andreea smiles sweetly and kisses his cheek. Max laughs and shakes his head as he clears our plates and takes them to the kitchen.
The silence stretches between us but neither one of us starts the conversation back up. Instead, we both stare into our wine glasses, listening to the muffled sound of running water as Max rinses plates and loads the dishwasher.
“How could you possibly think you could make the same mistakes?” my dad finally says, breaking the silence.
I sigh in defeat. “I don’t know Dad, seeing you and Mom constantly fight and reading about the cheating rumors in the news didn’t exactly instill confidence in me to fully open up to someone.”
Dad runs a hand down his weathered face and I take him in. He looks older, different than I remember him. But then again, he also looks better. Happier, even. There are more crinkles around his eyes and mouth and I wonder if he’s dating someone. If those laugh lines appeared because he’s found someone to make him laugh.
“You could never make those same mistakes because you’re nothing like your mother. You’re nothing like me, either,” he scoffs, shaking his head in wonder. “Thank God for that.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I wanted to keep the media out of my marriage, and I’m sorry I couldn’t do better. But honey, the only reason they were so hell bent on writing articles about us is because your mother went chasing them,” he says, resigned.
I frown and wait for him to elaborate. When he doesn’t, I prod. “She did?”
“The first time she cheated on me was back when we were still living in Romania and you girls weren’t born yet. We almost got divorced then, but we talked things through and decided to put it behind us.” He sighs, leaning back in his chair. He never talks about the time he lived in his home country and I might finally understand why. I never knew my mom was the one who was cheating.
“The second time she cheated, that I know of, you girls were maybe ten and fourteen. It was when we lived in Australia. You and your sister were taking tennis lessons and I was supposed to train a client, but he canceled on me at the last moment. I drove back to our house and found your mother with our gardener.”
I gasp. “No way,” I say, placing a hand over my mouth.Really, the gardener?
Dad gives me a sad smile and says, “Oh, it gets much worse. A year later, when we moved to the States, she started sneakingout. Turns out she was having an affair with another tennis coach at the same club I was working at.
“By the time you were in high school and we moved to California, she was going out a lot, partying. The news got a whiff of it and ran an article. Then another. And another. And she kept doing it. I begged her to keep a low profile, go to rehab, something to get better, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Then she started seeing this guy who worked for a prestigious sports news outlet, and that’s when things got out of hand.
“It’s like I had a target on my back, the media was always on my heels, and the rumors that I was cheating on your mother began.”
“But you never did?” I ask, stunned.
“Never,pi?cot,I swear,” he says, expression earnest and sad.
I nod slowly, seeing my dad in a whole new light. “Why didn’t you tell us back then?”
He sighs and shakes his head. “You girls already had a lot to deal with—school, the pressure to go into tennis, hormones. I didn’t want to paint your mother in a bad light and take her away from you.”
“But she left anyway,” I say, jaw tight.
