I swallowed. Took a sip of water. Everyone was staring at me expectantly, so I went on with my story. “When the pompiers arrived—the fire fighters—my parents, and several other unlucky souls, had to be cut out of their cars. It was such a terrible scene of destruction. It was all over the news in Europe.” I cleared my throat, took several gulps of wine and realized I’d given way too much detail and had made my guests uncomfortable. I felt as if I was failing and almost wished I hadn’t spoken at all. I stole a glance at Ashton to gauge his reaction. I so wanted—and needed—to say the right thing. To not alienate his friends, his colleagues.
The room lost its warmth and people shuffled their shoes under the table, or fiddled with their napkins.
“I’m so sorry,” Michael was the first to say. His dark eyes cast down, he stared at his plate and winced, mortified, it seemed, that he’d initiated this conversation.
“Thank you,” I murmured, squirming in my chair.
Then everyone else mumbled their “So sorry for your loss” and, “I had no idea.”
“C’est la vie, no? Or in English we translate that as, ‘Life sucks,’” June offered, giving me a pitying smile. Her nonchalant attitude rubbed me up the wrong way. I wondered why silver-screen-handsome Michael was dating her—or were they married?
Ashton leaned over, held my hand and whispered in my ear. I looked at him with tears falling from my eyes prompted by what he’d just told me.
There was a strange silence. Nobody dared speak. But I could tell that everyone in that room wanted to know what my husband had said to me.
His words pulled me into a dark place.
Ashton and I made passionate love that night. I wanted to stay strong, stay focused on the positive. Marriages are whatever you let them be. My marriage was a turning point in my life and there was no way I was going to jeopardize everything I’d worked so hard to create. I needed Ashton. I had to make this marriage work.
Whatever the cost to my soul.
Three
Sundays with Ashton were my favorite. That domestic bliss when you’re in the same room doing whatever you’re doing and you don’t have to say anything to each other. You just are. But when you’ve only been married six months—still just newlyweds—there is still so much discovering to do. Who is this man I’ve married? What makes his mind tick?
We had done things the old-fashioned way. No living together first. I suppose I didn’t want to entertain any possibility of failure, and by living together first so much could go wrong. Of course, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Checking to make sure you’re right for one another for a couple of years before really committing? But we had gone in headfirst. I wasn’t someone who’d had a string of beaux trailing behind me before I got married. I knew Ashton was the only one for me the second I met him.
Ashton looked up from his paper, glanced at me and smiled, then went back to reading. We were in one of the parlors, sipping iced tea… Georgia-May’s secret recipe, with a dash of maple syrup and sprigs of fresh mint. It was too hot outside today, so the laziness of the sultry heat had chased us inside. The weather had been up and down. Just yesterday we’d had a rainstorm.
A pastel portrait of Georgia-May stared down at me with her pale blue eyes, as if to say, Perhaps you made the tea too sweet, my dear? Too much syrup? I hope you’re doing right by my son. Are you living up to my expectations? Oh, and by the way, don’t let me down. Isn’t that pretty much a given, that you’ll let your mother-in-law down? I could feel it in my bones: dread, like a long frosty winter staring ahead of you, nipping at the windows of my soul, trying to weaken me, to make me slip up.
I was curious about their mother-son relationship, because Ashton never visited Georgia-May in her care home, and I wondered why. Whenever I asked, he used work as an excuse, or say something like, “Honey, I’d rather spend what little free time I have with you.” There was some underlying history there between them, I knew.
Today I had Ashton all to myself, and felt covetous of my time with him. Sometimes he might be whipped away unexpectedly to the hospital. Neurosurgeons like Ashton did not grow on trees. I had learned, as the wife of a doctor, you not only have to share but take a back seat where patients are concerned. It’s a lesson in humility. You can never believe you are number one because you’d be kidding yourself.
“Why are you smiling to yourself?” I asked, also smiling.
“Busted.” Ashton looked up from the article he was reading. His brown eyes held a glint of mischief.
“What’s so funny?”
“Are you ready? Something tells me you aren’t.” His smile lifted into a grin.
“Ready for what?”
“The test.”
“What test?”
“The test of true courage.”
“I’m a lot more courageous than you think,” I told him. “I’m tougher than you, probably.”
He roared with laughter.
“I am. I’m a strong woman. I’ll surprise you one day, you watch. What are you reading about? Bungee jumping or something?”
“They’ve spotted her again. One thousand and ten razor-sharp pounds of her, roaming the shipping channel jetties near Charleston.”
“Who?”
“Twenty miles offshore.”
My heart missed a beat just thinking about it. “Not that shark again?”
“She’s a true beauty. You see, when they satellite-tag white sharks we get such important tracking data. Discovering more about where they mate and give birth and their migration patterns is important. It’s been discovered that great whites use the East Coast as a type of highway from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. And this particular shark, Pearl White… well, we’ve learned so much about her lifestyle.”
I chuckled. “Lifestyle? You make her sound like an Instagram star.”
“She is. She’s got a lot of followers.”
I shivered. “Sharks scare me.”
“Why?”
“Ever heard of the film Jaws?”
“Peter Benchley once said he wished he’d never written that book. He’s done a lot for sharks and oceanic conservation since. You know getting in a car is a hell of a lot more dangerous than swimming in the ocean?” Ashton’s face turned serious, suddenly aware of what he’d just said. He leaned over and stroked my hair. “Sorry, Vivien, I didn’t mean to make you think about your parents again. That was a tactless remark.”
I shook my head. “It’s fine.”
This shark hobby Ashton had I found disconcerting. There was nothing more powerful than a great white. Is that what he valued above all else? Power? The unknown? The fearful? He had made friends with a non-profit organization that tracked these apex predators and had even gone on a couple of expeditions. It was a charity he supported financially, too. He also went diving whenever he could, especially up the coast, to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, to a place where there were more than three thousand shipwrecks known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” where sand tiger sharks had made their home. For some reason, Ashton was absolutely fascinated with all types of sharks.