59

“Mom?” Sean called softly as soon as he was close enough for her to hear him.

Ava tilted her head upward, as if she’d only heard his voice in the wind or in her imagination.

“It’s me, Sean,” he said, now only yards from her.

She froze, then slowly turned his way. The minute her eyes lit with recognition, she leaped from her chair and embraced him. Together they rocked, standing up, as she cried.

Then she drew back and touched his wet cheek. “It really is you. I thought I was dreaming.”

She didn’t ask where he’d been all this time. He knew his presence was enough.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think. Or I did, but only about myself, not about how you might feel.”

She reached to shush him, but he caught her hand. “I need to say this. I understand now why you had the affair—the loneliness, the desperation, the craving for love. I’ve felt those myself.”

Her eyes brimmed with sorrow.

“Maybe I understand for the first time how hard it is to be a Worthington—the expectations, being in the limelight, continually needing to be strong. You did a desperate thing. I did a desperate thing. I ran away—from you, from everything. We all do what we need to do to survive.”

“I was so lonely,” she murmured. “Nothing like a family vacation without your husband. It was the first of many I would have after that, but somehow the first was the hardest. And when Thomas comforted me, I . . .” She sighed. “These many years I’ve held in the pain, wondering when the truth would be revealed, knowing it would change our family. That I might lose Bill.”

Sean ached for his mother. Until a short while ago, she’d always been cheerful, holding the family together. Yet she’d lived for years with intense loneliness. “I know it hasn’t been easy. Living with Dad—or any of us.” Strange how easily he continued to think of and speak of Bill as his father.

“Your father . . . when I told him, he didn’t show any emotion. Took the news like he would the announcement of any business deal. Then he walked out the door.” A single tear traced down her cheek. “Took Will’s Land Rover and was gone for a long time.”

Sean closed his eyes. So the truth of his existence had separated his parents. He would have to live with that for a lifetime.

Her gentle hands cradled his face. “Oh, son, he came back. Told me how sorry he was for not being there for me when I needed him. Thanked me for telling him the truth.”

“So he didn’t know?” Sean had to ask.

“I never told him. But he said sometimes he wondered. Because you were supposedly born early but didn’t look like a preemie. Because we’d tried so long to get pregnant with Will and then had failed in our attempts to have a second baby. Then suddenly, after Camp David, you were in our lives. Later, he saw flickers of his friend in the way you smiled, your mannerisms, the color of your hair. You were so different from your siblings in the way you approached life.”

So Bill had guessed. Was it any wonder he’d called Sean “the boy” and never “son”? Little clues—his treating Sean differently, his dissatisfaction with anything Sean did, his focus on Will as his son—made sense now. Yet out of love and loyalty to Ava he had provided for Sean. It was no wonder he had cut off any contact with Thomas.

“I know you wish it had never happened, Mom. I remember you saying that when I left.”

“No, son, I never said that. I said ‘I wish . . .’ and you didn’t allow me to finish. Now I want you to listen to me.” The steel was back in her voice. “I never have wished I didn’t conceive you. What I wish is that I had told you sooner. I held information that you needed to make sense of who you are. Of why you and your father sometimes butt heads.”

He was confused. She still used the phrase your father naturally. “Is Bill here?” he asked.

She stiffened. “Your father,” she said, “is out taking a walk around the grounds. He’ll be back soon.”

“I understand. I’ll be gone before he gets back.”

“No, Sean,” she begged. “He needs to see you, say things to you. Please—wait until he gets back. Until you two can talk.”

He’d put her through so much pain, he could give her that much, he decided. “Mom, I’ve got all the time in the world. I’ll wait.”

He couldn’t believe those words had emerged from his mouth. A first for someone who fled from even the suggestion of family get-togethers.

As the bell tower at the point rang out the early evening hour, the man focused his binoculars on the poignant embrace. His gaze lingered first on the young man, then on the woman, as their auburn hair mingled in shades of dark and light red. It was only when they stepped apart that he swung the binoculars to inspect the house again and the shore on either side of the estate. Still no movement.

Now is the time, he decided. He powered up the idling boat so he could make his way to shore. He reached for the bulky package and started to open it.

At that instant, though, unrest swept over him. He refocused the binoculars on the man and woman. She was weeping, holding his face in her hands.

He couldn’t do what he’d come to do. Instead he withdrew only a creased photo from the packet. Dropping it over the side of the boat, he watched until the faces blurred, waterlogged, and the photo at last sank into the lake.

Perhaps it was time for some things to end.