“You’re right,” she said, dropping her hands and straightening her shoulders. “The truth is, I didn’t tell you because you’re a bastard. That’s why.”
Kit leaned away from her. He wished he were sitting on her other side, where he could not see the ruined part of her face. “What did I do to deserve that?”
“It’s not so much what you’ve done. It’s what you are, Kit. What you’ve become. What’s been happening to you ever since Mom died.”
When Holly looked at Kit’s face, saw how carefully he was breathing, how pale he had become, she realized that she was asking too much of him, that she had to lead him through this one step at a time if she hoped to reach him in the end. “For God’s sake, Kit, we’ve behaved like strangers for years now. We barely spoke to each other back then. What would you have done if I’d come to you and said, ‘Dad keeps touching me’?”
Kit had no answer. He might have laughed at her. He might have told her not to be a fool. He might not have listened in the first place. He did not know what he would have done. “I don’t know,” he said.
Holly sat back and looked at him in silence. “Thank you,” she said after a moment. “That’s the only answer I would have accepted.”
They sat for a while. Then, “What about later on?” Kit said, the questions he’d assembled refusing to be dismissed. “When things got worse? If he really did what you say he did, why didn’t you come to me then? Or leave altogether?”
“You see? You say things like that, you call me a liar, and you wonder why I didn’t come to you.”
“Oh, please, Holly. Did you really expect me to accept this story without any doubts? He’s my father. I’ve never known him to do anything like what you’re claiming he’s done. Why should I believe you? Why should I disbelieve him?”
Holly put her hand on Kit’s arm. It was the first time either of them had touched the other in many months. “All right,” she said. “That’s fair. It’s natural for you to deny what I’ve told you. I denied it myself, for years, so I can’t blame you for doing the same thing. Which answers your question. I didn’t come to you when things got worse because I knew that if it came to a choice between him and me, you’d choose him. In fact, you did choose him, a long time ago. Why such a choice was necessary, I don’t know. I suppose it’s because of the kind of man he is. The more distance I put between him and me, the less chance I had of keeping you.”
Kit was ready with his next question. He knew that he had another choice to make and that he would not be able to make it until he had asked every last question, weighed every last answer, and hopefully found a way to walk out of this gazebo a whole and healthy man.
But before he had a chance to ask anything else of her, Holly said, “I also think that the only way to learn the really important things in life is to live them. People learn things best on their own, in their own good time. Which is another reason I never told you. I kept hoping you’d grow out of his shadow. He’s a bad man, Kit. I know that’s a childish word. It makes him sound like a little boy. But that’s what he is … bad. Maybe it’s not all his fault. Maybe the seeds were in his blood or in his upbringing, but he fed them, let them put down roots. Like you’re doing.” The tulips, Kit noticed, appeared to be nodding. He suddenly felt outnumbered. “But I think there’s still a chance for you,” Holly said. “That’s why I’ve told you all this. What he’s really like.”
Kit suddenly found it difficult to remember what he had meant to ask Holly. Nothing came to mind but a memory of sitting in this same gazebo with his mother at his side.
“It’s impossible,” he said slowly, turning the memory around until it showed him another way to defend both his father and himself. “It doesn’t make any sense. You can’t say things like this about Dad without questioning everything you know about her.”
“About who?” And for the first time Holly too looked afraid.
“Mom. You can’t honestly think she’d have married a monster. She was smart. She would have seen signs. She would have known if he was capable of such things, long before he ever did them. She never would have stayed with such a man. You may not remember her, but—”
“Not remember her! Christ! Shut up! Don’t you talk about her!” And suddenly Holly was swinging her arms at him, her hair flying in her face, the tears she must have been saving for years streaming down her cheeks. He grabbed her arms and held her against him, wanting to silence her, wanting to hurl her into the garden, and yet wanting to mend everything about her that was broken, wanting everything to be all right and not knowing how to make it so.
“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to quiet her. “I’m sorry.”
But something had come loose inside Holly, and although she no longer struck out at him she now threw back her head and bared her teeth and said, before she could stop herself for the millionth time, “She sailed those waters her whole life, but she headed straight into a storm, Kit. Alone. She chose to do that. She died because she did that. But if we didn’t have her body
