“Perhaps this is a sexist thing to say, but I thought I might appeal to your softer side. All women have a softer side. I know Marni does. Right about now it’s not showing, because she’s addressing the board of directors, and I’m sure she’s making as businesslike a pitch as she can for their understanding. But the softer side’s there, not very far from the surface. Marni loves me. She’s aching because she loves you both, too, and it hurts her that she’s had to make a choice between us.”
“She chose you,” Adele stated evenly. “I’d think you would be pleased.”
He looked up. “Pleased, yes. I’m pleased, and relieved, because I don’t think I could make it through a future without her. But I don’t feel a sense of victory, if that’s what you’re suggesting. There’s no victory when a family is torn apart, particularly one that has already suffered its share of loss.”
Adele arched a brow. “Doyouknow about loss, Mr. Webster?”
“No. At least, not as you know it. One can’t lose things one has never had. I never had a father. Did you know that?”
“No. No, I didn’t.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me. I’d like to tell you, if I may.”
Adele paused, then nodded. Though she maintained an outer semblance of arrogance, there was a hint of curiosity in her eyes. Web wasn’t about to pass that up.
“I never knew my father. He and my mother didn’t marry. When I was two my mother married another man, a good man, a hard worker. I’m afraid I didn’t make things terribly easy for him. For reasons I didn’t understand at the time, I was restless. I hated school, but I loved to learn. I spent my nights reading everything I could get my hands on, but during the days I felt compelled to move around. Instead of going to college, I took odd jobs where I could find them. I traveled the world, literally, working my way from one place to the next.
“Then I met Ethan. We shared a mutual respect. Through him, I realized I had to settle down, that I wouldn’t get anywhere if I didn’t focus in on one thing and try to be good at it. I was a jack of all trades, master of none. And I was tired of it.”
He gazed at his thumbnail, pressed it with his other thumb. “Maybe I’d simply reached an age where it was time to grow up. After Ethan died, I did a lot of thinking. There were many unresolved feelings I had, about my father and about myself. I don’t know who my father is, so those feelings will remain unresolved to a point. But fourteen years ago I realized that I couldn’t let them affect my life, that I didn’t really need to be running around to escape that lack of identity. That if I stayed in one place and built a life, a reputation for myself, I could make up for it.”
He raised his eyes to Adele’s intent ones and wondered if she realized the extent of her involvement with his story. “I think I have. But there’s more I want, and it involves Marni.” He sat up in the chair. “I adore that woman, Mrs. Lange. You have no idea how much. I want to marry her, and we want children.”
“You’ve already told us that,” Adele pointed out, but the edge was gone from her voice.
“Yes, but I’m not sure if you realize how much Marni wants our family to encompass you and your husband. Do you want her to be happy, Mrs. Lange?”
“Of course. I’m her mother. What mother wouldn’t want that for her daughter?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “That’s what I’m trying to understand.”
“Are you accusing me of being blind to what Marni needs, when she sat here herself last Sunday night and announced that she’d go ahead with her plans regardless of what we said or did?”
He kept his tone gentle. “I’m not accusing you of anything. What I’m suggesting is that maybe you don’t fully understand Marni’s needs. I’m not sure I did myself until I heard what she said to you the other night. She badly wants your approval. You’re right, she and I will go ahead and get married even if you continue to hold out. We’ll have our home and our children, and we’ll be happy. But there will always be a tiny part of Marni that will feel the loss of her parents, and it will be such a premature and unnecessary loss that it will be all the sadder.” He paused. “How willyoufeel about such a loss? You lost your son through a tragedy none of us could control. This one would be a tragedy of your own making.”
“Ethan would have been alive if it hadn’t been—”
“Do you honestly believe that?Honestly?Am I a killer, Mrs. Lange? Look at me and tell me if you think I am truly a killer.”
Scowling, she shifted in her seat. “Well, not in the sense of a hardened criminal …”
“Not in any sense. I think in your heart you agree. Otherwise you never would have let me talk with you today.”
“My husband’s out. That’s why I’m talking with you today.”
“Then he’s the one who dictates your opinion?”
“We’ve been married for nearly forty years, Mr. Webster. I respect what my husband feels strongly about.”
“Even when he’s wrong?”
“I … I owe him my loyalty.”
“But what about the loyalty you owe your children? You had a choice when it came to picking your husband. Your children had no choice about being born. You gave them life and brought them into this world. They had no say in the matter. Marni didn’tchooseyou to be her mother, any more than she chose to be Ethan’s sister. And she didn’t choose to have him killed in that accident, yet she’s spent the past fourteen years trying to make up to you for it. Don’t you owe her some kind of loyalty for that?”
“Now you’re asking me to make a choice between my daughter and my husband.”
“No. I’m simply asking you to decide for yourself whether Marni’s marrying me would be so terrible, and if you decide that it wouldn’t be, that you try to convince your husband of it. We’re not asking for an open-armed welcome. We’ll very happily settle for peaceful coexistence. You don’t have to love me, Mrs. Lange, but if you love your daughter you’ll respect the fact thatsheloves me.”
