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“Let’s sleep on it,” he said again. “And see your mother tomorrow.”
“I never want to see her again,” she said with all the venom that had grown since she was eight years old. Since her father began to hate her because of what her mother had done. “She’s made her bed and now she can lie in it with him.”
* * *
The daywith Xandros had been the most amazing of her life. They pledged themselves to each other all over again, and this time, it wouldn’t end. Both divorced, they were free. They could be together now.
As soon as she told Sienna the truth.
He kissed her goodbye at the top of the villa steps. Angela didn’t want to leave him, but she had to talk to Sienna. It was long past time.
He rested his forehead against hers. “No matter how hard it is, remember I love you. I have always loved you, and I will go on loving you for the rest of my life.”
Tears pricked her eyes. “I love you too. I’ll make it all okay.” But what if she couldn’t?
Before she changed her mind, she dashed down the stairs. She owed Sienna the truth.
Opening the French doors, she called out, “Hello?”
The villa was silent. She headed out the gate of her unit and opened the one to Carter’s, taking the steps tentatively, her nerves getting the better of her.
They were all on the patio, drinking beer or spritzers or wine. She tried to sound bright. “How was your day?”
Sienna and Carter weren’t with them.
“It was great,” Tamryn said with a smile so beatific it scared Angela. The girl never smiled without a hidden meaning.
“I was looking for Sienna.”
Irene waved a hand. “She went off somewhere with Carter. They didn’t say when they’d be back. Did you try her phone?”
There’d been no answer. “Could you call Carter, just so I know where Sienna is?”
Tamryn clucked like an old woman. “Okay, Mom,” she said with an annoying drawl.
Then she called Carter. At least Angela thought she did.
“Wow!” she exclaimed, eyes wide with feigned surprise. “He doesn’t answer. Isn’t that weird?” Her phony tone grated on Angela’s nerves.
Tamryn said to the rest of them, “Did they say where they were going?”
After a lot of headshaking, Angela asked the question she was afraid of. “Did anything strange happen at the beach?”
“Not much,” Tamryn said with a nonchalant shrug. “We were talking about our ages, our birthdays. Stuff like that. Come to think of it, she got all weird and ran off.”
That sunset in Oia, Tamryn had pointed at her with the Grim Reaper’s bony finger. Angela knew deep in her gut that Tamryn had figured it out even then. She’d been probing when she asked about birthdays.
Almost with glee, Tamryn added, “We both thought it was strange that you were here just the summer before.” She finished her spritzer, smiled. “I’m getting another. Do you want one?”
She could hate this girl. Yes, she’d hated Donald, but she’d never felt quite this level of rage. Her eyes burned with it, and her body trembled.
Yet it wasn’t about Tamryn. It was about what she’d done from the moment she left Xandros thirty-one years ago. She should have told her mother to take a flying leap. She should have walked into Donald’s office and called off the wedding. She should have gotten right back on a plane and flown to Xandros. She should have trusted him. She should have believed in him.
She should have told him she was pregnant with his child.
* * *
She called him,talking in a frenzy he could barely understand. It could mean only one thing. The talk with Sienna had gone badly.
