“Olivia!”
Halting, she looked at him. “Don’t use your diplomat voice on me! I’m not some third world despot who will be overthrown next week. This—” She motioned to his all-over tan. “This is to make you look more Arabic. The military, specifically some guy you said was wider than he was tall—you called him a cartoon bear—is going to pick you up in just over two weeks. They’ll give you twenty minutes to pack and leave. And you do it! To hell with us and your family. You only cared about Muammar Gaddafi.”
When Kit opened his mouth to speak, Olivia knew what he was going to say. He was going to tell her that she was saying the name wrong. Always the perfectionist! She leaned toward him, her face red with anger. “Don’t you dare say it!”
But he had no idea what she meant. “Actually, his name is—”
She put her hands over her ears and screamed so loud the peacock screeched and the children came running.
“Go!” Kit ordered them, and the kids and the bird obeyed. When they were alone again, he looked back at Olivia. “You must tell me what this is about. Do I talk in my sleep? Is that how you know about...about my mission?”
Her arms were stiff at her side, her hands in fists. “No! You tell me when we finally get married—over forty years from now. But by that time I’m so beaten down by life that I would marry Gaddafi if it meant escaping my stepson and his wife.”
Kit’s face was losing the hard, unbending look that he would perfect as he aged. “Did you agree to marry me now because you thought you were expecting our child?”
“Yes!” she said. “I did. I thought I had no other choice in this unenlightened era when a single mother is considered—at best—an object of pity. This time is hardly better than the Puritans’.”
“Thought,” he said softly. “Past tense.”
“Yes. Past. Done. I now know I have choices. I have freedom. I don’t have to marry vain little Alan Trumbull just to get his kid because I lost mine. I don’t have to see our daughter’s eyes when we tell her we’re the parents who...” The energy her rage had given her was vanishing. “Who gave her up.”
“Come with me.” Kit’s his voice was soft and gentle. “I want to show you something.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you. I hate you! You lied to me. You left me.”
“I know.” He took her hand.
Olivia was feeling too bad to do anything but go with him. She’d had days of little sleep and endless misery. No one would listen to her or believe her. Even on small things like saying they needed to check the gas lines in the basement, she’d been told to mind her own business. And through every hang up, every warning, she’d thought how all this was happening because of Kit. Was it worth it? Must her future depend on him? Wasn’t there another choice? An alternative?
Tears of anger were blocking her vision, but she saw that he had led her to the pond.
On the side were the big towels they brought out for their twice-daily swims, but no one else was there. She had an idea that the men were keeping the children inside. Away from me, she thought. Me and my bad temper.
Kit gave her a very sweet smile. “Feeling better?”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and nodded. “I am, but it doesn’t change anything.”
Still smiling, Kit made a lightning-fast move as he bent, picked her up, then twirled around and threw her. Like a human spear, Olivia went sailing through the air to land in the deepest part of the pond. The force of Kit’s thrust sent her underwater. She hadn’t been expecting the plunge and she fought hard to get to the surface.
When she came up, Kit was there beside her, treading water.
“You bastard!” She started swimming to the bank, but Kit caught her ankle. “Let go of me!”
“I have some cousins who—”
“Yeah, I know,” Olivia said angrily. “We’re married, remember? I know your whole family.” Her skirt was wrapping around her legs and she didn’t like treading water.
“In the year twenty-something, right? But that couldn’t be. The world ends at the year 2000.”
“It doesn’t even screw up the computer clocks. I need to get back to feed the kids.”
“You haven’t thought about any of us for the last few days, so why bother now? As I was saying, I have some cousins, a bunch of earth-bound creatures, who say we Montgomerys are part fish. I can stay out here all day, and we will, until you agree to tell me everything.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you.” She started toward the bank, but again he caught her ankle and pulled her back to him. She closed her lips tight and didn’t speak.
“At first, I didn’t mind it when you called me a worthless boy. I knew you were overwhelmed with lust for me, so—”
“I was no such thing!”
“It’s all right as the feeling was mutual. I figured you’d come around eventually.”
“Ha!”
He went underwater and came up on the other side of her. “You did come around. And around.” He paddled in a circle, surrounding her. “And around. And around.”
“Okay!” Some of her anger was leaving her. “The sex was good. I admit it. But there’s more to being together than sex.”
“Trust? Honesty? Sharing things?”
She glared at him. “Like you told me what you were doing for your country? You know what you told me?”
“In the future, you mean? When we’re married?” He was laughing at her.
“Yes! Then. You said you were an idiot for thinking that your country was more important than I was.”
Kit stopped paddling and he lost that smirky expression.
Olivia smiled. “Sounds like you, doesn’t it? Just so you know, you don’t get back from Libya until three years later and it’s in a medic plane. Takes you a year to recover and the military no longer wants you.”
Kit looked so devastated that she almost felt sorry for him. Almost. She swam to the bank, got out, and grabbed a towel.
“I want to hear it all,” he said from behind her.
“You won’t listen. No one does. In the last few days I’ve concocted more lies than I have in my whole life. I was trying to save lives—except that it was all a lie. I...” She sat down on the ground, the towel around her shoulders, and looked out at the water. When she spoke, her voice was quiet. “You and I were so polite to each other. We made a pact to never talk about all the bad we’d been through, all that we’d missed by being apart.”
“When was this?” Kit sat beside her and began rubbing her back with the towel.
“After we were married. By then, you were so famous and—”
“Please no,” he said.
“Not like George and Amal famous but—” When he looked confused, she waved her hand. “You’re famous inside the political world. You solve problems for whole countries. It’s just that you couldn’t solve your own life. You greatly disliked your first wife. Rowan said...” She didn’t finish.
He’d stopped rubbing. “I married someone other than you?”
The disbelief in his voice was so honest that she looked at him. His lip was bleeding again. “After Libya, you came here to Summer Hill. You saw me but you thought I was married and had had another man’s child. Your pride didn’t allow you to ask anyone in town the truth. But...” She looked back at the pond. “But then, I still hated you for leaving me. I’m sure that if you had shown up, I would have pushed a refrigerator over on you.”
“I would never leave you,” he said. “If they came to get me, I’d let you know where I was.”
“You did. Sort of. You left a note and the ring in the well house, but I didn’t see them. I couldn’t bear to go back...back there.”
Kit put his arm around Olivia and pulled her head onto his shoulder. “I want to hear it all. From the beginning. Every word. What happened the day they came to get me?”
“I went to Richmond,” she said. “I was angry at you because I’d slipped up the day before and said I love you. You said nothing in return. You were silent.”
“Because I didn’t love you?” he asked.