"No, I don't want fruit and cheese." Susan reached over to still her daughter's nervous hand. "Are you in love with him?"
"I don't know." Laura leveled her breath and met her mother's gaze. "I'm sleeping with him. I'm sorry if you disapprove."
"It's not for me to disapprove over something that personal at this point in your life." But there was a pang. "You're being careful?"
"Of course."
"He's very attractive."
"Yes, he is."
"And nothing like Peter."
"No," Laura agreed. "Nothing at all like Peter."
"Is that why you're attracted to him? Because he's the antithesis of your ex-husband?"
"I'm not using Peter as a yardstick." Restless, she rose. "Maybe I was, to some extent. It's difficult not to compare when you've only been with two men. I'm not sleeping with Michael to prove anything to anyone, but because it's—he makes me… I want him. And he wants me."
"Will that be enough for you, Laura?"
"I don't know. It's enough for now." She turned away, paced to the fire. It was quiet tonight, just a warm glow and a subtle hiss. "I failed before. I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted to be perfect. Maybe I wanted to be you."
"Oh, honey."
"It's not your fault," Laura said quickly when her mother got to her feet. "Please don't think I mean that. It's only that I grew up seeing you, how you were, how you are. So competent and wise and flawless."
"I'm not flawless, Laura. No one is."
"You were to me. You are. You never faltered, never stumbled, never let me down."
"I stumbled." She crossed the room, took her daughter's hands. "Countless times. I had your father to help me get my balance."
"And he had you to help him. That's what I always wanted, dreamed of. The kind of marriage and life and family you made. And I'm not foolish enough to think it didn't take effort and mistakes and sleepless nights to make it. But you did. I didn't."
"You make me angry when you blame yourself."
Laura shook her head. "I don't, completely. But I know I'm not blameless either. I set my sights impossibly high. Every time I had to readjust them, lower them, it was harder. I don't ever want to do that again."
"If you set your sights too low, you can miss a great deal."
"Maybe. But I'm not pushing for more here than what I have. Part of me will always want what you and Dad have. Not only for myself but for my children. But if it's not in the cards, I'm through crying over it. I'm going to give them the best life I can, and make the best one for myself too. Right now, Michael's an important part of it."
"Does he know how important?"
Laura shrugged her shoulders. "It's often difficult to tell how much Michael knows. But I know this. Peter didn't love me, not ever."
"Laura—"
"No, it's true, and I can live with that." In fact, she discovered it was easier to live with than she had imagined. "But I loved him, and I married him, and stayed with him for ten years. Both of us, and certainly the children, would have been better off if I hadn't been so determined to make it work. If I had just accepted the failure and let go."
"I think you're wrong," Susan said quietly. "By doing everything you could do to hold your marriage and your family together, you can look back and know you did your best."
"Maybe." And perhaps one day she would look back. "With Michael I don't have to carry the burden of making something work, or of living with the illusion that I have a man who loves me and wants what I want. And I'm happier than I've been in too long to remember."
"Then I'm happy for you." And will keep my own counsel, Susan thought, for now. "Let's go rescue your father," she said, tucking her arm through Laura's. "Before those girls have him wrapped around their fingers so tight he bounces."
The year Thomas Templeton married Susan Conroy, he added the tower suite as his innovation for Templeton House. The house had already stood a hundred years, with nearly every generation of his family toying with or expanding the original design.