It was dark. Above us a full moon was massive and drenched the night in white light. Colton had taken us to dinner at Alto’s and it had been a good distraction. But now, sitting beneath the night sky, my demons were returning.
“He was so much more than that,” I replied quietly.
“You don’t talk about him. Or what happened.”
“He cheated on me.”
Colton was quiet. Like he was giving it a lot of thought.
“Anyone who cheats on you is a fool, Harlow,” he said finally. But his words made no sense. Since he was the one who had started the trend.
“Is that your way of apologizing?” I asked.
“You never gave me a chance to apologize. You ran off to California.”
I glanced at him sideways. “I think we both know it was the best thing.”
“Me doing wrong by you? Or you going to California?”
“Both.” I smiled. “Our relationship had run its course.”
“I’m a fool, Harlow. And so is your Mister Dillinger.” He smiled regretfully. “I will never forgive my actions and how they hurt you. If I could somehow go back in time … well, I wouldn’t be such a fool.”
I turned back to the moon.
“If I could go back in time … I’d do it all over again and not change a thing,” I whispered.
And I would.
Except for the part when Heath ripped my heart out and put it through the sausage mincer. But even then the pain and heartache was worth it for those precious moments I’d shared with him and my friends back in California.
We were quiet for a moment. Our legs swung over the branch while the crickets sang in the grass.
“I’m honored to be escorting you tomorrow, Harlow. I will be very proud, walking down that staircase with you on my arm.”
I smiled, but it was pensive. “Thank you for being here. And for escorting me tomorrow. It’s a comfort having you here.”
“Albeit, a bittersweet comfort.”
I cast my eyes down. “I love him, Colton. As much as I don’t want to, I love him.”
He nodded. “Then he is a bigger fool than I thought. He should be here.”
“But he’s not.”
“No. No, he’s not.”
We called it a night and Colton saw me to the door. Once inside, I headed towards the grand staircase but my daddy appeared in the doorway of his study and beckoned to me to join him.
“A word with my daughter?”
He poured me a brandy as I sat on one of the three leather Chesterfield sofas in the room. I shifted nervously. Chats with my daddy in his study were usually reserved for those discussions about poor grades or the times I’d been busted sneaking out or playing hooky from school because Colton wanted to go make out. Or like the time Bobby, Bridget and I snuck over state lines to go see Van Halen play in South Carolina because Bobby was a crazy Eddie Van Halen fan.
Oh, and let’s not forget the little chat about tattoos when Mama had seen the black ink inside my wrist. She had gotten so flustered, she’d taken two valium and gone to lie down. How on earth was I going to be the Debutante Queen with that thing on my skin?
For all our chats in this room, my daddy had never given me a brandy before. I took it as a good sign.
Then again, it could be a really, really bad one and maybe he was using the brandy to numb me first. I took a hearty sip and almost choked on the hot liquid as my daddy settled in the Chesterfield across from me. He stared into his brandy for a moment, swirling it before he spoke.
“I had to insist your mother rest. She is worried your heart is not in tomorrow’s events.”
“Then she’d be right. This is her thing. Not mine.”
He nodded, resignedly. “I understand. But this boy … Heath? He has you distracted.”
“I love him,” I said matter-of-factly. Then with less resolve, added, “I just can’t be with him.’
My daddy thought about my words and then nodded. I watched as he swirled his brandy again and took a mouthful.
“When I met your mother I was heavily involved with a girl I wanted to marry, Mary-Beth. But she left for the summer to be with family in North Carolina and while she was away I met your mother at a local dance.” He paused to remember. “She was nothing like any girl I’d ever seen. Darkly beautiful and glamorous. She seemed so worldly at the time. So exciting and mesmerizing. Beautiful, rich and spoilt, but at the same time, fascinating, witty and very charming. Of course, I was immediately drawn to her—as was every other boy in the county. She was visiting for a month from South Carolina.”
He nodded regretfully. “She was engaged to another man at the time. A Mister Will Starling. But he was serving overseas in Iraq. We were young and foolish. Both of us were meant for other people but, at the same time, unable to fight the attraction we felt towards one another. We were reckless. So we enjoyed the spontaneity and risks of such a brief affair, both of us understanding that it was only for such a short period of time.”
My daddy took another good sip of his brandy and something made me suspect it wasn’t his first glass. He looked pensive, almost remorseful. Then he gave a small smile and shake of his head. “Our affair lasted the entire month she was here and by the time Mary-Beth returned from North Carolina … well, your mother was well and truly gone.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“She phoned me a couple of months later. She was pregnant.”
My eyes rounded as I paused my brandy glass at my lips.
“Harrison?” I asked.
My daddy nodded.
“Her fiancé agreed to raise the child as his own. But unfortunately, Mister Will Starling was killed in action before Harrison was born. I felt an obligation. After all, she was carrying my child. Of course, by this stage Mary-Beth had found out and, well … let’s just say that she removed herself from the equation.” He paused and the regret was deep in his face. “So, I married your mother.”
This wasn’t how I imagined my parents falling in love.
Did he even love her?
“Love came much later. Well and truly after my children were born. But it wasn’t the dizzying heights I had felt with Mary-Beth. It was through respect and compassion … an affection, if you will.”
“Did you regret marrying, Mama?”
“How could I? She gave me three incredible children.” His smile was close-lipped and contemplative. “I know she’d wished her Will Starling had come back from his tour and taken her away from it all. She had loved him dearly. She used to write him letters, even after his death. She showed them to me once, after a particularly nasty row we’d had. She said she wanted me to understand who she had become and why. So I sat on our bed and read every heartbroken word. One by one. About how unfair life had been to her dead beau. That he had died never knowing the true depth of her love for him. That she had betrayed him with another man because she had missed him so desperately and was so lonely with him gone. That my attention had only meant to be a brief distraction.” He looked regretful. “That she would give her life to have him back.”
I frowned. I couldn’t imagine living with that kind of regret.
Or that my cold mother was even capable of that kind of love.
“I asked her once, how she would look back on her life and do you know how she replied?” He watched me shake my head. “She looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘With regret, Jean-Jacques. With complete and utter regret.” They were her very words.”
In that moment I felt incredibly sorry for my mother. While my daddy was uncharacteristically empathetic.
“I knew how she felt,” he said simply. “I’d watched Mary-Beth marry a local man and raise a beautiful family with him. All the while regretting it wasn’t with me.”
My daddy had never opened up to me like this before. It was candid and completely unexpected, but honest and sincere. It was hard to imagine the formidable Jean-Jacques Montmarte as a young man desperately in love with a local beauty, and consumed by regret. His intimidating exterior belied his emotional past.