Julia heard Ruby’s shout, “Who’s that man?” and Julia’s eyes closed in despair as she pulled herself free of her father’s hands.
“Julia, my dear, I know this is a surprise. I was stunned to get your mother’s letter telling me what happened to Gavin. So young, so full of life.” Her father was speaking to her and when she opened her eyes, she couldn’t meet his, couldn’t get a handle on her careening thoughts. His words were so inane, the kind of thing you’d say about someone you didn’t know.
But then, he didn’t know Gavin.
She caught Monique in her line of vision, the other woman’s face alight with vicious glee while she stood taking in the scene. After fifteen years, Monique knew that Trevor Fairfax had no place in his first family’s life and still she contacted him, invited him there, on Thanksgiving.
Julia’s bewildered panic began to give way to anger. She felt rather than saw Douglas position himself behind her, very close behind her. So close, she could feel the heat from his body. For some reason, this emboldened her.
“So full of life?” she whispered, as if to herself, emotions surging through her and she lifted her eyes to her father’s. Gavin would have likely looked like him, if he’d been given a few more decades, and that thought drove away all vestiges of panic and replaced them with blinding fury.
The likes of Trevor Fairfax, who could cheat on his wife and turn his back on his children, rarely seeing them, never paying child support, never giving them a kind word or a loving touch, could live happily into his sixties. But a good man like Gavin, who was full of love and fun and enjoyed life to its fullest, didn’t even make it to forty years of age.
At that thought, Julia’s rage exploded.
“How do you know what he was full of?” she snapped. “You hadn’t seen him in fifteen years, hadn’t sent a single Christmas card, hadn’t looked upon his children or ever met his beautiful wife! He could have been dying of cancer at the time of the accident, brought low with diabetes, had his legs crushed in a freak accident involving a tree,” she declared wildly, her voice rising.
She felt Douglas’s hand touch the small of her back and feeling it there gave her even more courage.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded hotly.
“Julia, I don’t think…” Monique started a reprimand but surprisingly it was Trevor who interrupted her.
With a look at his audience, his eyes showing nothing but polite irritation at her outburst, the very soul of the patient father, Trevor asked, “Perhaps we can have some privacy?”
“Yes, perhaps we should all go to the kitchen,” Charlotte offered quietly from somewhere behind Julia.
“No!” Julia cried, panicked, wanting her friends around her, feeling she couldn’t face this loathsome man alone, not without Patricia there, not without Gavin there. Tears began to fill her eyes, tears she resolutely refused to shed.
Douglas moved even closer. “Oliver, please take the women into the dining room and begin the meal.” His voice rumbled, so close, it sent vibrations down her back and her head twisted, her eyes flying to his.
Don’t leave me, she silently begged.
Douglas spared her only a glance before he said, “We’ll go into the library.”
She saw that Douglas’s eyes were blank, gone was the anger she had seen in his face earlier, gone was the teasing man she was with last night. Now, it was pure Douglas, unaffected and calm.
Even in the face of that, she felt a sense of relief that he said the word, “we”.
The others bustled quickly into the dining room, closing the door behind them as Douglas swung out his arm toward the library, cordially inviting them to move forward, the picture of the gracious host.
Trevor hesitated. “Could I speak with my daughter alone?”
Without hesitation, Douglas said simply, “No.”
It was said in his usual authoritative tone that brooked no argument. After uttering that one word, Douglas pressed his hand into Julia’s back, gently forcing her forward before she could see her father’s response and before her father could respond at all.
She preceded both men into the room, Douglas stopping considerately to allow Trevor to go in front of him and then turning to close the doors behind him.
Julia walked to the ceiling-high windows and surveyed the gardens. Although she knew in their full bloom they could be beautiful, now the formal and regimented beds had been put to sleep for the winter. They were nothing but borders and large circles of overturned dirt with enormous empty urns in the middle surrounded by still-green lawns. They were terraced with magnificent balustrades that led into a small, natural wooded area that gave way to graceful rolling fields where chocolate-faced, round, woolly sheep grazed. The sun was already beginning to set on this beautiful pastoral scene and the day, whose weather had veered from hazy to bright, was fading.
Julia saw none of that, her mind turning in circles and she had begun to shake.
She was shaking because her father was there, pretending to feel a grief there was no way on God’s green earth he could feel.
She was shaking because she knew Monique hated her enough to do this to her, on a special day, a holiday, for goodness sakes. It was never pleasant to acknowledge that someone hated you that much, especially someone with whom you were forced to live.
And she was shaking because even if Douglas was with her (and she was thankful that he was and she wasn’t going to try to process why, she just was), she still felt somehow alone. Thousands of miles away from her wise and dramatic mother who would know exactly what to say. And forever away from her beloved brother who would have known exactly what to do.
And she was just Julia, the weakest of the lot, and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to face this.
“Julia, you must know, regardless of our estrangement, it came as a great shock –” her father began but she turned and levelled her gaze at him, the look in her eye causing him to stop speaking.
He’d walked into the room and was standing not five feet from her, his face earnest, his eyes warm.
Her lip curled.
“Estrangement?” she broke in, her voice shaking. “What a convenient word. I thought it was called ‘abandonment’.”
Trevor’s head jerked in response as if she’d physically struck a blow.
“Of course,” Julia continued, ignoring her father, anger spurring her on. She turned her attention from her father to Douglas, who was standing with his shoulders against the doors and his arms crossed on his chest, regarding her with that bland expression on his face. “I may not have full command of the English language. I was born in a small town in Indiana to a mother whose parents were farmers, as were their parents before them. We’re just simple folk.” Her eyes swung back to her father. “I was not born to privilege. My mother was not heiress to a popcorn fortune who came complete with a trust fund, a five bedroom mansion and a fourth generation membership to the country club. My father was, of course, a well-known surgeon but I never saw him. He didn’t send me to private school and violin lessons and pay for college and graduate school. So perhaps I have it wrong. I suppose the genteel way is to refer to it as ‘estrangement’ but where I come from, we call ‘em as we see ‘em and we’d call it ‘abandonment’.” Her eyes swung back to Douglas. “What do you think, Douglas?”
“Julia, is this really necessary?” her father asked before Douglas could answer (not that he was going to answer). “I came to make amends, when things like this happen, you realise –”