The Winters(38)

We were side by side on our knees, the closest we’d ever been.

“Yes! Of course you can. If your father says so.”

“I’m not asking him. I’m asking you.” She nuzzled Maggie’s neck, her eyes pleading. If I had known a kitten could create this détente, I would have arrived from the Caymans with a crate of them.

Max, ignoring this miracle happening between us, walked over to the pile of debris and poked his foot at the broken clay pots and the spilled dirt on the ground.

“I’ll clean all this up in the morning,” I said. “I promise.”

He turned to face me, his expression still livid. “Dani, take it out of here. Now.”

“Her name is Maggie, Dad,” she said, remaining next to me on the floor.

“I said take it and go.”

Dani looked at me for direction.

“It’s okay, Dani,” I said, trying to stay cheerful. “After I talk to your father I’ll bring you her things and some formula if you want to feed her tonight.”

Dani nodded. I helped her to her feet. When she and the kitten were well down the corridor, I turned to face Max, clearing my throat.

“Max, please let me explain. I would have brought her down to the boathouse sooner but—”

“You’ve been busy this week.” He sounded calm. “I’m gone three days and you take it upon yourself to fix a boat that wasn’t broken, and then you bring a sick animal into the only place on the property I don’t want people to enter. As you can see,” he said, his arm sweeping the room, his voice pitching louder, “this place is unsafe. The glass, it needs to be reset. Those frames, they’re all rusting out. In fact, that fan, that fan weighs at least fifty pounds. It could fall out of the roof at any time and onto someone’s head and you’ve been running around in here chasing a kitten? I don’t want anyone in here. Not you, not my daughter, not Katya, and certainly not that fucking animal!”

There was nothing about Max that I recognized in that moment, not his face, nor his tone of voice. Backlit by the moon and looming over me, he was a mere outline of the man I thought I knew. I froze, speechless. Sensing my fear, Max shook his head as though to break a spell.

“Oh God, I’m sorry,” he said. “The way I spoke to you just now. It’s . . . I haven’t been in here in a long time. Forgive me. Please.”

“It’s all right,” I said.

“Now give me the key.”

I passed it to him.

“Please. Leave me alone for a minute.”

I picked up the kitten’s things, her crate, her litter box. Before I left, I stole a glimpse of him through the dirty glass door. I’ll never forget how lost he looked, arms slack at his sides, eyes closed, head bowed slightly. Walking through the kitchen with tears running down my cheeks, I was torn between anger at the way he had spoken to me and sadness for a man I’d left alone in his dead wife’s most treasured spot, a place she created and loved. Smell is a talented time machine. I saw how Dani instantly remembered Rebekah. He’s also inhaling her memory, thinking back on a time when he might find her in there, wearing a straw hat, perhaps, white-blond tendrils falling around her shoulders. I saw them now, dappled by the sun, him sneaking up behind her, wrapping his arms around her. Unlike me, she’d be wearing gloves to protect her perfect white hands, and a dress, probably, something feminine and flattering, cinched at the waist. He’s kissing her neck and she’s smiling as she cuts a dozen roses for the table, blades glinting in the sun.

For every step forward I made at Asherley, I suffered several back. While the kitten had seemed to bring me closer to Dani, she had caused a rift between Max and me. Outside Dani’s bedroom, I heard cooing and giggling. I put down Maggie’s crate and took a moment to wipe the tears off my face. Then I knocked, listening as Dani skipped across the bedroom floor. When she opened it, I went to step inside, but she pushed me back with her body.

“Careful! I don’t want to let Maggie out,” she said, now through the crack in the door.

“Oh. But I brought you her stuff. Let me just—”

“I got her bottles and formula from the fridge. Just leave that outside the door. My friend Claire’s here and she knows how to take care of kittens.”

Over Dani’s shoulder, I saw her friend lying on her side on Dani’s bed, one arm aloft holding a string to taunt Maggie.

“Nice to meet you,” Claire called out, without lifting her head.

Dani gave me a bright, wide smile. “Okay, so, night-night,” she said, before shutting the door in my face. The silence was broken seconds later by the sound of teenage girls laughing.

I stood there in the gallery surrounded by a hundred triumphant Rebekahs.

Perhaps Maggie had done something cute to elicit those giggles. Perhaps they weren’t making fun of me at my most vulnerable. But Dani was cruel, and it was clear now that her happiness was achievable only in direct proportion to my sadness. Even if I were to look upon that moment between us in the greenhouse as an appeasement, it was only temporary, the price, this time, a kitten. When she grew bored of Maggie, then what would I need to throw at her to keep her at bay?

As for Max, I still loved him, felt it acutely that night in the empty spot in our bed. But when he had asked to be alone in the greenhouse, he was asking to be alone with her, and it was the only thing in the world I could truly give him.