Declan was looking around, taking in all the artwork my mother had hung on the walls, including the marble table in the foyer with a towering orchid growing out of a ceramic pot.
Bill came down the stairs, he and Cole shook hands, and he said hi to Declan. He gave me an awkward half-hug.
“Do you have a minute?” I asked. Cole and Declan were following my mother down the hallway toward the dining room, so it was just Bill and me standing there in the foyer. I hadn’t decided beforehand exactly when I was going to talk to him, but it seemed like it would be better to just get it over with. Otherwise, I’d be thinking about it all day.
“Sure,” he said, a surprised look crossing his face. “Why don’t we go into my study?”
His study was right off of the hallway, so I followed him in there. It was a small room with built-in bookshelves, a leather couch, and his desk in the corner by the window. It felt strange to be in a room alone with him. But the dynamic had changed; I wasn’t a kid anymore, after all. I was an adult, and he was an adult, and he suddenly seemed older to me, more tired than I remembered, and it seemed weird that I had ever thought of him as this menacing person.
He sat on the couch. I remained standing.
“What is it you wanted to talk about?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”
The air was heavy around us, and not just because it was humid out. As I stood there, I remembered that night when I was 15, but I was also remembering some of the good times that we’d had, how before I’d become a teenager, I had been thankful for Bill, glad that I had a father in my life, even if he wasn’t my real dad. I felt this odd juxtaposition of emotions swirling inside of me.
“Things haven’t been okay for a long time,” I said. “For almost 10 years.”
“Really?” he said. “I’m sorry to hear that. But your mother and I thought that things seemed pretty good with you.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. I folded my arms across my chest. He clasped his own hands over his trim waist. “You’re going to have to be more specific, Allie,” he said. “Because I’m really not sure what you’re getting at here.”
“Do you remember what you did to me that night?” I asked.
He didn’t try to deny it or confirm it; he said nothing.
“Let me refresh your memory,” I said. “I was 15. Mom went out for the night. I was lying in bed, trying to go to sleep, and you came in and climbed up into bed with me. Ring any bells?”
Finally, he looked at me. He rubbed his hand across his mouth and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said.
I stared at him. “What?”
“I’m sorry.”
Wait—he was sorry? That had been the last thing I’d been expecting him to say, because if he was apologizing, that meant he was acknowledging that something had happened.
“I was drinking a lot back then,” he said. “I don’t know if you remember that or were even aware of it. What I did was wrong, and I’m sorry. I should have apologized to you sooner, but I just...didn’t.”
“Then why did you pretend like you had no idea what Mom was talking about when she brought it up to you?”
He looked at me blankly. “She never brought it up with me.”
“But she...” I didn’t finish my sentence. I tried to recall my phone conversation with her—I was pretty much 100 percent certain I could remember her saying that she had talked to him about it, and he said he had no clue. Hadn’t she? Yes, she had. At least, that’s what she told me, but from the sounds of it, she hadn’t broached the subject with Bill at all. And that made sense, really. She didn’t want to believe it, and since nothing had actually happened, in her mind, it would be better if the whole thing just went away.
“You were like a dad to me,” I said. “I always thought it was cool that we were able to get along, that you weren’t some stepparent that I hated.”
“And I appreciated that fact, too.”
“Appreciated it a little too much.”
“It was wrong of me. To be honest, I barely even remember that night; that whole period was kind of a blur and not in a good way. Things in my professional life were not going particularly well at the time.”
“So you thought it would be good to mess up things in your home life, too?”
He shook his head. “That’s not it. I had a lapse in judgment. A severe lapse in judgment. But I do remember enough to know that nothing happened.”
“Yeah, because I didn’t let it! If I hadn’t stopped you, you probably would’ve raped me.”He winced at the word. “Allie,” he said.