Page 73 of I Think Olive You

My parents loved each other at some point too, but by the time I was old enough to know what relationships were, there was a coldness. The ice grew and cracked until separate sheets floated, pulling us further away from each other. Now there’s dry land and my mom’s on it, solid and strong. It’s time to ask for help.

“What can we do about Alan? My therapist thinks it sounds a little shady, especially since I haven’t even seen the clause or the will itself.”

“Your therapist? You’ll go back?”

Can’t she stick to the topic? It’s hard enough asking for help, derailing my request does nothing.

“Yes, next week. But seriously. I need your help.”

“I’ll reach out to someone on the board tomorrow to get a feel for the environment there, make it sound like it’s about me. We’ll get my lawyer lined up and I’ll ask Alan for a copy. If he refuses to provide one, we can have Charlie send discovery demands and claim we plan to dispute it.”

Relief washes through me, sudden and overwhelming. It’s been just me for so long. I’ve never had someone to rely on, even with Giuliana I kept so much to myself. It’s time I let someone in.

“You can tell him I’m drying out somewhere; he’ll believe it.”

“Matt… I’m not going to badmouth you, even if it’s to lie. You’re better than that and I won’t give him the satisfaction.”

My throat constricts with emotion, with this sense of family I found and lost and have somehow tentatively found again with my mom this time. How much of the distance between us is because of my father and his looming shadow? Gathering the courage, I ask her about him, even though bringing him up might hurt her.

“Hey, do you know why Dad left Italy? I’ve been trying to piece it together and I keep getting these bits from different people but nothing makes sense.”

Isabella spoke about him with love—for the most part—and the inscription on the photograph told its own story. Andrea dropped that piece of information about Aria’s death and I have no idea how to unpack that. Everything my father said about Italy in the press made it sound like something he’d rather forget. His name change spoke to that.

Sighing, my mother tenses and I know this is a mistake. The words are out, though. All I can do is hope she doesn’t brush it aside.

“There was a woman, Aria, I think it was. It’s been so long. Thomas and I met shortly after he got here. He was clawing his way up the corporate ladder trying to fill a hole in his heart and I was getting my start in New York’s modeling scene. Both alone. Both hungry for success and fame, and everything that made us hate each other later on.”

Staring out at the city, her eyes are glassy with the past. I wait, body poised—drawn back and taut like a bowstring.

“I only asked him about it once, after we were engaged. Thomas told me that he’d betrayed his best friend and he couldn’t stand to face him. They had feelings for the same woman, but she was closer with his friend. One drunken night Thomas came onto her and they shared a kiss. Aria pulled away shortly after, explaining her feelings weren’t as strong as his, but his friend…”

“Lorenzo,” I supply, giving her a piece she doesn’t have.

“Lorenzo saw them and left, very upset. Aria wanted to go after him and she fought with Thomas, urging him to give her his car keys. Since they’d been drinking and she was so upset, he tried to stop her. When she insisted, he begged to go along with her, but she refused.”

My mother’s breath shudders out of her chest now. The past glistening between us, I can picture it somehow. Casting my mind’s eye, I see the living room how they’d left it, and the gravel road twisting up through the grove.

“Your father stayed behind and finished off the bottle. He woke up to his best friend in the hospital and the woman he believed he loved dead. Apparently, she’d caught up with Lorenzo and tried to get him to stop, but lost control of the car.”

Oh god. The photograph flashes in my mind, their broad smiles so clear in my memory. I can only imagine how ugly it must have gotten between them after.

“The rift couldn’t be repaired. Lorenzo blamed your father, Thomas blamed himself. He couldn’t stay, not with things the way they were after what he’d done. It was one of his biggest regrets. Lorenzo accused Thomas of being selfish, greedy. Always wanting what wasn’t rightfully his.”

All words I can see myself using against my father. But now I know he’s suffered loss—know he walked away from the only family he had because of the shame he felt. I’m about to be sick. Guilt drove him away the same way it did me. He wanted more than he should’ve. So have I.

Abundantia wasn’t rightfully mine. In trying to get both the grove and Giuliana, my greed tore it all away from me. And that rift can’t be repaired either.

“Are you okay?” my mother asks, probably because she’s watching me have some kind of fucked up epiphany.

“Yeah, uh… I think I might be relating to Dad for the first time and it feels like an out-of-body experience.” I try to laugh it off but my heart aches with something I don’t know how to put a name to.

With every year passing, my father seemed like more and more of a stranger. The distance grew until he began to feel less like a person to me. Thomas Palmer became a figurehead in my mind—a name, a bogeyman. Something to be defied and hated, and feared.

But maybe. Maybe he was just a man. Like me.

Flawed, fucked up. Incapable of loving in the right way—drowning. I wish I could face him now to ask him the questions I’ve finally found the words for. If I only had a few more minutes with him—to rail at him and forgive him… To look him in the eye as a man and not the lonely little boy with a stone in his chest.

Like it or not, Thomas Palmer had an immense effect on me and my life. His choices echo through mine and I walk a similar path he did. I want to tell him that I’ll fix it. I’ll do better. I’ll heal what both of us have hurt. But I can’t.

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