Bitter Spirits (Roaring Twenties #1)(49)

He used to be happy and fun to be around, Aida thought, remembering Astrid’s words. This was what she meant. This was the real Winter. She understood Astrid mourning him, if this was something she didn’t see much anymore, because Aida could think of no recent company she’d enjoyed half as much.

The only pause in their conversation came after the waiter cleared their plates away and promised to return with something for dessert. After a few moments of silence, Winter surprised her by saying, “I didn’t love her.”

She glanced up at his face. “Sook-Yin?”

“No, my wife.”

“Oh.”

“You told me I shouldn’t feel guilty about the accident, and I try not to. But that’s what still bothers me. I didn’t love Paulina when I married her, and she definitely didn’t love me.”

Was he really talking about this? She couldn’t believe it. She was scared to say anything for fear he’d stop, but he seemed to need some encouragement, so she gave in. “Why did you marry her, then?”

“I married her to please my mother, and I suppose I thought my feelings would deepen after the wedding. But we couldn’t even manage small talk, much less love. The more we grew apart, the more I helped my father out with the bootlegging, which only made things worse. She detested the bootlegging. Her family is Pentecostal—are you familiar?”

“The religious people who speak in tongues.”

“Holy Rollers,” he confirmed. “Paulina wasn’t active in the church when we met, but I suppose that I was so inherently evil, I made her long for fellowship. She tolerated my father’s bootlegging, but knowing I was out making deals after dark became a sin too big for her to ignore. She once told me she didn’t know which was worse—staying awake at night worrying I’d be killed, or finding out that I hadn’t been.”

“What an awful thing to say.”

“It made me never want to come home. I stayed out just to avoid her. She accused me of being unfaithful, which I never was, Aida—not once.”

“You don’t have to convince me.”

He scratched his neck and remained silent for a time, staring at the flickering candlelight on the table. “It’s not just that we made each other miserable, because we did. The worst part was that we wasted each other’s time. Several months of courting and a wedding that cost my family enough to shame William Randolph Hearst, only to find that we were complete opposites. She didn’t like rich food, sex, foul language, drinking . . . or jokes. I swear to God, I never once heard her laugh. Not once. I don’t think she even knew how.”

“She sounds delightful, Winter.”

“I—” He looked down at her in wonder, then laughed. “Yes, I suppose so. Those were all my favorite things, so she pretty much ripped the joy out of my life. Especially when she made the decision to go back to her church and started attending services every weekend. I thought it would make her happier, but the congregation just encouraged her to divorce me, because I was a known criminal.”

She waved around the luxurious dining room. “All of us are criminals. There’s not a dry table here. You’re Robin Hood, taking back what the government took away—not Jack the Ripper.”

He crossed his arms and rested them on the edge of the table. “Regardless, I should’ve just let her go. I’m not sure why I didn’t. I think maybe I saw it as a failure, and that was unacceptable. So we had a bad fight, and I told her divorce was impossible, that I’d never let it happen.”

“What did she do?”

“Nothing. That was two weeks before the accident.”

“Oh.”

“If I would’ve just let her leave, she wouldn’t have been invited to her aunt’s dinner, and her family wouldn’t have tried to tell us that we were going to hell, which was the thing that spurred my father’s last fit. So that’s why I feel guilty—because even though I didn’t love her, I refused to let her go. If I had, everyone would still be alive.”

The waiter returned with some sort of sponge cake and more wine. She waited until the man left, then said, “I can understand why you’d feel that way. I probably would, too, if I were in your shoes. But you can’t continue to pummel yourself. You can’t let one moment in time define you for the rest of your life.”

“Easy to say, harder to do.”

“Paulina made the decision to marry you. You didn’t hold a gun to her head.”

Winter toyed with the stem of his wineglass. “No, but I might as well have done that when I didn’t let her leave.”

“She had two feet and a mind of her own. If she wanted to leave, she could’ve walked out the door.”

“Not every woman thinks like you.”

“Which is a damn shame, to be sure, but you can’t be held responsible for her character defects. Nor can you spend the rest of your life allowing human mistakes to mold your future.”

“Yes, well—”

“Nothing is more important than right now. This moment.” She tapped the table with her fingernail. “Not what happened yesterday. Not what will happen tomorrow. You once asked me how I could be happy moving from place to place, and that is the answer. I live for the moment. I enjoy what I have, not what I’ve lost. Not what I don’t have yet.”