Courtship

Part 41

Marina was pleased Isabelle wasn't home when Marina opened the door and stepped into the house because she had tears streaming down her cheeks. With her lips quivering, and tears flooding her eyes she leaned against the closed door and waited to hear the car leave their driveway. She was half hoping that he'd come after her. Please come after me. Please let me wake up from this nightmare. Please can we go back to how we were. Please give me a second chance. Pound on the door, demand to talk to me. The thoughts raced through her head.

Give me a chance. Come after me. Cause that way she might still have a chance to persuade him to see things from their point of view. But there was no hammering on the door. No incessant ring of the doorbell. And she heard the car tyres on the gravel as he drove off down the driveway.

How long Marina stayed by the door she did not know. When she eventually moved she did so with her eyes red, and her sight blurred by the unending stream of tears as she headed for her room. She couldn't afford to mope around and yet that is exactly what she wanted to do. She wanted to curl up in bed and hope that she would wake up and find this was all just a bad dream. But it felt too painful to be a dream. It felt too raw for it to be anything but real. Thank goodness Isabelle was covering for her tonight, for an hour at least. For Marina knew she would need that time to pull herself together.

It was only as he drove home that Rafe wondered whether he'd overreacted. She wanted to be friends. He could work from that starting point. Friends was better than nothing. Wasn't it? But the more he thought about it the more he found himself coming up with questions that needed answers.

Back at Marina's home it was Isabelle who brought the matter up for discussion the following morning when Isabelle asked Marina if she was coming down with something, cause her nose was red and she looked shattered. Maybe the night at the centre was full on. "Busy night?" Isabelle asked her sister. "You look awful!"

"Thanks." Came the droll response as Marina rubbed at her nose and fought off another bout of tears.

"So what's up?" Isabelle asked, deciding that the centre wasn't the issue.

Marina dithered about telling her sister the truth. But given how secrets had resulted in her current situation Marina opted for the truth. So tearfully Marina told her sister that her relationship with Rafe had come to an end last night. And she went on to tell her sister that their secret may not be a secret for much longer because he knew about it and was annoyed with her because she hadn't told him.

"When were you going to tell him?" Isabelle asked softly.

"I don't know. When could I?" Marina was daydreaming. Again. It had become a common occurrence over the last couple of months as she'd revisited their dates. But now her daydream was fanciful because she knew she'd have to rely on her imagination from now on. "Any way, it doesn't matter! It's over. Somehow he found out and he wasn't happy! Who could blame him? No one wants to learn they've been duped."

"We didn't dupe anybody!" Isabelle stated firmly. She had been dreading this day for years, more so in the last couple of months as she watched her sister fall deeper and deeper in love. For while Isabelle, with the luxury of distance had been able to think about this eventuality, it was clear that either Marina had buried her head in the sand, or hadn't expected it to be this difficult.
"What do you call letting people believe we were financially afloat when in reality we were flat broke?" Marina huffed in indignation and annoyance. This secret was not meant to cost her happiness! She was not willing to let what they'd had to do to stay afloat in the past to ruin her future. She just wasn't. And if that meant telling the whole world what they had done in the past, then so be it. If only it was that simple.

"I call it keeping our private business private! It is no-one's business!" Isabelle stated.

Marina shook her head, "I'm not surprised he hates me. We pulled the wool over their eyes for years. No one is going to like that. It doesn't matter whether it was private business. When they find out they will all think we pulled the wool over their eyes."

"Wasn't expecting anyone to find out." Isabelle said. "I wonder how he did?" She shook her head. "I mean, no one outside of you, me, Giana, Cara, Grandmother and my Godmother know! None of us have said anything. How did he find out?"

"Shouldn't we be more worried about the fact that if he knows, then other people do too?"

Isabelle sighed. Then she looked up at her sister and said, "If other people knew we'd have heard by now. You can bet we'd have heard from someone by now."

That had Marina pausing for thought. She frowned, "So what are you saying?"

"You sure he knows?"

Marina nodded. "He kept going on about secrets and being kept in the dark." Marina huffed. "Maybe he is the only one who knows."
"That doesn't make sense. How would he? How could he? He's in medicine not finance, so how would he know about our finances?"

"You think he was on a fishing expedition last night, waiting for me to confirm his suspicions or something?" Now that she thought about it, he hadn't actually said anything about what he knew. She assumed he did. "I thought we had something. Everything was going so well. I must have let my guard down, told him something to make him suspicious. Must have said something last night, cause it was only last night that he started with the cryptic questions and hints about secrets." Marina sighed. "I thought we had something. Not just the chemistry. Something."

"You do have something! I saw you two kiss." Belle said dryly. She waited, her eyes met her sister's gaze as she added, "You should go see him. Talk things through. I'm not sure that either of you have all the pieces."

"You want me to see what he knows?" Marina scowled at her sister.
"Not exactly. I want you to see what he knows and tell him what he doesn't know!"