He paused again, took another breath. “We’ve made a start—this evening—here, and now, like this, haven’t we? And it’s a better place for us to be than the place we were before.” He stopped. Letting what he’d said rest between them.
Slowly she nodded. She didn’t speak, but something had changed in her expression. The guarded look had gone again.
As if she’d been protecting herself.
“Then that’s good, isn’t it?” he said. “We can…go on…from here. Go forward.”
For a moment longer their eyes met and held. A veil of some kind was still over hers, but different now.
“Yes,” she said.
He nodded. Some kind of resolution had been reached…achieved. For now it was enough. Draining the last of his wine, he glanced at his watch, got to his feet.
“I’ll leave you now,” he said. “I’ll be here again at lunchtime.” He paused a moment. “If that suits you?”
She nodded again, making to get to her feet too. Xander stayed her. “No, don’t disturb yourself. I’ll see myself out.”
He paused yet again, standing there, then nodded, as if bidding her goodnight, then walked out into the hallway, glancing up the staircase. The landing light was on, and he could see Dan’s door slightly ajar. For a moment he just stood there as emotion filled him. Protective. Guilty.
How close they’d come, he and Laurel, indulging in their own rage, to devastating their own son…
But we’ll do better now.
He felt resolve filling him—relief. Thankfulness.
With a lighter step, resolute, he let himself out of the house and headed for his car.
Behind him, Laurel heard the front door close, and then the sound of Xander reversing the car out of the driveway. Her eyes went to where he had been sitting on the sofa, the cushions still indented, the empty glass and pasta bowl on the side table. For a moment her gaze lingered, then she pulled it away.
She felt drained, exhausted. But something more as well, though she didn’t know what. Perhaps it was best to let it be.
Fragments of what he’d said flickered in the firelight. She’d been wary—so very wary—instinctively guarding herself from what he might say to her, yet all he had said, in the end, was what she was glad of, ifgladnesswere even a term to associate with him.
One thing, though, she could feel he was being different towards her. He’d asked her to agree, not told her. Not ordered her. It was not conciliatory, but it was at least not that constant knifing hostility he’d treated her with from the moment he’d hauled her into his car outside Dan’s school.
From the moment he found that bracelet in my suitcase…
The change from the man she’d known, had come to know, those blindly blissful weeks together in their carefree cruising of the Aegean had shocked her to the core. She’d retaliated. How could she not have? But it had been defensive, unable to believe that he could believe so instantly in her guilt.
Her expression changed. He still did believe it; he’d admitted as much even as he’d declared they had to find a better way forward for dealing with each other, for Dan’s sake. Could she live with that, cope with that, knowing he still thought her a liar and a thief? Heaviness pressed on her, then, with a breath, she pushed it away. She would have to live with it, cope with it. As he had said, and with which she could not possibly disagree. The only person who was important was Dan.
For Dan’s sake I can cope with still being thought a liar and a thief.
Xander had said they should put it aside. What other way was there for them now?
The question hung, finding no other answer.
It will have to do.
She gave a sigh, still feeling drained and exhausted, but perhaps, too, something else, though she still did not know what. Instead, she reached for the TV remote, flicked it on, wanting something, anything, to divert her thoughts.
Tomorrow would bring Xander back again, and she and he, she supposed, would take it from there.
What else could they do? Upstairs, their son slept, peaceful now after the trauma of the evening.
For Dan I can do this. For him.
And Xander must too.
