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“Scary?”
“Massively efficient. Competent. Driven. No flaws. And she dominates inner Samantha, which is a shame.”
She ran her finger over her glass. “So there isn’t an inner and outer Brodie?”
“There probably was at one time, but they merged.”
“I wish I was more like you.” She leaned back against the sofa, nursing her glass. “As for my meltdown tonight—I think it’s been coming for a while. Ella leaks emotion all the time, but I store it up inside where no one can see it.” She took a sip of wine. “I built a life that didn’t have my mother in it, and then suddenly she’s back in it. Only it’s complicated, because my sister didn’t tell our mother she was married, or that she had a child, or that she’s currently at home and not working and I’m expected to remember who knows what about who at what point, and that is blowing my brain. And now, tonight, I discover that apparently my father didn’t die the way my mother said—I mean he did die, but only after she’d left him because he was abusive.”
“That’s—” He adjusted his glasses. “I’m starting to understand your need to escape.”
“I can’t even tell you why I’m upset—it’s all a tangled mess. But I feel like a bad daughter for not entertaining the possibility that there might have been more to my mother’s story. I feel selfish.”
“You’re not a mind reader, Samantha. Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself?”
“I don’t think so. I thought she was this tough, ruthless workaholic, but it turns out that she became that way because she had to. And then there’s my father—I had this image of him in my head. I’d sometimes picture him taking me to the park, or reading to me, or visiting me in my office. Being proud. And tonight that image was shattered forever. And I feel as if I’ve lost him, which makes no sense at all because all I’ve lost is the false pictures I painted for myself. Does this make any sense?”
“Perfect sense. You didn’t have a father, so you imagined one.”
“And boy did I get it wrong. Actually, maybe I don’t want to talk about it.” She sat up. “I thought I did, but I don’t. Just for tonight I’d like to forget the whole thing and pretend I’m a normal person, with a normal family.”
“That exists?”
“I want to think it does.”
“Fine.” He stretched his legs out and together they stared at the view. “Family gatherings often have an interesting dynamic. I remember the year my uncle Finlay—he wasn’t really my uncle by the way, more a friend of the family—arrived with his twenty-two-year-old girlfriend.”
“Was that a problem?”
“It was a big problem for his wife, who he’d left at home. She turned up in the afternoon and we had to smuggle the girlfriend out of the house.”
Samantha laughed. “We didn’t really do Christmas when we were kids. You probably gathered that, as you’ve already had to intervene to save Santa’s reputation. Thank you for that, by the way.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Did any of that fancy math actually make sense?”
“Not a word of it.”
She grinned, finished her wine and put the empty glass back on the table. “That’s good. Is there more?”
“More? I—yes. Yes, there’s more.” He grabbed the bottle and filled her glass again. “You’re thirsty.”
“More trying to numb myself.”
“Should I try and stop you?”
“Why would you stop me?”
“Headache. Lowering of the defenses. Potential liver damage in the long term. What? Why are you laughing?”
“I love the way you spell out the facts with no filter.”
He emptied the rest of the bottle into his own glass. “I should keep quiet?”
“No, because it turns out that the only thing that distracts me from my crazy family is you talking. The wine isn’t doing it.” She sighed. “Take my mind off it, Brodie.”
“Me?”
