IT TOOK ISABELLE A day to bring it up.
“Why you were at St. Stephen’s?” she said as she handed him his coffee and buttered bun the next morning.
“I don’t owe you an explanation for anything.”
“Are you Catholic, Finn?”
“What part of I don’t want to talk about it is not clear? How do you say that in Ukrainian?”
She watched him with her intense gray eyes, blinking, assessing—understanding? God, he hoped it wasn’t understanding!
“Leave me alone,” he said. “Stop studying me. I just want to sit in silence before I go out. For just one minute!”
“Are you going to church? Let’s go together,” she said quietly.
“Oh, my God, stop it!”
“Let’s go. We both need it.” She stretched out her hand to him.
He didn’t know where she got the nerve to speak to him like this. “Absolutely not,” he said through his teeth, pulling his hands away from the table, from her. “I need to find work. I’m trying to earn a living.”
She sat back. “A living, huh?” She smirked. “You banker, Finn. You have living. What do you mean?”
“I can’t—I’m not going to discuss it with you,” he said. “It’s not possible for us to talk about it.”
“Oh, yes,” she said with irony. “I’m sure you talk to your wife about it.”
“I am not,” he repeated very slowly, “going to talk to you about it.”
“You should,” Isabelle said. “Just for advice.”
“Do I look to you like I need advice?” he barked.
“Desperately,” said Isabelle.
This was Finn’s penance. She didn’t mention the church to Vanessa and hadn’t said a word to his wife about Lucas or North Troy. In return for keeping some of his secrets, she was torturing him.
They were in the dining room. Everyone else was asleep. All the lights were off to save on electricity, only a single candle was burning between them; even the furnace was off. It was cold and dark.
“Can you tell me why—” she began, before Finn interrupted her.
“Isabelle, would you please go put some coal in the furnace. I want the house warmer for when the girls wake up.”
“Can you tell me why your bank is not open during weekdays? I know Lionel left, but where do you go?”
Would this nightmare never end? Finn wanted to slam the table, but he needed to stay quiet to fake indifference. He didn’t say anything, and she didn’t say anything else. Finn knew what she was about to say, and he didn’t want to hear it. But he also knew that if he raised his voice, Vanessa might overhear. He was trapped.
“Are you closing your bank forever, Finn?”
“No!”
“Is that yes?”
“Isabelle!” Finn nearly hissed out her name.
“Finn!” she said. “You so upset all the time. I see it. But don’t worry. Even if bank close, it’s all right.” She nodded. “You find another way. Other work. Don’t be upset. It’s just money. How you say, easy come, easy go.”
Finn’s teeth ground together. He stood up. He didn’t raise his voice, but the heat with which his words left his mouth, he may as well have been screaming. “You think it’s just money?” he said. He threw his arms behind his back so she wouldn’t see his fists clench. “You know nothing, nothing! I don’t know where you come from, but it’s not about the fucking money. I can’t feed my family. I can’t pay for this house. I can’t save—no—don’t speak,” he said, when she opened her mouth to refute some part of what he was saying. “I’ve heard enough. You think it’s nothing that I’m losing my wife’s father’s bank, the business that sustained four generations of their family? His great-grandfather lent merchants money during the war of 1812, and here I am single-handedly destroying his business.”
“Not single-handedly,” she said before he could shush her.
“Don’t shake your head. My family depends on me, and I failed them.”
“You have not. Somebody needs to help you.”
“Be quiet! My own father trusted me with his life’s savings, and I flushed them down the toilet.”
“You did not.”
“My family’s life savings wiped out. My father-in-law ruined. My father left penniless. I can’t feed my children. Soon I won’t be able to keep them in this house. All that is nothing to you?”
“I agree, it’s not nothing,” she said, undaunted by his anger. “This house very beautiful. Takes lot of your money. Too much money. But it is not your big problem.”
“Oh, my God, Isabelle, if you dare tell me what my problem is—”
“Your most big problem,” Isabelle said, “is that you fake to your wife that everything is still good, still same. This is terrible unjust burden. Because everything is not same. You need to let her help you. Wife helps husband. Like Barbara helped Lionel. He didn’t keep her in dark, saying everything was hunk-dory. No. First they move to smaller place, and now they left Boston for Indiana to live with her mother until Barbara has baby. Like them, you and Vanessa must glue your heads and together solve life. You need each other. Your problem is—you trying to live every day like nothing changed.” She lowered her head. “I don’t know banks and loans and stock exchange, whatever, but I do know something about that.”
“It’s difficult to put into words how much I don’t want to talk about this—with you of all people.”
“Finn, you can’t keep paying your servants money because you afraid to talk to your wife!” said Isabelle. “It’s crazy. You have to do what you did at bank. Let them go.”
“And how is that working out at the bank?” Finn said through his teeth.
“You need to talk to Vanessa,” Isabelle repeated.
“No!”
“To which part?”
Finn groaned in barely stifled outrage.
“I will talk to her,” Isabelle said. “Even about stupid books if you want. But about this first. I will tell her things you afraid to.”
“I am not afraid,” he said, too loudly, “and no!” But there was a moment when he almost wished he could say yes. Yes, please, oh God, yes, talk to her.
From the top of the stairs, Finn heard Vanessa’s voice. “Finn, darling? Is everything all right?”
“Of course, darling,” he called out to her. “Everything’s fine. Go back to bed. I was just leaving.”
“Everything is very long far from fine,” said Isabelle. “Tell her, Finn. Wife deserves to know what’s happening to her own life.”
It was all he could do not to slam his hands over his ears, not to run from her and the house and his life and the continent, from the whole earth entire.
“I’m sorry you ever learned English,” he said. “I’m sorry I ever helped you in the first place. You have brought nothing but strife and conflict into my house.”
“You think I brought strife into your house?” Isabelle laid her hands on the table. “You don’t think it’s your secrets that drive your wife into crazy bin? Lucas, bootleg, bank, broke, Holy Communion—who knows what else.”
That was it. Finn had had enough.