‘Where were you when you...?’ He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
‘In my hotel room.’ She took a gulp of air. ‘I’d checked into a hotel because I couldn’t face Melissa after our row and you wouldn’t let me anywhere near you.’
‘You were alone?’
She nodded into his chest. ‘So, selfish creature that I am, I went back to my sister.’
‘You are not selfish,’ he stated fiercely.
Anna had had to go through that trauma on her own?
The only selfish one here had been him.
‘Aren’t I? I hated the thought of her seeing our mum.’
‘No,’ he contradicted, ‘you were scared you would lose her too. You lost both your parents when you were at an age when you needed them most. Your father, rest his soul, did not leave by choice but your mother did. Is no wonder you find it hard to trust people—the woman who should have been there for you left you behind.’
And if he’d ever allowed Anna to open up to him during their marriage instead of avoiding any kind of intimate talk he would have known how shattered her mother’s emigration had left her. He would have known just how vulnerable she was and would have made that damned call to her ins
tead of telling himself she would be fast asleep and wouldn’t mind waiting.
You did know she’d mind but you were running scared. Anna got too close, didn’t she? You were waiting for an excuse to push her away before she rejected you like everyone else you ever knew did.
She hadn’t been asleep. She’d been in an airport waiting to return home to him with the best news of their lives and some shattering news of her own. She’d needed him.
He squeezed her even tighter to him. ‘Melissa looked after you?’
‘Melissa always looks after me.’ Anna tilted her head to look at him. ‘She’s always been my lifeline, and you’re right, I was scared I’d lose her. We muddled along as well as we could but it was hard. We’d both said things we couldn’t take back. When she left for Australia it was without my blessing. She even left me a note asking for my forgiveness when it should have been me down on my knees begging for hers.’
‘Anna...’
‘No, please don’t make excuses for me. I’m not fourteen any more. I’ve always known how much Melissa missed our mum but ignored it under my own self-righteousness.’
‘Or did you ignore it because it meant you would have to confront how much you missed your mum too?’
‘Don’t say that,’ she protested.
‘You must have missed her. I always missed my mother and I never even knew her.’
‘Did you?’
She sounded so surprised that he couldn’t help but give a grimace of a smile. ‘All my life. And I missed my father. I look now on all the years we missed out on when I could have known him and I think what a waste those years were.’
‘But do you regret cutting the rest of your family out of your life?’
‘Not at all. I will never have them in my life again but my situation with them is different from yours. I never loved them and they never loved me.’
Since his nonno had died, Anna was the only person who had loved him. Lots of women had claimed to love him but he’d always known their words to be a pack of lies. Anna was...
She was the only one.
‘You still think I should see my mother?’
‘You will never find peace until you do, that much I do know. Speak to her. Hear her side. Admit to yourself that you need her in your life. See if you can build a relationship.’
She fell silent.
‘I can come with you.’