“Isn’t it?” he asked, pushing away from the banister to walk toward her.
“No,” she insisted with a shake of her head. She felt the intensity of his gaze and flinched from it. Tula didn’t need sympathy and wasn’t interested in sharing her childhood miseries with a man who had already made it clear just how he felt about her. “This is about Nathan and what’s best for him.”
He kept coming and was close enough now that she had to hold her breath to keep from inhaling the scent of him. A blend of his aftershave and soap, it was a scent that called to her, made her remember lying beneath him, staring up into his eyes as they flashed with passion. Eyes that were, at the moment, studying her.
“You said it yourself,” he told her, “we’re all affected by who raised us. And whoever raised you will affect who you choose to care for Nathan.”
Instantly, her back went up. He’d somehow touched on the one thing that had given her a lot of misgivings over the years. She had thought about how she was raised and about her parents and had wondered if she should even have a child of her own. But the truth was, Tula’s heart yearned for family. Hungered for the kind of love and warmth she used to dream about. And she had always known she would be a good parent because she knew just what a child wanted. Craved.
So she was completely prepared and ready to argue this point with Simon.
“No, Simon. You’re wrong about that. The initial input a child is given is important, I agree. And when we’re kids and growing up, it pushes us in one direction or another. But at some point, responsible adults make choices. We decide who we are. Who we want to be.”
He frowned as he thought about what she said. “Do we? I wonder. Seems to me that we are always who we started out to be.”
Uncomfortable with being so close to him and unable to touch, she walked into the living room. She wished Nathan were awake right now because then she could claim that she didn’t have time to talk. That she had to take care of the baby. But it was nap time and that baby really enjoyed his naps. Ordinarily, she loved that about him because she could get a lot of her own work done. Today, when she could have used Nathan’s presence, she had to admit there would be no help coming from that quarter.
She kept walking farther into the huge room and didn’t stop until she was standing in front of the bay window. Naturally, Simon followed her, his footsteps sure and slow, sounding out easily against the wood floor.
“So,” he said, “you’re saying your parents had nothing to do with who you are today?”
Tula laughed to herself but kept the sound quiet, so he wouldn’t know just how funny that statement really was. Of course her parents had shaped her. Her mom was a lovely woman who was simply never meant to be a mother. Katherine was more at home with champagne brunches than PTA meetings. Impatient with clumsiness or loud noises, Katherine preferred a more formal atmosphere—one without the clamor of children.
Being responsible for a child had cut into Katherine’s lifestyle, though it had significantly increased her alimony when she and Jacob divorced.
But when her stint at motherhood was complete, Katherine left. She moved out of Crystal Bay the morning of her daughter’s eighteenth birthday.
Tula still remembered that last hug and brief conversation.
The airport was crowded, of course, with people coming and going. Excitement simmered in the air alongside sorrow as lovers kissed goodbye and family members waved and promised to write.
“You’ll be fine, Tula,” her mother said as she moved toward her gate. “You’re all grown up now, I’ve done my job and you’re entirely capable of taking care of yourself.”
Tula wanted to ask her mother to stay. She wanted to tell Katherine that she so wasn’t ready to be alone. That she was a little scared about college and the future. But it would have been pointless and she knew that, too. A part of her mother was already gone. Her mind and heart were fixed in Italy, just waiting for her body to catch up.
Katherine was renting a villa outside Florence for the summer, then she would be moving on—to where, Tula had no idea. The only thing she was absolutely sure of was that her mother wouldn’t be back.
“Now, I can’t miss boarding, so give me a kiss.”
Tula did, and fought the urge to hug her mom and hold on. Sure, her mother had never been very maternal, but she had been there. Every day. In the house that would now be empty. That would echo with her own thoughts rattling around in the suffocating silence.
Her father was in the city and Tula wouldn’t be seeing him anytime soon, so she was truly on her own for the first time ever. And though she could admit to a certain amount of anticipation, the inherent scariness of the situation was enough to swamp everything else.
Thank God, Tula thought, she still had Anna Cameron and her family. They would be there for her when she needed them. They always had been. That knowledge made saying goodbye to her mother a bit easier, though no less sad.
She’d often dreamed that she and her mother could be closer. She had wished she had the sense of family that Anna had. Though Anna’s mom had died when she was a girl, her father and stepmother had supported and loved her. But wishes changed nothing, she told herself firmly, then pasted a bright smile on her face.
“Enjoy Italy, Mom. I’ll be fine.”
“I know you will, Tula. You’re a good girl.”
Then she was gone, not even bothering to glance back to see if her daughter was still watching.
Which Tula was.
She stood alone and watched until the plane pulled away from the gate. Until it taxied to the runway. Until it took off and became nothing more than a sun-splashed dot in the sky.
Finally, Tula went home to an empty house and promised herself that one day she would build a family. She would have what she had always longed for.
Simon was watching her, waiting for her to answer his question. She scrubbed her hands up and down her arms and said, “Of course they influenced me. But not in the way you might think. I didn’t want to be who they were. I didn’t want what they wanted. I made a conscious decision to be myself. Me. Not just a twig on the family tree.”
A flash of surprise lit his eyes and she wondered why.
“How’s that working out for you?”
“Until today,” she admitted, “pretty good.”
He walked closer and Tula backed up. She was feeling a little vulnerable at the moment and the last thing she needed was to be too near Simon. She kept moving until the backs of her knees hit the ledge of the cushioned window seat. Abruptly, she sat down and her surprise must have shown on her face.