Astrid kept quiet long enough to make Olivia look up. A small smile played at her mouth. “You sound just like your father.”
Olivia reeled as if she’d reached out and slapped her. She had never, not once, been compared to her father. She didn’t even know the first thing about him to know if they had anything in common.
Astrid softly, and sadly, smiled again. “I can tell that’s surprising to you, but it’s true. I was married to him for ten years, so I would know. You may look like your mother, but your mannerisms, the way you talk, your natural skepticism, that flush in your cheeks right now, that’s all your father. It’s so plain to see.”
The revelation left Olivia breathless. It struck her that Astrid was likely the only person alive with any intimate knowledge of her father, and she’d just dipped a ladle into the well that she possessed. Both of these facts had Olivia wanting to swan-dive into that well and swim to the bottom to gather up everything she knew.
She found herself unable to speak.
“Look,” Astrid said to fill the silence. She traced her manicured fingertip around her coffee mug’s rim. “I know you must know the truth by now, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, and I know you have no reason to trust me, but I hope that you will believe me when I say, I’m sorry.”
The apology pierced through Olivia and did not feel the way she thought it would. Where she wanted to feel restored, vindicated, made whole again, the simple sorry felt cheap. Easy. Inadequate.
“For what?” she said coldly, unable to keep the edge out of her voice.
Astrid’s eyes shot up to her. She was well versed in faking emotion—she’d literally won awards for it—but Olivia could not mistake the expression spreading under the mask she tried to hold.
Shame.
Olivia sat up straighter, empowered by the sight of the imposing woman wilting before her. She didn’t care if this was difficult for Astrid. She wanted to hear her say it. “Sorry for the way they were treated? Sorry for how I grew up thinking my parents were terrible people? Sorry for the wayIwas treated? Sorry for staying silent for thirty years?” Her voice rose with each question, and Astrid further wilted. All her life, Olivia had never had anyone to direct her anger at, and now with the person she hadn’t even known was the source of it sitting in front of her, a fire hose had been turned on.
“Do you know what it’s like to only know your parents from tabloids? To see them called every terrible thing possible for something they didn’t even do? And to find outthirty years laterthat the person who could have cleared their names kept quiet the whole time?”
“Olivia, I—”
“I thought they didn’t want me,” Olivia said. Tears had found their way into her voice, and she did not hold them back. She was not ashamed to cry in front of Astrid Larsson. Shewantedto cry. She wanted her to see the damage her choiceshad inflicted. “I thought I was a mistake. An unwanted accident from a toxic affair that turnedyouinto a victim and leftmealone. You could have fixed all that, and you didn’t. So don’t tell me you’resorry, because it’s not good enough.” She used one of the heavy cloth napkins to wipe her eyes and didn’t care that she was staining Astrid Larsson’s linens with makeup.
A thick silence expanded between them. In it, the only sounds were birds chirping and Jax lapping at the pool water. Olivia’s outburst had lifted a weight off her. One that she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying until it was gone. Astrid, on the other hand, looked as if it had settled firmly on top of her and might have been limiting her ability to breathe. When she finally spoke, her voice came out soft and sounding nothing like the woman Olivia had seen command the screen for decades.
“No, I can’t imagine what that was like at all. I admit, when your grandmother decided to keep you out of the spotlight, I felt like I dodged a bullet. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’ve been holding my breath for thirty years, waiting for this to come, for you to show up wanting answers. I’ve thought of reaching out to you over the years. I thought that seeing Brad and Becky’s daughter would be like seeing an old friend—two old friends. But then I’d remember how everything happened, the choices we made, and it was simply easier to let it all go. To keep it all quiet.”
As Olivia digested her words, three of them rang like chimes she couldn’t unhear:Brad and Becky.She’d never heard anyone refer to her parents like that. She didn’t even know there was anyone whowouldrefer to her parents like that. The casual nicknames implied a level of intimacy reserved for friendship.
Her own voice came out thick and strained with pain. “Ifyou considered them friends, why would you do this to them? Why wouldn’t you tell the truth?”
Astrid sighed. “That is complex, and I don’t think my answer will satisfy you.”
“I think I deserve to hear it, regardless.”
She gave her a stiff nod like she agreed but was still reluctant. “Your father and I married as a business arrangement. I was on the cusp of stardom, and being an American citizen would have helped my career in multiple ways. Your father was a businessman who knew what levers to pull to make things happen. Neither of us was interested in a family life. I wanted the biggest career I could have, and he wanted to get me there. It was settled with a trip to the courthouse and a few months of immigration paperwork. No one questioned that it wasn’t sincere, and it worked for years. We lived together, married on paper but married to our careers in reality. It worked until he met your mother.”
Where Olivia might have expected to hear bitterness, a sour resentment toward the woman who threw a wrench into her golden plan, she instead heard fondness. Perhaps even a hint of envy.
Astrid continued with a small smile on her lips. “You know those stories where someone is set in their ways until one person comes along and turns their world upside down? Well, that was your mother for your father. I’d never seen him like that before. He was like a teenager in love, and his whole worldview from before ceased to matter. When he told me he wanted a life with her, there was no way I could stand in their way. You see, Olivia, I was neverinlove with your father, but I loved him dearly as a friend. And I could not deny him the true love of hislife when he found her.” She let out another long breath and tapped her fingers on the table. “But we’d also been building my career for most of a decade and didn’t want to undo all that work. So, we made an arrangement. Among the three of us.”
She paused as if to remind Olivia that her parents had been complicit in the plan too.
“That also worked for a few years,” she continued, sounding like she was fondly remembering again. “I was off traveling for films most of the time, either shooting them or promoting them, and Rebecca all but moved into our house. She was…” She paused again and looked down with a smile. “She was really lovely, your mother.” Again, another skim of a deep well that Olivia wanted to dive into, but Astrid looked up with a grim expression. “When she got pregnant, we knew things were going to get difficult. And then after their accident…It was just easier not to correct the assumptions everyone made.”
The faint joy that had been brimming Olivia’s heart faded into an ache. She stared down at a lemon Danish pastry that had begun to melt and looked too fancy to eat anyway. “How could you do that to them?”
“Honestly, at the time, I wasn’t thinking of them. Or you,” Astrid said, and Olivia’s eyes bounced up. “I was only thinking of myself. I was thinking of whatIwould lose if word got out that I’d knowingly let my husband have an affair for two years. That I’d let the other woman live in my house, and to top it all off, that it wasn’t even truly an affair because my marriage wasn’t real to begin with. Everything I’d worked for—that your father had worked for too—would have been lost. So I didn’t say anything at all.”
A new breed of anger burned inside Olivia. It wasn’t the explosive kind she felt when she argued with Chuck. The kindthat burst and then faded into an afterglow that eventually healed like a sunburn. This anger was core-deep and powerful. Dangerous.
“Was it worth it?” she said hardly above a whisper.
Astrid considered her with a steady gaze. “I don’t think you want me to answer that question.”