He understood such things, had seen them among both friends and relatives, so he understood the scars and disillusionments that could be left. “Juliet, you’re not your mother.”

“No.” She turned back, head up. “No, I’ve worked long and hard to be certain I’m not. She’s a lovely, intelligent woman who gave up her career, her self-esteem, her independence to be no more than a glorified housekeeper because my father wanted it. He didn’t want a wife of his to work. A wife of his,” she repeated. “What a phrase. Her job was to take care of him. That meant having dinner on the table at six o’clock every night, and his shirts folded in his drawer. He—damn, he’s a good father, attentive, considerate. He simply doesn’t believe a man should shout at a woman or a girl. As a husband, he’d never forget a birthday, an anniversary. He’s always seen to it that she was provided for in the best material fashion, but he dictated my mother’s lifestyle. While he was about it, he enjoyed a very discreet string of women.”

“Why does your mother stay his wife?”

“I asked her that a few years ago, before I moved away to New York. She loves him.” Juliet stared into her wine. “That’s reason enough for her.”

“Would you rather she’d have left him?”

“I’d rather she’d have been what she could be. What she might’ve been.”

“The choice was hers, Juliet. Just as your life is yours.”

“I don’t want to ever be bound to anyone, anyone who could humiliate me that way.” She lifted her head again. “I won’t put myself in my mother’s position. Not for anyone.”

“Do you see all relationships as being so imbalanced?”

With a shrug, she drank again. “I suppose I haven’t seen so many of them.”

For a moment he was silent. Carlo understood fidelity, the need for it, and the lack of it. “Perhaps we have something in common. I don’t remember my father well, I saw him little. He, too, was unfaithful to my mother.”

She looked over at him, but he didn’t see any surprise in her face. It was as though she expected such things. “But he committed his adultery with the sea. For months he’d be gone, while she raised us, worked, waited. When he’d come home, she’d welcome him. Then he’d go again, unable to resist. When he died, she mourned. She loved him, and made her choice.”

“It’s not fair, is it?”

“No. Did you think love was?”

“It’s not something I want.”

He remembered once another woman, a friend, telling him the same thing when she was in turmoil. “We all want love, Juliet.”