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The Gate House :: Demille Nelson
Страница: 420 из 490I’d imagined two things – one, she was sad, but had bounced back and was getting on with her life; or two, she was devastated, miserable, guilt-ridden, and considered her life as over. I’m sure it had been all of that, and since we’d reunited, I had a sense of what those years had been like. And now William, her loving father, did not want to see her hurt like that again. Well, if William wasn’t such a duplicitous, manipulative, conniving dickhead, I could believe him, and I could feel some empathy for him as a father. But I wasn’t going to endow him with any feelings of paternal love, just because he claimed those feelings. Possibly, though, he was also speaking on Charlotte’s behalf, and ditsy as she was, I thought she’d probably been very saddened by her daughter’s unhappiness.
Finally, I responded, “This may come as a shock to you, William, but Susan and I had a wonderful, loving marriage, and it would have continued that way if” – I really didn’t want to get into this, but the time had come – “if she hadn’t had an affair with Frank Bellarosa, and then killed him.”
William drew a deep breath, then looked at me and said, “Charlotte and I have discussed… what happened, and we can only conclude that your marriage was not as wonderful as you thought it was.” He pointed out, “If it had been, then what happened would not have happened.”
I’d thought the same thing myself, obviously, but looking back on our marriage, even in the most critical light, it had been a very good marriage. Susan herself agreed with that. But even in Paradise, shit happens. Maybe ninety percent of the married people I’d known who’d had affairs were basically happy at home and stayed at home. Now and then, unfortunately, a husband or wife became obsessed with a lover and mistook that for love. And that was a recipe for emotional and marital disaster. Not to mention that sometimes people got shot.
But rather than explain all this to William, even if it was a little bit of his business, I said to him, “Susan has told me, and I’m sure told you and Charlotte at some point in the last ten years, that there was nothing fundamentally wrong between us. What happened was an aberration and not indicative of a deeper problem.” I added, “She became… sexually obsessed with this man.” I pointed out, “Assuming she’s learned something from that, it won’t happen again.”
William seemed uncomfortable at the thought of his daughter being sexually obsessed with a man. He might have thought she was still a virgin.
Finally, I responded, “This may come as a shock to you, William, but Susan and I had a wonderful, loving marriage, and it would have continued that way if” – I really didn’t want to get into this, but the time had come – “if she hadn’t had an affair with Frank Bellarosa, and then killed him.”
William drew a deep breath, then looked at me and said, “Charlotte and I have discussed… what happened, and we can only conclude that your marriage was not as wonderful as you thought it was.” He pointed out, “If it had been, then what happened would not have happened.”
I’d thought the same thing myself, obviously, but looking back on our marriage, even in the most critical light, it had been a very good marriage. Susan herself agreed with that. But even in Paradise, shit happens. Maybe ninety percent of the married people I’d known who’d had affairs were basically happy at home and stayed at home. Now and then, unfortunately, a husband or wife became obsessed with a lover and mistook that for love. And that was a recipe for emotional and marital disaster. Not to mention that sometimes people got shot.
But rather than explain all this to William, even if it was a little bit of his business, I said to him, “Susan has told me, and I’m sure told you and Charlotte at some point in the last ten years, that there was nothing fundamentally wrong between us. What happened was an aberration and not indicative of a deeper problem.” I added, “She became… sexually obsessed with this man.” I pointed out, “Assuming she’s learned something from that, it won’t happen again.”
William seemed uncomfortable at the thought of his daughter being sexually obsessed with a man. He might have thought she was still a virgin.