‘I couldn’t protect her.’
‘How do you think you failed her?’
‘I… I wasn’t a strong swimmer. I panicked,’ he admitted. ‘She drowned.’
‘Her death,’ she said. ‘It made you believe you had to save everyone?Protect them?’
‘Yes.’ His teeth gritted. ‘I grew up, Anna, believing it was my job to protect everyone. I created an environment wheremypeople knewIwould look after them. They were not scared to ask for help.’
‘Areyouasking for help now?’
Konstantinos’s jaw turned to granite. ‘All my life, I never asked for help.’ His fingers curled around the ends of the armrests.
Anna stayed silent. Let the weight of Konstantinos’s words hang in the air. Until everyone felt it. The unbearable weight on his shoulders.
A broken sound fell from Poppy’s lips.
‘My father was a man who did not allow for weakness,’ he explained. ‘Image was everything. His reputation… He was in control of all things. Hekeptcontrol of everything in any way he could. He taught me to do the same. To be strong. I was taught emotion was weakness. I had to bury my—my feelings. Or…’
‘Or?’ The single-worded question was soft, not demanding. It encouraged Konstantinos—the audience—to believe it was just him and her. The talk show a safe place to confess.Everything.
‘If I let myself feel…if I let myself cry—grieve—for my mother…it would make me weak. And weakness was death. When my son died, I did the same. I did not cry. I did not grieve. I was everything I was taught to be.Strong—’ His voice broke and so did something inside Poppy.
‘I’m sorry you lost your mother, Konstantinos.’
‘I am, too,’ he said thickly.
‘And your son,’ she added. ‘I can’t imagine. I’m so sorry.’
Poppy held her breath.
‘I pretended his death meant nothing,’ he admitted roughly. ‘But it was…everything.It took the separation from my wife for me to realise how much pain I was in.’
Tension corded his throat.
It curled around her heart and held it.His slip. He’d called her his wife, not his ex.
It wasn’t over for him, either.
Anna caught it too.
‘Your wife?’ she asked, so gently did she guide him.
‘Poppy,’ he said.
‘Tell us about her?’
‘I hurt her,’ he confessed. ‘My inability to grieve. To feel… I wanted to be strong for her. Strong in all the ways I hadn’t been able to be for my mother. I needed to protect my wife. But I couldn’t stop Isaak from dying. I could not take away her grief. And, however illogical, I blamed myself for the death of our son. I blamed myself for my wife’s grief.Her pain.’
‘Do you still blame yourself?’
‘I will work through this, Anna, with a therapist.’ Lips compressed, Konstantinos shook his head. ‘But I understand now, to confront the irrationality of my thoughts I need to be honest. I am not okay, Anna. I am grieving.Deeply. For my mother. For my son. For the end of my marriage. I am grieving for the marriage I could have had.’
Anna didn’t hit him with a follow-up. She waited for him to carry on, to tell his truth and for the world to hear him. To see this powerful man own his feelings. His mistakes. His regret.His grief.
And it was powerful. Poppy could feel it insidethatstudio. Inside the room with her.
‘Poppy, she is stronger than I could ever be. She isn’t afraid to feel. She is not afraid to let the world know how deeply she does. She does not care about image or reputations.She loves. And to love is sometimes pain, but it’s the root of everything…good. I want to do good in the world,’ he told Anna. ‘I want my son’s—Isaak’s—death to change me for the better. I want to feel all the things I have never let myself feel. I want to grieve. I want the world to know I—I love him.’
