‘A stroller, yes. She likes being in it usually.’
‘All the better. We can talk as we walk. Is there a park near by?’
‘Fort Tryon Park isn’t too far away,’ Maisie suggested. ‘I sometimes take Ella there.’
‘Right, then, that’s what we’ll do.’ Antonio gave a decisive nod. ‘What can I do to help you get her ready?’
* * *
It felt entirely surreal and strange to be strolling down one of the neighbourhood’s wide avenues towards the leafy green park in the distance, Maisie next to him, Ella in her pram. Did the people glancing their way think they were a family? Were they?
It was so odd. For ten years, since his brother’s death, Antonio had kept himself solitary. Yes, he’d had flings and affairs, but no one had ever meant anything to him. No one had come close enough to know him. Until Maisie.
That night she’d slipped under his defences and it was what had made him pretend he didn’t know her. What had kept him tossing and turning last night, wondering how he could honour his responsibility to his daughter—which he intended to do utterly—and still keep Maisie at a safe distance. He needed to somehow find a way.
They strolled through the park, along winding paths and through verdant meadows and copses of trees, the sun shining high above them. Perched on a craggy outlook was a medieval-looking building Antonio had never seen before.
‘It’s part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,’ Maisie explained when he asked. ‘A reconstructed medieval monastery called the Cloisters.’
As they walked along, Ella kicked her chubby legs in the stroller as she blinked up at the sunshine.
‘She likes the movement, I think,’ Maisie said. ‘She always wants to be moving, whether it’s me jiggling her or in her stroller. She loves riding on the bus.’
‘Tell me about her,’ Antonio urged, the need to know more about his daughter nearly overwhelming. ‘Your pregnancy and her birth; everything.’
Maisie glanced at him in surprise. ‘I thought you wanted to talk about the future?’
‘First I want to know about the past.’
‘All right,’ she said slowly, and then she began to tell him all the things he’d missed, all the things he hadn’t even realised had been happening. Her debilitating morning sickness, which she tried to make light of, but which Antonio could tell had been horrible; the onset of pre-eclampsia in the third trimester.
‘My ankles swelled up like balloons,’ Maisie said with a grimace. ‘I felt awful. That’s when I left school.’
‘Do you miss it?’
She paused, pursing her lips in thought. ‘Honestly? Not as much as I thought I would. Not as much as I feel I should, and that makes me feel guilty.’
‘Why?’
She shrugged. ‘Because it was all I was working towards. Taking care of Max, making sure he got to go to college, keeping us afloat... The whole time going to Juilliard was what drove me. I’d finally get there one day, and then everything would make sense somehow. But it didn’t quite feel like that.’
‘What did it feel like?’
Maisie let out a little laugh. ‘You really want to know this?’
‘Yes,’ Antonio answered, the word surprisingly heartfelt. ‘Yes, I do.’
They were walking along a path high above the Hudson River, and Maisie glanced down at the water glinting and sparkling below, her forehead creased in thought. ‘It felt like instead of arriving at the top of the mountain, I was at the bottom. And this time there were lots of other climbers, elbowing each other out of the way.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘The truth is, I’m just not cut out for that kind of competitive, cut-throat environment. Everyone else put performance first in their lives, and I’ve always put people first. I couldn’t make the change.’
‘Perhaps that doesn’
t have to be negative.’
‘It isn’t,’ Maisie declared with a spark of challenge. ‘Of course it isn’t. I made a choice willingly, deliberately. I’ll never regret taking care of Max, and I certainly don’t regret this little one.’ She gazed down at Ella, her face softening in love as she looked at her daughter. Ella’s eyelids were fluttering closed, one tiny fist flung up by her face.
Antonio gazed in rapture and wonder at his daughter, and then back at Maisie. She still looked pale and tired, but also very lovely with the sun gilding her hair in gold, wild curls dancing about her heart-shaped face. The freckles he remembered from before were scattered across her nose. Her figure had been made softer and rounder by motherhood, and she seemed more womanly, and yes, more alluring.
Even now, especially now, Antonio desired her. Knowing she had brought his child into the world only piqued his desire rather than lessened it, a fact which was both undeniable and inconvenient.