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On some level I knew they’d be worried, but this is something else. In a family like ours, this feels like love.
“I’m sorry,” I say to everyone.
There’s a cacophony of responses, but I can’t hear them over the buzz in my head. Dizziness washes over me. Shock? Maybe. Adrenaline? Probably. The room tilts, and there are arms to catch me.
My mother makes me sit next to her on a sofa for the better part of an hour. Eva sits on my other side. Dad takes a chair across from us, his expression fading from irritation at all the chatter to a distant, thoughtful look. Neither of them asks me about where I was, like they’ve agreed to avoid the topic. They talk about other things instead. My work in the gallery. A charity my mother is working with. Anything but the fact that I was missing.
At the end of the hour, my mother hugs me tight one more time. She drops a kiss to the top of my head and stands.
“I’m tired,” she says. “And I’m sure you are, too. It’s time for us to make our exit.”
“You can stay,” Leo offers, from the other side of the coffee table. “I have room.”
This is the first time he’s invited them to stay.
My mother shakes her head, smiling a little at the invitation. She goes to kiss Leo’s cheek, and she and my father say their goodbyes.
I walk with them to the front doors.
We’re almost there when Lucian calls out from the end of the call. “Dad. The Times wants a statement from you. Should I tell them to fuck off?”
My father turns back. “Give me a minute,” he says in our general direction.
My mother watches him go, and then her eyes are on mine. She reaches out, hesitant now that we’re alone, and touches my cheek. “You were with a man?”
It’s the first direct question she’s asked about where I was and what I was doing. The living room was about being together, not hard questions. I’ve always cared more about what Eva thought, and Leo, but now, with my mother—
“Yes,” I admit. “But it wasn’t how it seemed. At least not by the end. I wanted to be with him.”
“You know…” She frowns a little, and I wonder what’s going on in her mind. If she wishes she could paint. If she wishes she could do anything else. “Your father and I would have preferred you come to us first.”
“For what?”
“A man,” she says, as if it’s obvious. “We’d have found you someone suitable. Regardless, there’s no need to hide. We were all very worried.”
“I—” I’m sure Leo didn’t tell them I was hiding. But I’m tired. I don’t want to get into the details. “I don’t think you’d have found him very suitable.”
“Why not? Does he have enough money to support you?”
I can’t stifle my laugh. “He’s very wealthy, Mama. But he’s obsessed. With me.”
I expect her to react. Overreact, even. But my mother shrugs. “There are worse things in life than a man being obsessed with you, sweetheart.”
“Like what?”
“A man not being obsessed. Or rather—being obsessed with someone else instead.”
It feels like she’s talking about something specific. Something important. “What—”
My father comes back into the foyer, and my mother pulls me into a hug. “We’ll talk again soon,” she says. “Don’t run off again.”
The amount of hugging today is unprecedented. I love parties, but having everyone at Leo’s house like this is different.
It’s obvious that the formal living room has been the meeting place for my family while I was missing. Food waits on tables along the walls. Food, and flower arrangements. People sent condolences.
It’s a lot.
When my parents’ car pulls away, I turn the other direction and go to Leo’s den.
