Page 95 of So Now You're Back
He put his fork down slowly, carefully. ‘Why?’
‘I had a Skype call with Lizzie and Aldo about an hour ago, and something’s not right at home.’ It was the absolute truth; her mother’s intuition was never wrong about this stuff. Well, apart from Lizzie’s anorexia that wasn’t, but she’d been under a lot of stress then.
Luke’s eyebrows rose up his forehead. She’d expected surprise, even irritation; they’d had an agreement, after all. An agreement that she was being forced to break. What she hadn’t expected was for him to look so stunned.
A tiny piece of her heart broke off inside her chest. She steeled herself against it. How easy would it be to fall for the man, the way she had once fallen for the boy? This was exactly why she needed to cut and run. Not that she was cutting and running; she had a perfectly good explanation for leaving early.
‘What’s wrong, exactly?’ he asked.
‘It’s, well …’ She scrambled around for a way to make her case convincingly. ‘It’s nothing specific. I just have a feeling that something’s not right. Lizzie was much perkier than usual. She asked me questions about the book tour. Which is not like her at all. She never shows an interest in my career.’
‘You told her you were on a book tour?’
Was that accusation she detected in his tone? ‘I had to think of something to explain a two-week trip. I told you why I couldn’t tell her the truth.’ Even if those reasons seemed a tiny bit spurious and self-serving now.
And, obviously, she should have come up with a much better cover story. But she wasn’t a fricking journalist. And she hadn’t expected Lizzie to suddenly become curious about her career after six long years of sulky apathy and seething resentment.
‘OK, what else?’ he said.
‘What else, what?’
‘What else is making you uneasy? Because I’m not seeing Lizzie being inquisitive about your career as a major problem here. Or not one that requires you to go hightailing it back to the UK four days ahead of schedule and break our agreement.’
‘Haven’t you got enough now for your article?’ she countered, struggling to suppress the sharp pain under her breastbone at his pragmatic response.
What had she expected? That he would beg her to stay? Of course the article was his main concern now. He’d got the only other thing he had wanted already—her agreement to let him contact her directly about Lizzie. Everything else—the hot sex, the candid conversations about their past, the growing sense of companionship and intimacy—had probably just been added extras to him, and not something that he obviously considered a top priority.
Luke had never been the hopeless romantic in their relationship. That had always been her … Which was exactly why she wasn’t going to be spending another night in his arms and risk losing her grip on reality.
‘We had an agreement,’ he said, his expression strained. ‘You want to duck out of it, that’s fine, if there’s a problem at home. But I’d like a bit more clarity on what exactly the problem is.’
Temper flickered under the hollow feeling of hurt. ‘Aldo was behaving weirdly, too. The two of them were suspiciously pally. And I didn’t get to speak to Trey.’
‘Who’s Trey?’
‘Aldo’s au pair. He’s twenty-one. Aldo adores him. And he’s very responsible and conscientious. I check in with him every time I ring or Skype them. Just to make sure there’s nothing wrong. But Lizzie cut me off before I could speak to him. I don’t even know if he was in the house.’
‘What did Lizzie say?’
‘Nothing, I didn’t get a chance to ask her about Trey. And when I rang his mobile, it went straight to voicemail.’
‘No, I mean, didn’t you ask Lizzie if everything was OK?’
‘Of course I did, and she said everything was great and so did Aldo. But that’s not the point …’
‘Then what is the point?’
‘You’re making me sound paranoid,’ she countered. He was doing that journalist interrogation thing again. Flustering her and making her sound stupid. ‘I’m not paranoid. I know when something is off with my kids.’
He covered the fist she had clenched on the table. ‘I’m not saying you’re paranoid. But is it possible you’re overreacting?’ She could almost hear him thinking about the anorexia-that-wasn’t-anorexia panic attack. ‘Lizzie’s eighteen, Hal. She’s a bright kid and she’s mature and sensible when she wants to be. Why do you think she and Aldo would be lying about everything being fine?’
She tugged her hand out from under his. Feeling badgered. And defensive. And patronised. She knew she’d made mistakes with her kids. Maybe she hadn’t always trusted Lizzie enough. And maybe she hadn’t always been one hundred per cent as honest with them both as she should have—certain phantom US book tours being a case in point. But she’d spent a lot more time with Luke’s daughter than he had. And he’d never even met Aldo.
‘You’ve never seen Lizzie and Aldo together,’ she said. ‘Lizzie may tell you how much she loves her little brother, but what I’ve seen in the past six years is a lot closer to Alien vs Predator than The Care Bears Movie. The two of them suddenly being best buddies would be fabulous if it were true. But I want to go home and check out what’s going on for myself.’
Even if I’m starting to sound totally paranoid to myself now, too. Thanks so much, Carl Bernstein.
‘And I don’t need your permission to do it,’ she added. ‘So I’m not even sure why we’re having this conversation.’