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Alexandros had been stewing all evening and barely waited for the door to shut them into seclusion before saying, “I can’t believe you told my family you don’t think I’m an attentive husband.”
The laugh his comment startled from his wife was anything but amused. “Are you trying to claim that you are?”
“When have I ever neglected you?” he demanded in a driven tone. “Would you look at me when we’re talking?”
She lifted her head, her blue eyes shadowed by fatigue not anger. “When haven’t you?” she asked.
“I am not a neglectful husband.”
“If you say so.” She let her head fall back against the headrest and closed her eyes.
“It’s not even worth arguing with me over?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are very few things I find worth arguing with you over anymore, Alexandros.”
When she used to argue about everything, screaming when he would not listen. She hadn’t even argued over her refusal to bring their daughter to the family dinners.
Pollyanna had simply pointed out in a very reasonable tone that since Helena was usually in bed by the time they ate, keeping her up was not conducive to the baby’s well-being. She’d added that Athena and Stacia wer
e welcome to visit during little Helena’s awake hours.
She hadn’t mentioned his brother because Petros had made an effort to spend time with his sister-in-law and then his niece from the very beginning, the only person in Alexandros’s family who had accepted Pollyanna’s joining the family without any reservations. He and Corrina now came to Villa Liakada to visit once a week, frequently opting to stay the weekend and fly back into Athens on Sunday evening with Alexandros and Polly for the family dinner.
Petros and Corrina had made their visit midweek this time around however.
Though their daughter, Helena, was now three, she was still too young to be kept up. Alexandros and Pollyanna had yet to revisit the issue.
“Why didn’t you ever suggest that my mother change our family gatherings to the midday meal so our daughter could be included?” he asked.
“Why would I? I have no sway with your mother. She’s not my family.” The last was said with absolute certainty.
But it was not true. His mother was her family. Only clearly, Pollyanna did not see it that way. Had Pollyanna refused to accept the connection, as he had always assumed, or did that lack lay at his mother’s door?
Had he made too many concessions to his mother because of her emotional fragility and too many demands of his wife because of the strength he knew she possessed?
Emotional self-analysis was not something he was comfortable with, but he was beginning to see that so much he had taken for granted was not as he believed it to be.
“Did you expect me to make the suggestion?” he asked her, trying to understand a relationship he had thought he had figured out perfectly.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Did you make it?” she asked wearily.
“No.” He had never even thought of changing a long-standing tradition until just that moment and was a little ashamed of that fact.
Not only would his daughter have gotten to spend more time with her yia-yia, but the more casual setting of lunch would have been easier on his wife. Though she’d never said so.
“Then?” she prompted, with little interest lacing her tone.
Having no answer and not even sure why he’d brought it up, he admitted, “I don’t like you telling my brother he’s a better husband than me.”
“I would never presume to comment on how good a husband your brother is.”
“You said he was more attentive and considerate than I am.”
“If those are the traits by which you measure good or bad, you might take issue, but we both know you don’t.”
