CHAPTER TWELVE

The villa was nestled into the hillside above the ocean and was set among bougainvillea with the fragrance of the sea. The villa had a private pool that looked out directly over the water. Aria was surprised to find the bedroom contained, as she had seen the enormous bed, she and Adrian had stood on either side of it and pondered over this piece of information. "I will take the sofa, " he said. "After all it's your honeymoon. You get the bed." "You are the one having the baby. You take the bed." She glanced at the bed. It was indeed very large. "Besides you and I are grown-ups, " she went on. "We can share

it." He a little as if he too wanted to have a sexual relationship by way of problem-solving, and if that is how their minds work, then this would not be a problem at all. "In that case, " he declared. "I am on my side; You on yours." "We agreed."

He was a different person and asleep after just twenty minutes, which she found strangely impressive. However, she needed more time. Besides, she lay there in the warm dark, hearing the ocean from below, detecting the presence of someone else next to her, not threatening, not intimate exactly, but undeniable  and her mind went to the photo in her bag, her mother's diary, and all the slow, gradual revelations about the man sleeping three feet away from her. She was startled by a scream. It was her next to her low and ragged, the kind of sound uttered below the level of consciousness, and before she was completely awake, she was upright, her hand reaching out through the sheets. Adrian was stiff, his hands clenched fists in the pillow, his breath coming in short, irregular waves. His eyes were closed. The nightmare must have taken him, as he was completely disconnected from the present. She touched his arm. He became motionless. It was not calm there was still a hint of tension, the whole body bracing itself against something but he was still. She went closer and placed her hand on his chest, near his heart, as it was the right, the simple grounding thing, and she whispered his name very softly. The stiffness… slowly,very slowly,left him. His breathing became steady. He didn't exactly wake but surfacing to something more shallow than the nightmare. Soon his hand moved and was placed over hers, and she figured he was probably still more asleep than awake.

She stayed like that for a long time.

That morning, before she could even open her eyes, he had already left. For two days he hardly spoke to her. It was not without a reason that he was distant, in fact, he was never unkind with her. She realized that what he was, was absent, turned inwards, handling whatever had come up with the same focused self-control that he applied to everything else. He would swim alone at the break of dawn. He ate his meals hours apart from her. She would get a reply from him whenever she talked but he never started the talking. She let him have it. She realized what it means to want to put your walls up again after someone has been inside them without your permission. On the third day, she went to the terrace with her mother's journal and was sitting under the sun reading when she realized that Adrian has been watching her from the doorway. She didn't immediately look up. After marking the page she was on and closing the journal, she went on to look at him. He was in the chair at the other side. For a while, they kept quiet. The sea was extremely blue and very loud. Then Aria remarked: "Will you tell me? It is up to you." After a long silence, he spoke. She was thinking that he was going to stand up and walk away. "My house was on fire, " he revealed. "It happened when I was nine." Still not facing her, he was staring at the sea. "The house my brother and I shared was not secure. Our mother was " Pause. "She was sick. And she made some decisions that put them in danger."  and one night those choices became a fire, and I got out and Roman didn't." He stopped. "I thought he didn't." She waited. "I have dreamed about it for twenty-three years, " he said. "The sound of it." Aria looked at his profile. The jaw she had thought was cut from limestone. The controlled, composed face that was she could see now the adult architecture built over a nine-year-old boy who had survived something unsurvivable and spent two decades trying to deserve it. "My mother died four years ago, " she said. "Everyone thought it was her heart. The doctors, my father, everyone." She paused. "I think someone helped her die. I'm not sure who yet. I'm looking into it. She left me her diary, and there are hints in it, and I believe she was aware of something going on and was recording it." He looked at her. The silence between them was different now. Not the silence of strangers or of a contractual arrangement, but the silence of two people who have put something real between them and are deciding whether to step over it. "I have connections, " Adrian said at last. "If you ever need them." "I understand, " she replied. "I'll reach out when I feel ready." He agreed silently. They remained side by side until the time changed and the sun was casting long shadows on the terrace, it was not discomfort exactly, but it was honesty, and Aria was beginning to see that honesty with this man at least was something very valuable.

Marianna, who had been roped in by Elena's insistence to run the kitchen while at the villa, cooked a dinner of fresh fish and lemon rice that evening. Adrian lingered at the table more than he should have after the meal. 

Aria narrated to him a story from her childhood, a really ludicrous one about a school play and a borrowed costume and a goat that was not to be anywhere near the building, and he listened full and intently, and after the story he noticed her something in his expression a loosening, a sparkle, the muscular precursor to a laugh. He didn't laugh. But he was very close. She went to sleep that night thinking that very close indeed was enough, for now. And a man who is very close to laughing is one, in her opinion, who hasn't entirely given up the idea of it, yet. She thought that was something worth holding on to.