Authors: Kristen Ashley
“You might not
want to ogle my new best friend,” Charlotte hissed in a playfully
irate voice and Douglas, unusually, started. He swiftly shuttered
his blatant reaction, his head swung to his friend but he saw
Charlie was admonishing Oliver who turned sheepish eyes to his
wife.
As Julia and
Sam made it to the bottom of the stairwell, the children already
rushing to the dining room, Douglas moved forward, intent on one
thing.
Dinner
may get cold and his careful strategy might be damned but he was
going to slip her somewhere so he could privately show her exactly
how much he liked her dress. Privately and thoroughly, until she
was in no doubt about his particularly strong, insistent feelings
about that…
fucking
…
dress.
Julia lifted
her eyes to his and Douglas saw hers became startled as she read
his unconcealed intent and, at that moment, with her green eyes on
him, that dress on her, he didn’t give a good goddamn that she
could read him so easily.
However, just
then there was a bustle of activity down the hall and Monique came
gliding out of the library.
“
How
delightful, my friend is just in time. Now, another Thanksgiving
tradition, a family
reunion.”
Douglas
ignored his mother but Julia’s eyes followed Monique.
He arrived at
her side and bent to whisper in her ear, “If I may have a private
word before dinner?”
“What?” she
asked distractedly, not looking at him, but instead she continued
gazing down the hall and he saw her face pale as she breathed,
“Oh.”
Douglas
followed her eyes and saw what made her pale. In confusion, he
stared at a tall, familiar-looking man with greying blond hair and
faded blue eyes.
Then he heard
Julia whisper, “My God, it’s my Dad.”
At her words,
Douglas’s vision exploded in a white-hot blaze of fury.
* * * * *
Monique was
escorting into the stairwell, and fawning over, Dr. Trevor Fairfax,
Julia’s father.
Dear Lord in heaven
, Julia thought and then she felt the room reel and she was
almost certain she was going to faint even though she’d never done
such a ridiculous thing in her entire life.
“I didn’t want
to say anything because Dr. Fairfax didn’t know if he could make it
but here he is! Isn’t this an extraordinary surprise? A family
reunion!” Monique announced with malevolent delight.
The room was
still spinning and in a desperate effort to steady herself, Julia
focused on Douglas. Looking at him from under her lashes, she saw
to her distracted surprise that he was staring at her father, not
blandly, but thin-lipped, his scar frighteningly defined and a
muscle worked angrily in his hard jaw.
Monique
continued with her announcement and Julia swung her dazed eyes to
the woman. “I know, Julia, that this will be a big surprise for
you. But I
do
hope it’s a
welcome one. I’ve had many heartfelt conversations with your
father, who was understandably upset about Gavin, and, of course,
that no one saw fit to invite him to his own son’s
funeral.”
At any
other time Julia would have laughed out loud at the thought of the
heartless Monique having a heartfelt
anything
.
However
nothing at that moment was even the slightest bit funny.
She didn’t
even dignify Monique’s second pronouncement with a thought. Of
course her father hadn’t been invited to Gavin’s funeral. It was
Trevor Fairfax’s choice not to be a part of their lives. Julia
herself hadn’t seen her father since her college graduation when he
handed her a tiny cardboard box that held a pair of earrings made
of paste and some metal that turned green within a few weeks. He
had walked away from her then, feeling his duty done, and she’d
never seen or heard from him again.
And she liked
it that way.
“Julia.” Her
father came forward, his smooth, cultured voice, grating across her
skin like sandpaper. His blue eyes, eyes so much like Gavin’s,
moved over her face with worried care. To her disbelief, he pulled
her rapidly stiffening body into his arms. “I was so sorry to hear
about Gavin.”
“Children!”
Monique called and Julia jumped while still suffering her father’s
embrace. “We have a surprise for you.”
Julia uttered
a panicked noise and her father released her, his hands on her
shoulders slid down to hold her firmly by her upper arms. They had
to look, for all intents and purposes, like the happily reunited
father and daughter and this thought made Julia want to scream.
For some
reason she could not fathom, her eyes searched for Douglas, but he
was no longer at her side. She didn’t want the kids to be involved
in this, yet somehow in those vital seconds, she had been rendered
speechless.
Sam, Oliver
and Charlie were staring at the scene openly, obviously bemused by
this highly-charged turn in the so recently convivial state of
affairs.
The children
had entered the room and were watching in silent confusion. Before
Julia could pull herself together, she realised Douglas had moved
toward them.
“Lizzie, take
your brother and sister into the kitchen.” His deep voice ordered
then Julia saw Mrs. K bustle up the long room. “Mrs. Kilpatrick,
please take the children to the kitchen.”
“What’s
happening?” Mrs. K, who normally would not say a word in response
to any command of Douglas’s (except “Yes, Lord Ashton”), took one
look at Julia’s stricken face and her own became a mask of
concern.
Julia finally
found her voice.
“Please,” she
implored and Mrs. K became all business. She quickly hustled the
children out, pulling the dining room doors closed behind her.
Julia heard
Ruby’s shout, “Who’s that man?” and Julia’s eyes closed in despair
as she pulled herself free of her father’s hands.
“Julia, my
dear, I know this is a surprise. I was stunned to get your mother’s
letter telling me what happened to Gavin. So young, so full of
life.” Her father was speaking to her and when she opened her eyes,
she couldn’t meet his, couldn’t get a handle on her careening
thoughts. His words were so inane, the kind of thing you’d say
about someone you didn’t know.
But
then, he
didn’t
know
Gavin.
She
caught Monique in her line of vision, the other woman’s face alight
with vicious glee while she stood taking in the scene. After
fifteen years, Monique knew that Trevor Fairfax had no place in his
first family’s life and still she contacted him, invited him
there,
on
Thanksgiving
.
Julia’s
bewildered panic began to give way to anger. She felt rather than
saw Douglas position himself behind her,
very close
behind her. So close, she could feel the heat from
his body. For some reason, this emboldened her.
“So full of
life?” she whispered, as if to herself, emotions surging through
her and she lifted her eyes to her father’s. Gavin would have
likely looked like him, if he’d been given a few more decades, and
that thought drove away all vestiges of panic and replaced them
with blinding fury.
The likes of
Trevor Fairfax, who could cheat on his wife and turn his back on
his children, rarely seeing them, never paying child support, never
giving them a kind word or a loving touch, could live happily into
his sixties. But a good man like Gavin, who was full of love and
fun and enjoyed life to its fullest, didn’t even make it to forty
years of age.
At that
thought, Julia’s rage exploded.
“How do you
know what he was full of?” she snapped. “You hadn’t seen him in
fifteen years, hadn’t sent a single Christmas card, hadn’t looked
upon his children or ever met his beautiful wife! He could have
been dying of cancer at the time of the accident, brought low with
diabetes, had his legs crushed in a freak accident involving a
tree,” she declared wildly, her voice rising.
She felt
Douglas’s hand touch the small of her back and feeling it there
gave her even more courage.
“What are you
doing here?” she demanded hotly.
“Julia, I
don’t think…” Monique started a reprimand but surprisingly it was
Trevor who interrupted her.
With a look at
his audience, his eyes showing nothing but polite irritation at her
outburst, the very soul of the patient father, Trevor asked,
“Perhaps we can have some privacy?”
“
Yes,
perhaps we should
all
go to the
kitchen,” Charlotte offered quietly from somewhere behind
Julia.
“
No!
” Julia
cried, panicked, wanting her friends around her, feeling she
couldn’t face this loathsome man alone, not without Patricia
there,
not
without
Gavin there. Tears began to fill her eyes, tears she resolutely
refused to shed.
Douglas moved
even closer. “Oliver, please take the women into the dining room
and begin the meal.” His voice rumbled, so close, it sent
vibrations down her back and her head twisted, her eyes flying to
his.
Don’t leave me,
she silently begged.
Douglas spared
her only a glance before he said, “We’ll go into the library.”
She saw that
Douglas’s eyes were blank, gone was the anger she had seen in his
face earlier, gone was the teasing man she was with last night.
Now, it was pure Douglas, unaffected and calm.
Even in the
face of that, she felt a sense of relief that he said the word,
“we”.
The others
bustled quickly into the dining room, closing the door behind them
as Douglas swung out his arm toward the library, cordially inviting
them to move forward, the picture of the gracious host.
Trevor
hesitated. “Could I speak with my daughter alone?”
Without
hesitation, Douglas said simply, “No.”
It was said in
his usual authoritative tone that brooked no argument. After
uttering that one word, Douglas pressed his hand into Julia’s back,
gently forcing her forward before she could see her father’s
response and before her father could respond at all.
She preceded
both men into the room, Douglas stopping considerately to allow
Trevor to go in front of him and then turning to close the doors
behind him.
Julia walked
to the ceiling-high windows and surveyed the gardens. Although she
knew in their full bloom they could be beautiful, now the formal
and regimented beds had been put to sleep for the winter. They were
nothing but borders and large circles of overturned dirt with
enormous empty urns in the middle surrounded by still-green lawns.
They were terraced with magnificent balustrades that led into a
small, natural wooded area that gave way to graceful rolling fields
where chocolate-faced, round, woolly sheep grazed. The sun was
already beginning to set on this beautiful pastoral scene and the
day, whose weather had veered from hazy to bright, was fading.
Julia saw none
of that, her mind turning in circles and she had begun to
shake.
She was
shaking because her father was there, pretending to feel a grief
there was no way on God’s green earth he could feel.
She was
shaking because she knew Monique hated her enough to do this to
her, on a special day, a
holiday
, for goodness sakes. It was never pleasant to acknowledge
that someone hated you that much, especially someone with whom you
were forced to live.
And she was
shaking because even if Douglas was with her (and she was thankful
that he was and she wasn’t going to try to process why, she just
was), she still felt somehow alone. Thousands of miles away from
her wise and dramatic mother who would know exactly what to say.
And forever away from her beloved brother who would have known
exactly what to do.
And she was
just Julia, the weakest of the lot, and she wasn’t sure she had the
strength to face this.
“Julia, you
must know, regardless of our estrangement, it came as a great shock
–” her father began but she turned and levelled her gaze at him,
the look in her eye causing him to stop speaking.
He’d walked
into the room and was standing not five feet from her, his face
earnest, his eyes warm.
Her lip
curled.
“Estrangement?” she broke in, her voice shaking. “What a convenient
word. I thought it was called ‘abandonment’.”
Trevor’s head
jerked in response as if she’d physically struck a blow.
“
Of
course,” Julia continued, ignoring her father, anger spurring her
on. She turned her attention from her father to Douglas, who was
standing with his shoulders against the doors and his arms crossed
on his chest, regarding her with that bland expression on his face.
“I may not have full command of the English language.
I
was born in a small town in
Indiana to a mother whose parents were farmers, as were their
parents before them. We’re just simple folk.” Her eyes swung back
to her father. “
I
was not born
to privilege.
My
mother was
not heiress to a popcorn fortune who came complete with a trust
fund, a five bedroom mansion and a fourth generation membership to
the country club.
My
father was,
of course, a well-known surgeon but
I
never saw him. He didn’t send
me
to private school and violin lessons and pay for
college and graduate school. So perhaps
I
have it wrong. I suppose the genteel way is to refer to it
as ‘estrangement’ but where I come from, we call ‘em as we see ‘em
and we’d call it ‘
abandonment’
.”
Her eyes swung back to Douglas. “What do you think,
Douglas?”