I don’t know how long I sat, that thought echoing in my mind, how long I would have stayed had the phone not rung.
The shrill ring filled the cabin of the car, but I ignored it. But it rang again and then again until I finally answered it.
“What?” I barked into the phone.
As I listened, my anger fled, replaced with a different but no less crushing sadness.
“I’ll be there soon,” I said.
Anton
It had only taken fifteen minutes between the call and my arrival at the house. Five of that had been spent sitting in the car, wishing the past hours hadn’t happened, picturing how the day could have gone, me with Lily in my arms, the terrible knowledge I now carried not even on a ripple on the horizon.
But that was a fantasy, a life that wasn’t mine and never could be, so I got out of the car, went to face the reality.
Tense silence greeted me when I entered the house, a row of grim-faced men, all solemn, standing in the foyer.
I paid attention to only one. “Where’s Christoph Junior?” I asked Sandu.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I called him after you, but I didn’t get an answer.”
“Try again,” I said.
Then I went to the old man’s office—Christoph Junior’s office now. It should have felt different now, but it didn’t. I could imagine Christoph Senior walking through the door, setting me to work on one task or another.
But that wouldn’t happen ever again, and though I’d thought I was prepared, the clench in my chest told me I hadn’t been.
“Anton,” Sandu whispered.
I turned, looked at him questioningly.
“Mrs. Constantin asked me to send you to her when you arrived. She’s in his room.”
I nodded, and after a moment, I headed down the hall, wondering at this development. That wonder kept me from reflecting on the oddness of it all, of how, even now, everyone kept up the ruse. Pretended I was only a trusted adviser. Nothing more.
I found Adela in the chair that she had spent so many hours in. But rather than holding Christoph’s increasingly frail hand in hers, she simply stroked the plain white sheets that covered the mattress.
“I changed the sheets after they came to get him,” she said, not bothering to look up. “I don’t know why, though. Doesn’t change anything.”
“Adela, I’m sorry,” I said.
She looked at me then, the puffy redness around her eyes the only hint that she’d been crying. Her poise shouldn’t have surprised me, though. And it didn’t, not really. I’d expected no less from her. For all her flaws, I knew she was one of the strongest of us, wouldn’t give in to hysterics, sully her or Christoph Senior’s reputations, even in her grief.
“Why are you sorry? Because he’s dead?” she asked.
“Yes. And I’m sorry that you’re hurting,” I said.
“What makes you think I am?”
“I know you, Adela. No matter what happened between you and him, I know you loved him. And he did as well.”
She lifted one corner of her mouth, as close to a smile as she would ever get. “You always were a very clever boy,” she said.
Then she stood, faced me. “He loved you most of all the boys, you know.”
There had been a time when hearing those words would have given me the validation I had sought for years, but now, they left me empty. All that I’d ever know of him, I knew, and all that he would ever say to me had been said. Everything else was of no consequence. “I didn’t. But I knew you always hated me.”
“I did,” she said with a slight nod. Then she glanced off, pulled her brows together. “Well, I didn’t hate you. Not entirely. I hated what you represented.”
“And what did I represent? His unfaithfulness?”
She laughed, the sound a tired snort and not one of humor. “You’re intelligent. Don’t pretend otherwise, Anton. It won’t work. At least not on me. No, unfaithfulness was never my concern. He loved me in the way he knew how, and I did the same. Nothing so meaningless as…sex could come between us.”
“So why, Adela?” I found myself asking.
For years, I had imagined this moment, dreamed of finally getting the truth from her, but now that I confronted it, I realized what I felt was a vague curiosity, not the burning wonder that had propelled me for years. It seemed so small now, so insignificant. Especially when I thought of Lily, and of the things she made me feel.
“Every time I looked at you, I saw how Christoph smiled at you when you weren’t looking, the way his chest expanded with his pride when he spoke of you. Each was a little tiny reminder that our boys—my boys—would never measure up. And you, you were of him. Him and someone else. So my boys, their disappointments, were my fault. What else could it be? There was only one answer with you here, the cruelest reminder that another woman had given him the only son worthy of carrying his name.”