“Your family. All of them knew?” she whispered. She kept her eyes averted, but she raised her chin in a show of brittle defiance.
“Just my parents and Katie,” Christian said woodenly.
Powerful emotions clogged her throat. Megan didn’t know if she felt more like shouting or crying. She should have known. She was so stupid. Suddenly, the logic behind Katie’s kindness and Caroline’s maternal solicitude were all too clear to her. And Christian’s new wariness around her, his odd behavior in regard to sleeping in her room, his sudden disinterest in availing himself of her proposal to make love: all of that made sense, too.
Bitterness clawed at her throat when she recognized that she would never escape a past that she couldn’t even recall. She was surprised at how much she’d come to need Christian’s honest, healthy sexual desire for her. It had somehow made her feel whole, like the sexual being that she was entitled to be. Now, her past had touched him too. Like almost everyone else, he was going to treat her like she was a piece of fragile porcelain.
“What about you? You didn’t know. Not in the beginning, anyway. I would bet on it. Who told you?”
Christian sat up slowly, raking his fingers through his unruly hair. “Hilary. She came by the night after I made you dinner.”
Megan’s defiant expression broke. “Hilary?”
“She wanted me to leave you alone.”
Christian saw how she stiffened in disbelieving anger. How could Hilary have done that to her? He leaned toward her. “Maybe she did it for the wrong reasons. But I’m glad that she told me.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s part of who you are, part of your history. I want to know all of you, Megan.”
Her spine stiffened. “If you think that by knowing that I was sexually abused when I was three years old will make you understand me, Christian, you’re very wrong.”
His eyes flared with emotion. “And if you believe that I’m that simple-minded, you’ve got another thing coming yourself.”
Megan didn’t falter under his hard stare. Equal passion stormed in her breast. It was Christian who finally muttered a curse and turned away. She watched him silently as he got up from the bed. He moved like an old man.
He seemed undecided as he stood with his back to her. He finally took a deep breath and exhaled, turning toward her. “Maybe now isn’t the time to go into this. I’m going to be busy tomorrow with the concert. I won’t be home until eleven or twelve. Will you be here? So that we can talk?”
“I don’t know what my plans will be,” she said, wanting to hurt him with her careless tone. She felt exposed…helpless.
Hurt.
Christian’s expression said that he thought she was acting childish. For a second, he looked like he was going to argue with her. Then he stalked out of the bedroom, muttering sarcastically as he went, “Well, why don’t you just let me know when you do know, honey?”
Chapter 10
“Mom?”
Megan’s voice seemed to echo off the walls in the house where she’d grown up. Had it always seemed this empty, so bereft of life? Or was she just seeing things through the haze of melancholy that had surrounded her since Christian left last night? Her gaze took in the familiar furniture, now beginning to show signs of wear and age.
The few pictures of Hilary and herself that were scattered around the living room didn’t impart a sense of intimacy or warmth that one might expect of family pictures. It hurt her to admit it, but she couldn’t imagine her mother picking up a framed childhood picture of her and smiling with warmth and nostalgia. No, the photos scattered around the room were tokens of love, but the ones of her, at least, were obligatory, regretful ones. Megan had always known this. She couldn’t understand why she felt the old pain so poignantly today.
“Meg?” Linda Shreve smiled thinly as she left the hallway. “Why, I haven’t seen you in a week. Hilary says that Jewish man—what’s his name—is letting you show some of those statues that you make. I guess that’s why you’ve been too busy to stop by.”
“Rosenfeld, Mom,” Megan murmured as she hugged her mother. She felt light and hollow beneath Megan’s hands. When her mother began to back away, Megan surprised both of them by momentarily tightening the hug.
Linda laughed uncomfortably. “Well, what’s gotten into you, Meg?” Her pale eyes searched her daughter’s face anxiously.
“Is everything all right, sweetheart?”
Megan smiled brightly, automatically doing what was expected of her. “Of course, Mom. Everything is great.”
Her mother didn’t look entirely convinced as she beckoned Megan into the kitchen while she put a pot on the stove for tea. For a while, Megan just sat quietly and listened to her mother’s customary ramble about the small, inconsequential details that formed the pattern of her life. Megan blinked into full awareness when her mother set a cup of steaming tea in front of her, followed by a small pitcher of cream and a sugar bowl.
“…asked Phillip Barton, who lives next door, to put an extra lock on the back door before that block party tonight. I know Father Gregory has made a load of money for St. Cat’s by having that rock concert, but I never sleep a wink until that thing is over and done with every year. Seems like it’s an open invitation to every freak and criminal to come and loiter around our neighborhood,” Linda fretted.
Megan stirred a teaspoon of sugar into her tea. “We’ve never had any trouble around the house during the St. Cat’s block party, have we?”