Tom, crediting James with little to offer other than materialistic tokens. Paints, brushes, baby clothes from trips to Truro. But in that dark office, which smelled faintly of cigars she didn’t know he smoked, she realized that she had given him little chance to offer her anything else. At least he was trying. Was she?
“It hasn’t been easy, has it?” she said.
His tears had pooled in the fine lines around his eyes, which she had never noticed before. Their union had aged him, made both of them tired. “You could say that.”
“I haven’t been fair,” she said. “You deserve a lot better than this.”
Tears struck the desk as he closed his eyes. “I’m not sure I do.”
Turning his head with the flat of her hand, she pressed gently against the side of his face. Did she make him feel as Tom made her feel? Doubtful, she thought, but perhaps she could try. Would that be so bad, to give him a taste of what she had felt, once? After all, he was her husband, and he had promised to raise her baby as his own. Perhaps she would find something for herself too, a form of companionship and unity in their secrecy, or if she was lucky, some form of love. But if she never tried, she would surely never know.
“You have stood by me as you said you would. You are the only person left who cares.” A deep breath shook her insides, hot as acid as she reneged on a promise they had made together. “And you’ve kept the worst secret I have ever known, that my father helped my mother die. I know we said that we would never talk of it again, but I think perhaps we must, if we are to stand a chance of making this work.”
“I did it for you, Elizabeth. For us, and this little one,” he said, his hand warm against her stomach. “Sometimes people do terrible things for the person they love. Things of which they are not proud, that cause them great pain about who they are as a person.”
It was a confession of sorts, but she would never have known it. She kissed him then, and for the first time in the months since Tom and her father left, she had wanted to. She didn’t want to live in a time that no longer existed, sucked into a vortex underneath the waves. If she stayed there for too long, she too would drown.
Kate arrived six months later, a beautiful, perfect little baby. Nobody knew the secret of her parentage at first, but when Kate’s dark hair and pale skin began to mark her apart from her parents, the likeness to Tom became hard to ignore. He hadn’t been gone long enough to be forgotten. Nobody ever said anything, of course, not wishing to rake over old ground digging for secrets. But all Porthsennen knew the lie, nobody more so than Elizabeth as she watched her beautiful daughter grow throughout the years, into the ghost of a man whom she had never been able to forget.
* * *
Elizabeth never stopped painting during the earliest years of their marriage, but it wasn’t until the seventh year came that she felt ready to exhibit her work.
“What do you think of the space?” James asked as they stood in the middle of the room, the ceilings high and walls wide and white. It was overwhelming, the whole experience of being in London and finally having her own exhibition, which would open that same evening.
The exhibition was possible only because of James—aged since the day they married, flecks of white peppering his temples, his trousers growing ever tighter. She could still see that handsome chap that she had once agreed to marry, but the years of marriage and parenthood had worn harder on him than on Elizabeth.
“I think it’s wonderful,” she said, taking his hand. “Thank you. The whole day has been wonderful.”
Lunch had taken place in Sloane Square, consisting of the sweetest cupcakes, tea from bone china cups. They had walked hand in hand by the river, and she found joy in noticing how he watched her, glancing every few steps. Their love had grown, had been nurtured by the shared responsibility of parenthood, and through watching him raise Kate as his own.
“What are you looking at?” she had asked him that afternoon as they walked past Buckingham Palace.
“Just you,” he had said, causing her to blush. “Sometimes I still can’t believe