Chapter 6 #2
She expelled a soft sigh, because she understood how he felt. How could she not? The last six weeks without Jack had given her an insight into what her life would be without the boy. To imagine a life in which she didn’t know him at all – she shivered.
“You hate me.” The realisation did something funny to her stomach. It squeezed hard and she trembled from head to foot.
“I hate what you did,” he grunted, his jaw locked tight.
The distinction was small, but somehow vital.
“I hated you,” she whispered. “For a long time.” She lifted a finger to his lips to silence him, and in the back of her mind she wondered why the intimacy didn’t feel at all out of place.
“But that’s not why I kept Jack from you,” she murmured.
“I hope one day you’ll understand me, and understand why…
” her voice trailed off at the look in his eyes, a look of unforgiving hardness.
“I hated that you disappeared. I hated that you were married. I hated that you were happy.”
His eyes sparked with hers. “Being married does not necessarily equate to happiness.” She had the sense that there was something he wasn’t saying, something he felt deep in his soul.
She ignored it. “I hated that I thought of you.” She swallowed, her throat was dry and sore.
“I hated that I thought of you as often as I did, and when I found out I was pregnant, I hated that I was happy.” She angled her face away, turning to look towards Rome.
“I knew you were married. I knew – I thought – that what we’d done was wrong, and despite that, knowing that we’d made a baby together… ” she shook her head. “It’s stupid.”
“What’s stupid?” his voice was husky.
“I wasn’t used to being alone.” She toyed with her fingers, plaiting them together distractedly.
“I struggled with that, and then I met you and for the first time in…since…” she swallowed.
“For the first time in a long time, I felt connected to another human.” Her smile was wistful.
“And then I got pregnant with Jack and it was messy and complicated and stressful and terrifying, but also, amazing.”
He was watching her intently. “You’re from Australia. Did you think about going home?”
A frown flickered across her face. “Briefly.”
“But you decided against it.”
She nodded.
“Surely it would have been easier to go home, to be amongst family and friends, rather than to raise a child on your own?”
She considered this for a moment. “I didn’t really have family or friends.
” Her heart thumped. “My parents died in a car accident, six months before I met you.” The words were cool, but grief was pressing down hard against her.
“I’m an only child. They were the only family I had.
” She studied the water, the small ripples that shifted beneath the dusk sky.
“And until they’d died, I’d been so wrapped up in my career that I’d let a lot of my friendships go. ”
“What did you do?”
“I was operations manager for a large textiles and manufacturing company. I reported directly to the CEO. I was young and I guess kind of addicted to my success. I loved my job.” She shook her head, dismissing that.
“I loved feeling useful, being good at something, but I ignored everyone and everything to get where I was.”
In the back of her mind, she wondered why she was telling him this, why she was being so open about something she preferred not to think about, much less admit to someone.
“My parents were really good about it. They were proud of me, I think. But I pretty much ignored them, all the time. I never went home, I never called.” Her statements were full of self-recrimination.
“I just presumed they’d always be there.
I thought I could get around to seeing them in my own time. ”
There was silence as the wistful tone of her words wrapped around them both, and then he spoke quietly, gently. “How did they die?”
She closed her eyes, blocking out the memories of that day.
“In a car accident. On their way to see me.” The words were a blade, pressing into her belly.
“I’d put them off for months and finally they said they’d come and visit, fill my freezer, reassure themselves I hadn’t joined a cult, you know, joke, joke, but it must have hurt my mum so much, how absent I was.
” Elodie turned to face Fiero and the look of sympathy in his expression surprised her; she hadn’t expected to find that within him.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because we were close. And I just disappeared.” She ground her teeth together, regret a violent force inside her. “I loved them, I just didn’t have time for them.”
“You were young. Building your career. What you did is what every person does at some point in their life. I have no doubt they were proud of you.”
More surprise. He wasn’t the first person to say as much to her, but it filled her soul in a way she hadn’t known possible.
“Maybe.” She lifted her shoulders. “They died, and my world fell apart. Everything I’d cared about so much, so passionately, just didn’t seem to matter anymore.
I went back to work and I tried to focus on the budget, on hitting the KPIs I used to live and die by, but it all felt so pointless.
All I could think about was how much I’d lost, how stupid I’d been.
How disloyal and ungrateful.” She shook her head angrily.
“They sacrificed so much to send me to the best school in Sydney, they supported me and championed me all the time, and then I just picked up and moved, and pretty much forgot they existed.” She tilted her head backwards, her eyes focussing on the sky overhead.
He was silent, contemplative.
“After they died, I had to go and pack up their house. Our house. Dad had taken up pottery,” her smile was filled with sadness. “He’d never even mentioned it. There was so much about them I didn’t know, at the end. I should have spent more time with them. I should have made more effort.”
She felt his eyes skimming her face.
“So finding out I was pregnant was sort of like a second chance, in a weird kind of way. Jack was a gift.” She turned to look at him.
“I’d lost so much and suddenly I had family again.
My own little boy.” Unconsciously, her eyes roamed his face, picking out all the similarities their son bore to his father.
“And you chose to raise him on your own.”
She considered that a moment. “I chose to not break up a marriage,” she corrected firmly.
“But I knew I could raise him on my own, yes. I was terrified, because having a baby is scary and strange and I had no experience whatsoever with children, but other people do it and I figured I’d work it out as I go along. ”
Something shifted in his features, something she couldn’t quite comprehend. “He is a remarkable boy.” His voice was deep. “I imagine that’s a credit to you.”
It was unmistakable praise, but it was delivered as a statement of fact. An observation, rather than anything designed to warm her. Nonetheless, a smile touched her lips. “Thank you.”
Silence, except for the gentle lapping of the water.
“And you were able to manage financially? I presume you haven’t been working?”
She kicked her feet under the water a little, grateful for the grounding properties of something as elemental as water. “I’ve done some consulting.”
“Have you?”
Her eyes lifted to his. “Yeah. Does that surprise you?”
“A little.” His smile was just a flash, a rueful shift of his lips that did something funny to her tummy.
“Why?”
He lifted a single brow. “Our son is not exactly a restful child,” he grimaced. “In the six weeks you were in hospital, I found his energy…exhausting,” he laughed, and she found herself laughing too. “And that was with a nanny employed full-time.”
“He’s a dynamo,” she agreed. “Not for the first six months or so. He was born a month prematurely, so he took a while to ‘wake up’.”
“I didn’t know that.”
She nodded. “A complication. It’s why I made sure your details were available to the hospital.
It was all very sudden. I had to have an emergency C-section.
I was partly terrified I’d wake up and be handed the wrong baby.
With no one there to watch him like a hawk and make sure they didn’t lose him. ”
“You were on your own? No friend with you?”
“No. No one.” Her expression was tight, her eyes focussed on the bright lights of Rome in the distance, without really noticing the details.
“He looked so much like you. Even at birth, there was no mistaking I’d been handed the right baby.
” She lifted her slim shoulders and his eyes dropped to the gesture, lingering there as he ruminated on this.
“What was the complication?”
“A rare blood pressure problem. They were worried I was going to have a stroke.”
He looked to relax a little, despite the seriousness of this. “But he was fine?”
“Yeah. He could have stayed in there cooking another month but I probably would have died.”
He was quiet, as though he wanted to say something, but when he didn’t, she continued.
“Anyway, the first few months were actually pretty great. Exhausting in that way new-babies are, but he fed well, slept well, smiled often. He’s still got a great temperament.
But he’s definitely ‘on the go’ all the time.
All the time,” she laughed, shaking her head. “I hope you’re paying Emilia well.”
“Of course.” But he smiled, and when their eyes met, it felt like a bottle of champagne had been opened inside her tummy. Bubbles fizzed against her flesh. It was breath-taking and distracting and she couldn’t look away.
“I’m impressed you managed to work without any help with Jack.”
“I only took on the projects I could manage,” she demurred. “And I did have some help.”
“Oh? A nursery school?”
“No, Axel, my landlord. He’s the opposite to me – the oldest of eight siblings, he grew up holding babies and entertaining toddlers. I honestly don’t know if I would have been able to keep such a level head if he hadn’t been around.”
Silence.