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“When I was fourteen, I went on a cruise with my family. My parents were arguing about something, I don’t even know what. But they sent my brother, Caiden, and me down to the pool while they worked things out. My mom told me to look after my brother, but I was distracted, and flirting with a girl. Caiden kept pestering me. ‘Hey, Nicky, look at this! Hey, Nicky, watch me! Hey, Nicky, are you gonna kiss that girl?’ I got mad at him, and I told him to go away. I just wanted him to go away for a few minutes and leave me alone. Ten minutes later, a swimmer pulled my little brother out of the deep end of the pool. He drowned. I was supposed to take care of him, but I didn’t. He drowned because of my carelessness. When my parents found out, for a split second, I saw this look in my mom’s eyes. I knew she blamed me even though she never said a word. She blamed me. It was my fault.”
Becca reached out and took Nick’s hand.
“I’m so sorry, Nick. That must’ve been horrific.”
Her words hung in the air between them, heavy and still.
“But you were only fourteen years old,” she said. “Who puts that kind of responsibility on the shoulders of a kid?”
Nick shook his head. “I was old enough to know better. I did know better. He couldn’t swim. But I never thought he’d go near the deep end of the pool.”
Nick still had nightmares of them pulling his brother out of the water. Twenty-one years later, and the image was still burned into his brain as if it happened yesterday.
“How long after your brother’s accident did your parents divorce?”
Nick leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, studying the grain in the hardwood floors. The song on the stereo changed to “Silent Night.”
How long had it been?
“Five, six months, maybe? I think they tried to make it work for me or maybe out of habit or obligation. In so many ways it seemed like they split the moment they found out about Caiden. My dad ended up moving out. I came home from school one day, and he was gone. My mom was a shadow of herself. She just went through the motions. She didn’t cry. She didn’t talk much. A year later she died. An aneurism. It was as if all her grief had bottled up inside her and exploded. God, I’ve never told anyone this before.”
“Not even your ex-wife?”
“Delilah and I were married for less than two years. She was too busy complaining about how many hours I was away from home to worry about something like this.”
They sat there quietly for a while. He felt her gaze on him, but he couldn’t look at her. He didn’t want to see the pity in her eyes.
Pity had been one of the worst things he’d had to deal with after they returned home, and all the neighbors found out.
Whispers and pity.
Their family is never going to be the same.
Oh, that poor Ciotti boy.
He was never really sure if they were talking about him or his brother. It had to be Caiden, because he knew he didn’t deserve any pity.
“Nick, it wasn’t your fault. You have to stop blaming yourself. And most of all, you need to forgive yourself. You were just a kid.”
It was all just one more thing that made him feel out of control of his life—babies on the way, a new town that had already sucked him into a way of living he wasn’t used to. But he should like it. He should love being part of something bigger than himself. He should welcome a reason to step outside of himself. He knew that.
This was Becca’s life. She was at the center of it all. Heart and soul and lifeblood. She thrived in the midst of friends and community and even family, no matter how dysfunctional she thought hers was.
Here he was, trying to be part of it, part of her life. But, really, he was standing on the outside looking in.
It seemed so much bigger than him. It was all coming at him so fast. When it came down to it, could he really give her what she needed to be happy? He wished he could. He wanted to. But she deserved better. Was it fair to her to hold on to her if he couldn’t give her all that?
He knew he could sit there all night banging his head against the proverbial wall and telling himself this life should be what he wanted, that he should feel lucky, but he just wanted to run.
He set his wineglass on the coffee table and stood up.
“Look, it’s late,” he said. “I need to go into the hospital tomorrow and check on some things before the wedding. I need to go.”
* * *
The next evening, Nick sat in the ballroom at Regency Cypress Plantation and Botanical Gardens waiting for the wedding to start.
