Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [56]
“I felt more like coming home to bed instead of going to the performance,” she said.
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. Because we had tickets.”
Michael grabbed a contractor’s report and tore it in half. “This is what I would have done with the tickets,” he said.
“That’s really great, ripping up your report,” she shrieked.
“Why should you care about my fucking report if I don’t?” Michael threw the pages down; they skidded across the sideboard into the wall.
“When did this start? How long have you felt this way? Can you tell me exactly?” Her ears rang, making the words echo.
“I think it hit me when we got to Paris. Back in New York I just blamed it on your family. I thought you were giving them everything you should have been giving me.”
“Like what?” Lydie asked.
Michael leaned toward her, grabbed her upper arms so hard she gasped. “Words, Lydie. Your mother’s the one you call to talk about your father. I loved him too—do you ever think of that? When he died …” Michael closed his eyes and stepped back. He swallowed hard.
“What?” Lydie asked, suddenly terrified.
“When your father died, all I wanted was to comfort you, to help you through it.”
“But you did, Michael.”
“I wanted the same from you. Remember how he used to say I was like the son he never had? We were close too, Lydie—apart from you. But you were the one who brought us together.”
“He loved you,” Lydie said, reaching out to stop a tear from rolling off Michael’s cheek.
“That ride we took? The day before he died? I saw how unhappy he was. I should have known. I’ve always believed that—that he was trying to tell me what he was going to do.”
“You couldn’t have stopped him,” Lydie said.
“No?” Michael asked, looking at her. “You know, you’ve never said that to me before.”
Because we don’t talk about it, Lydie wanted to say but couldn’t. She held her face in her hands and wept.
“You always turned to your mother,” Michael said. “I understood that, or I tried to. At least at first. You two were always together; you left me out of it. You didn’t care how I felt, and you never let me take care of you.”
“That’s not true,” Lydie whispered, knowing as she said it that it was.
“It is,” Michael said. “It is.” Having said that, he let out a long sigh that sounded to Lydie like relief.
“Then what happened?” Lydie asked, dreading to hear.
“Well, we moved to Paris. And over here you have Patrice.”
“That’s different,” Lydie said.
Michael stared at her. “You don’t even know. This is coming as a big shock to you, isn’t it?”
Suddenly his tone was tender. Lydie nodded, and tears filled her eyes again. “You’re talking about togetherness?”
“I’ve been thinking of it as—I don’t know. Romance.”
Romance, Lydie thought. Wasn’t it ironic that her greatest fear before marrying Michael was that marriage, years of it, would dull romance? The heart-in-the-throat sort she had felt while courting? Then, after marrying him, she discovered that what she had called “romance” was, in many ways, fear. Fear that he wouldn’t call. Fear that he would love someone else. Fear that he would leave. Marriage had taken all that away.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, the clear realization spreading like an anesthetic. It gave her strength and made her mean. “Are you saying you want to fix it or you want to end it?”
Michael stared at her. “I don’t know,” he said.
Then it came to her: his sun-lightened hair, his absences, everything. “Are you having an affair?” she asked.
“I care about someone,” he said.
“Michael,” Lydie said. She had always believed, even before knowing Michael, that her husband would always be faithful, that she would leave him if he were not. She would do what her mother should have done: leave the bastard before it was too late. She gazed into his eyes, which were sad, full of pain. “Brown eyes” did not begin to cover them. Their color was so warm, chestnut or sienna, flecked with black and gold. They made all his expressions seem more dramatic. His excitement appeared more vivid than other people’s, his sadness hurt more.