“Yes,” he said softly. “She was a tomboy princess. She liked baseball and digging tunnels for toad crossings and tea parties and playing princess. And theMadelinebooks.”
“A well-rounded little girl. She sounds lovely.”
“She was.”
There was a long silence. Elizabeth could feel his heartbeat, always so steady, quicken. His breathing became a little uneven and his grip tightened on her hand.
“We always spent summers here.Always.But my father had some business to tie up, and a friend’s daughter was getting married, so all of us were in England for a week in July. I was angry and unhappy about it. All of my cousins werehere, and all the summer kids were around. I was sixteen, and there was no place more wonderful than here.” He swallowed and grew quiet.
Elizabeth lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his fingers. He opened his eyes and gazed at her. She could barely stand the pain she saw in them. Her eyes filled.
“My mother wasn’t happy either. She…she’d grown to hate England. It had become too formal, too mannered for her. She wanted to move back to New York permanently.” He swiped at his eyes and sighed.
“We were staying at our country house and the weather was dreadful, so she decided to take Georgie to London for the day. She wanted us all to go, but I…well, you can imagine my feelings. I just wanted to sulk in my room with my headphones on. She argued with my father, and then I decided to go.”
He took a deep breath and began speaking rapidly. “She’d been drinking. I knew how to drive—I’d drivenhere—so I took the keys, and I forced her to letmedrive.”
Oh God.
“And Georgie was crying, and my mother was on her phone and I…I decided to turn around and take them back to the house. And I was backing out of this little road, and I looked the wrong way. There was a delivery truck. I didn’t see it. I was confused because I’d driven here and it’s the opposite there?—”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Elizabeth wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him tightly to her. She felt his breath hitch and a shudder run through him. She felt useless; she had no idea what words she could say. So she said all that came to her. “I love you. I’m so sorry.”
He pulled away slowly and looked at her, his cheeks streaked with tears. “I hated myself.”
“No! You were trying to help, to be responsible.”
“Right.” He sighed, then suddenly stood up and strode over to the window. “I haven’t told you everything. Some of it is…” His voice faltered. “She, my mother, survived the accident.”
Elizabeth gasped. She watched as he slumped against the wall and slid down to sit on the thick Persian rug. He drew up his knees and leaned back against the wall.
“I helped pull her out of the car. Her injuries were awful, but she hung on for nearly a week.” He said it so quietly that Elizabeth barely heard the words. She slipped off the sofa and crawled over to him. She reached for his hand; it was warm and soft and gripped hers hard. “She was so weak with grief she could barely move. And after she died… She had held us together as a family, but with Georgie gone and then…we weren’t a family any more. So I came here as soon as I was of age to be away. He…my father, couldn’t look at me. Hehatedme. I left him in England, and a few years later, he died.”
“He couldn’t have hated you. You were a boy, trying to help.”
He half laughed. “Help? I didn’t help. I killed them. I?—”
“No, you took the wheel because you were trying to help your mother, to stop her from hurting someone.”
“Yes. I was amazing at it,” he said bleakly. “There are levels of fucking up. You can’t fuck up much worse than I did.” Darcy swallowed and looked away from her. He shook his head and asked in a hushed, pained voice. “How can you blame him for hating me?”
“How? He was yourfather. Few of them are perfect, but he was wrong.Horriblywrong.”
Elizabeth maneuvered herself between Darcy’s knees and leaned against his chest. “A few months ago, you told me just outside this house that I shouldn’t heap blame on myself and shoulder all the responsibility when bad things happen.” Elizabeth caressed his cheek. “You were right then. You learned that lesson from experience.”
He looked at her, his eyes misty and sad. Elizabeth smoothed her hand over his furrowed brow and kissed it.
“Your father blamed himself but couldn’t say it to you or even acknowledge it to himself.Hemade the decision to have you all in England when none of you wanted to be there.Your mothermade the decision to take Georgie out for some fun.” Elizabeth paused and took a deep breath. “They fought, she drank, and all you did was try to be the responsible one. Nothing you did was deliberate. It was all done with the best intentions, more than most teenagers I know.”
“I couldn’t have made it any worse than it turned out,” he whispered.
“That’s not true,” she said fiercely. “You’rehere. Nothing could be worse for me than if you weren’t.”
His eyes flickered up to hers, and he leaned toward her. Their lips met, soft and salty. She pulled her mouth away and whispered words of love. She kissed his eyes, his nose, his cheeks, and chin.
“Come with me.” She stood up, grasped his hand, and led him outside into the starry night.
“Lie down.”
