weird, the thought of us, who regularly spent the night fully clothed slumped over the ratty couch at our office, had a butler for the next week.
Mr. Deleon promptly gave us the tour. The villa was actually bigger than the house I grew up in. Full kitchen, formal dining room and a sitting room, office and exercise room on the bottom floor. Bedroom and a recreation/game room on the second floor. And on the top floor, the best part of the amazing place, a rooftop garden patterned after an Italian garden villa. I’d only gotten a glimpse of it, but was determined to explore it later, once I had the time.
As it were, we had just enough time to freshen up for a casual dinner with the early arrivals. Most of the guests would be arriving later tonight or tomorrow morning. The dinner seemed uneventful though Lucas did not appear all too pleased by the presence of not only his ex-wife, but her parents, too.
And I thought my family was weird.
Fortunately there were enough people to provide a barrier, but I couldn’t help but marvel at the insensitivity of Lucas’s family to have them here. To treat them as if they were still family and give more deference to their feelings than to their own newly re-married son and new daughter-in-law.
After dinner, we went on another walk, then back to the villa. I collapsed into bed that night while Lucas was still in the shower. And by the time he came to bed, I barely registered him lying down. I was in that lucid land where my reality was mostly a product of my own silken dreams. Like… that feather-light touch on my face was most certainly a figment of my imagination. And maybe even that sensation like a thumb lining the edge of my jaw as if that thumb had edged that jaw every night for the past year. When clearly it had not. Which made it almost certainly a dream.
Almost. Certainly.
As a result of my early night, my eyes snapped open just before dawn. And try as I might to close them again, I couldn’t. The thoughts had started racing almost the second I’d reached consciousness. Lucas’s breathing was still that calm regular inhale-exhale of deep sleep. I slipped out of bed as quietly as I could and dug out a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.
Normally, I’d prefer to do some yoga to help myself wake up. But this morning, I had an even stronger desire to be outside. I was excited to explore the grounds and the bigger parts of the gardens I’d only caught hints of the day before. The air was fresh and cool for now and I started by winding my way through the artfully designed “forest trail” just off the main garden. It was nothing like the forests of the Pacific Northwest, but this forest grove included a few giant Sequoias, which thrived in California. None grew further north due to the cold. They were impressive trees, even to this girl who had grown up amongst trees all her life.
The grove was bordered on all sides but one by the carefully arranged grapevines in their fields. On the fourth side, I found myself walking the loamy gravel path of a French garden. There was even a shrub maze.
The sun had risen and was gleaming in the sky hours later as I made my way by the side entrance of the main house. I almost turned away before stepping onto the pavement until I heard a muffled huff of disgust and a swallowed sob.
Too curious to stop myself, I did an about face and peeked around the corner near a service driveway. There stood Julia, Lucas’s sister, dressed in designer jeans, Prada boots, a carefully arranged Hermes scarf and a Louis Vuitton bag over her shoulder. Her phone, complete with bedazzled case, was in her hand and she was stabbing at it desperately with her pointer finger.
I cleared my throat. “Hey! Fancy seeing you here.”
Julia’s head jerked in my direction. Her eyes widened, and she lost some of her color, as if horrified that I was here, witnessing whatever I was witnessing. Perhaps she was about to make her own great escape? Perhaps it was her just acting like a normal person and getting caught in the act. Who knew…
She seemed to recover herself and gestured stiffly at her phone. “Can you believe that Uber won’t send a car out here? It’s too