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The Compound looks picturesque from here. It’s a beam of light on top of a hill. It’s like a framed picture. My father would see this through all the seasons. He would watch leaves fall and snow pile up and flowers bloom. The Constantine Compound would stay the same.
I take another step in, and he turns his head a little toward the sound.
I wait.
He doesn’t order me out.
“Daphne,” he says.
“I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you sooner. About Emerson.” He doesn’t turn, so I go to stand next to him at the window. “Daddy? Did you hear me?”
He pauses, and I want to leave. Hide. But I don’t. I wait.
“My father chose for me.”
“He did?”
Frankly, it’s shocking. I can’t imagine my father ever letting anyone choose for him. Those five words explain a lot about his marriage to my mother and how unhappy they’ve been. And they add more questions.
“I wanted something I couldn’t have, and he didn’t allow it. He chose. And I did what I had to do for the family.”
I haven’t put much thought into my father’s childhood. Even his young adulthood. I never met his parents. They could have been like him.
They could have been worse.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t have what you wanted.”
A beat of silence. “I’m jealous of that prick.”
“You mean Emerson?”
“Yes.” A deep, exhausted sigh. “Emerson.” I didn’t know Leo had scars until I walked in on him. I didn’t know my father could have so much hurt in his voice until this conversation. He covers it in cruelty, but it’s a hiding place for pain. “He took what he wanted.”
He says this while he’s staring at the Constantine Compound, staring as if he can’t look away. As if he’s waiting for it to give him something.
A jolt of recognition shocks my spine.
My father spends most of his time in his office, looking at the home of his worst enemy.
Or maybe he’s looking at his obsession.
Maybe, for all these years, he’s been keeping watch over the thing he wanted but couldn’t have.
All the hair on the back of my neck stands up. My mother hinted at this. That he was obsessed with someone else. I don’t think it was a nameless, hypothetical person.
I think, from how sad and far away my father looks right now, that it might have been Caroline Constantine. He didn’t kidnap her. Didn’t steal her away for himself. He couldn’t.
And he regrets it.
His regret looks like anger.
“I’m sorry, Daphne.”
I’m so startled by the apology that I don’t say anything.
And then, because loneliness clings to him like a shadow, because he seems so alone, I slide my arm around my dad’s waist and step closer to him.
At my touch, he tenses. Almost a flinch. Tiny. Subtle. Another thing that reminds me of Leo.
We look at Bishop’s Landing together.
“Bring him to the house,” he says, after a long silence. “That bastard isn’t going to steal my daughter without shaking my hand. You’d better fucking believe it.”
