Moonlight Over Manhattan(99)



“You’re thinking that I love her too, but I don’t. Honestly? I think there’s something missing inside me—” He put the gingerbread down untouched. “I don’t feel deeply anymore. I taught myself to switch off and detach and now I can’t switch it back on again. And Harriet deserves more than that.”

“So you’re not making this decision for you, you’re making it for her? Why don’t you let her decide what she needs?”

“I don’t want to see her hurt.”

“I’ve known you since you were a little boy and you’ve always been the same. Always first there to save anything injured or damaged.” Elizabeth reached across the table and took his hand. “I knew when I gave you your first Superman costume that you were going to try and save the world.”

“Yeah, well even Superman struggled to save the world and have a relationship. Relationships are complicated.”

“Anything that involves people is complicated. That doesn’t mean we should walk away. Have you talked to her about it?”

“No.” And he realized that while Harriet was constantly forcing herself to face challenges head-on, his own approach was less impressive.

He’d walked out.

Elizabeth smiled. “It seems to me, an honest conversation would be a good place to start.”

“You’re right.” He stood up, gave her a hug and walked out of her kitchen.

No matter how hard it was for him to say, and how hard it was for Harriet to hear, he needed to be honest.

Challenge Ethan.

HARRIET WOKE FEELING EXHAUSTED. She’d lain awake for half the night, thinking about what she’d said, and finally fallen asleep as the first fingers of light had poked their way through the trees.

The bed next to her was empty and cold, indicating that Ethan was long gone. For a moment she wondered if he’d packed and left, but then she saw his things strewn around the shelf.

She flopped back against the pillow, staring at the trees.

Way to go, Harriet. How to drive a man out into a blizzard.

He seemed to think that what he did, who he was, wasn’t compatible with love and family life. He blamed himself. Felt responsible. She disagreed, but it wasn’t what she thought that mattered.

You couldn’t make someone love you. That wasn’t how it worked. And a relationship between two people whose feelings were unevenly matched could only ever end in disaster. Feelings became a fault line, which would crack under pressure.

All her life she’d wanted love. To suddenly find it and know that it wasn’t returned was the most exquisite agony.

Was this how her father had felt? Had he lived through every day knowing that his deeply felt emotions weren’t returned? How hard must that have been to deal with?

It wasn’t an excuse, but it was an explanation.

Harriet realized there could have been any number of reasons why her father hadn’t loved her. Maybe she reminded him too much of her mother, the woman he loved so deeply and who didn’t love him back. Maybe loving deeply had hurt him so badly that he’d been afraid to love again, even a child. She didn’t know his reasons but what she did know was that his reasons had nothing to do with her. She wasn’t responsible for the fact that his feelings for her weren’t what she wanted them to be. If she could have gone back in time and spoken to the child she’d been then, she would have told her to stop trying so hard to please other people. She would have told her that life was hard enough without twisting yourself into knots trying to be someone you weren’t, or trying to live up to some ridiculous standard that you weren’t part of making.

Deciding that she was going to attend Elizabeth’s wedding even if she had to go by herself, she took a shower and dressed in the outfit she’d bought for the occasion. It was a wool dress with a high neck and narrow sleeves. It had looked good the first time she’d tried it on in the store, but now she’d had her hair cut it looked fantastic.

Ethan appeared as she was wrapping the gift she’d bought.

From the way he was dressed, it seemed that he’d been skiing.

“I’m sorry I disappeared early—” He closed the door against the blast of cold air and she smiled at him, forcing down all the emotions that tumbled inside her. Those emotions weren’t his problem. They were hers.

“It’s your vacation,” she said. “Of course you want to ski. Was it fabulous out there?”

He shrugged off his coat, his gaze fixed on her face as if he was trying to work out what was going on. “Perfect powder. And now I have less than eight minutes to get ready for the wedding.”

Which gave them no time for conversation.

And maybe that had been his plan.

Harriet looked at the snow clinging to his dark hair, the roughness of his jaw, the incredible blue of his eyes. She loved him so much it was hard to look at him and not want to tell him.

“It’s the perfect day for a wedding, and it’s not like we have far to go.” The wedding was taking place at Snow Crystal. A small wedding with family and friends in one of the barns on the resort.

It was a five-minute drive away, but they made it in good time.

Elizabeth and Tom stood side by side, hand in hand, exchanging vows they’d written themselves.

Watching them together, Harriet thought about all the time she’d wasted wishing her family could have been different. Her family would never have been any different. To build something strong, you needed solid foundations and her parents had lacked that solid foundation of love.

Sarah Morgan's Books