Chapter 12 - DANIEL FINALLY SAID WHAT HE THOUGHT HE WAS PROTECTING
Six months after Easter, Daniel asked Margaret to lunch.
Public restaurant.
No Vanessa.
Margaret agreed.
He looked tired.
Not destroyed.
Just forty-three instead of forty-two.
“Vanessa thinks you hate her.”
“I don’t.”
“She thinks you ruined her chance.”
“I stopped her using my house.”
“I know.”
Daniel looked at his coffee.
“I didn’t then.”
Margaret waited.
“I mean, logically I knew it was yours.”
“That is a strange sentence.”
He smiled weakly.
“I thought family property was different.”
“Different how?”
“You and Dad always said everything would be ours eventually.”
Margaret frowned.
“We said you and your sister would inherit whatever was left.”
“That felt like the same thing.”
“It isn’t.”
“I know.”
Now.
Margaret leaned back.
“Why didn’t you defend me in the kitchen?”
Daniel looked ashamed.
“Because if I told Vanessa she was wrong, everything else came apart.”
“What else?”
“The business.”
“More.”
He stared at the table.
“My marriage.”
There.
Vanessa had been restless for years.
Jumped between marketing jobs.
Always wanted something she could own.
Rose & Reed made her feel capable.
Important.
Daniel invested money because he wanted his wife to stop feeling like she had built nothing of her own.
Margaret understood that.
Then Daniel admitted the uglier part.
“I also liked being the guy who could give her a venue.”
“The venue being my house.”
“Yes.”
“What were you protecting when you recorded me?”
His eyes watered.
“The story that we had control.”
Margaret nodded.
“And me?”
He didn’t answer.
She did.
“I was the obstacle.”
Daniel whispered:
“Yes.”
There it was.
No monster.
No mystery.
A son who loved his mother and still found it easier to reduce her than disappoint his wife.
Margaret asked:
“Do you understand why loving me isn’t enough?”
Daniel looked up.
“Yes.”
May you like
That was new.
Whether he would continue understanding it once he wanted something badly again remained another question.
