Chapter 7
While Marc was making dinner, he’d managed to regain some sense of equilibrium.
Refereeing between his two sons would never be easy; he was telling the truth when he’d admitted to Luca about his and his brother Noah’s past confrontations as kids.
It was only in this last year that he and Noah had grown closer.
They’d led such separate lives; all three brothers had, despite their own early parental loss.
Their father had died when Marc was nine and Joel was seven.
Noah, at twelve, had done his best to keep the brothers close, but things hadn’t worked out that way.
They were all such different people, and as their careers and wider lives had taken them in different directions, it had been increasingly difficult to maintain meaningful contact.
They all phoned each other occasionally, and in the immediate aftermath of Tessa’s death both Joel and Noah had made more of an effort to keep in touch with him, if not each other.
But a lifetime of distance was a hard thing to bridge.
That was one of the reasons why Marc had decided to buy the lake house.
Being just a couple of miles away from Noah, who’d recently bought a house with his partner, Bella, was as much of a motivator as the price of the place.
Money hadn’t been an issue: he earned a good salary as an AI systems executive for a large, multinational software firm, and at this stage of his career he could work from anywhere that had decent internet.
Lower Brambleton had been connected to the fibre optic network during the past year, which had made the move an even better decision.
He could still remember Noah’s exclamation of surprise when he’d told him he’d like to make an offer on the lake house, but once Noah had got over his shock, he’d negotiated a very reasonable deal for the property.
It might need a lot of work, but Marc was desperate for things to take his mind off Tessa, and this house would certainly do that.
Marc also hoped that being so close geographically to Noah would mean the two brothers would grow closer emotionally too.
It certainly seemed, in the past couple of weeks, that Noah felt the same way.
His brother had visited the lake house several times and although he seemed sceptical that Marc would ever get the place completely modernised, he had admitted that the house had great potential.
As for bringing the two of them closer to their other brother, Joel… Well, time would tell on that one.
All he knew was that he didn’t want his history to repeat itself with his own sons. He’d do everything he could to make sure that they remained close.
‘Boys, dinner!’
One thing he could be proud of was that he was a good cook, and he and the children enjoyed eating together.
He had the French culture to thank for that, and it was a habit he intended to maintain.
The twins had been playing upstairs since they got back home, their previous spats all but forgotten, which had given Marc time to cook up a half-decent lasagne and shove some garlic bread in the oven.
He heard the reassuring thump of two pairs of feet on the stairs, and only just had enough time to call out to them not to run, before they erupted into the kitchen, dragging a couple of toys and bickering amiably about whose turn it was to sit next to the radiator.
‘All right, all right, look at the chart on the fridge – that’ll tell you.’
Liam grinned as he saw the blue soldier figure that he’d picked to represent himself, making him the winner. Luca was downcast for a second, but his eyes brightened when he saw the huge baguette stuffed with garlic butter that Marc was now removing from the oven.
‘Have you washed your hands?’ Both boys nodded.
‘With soap?’ There was a slight hesitation, before Marc sent them to the downstairs bathroom to do them properly.
Upon their return, he’d laid out the garlic bread on a serving plate and was in the process of dishing up a hot, bubbling, cheesy lasagne: the perfect comfort food for a cold December evening.
Marc gave the boys their plates and had put his down on the table when the chime of the front doorbell broke into the beginning of their meal.
‘I’ll get it!’ Liam trilled.
‘No you won’t. You sit and eat your dinner.
I won’t be a tick.’ Checking they both had all that they needed, Marc flipped the tea towel he’d been using to hold the lasagne dish over his shoulder and hurried to the front door.
He wasn’t expecting anyone, but he wondered if Noah or Noah’s girlfriend, Bella, had decided to pop over on the way past. Not that the lake house was on the way past anything, per se, but they’d checked in on him a couple of times since he’d arrived, and he’d been touched by their concern.
If it was either of them, they could stay for a plate of dinner.
Goodness knew, he’d cooked enough to feed an army.
Hurrying through to the hallway, he saw an indistinct figure through the frosted glass of the front door.
It was too short, and too female, to be Noah, but in the slightly odd illumination from the security light it didn’t look much like Bella, either.
He really hoped it wasn’t a salesperson or a religious representative interrupting their dinner.
Taking a deep breath, he pulled open the door.