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.”