"I remember."
"You didn't believe me."
He started to say that he had believed she was upset, that he had simply misunderstood what she needed. Then he heard how cowardly that explanation sounded. He took a breath. "I didn't listen well enough to understand," he said. "And when someone tells you they're hurting, that is something you have to do. I'm sorry, Amara. I won't ask you to pretend it didn't happen."
"Can we go somewhere quiet?" Amara asked.
Marcus nodded and asked Evelyn to escort the guests into the garden while the musicians took a break. He offered to dismiss everyone, but Amara shook her head. She did not want her friends sent home as if her tears were something shameful. Instead, she walked with him into the library, the one room in the house where her mother's old sketchbooks still occupied an entire shelf. Talia waited outside the door in case she was needed.
For nearly half an hour, Amara told her father what life had felt like when he was away. She described the comments about Naomi, the letters Celeste opened, the phone calls she had been told not to interrupt, and the way every disagreement was reported to him as proof that she was becoming ungrateful. She told him that she had stopped sketching downstairs because Celeste called it a childish hobby. She told him how frightened she had become of asking for anything at all.
Marcus listened without checking his phone. Once he covered his face with both hands. Once he began to interrupt and stopped himself. When Amara finished, he said, "I kept telling myself that giving you a good life meant making sure you had everything you needed. I never checked whether you felt safe enough to ask me for it."
"I didn't need a bigger party," Amara said. "I needed you to show up for the small things."
"Then that's where I'll start." He looked at the sketchbooks behind her. "I cannot promise I'll never make another mistake. I can promise that what you tell me will not be filtered through somebody else. And you will not have to prove your pain in front of a crowd before I take it seriously."