“What?”
He put his hands on his hips. “I always knew it, but I didn’t get what it meant. I never realized how it affected everything.”
She sank onto the bench and stared at him. “You’re acting crazy.”
“I’m not. I’m right, aren’t I?” He moved closer, then sat a few feet away and faced her. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Us and what went wrong.”
“You cheated.”
“Yeah, but it’s more than that. You’ve been mad at me for years. Because of how I acted. Because you had to be the grown-up in the relationship. I loved you, Rach, but I wasn’t ready to be a husband or a father. But there I was—playing at both.”
“Leaving me with all the work,” she grumbled.
“You’re right. I did leave you with everything. You couldn’t depend on me to support you the way you needed. And you sure wouldn’t ask for help. That’s the part that gets me. Why didn’t you ask?”
He paused, as if waiting for an answer. Not that she had one. She’d liked the conversation much better when they’d been talking about his flaws rather than hers.
“Do you think it’s about your dad dying?”
“What?” she yelped. “Leave my father out of this.”
“I know it was hard for you when that happened. You missed him, and your mom depended on you to take care of things. There was so much responsibility for you. So much more than you were equipped to handle. But you couldn’t ask for help.”
How had he figured this out? She searched for an escape, but there was only her car and he still had her keys. It wasn’t as if she could simply limp away.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” she told him.
“You had to do everything,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “There’s a part of me that thinks you really like doing everything. I’m not sure if it’s a control thing or being the one who’s right or something else. But like today. You could have asked a dozen people to go get the drinks, but you didn’t. You had to do it all yourself, even with your back hurting.”
Tears threatened, but she blinked them away. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Humiliation burned, but so did determination. And the latter was going to win.
“Or with us,” he continued. “You should have reamed me a new one, but you didn’t. You simply endured my bad behavior. I played and you were the faithful, long-suffering wife. You got to be right, though, and you enjoyed that.”
“You’re wrong,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around her midsection. “About everything.”
“I’m not. It’s taken me nearly two years to put together the pieces, but I think I have them now. I was wrong to cheat on you, Rachel. I knew the second I did it, I would regret it for the rest of my life. And I do. I was wrong and I’m sorry. I broke your trust and you were right to throw me out. I needed that and you deserved your pound of flesh. But you were wrong about a lot of other things.”
He leaned toward her. “Here’s where it gets fuzzy for me. The asking for help thing. Is it that you really need to do it all yourself, or do you think you’re the only one who can do it right? Because I think that’s the key. Getting the answer to that question.”
“Why are you doing this? Why are you treating me this way?”
“Not to hurt you. I hope you can believe that. The thing is, I don’t think we’re finished. I’m not sure what that means, exactly, but I haven’t moved on, and I don’t think you have, either. We’re both in limbo. I keep thinking that if I can finally understand you, I’ll know what to do.”
He stood and smiled. “Thanks for talking to me. This was really good. I understand a lot more now.”
How nice for him. He’d laid her bare, talked about how awful she was, and now he felt better? Lucky him. She felt sick to her stomach. She wanted to crawl into a hole until the entire world went away.
“I’m not going to ask if you need help,” he told her. “I know you’ll say no. I’m just going to do it. You sit here while I load the car. Then I’m going to follow you home and unload it. You just worry about yourself. I’ll take care of everything else.”
She felt as if he’d slapped her. Of all the awful, mean, cruel things to say—that was the worst. Because he wanted her to believe in him. To trust him. To hand over control and let him run things.
She’d tried that before. With him, with her mother, even with her friends. And she knew how it ended. With the other person letting her down and her all alone. It had always been that way and it always would be.
He looked at her, then shook his head. “I can see you don’t believe me. It’s okay, Rachel. Now that I know what’s wrong, I can fix it. Maybe that makes me a fool, but I’ve got to try. You’ll see. Everything is going to be fine.”
Famous last words, she thought grimly. A little bit like “I’ll love you forever.” She’d fallen for that one, too. And look where it had gotten her.
COURTNEY WHEELED HER cart down the path to the final room on her list. Unless a guest requested a special time for housekeeping, she had the option of cleaning the rooms in any order she liked. At the risk of being just a little weird, she’d saved Quinn’s bungalow for last.
It was nearly one in the afternoon. She was tired, but happy. She’d stayed up until three to finish her marketing report and had sent everything to her professor. She had one more paper to write, then she was done for the summer.
The thought of not studying for nearly twelve weeks was strange. She’d been going year-round since she’d started at community college. With all her general education requirements filled, she only had classes in her major left. And the last few she had to take weren’t offered in the summer.
Not that she was going to be overwhelmed by free time. Her mother was getting married at the hotel in August. August 20, to be exact. Joyce had already made it clear she was putting Courtney in charge of the wedding. On the one hand, Courtney appreciated the fact that her boss had faith in her. Plus, handling an event that large would look good on her résumé. On the other, she suspected Joyce had an ulterior motive—to bring mother and daughter back together. Not that they were actually apart. They were more, um, casually involved in each other’s lives.
She supposed that had always been the case. After her father died, her mother had been frantic to hold her family together and restart her husband’s accounting business. Then the bills had piled up and they’d lost their house. Maggie had been scrambling.
Courtney got that. She respected all her mother had done. As an adult, she could look back and see how hard things had been. But as the youngest kid in the family, the one who was frequently overlooked and ignored, she couldn’t help still being resentful.
For those reasons, and maybe some others, she and her mother had never been close. She could live with that. But, according to Joyce, she should make more of an effort. Something that wasn’t going to happen in the middle of her shift.
She stopped her cart in front of the door to the bungalow and knocked. “Housekeeping,” she called loudly.
She hadn’t checked the parking lot to see if Quinn’s car was there. Not that she usually kept track of guests’ vehicles. Except in his case, it was pretty easy to tell. There was only one Bentley parked there.
She was about to knock again when the door opened.