Page 34 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

He lifts a brow. “You say that as if there was a time I didn’t tell you about it. You know many things about my childhood.”

“I suppose, though it seems superficial.” I never push him, but now I feel I have nothing to lose. So I am.

“My parents are dead, what is there to say?”

“Some people would maybe have something to say about their parents.”

“I am not some people.”

That was an understatement. “I understand that, it’s just that I don’t know anything about your life and that’s weird.”

“It has never bothered you.”

I look down, then back up at him. “It has, actually, I just never said anything. You’ve been to my parents’ house.

You’ve met my siblings. You know all about the schools I went to and how I got teased for being a nerd, and how I had a hard time making friends because I’d tell them they were unserious for not having goals for their future.

You know about the time I planned a big sixteenth birthday party at the bowling alley and only two people came, and my mom put on bowling shoes and paid them to play my favorite band over the loudspeaker and embarrassed the hell out of me, bowling and dancing, and also saved the whole entire day. You know me. You’re like a locked box.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that I give you nothing more or less than what is good for you to know?”

I have no idea how to interpret what he’s just said. “Dragos…”

“The night you met me you went home with a stranger. You were happy to let that man have you in every way he wanted. You have been happy with that for four years, we do not need to change it. We live this life, here, and that is sufficient. The past does not matter.”

“I’m not even involved in your present. We used to travel, at least. We haven’t gone anywhere for eighteen months.

I’ve been stuck in this house other than the odd event and then…

and then six months ago you stopped coming home.

You do all these things without me now and you’re acting like nothing has changed. ”

“And somehow you think my childhood is the key to all this?” He laughed, a booming crack of a sound that was divorced from humor. “Yes, drogostea mea , my father did not hug me and my mother was a drunk and so now I have trouble with emotional intimacy.”

I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. “Well, is that true?”

“My father was a hard man, that’s true. He made me into a hard man, that is also true, but I have no sadness about it. No regret. It is what had to be in order to make me the man who could carry on the family legacy, and so I have done it. My mother…she does not matter. She did not raise me.”

I huff a laugh. “Some would argue that suggests she matters all the more, or at the very least it indicates that you might have some issues around that.”

“You once told me you were too middle-class for some event I took you to. I suspect you are too middle-class here as well. Issues. Those are middle-class.”

I nearly snort. “Hardly. Everyone in the middle class is too busy working to go to therapy. But we do talk about things with our friends.”

“Friends may yet be another bastion of the middle class, I fear.”

This conversation is frustrating, but I feel like I’ve actually learned some things about him, though I sense him getting irritated. Normally, when I sense his irritation I pull back. It’s one reason I never get this far.

“How was your father hard?”

“He was Romanian.”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me, I’m American. You’re the only Romanian I know.”

“You have met many since marrying me.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Perhaps I don’t.”

“If you can’t even tell me about your father I’m going to assume you have some deep trauma associated with him and you’re too scared to tell me about it.”

My heart is racing and I fear I’ve gone too far, and when he looks at me with flat, ice-blue eyes, I know that I have.

“You think I’m afraid of trauma? What is it you think might happen? Do you think I will weep, Cassandra, is that it? Do you think I fear emotion?”

“S-sometimes.”

“Let me put your mind at ease. I do not speak of my life before you because of your own delicate sensibilities. But if you are truly curious, I am happy to tell you about the last time I saw my father.” He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together behind his head.

“The last time I saw him he was standing in front of the family estate, and then suddenly he fell, and a large pool of blood spread out beneath his head. He was killed right before my eyes by an assassin’s bullet. And you question why I have security.”

I sit in stunned silence. I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t understand what he’s just told me.

“I…”

“Do you wish to give me condolences?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I… Of course I didn’t know that happened to you. How old were you?”

“Sixteen.” He stands up and pushes his chair in. “It was not the first death I ever witnessed, though, so I was not terribly upset by it. When I was eight I found my mother’s body in the kitchen, though I think my father was responsible for that.”

“Dragos…”

“Do you feel better for knowing that, Cassandra? Does it make you feel as if we have the intimacy you so crave?”

“I…”

“If you expect that it will make me emotional to relive this, I am sorry to disappoint you. People live, and they die. It is a brutal thing but there is no reason to remain tortured by what is.”

“Your mother…”

“My father wasn’t a good man.” A smile curves his lips.

“I cannot lie to you. When I saw him there, his eyes lifeless, I said a prayer to St. Isaac for justice to be done. For my father that will mean burning in hell, and I take joy in that.” He pauses for a moment.

“This does not disturb me, though I can see it does you. I will leave you to finish your night in peace.”

Then he turns and leaves me alone.

Again.

The sadness mingles with fury inside me and I know one thing for sure.

I can’t try anymore.