‘Gnocchi.’
‘Really?’ she asked incredulously. ‘You’re justwhipping upsomegnocchi?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, and a touch of pride flashed through him as the gold in her eyes sparkled.
He opened his mouth to ask the question that had snared in his mind earlier, but he hesitated, reluctant to broach it. And he wouldn’t have if he hadn’t thought that Summer needed it. Her mother was important to her and, whatever was holding her back, she would never forgive herself if anything happened while she held onto that hurt.
‘Why are you angry with her?’ he asked gently.
‘Who?’
‘Your mother.’
‘I’m not.’
Theron just managed to stop himself from contradicting her, choosing instead to wait her out.
Summer pressed her lips together and stared at her hands until her shoulders sagged ever so slightly.
‘She told me she didn’t know who my father was.’
Summer watched as he filled the pan with water and put it on the lit stove. He was waiting for more, she recognised that in him now. Waiting for her to say what she needed. She liked that about him. It would make him a good father, she realised with a jolt that hurt her heart a little as she realised just how much she’d missed.
‘Mum told me that they’d met, that the time they’d shared had been magical, but that they hadn’t exchanged names, so she’d never been able to tell him about me. Over the years there might be slight variations, a few extra details, or some that changed. But it had always been an almost mystical holiday romance. As if it had been outside of time and incredibly special, but entirely contained within that bubble.
‘But that was a lie. She could have reached out to him. Even if Kyros was married, even if it was difficult, even if he’d said he didn’t want anything to do with me,’ she said, the words rushing out on a shaky breath, ‘I would have preferred that to...’
‘To?’ he nudged gently.
‘To growing up searching every face, every person, for the thing that I felt I was missing. Not knowing, it was a physical pain for me. An ache for something I couldn’t even name.’
A sense of security—was that what a father gave? Summer wondered. A template for how men should behave, how they should treat her as a woman? Wasthatwhat she’d missed? A safe haven, somewhere to turn, no matter how hard or bad or difficult things got? She loved her mother fiercely and with her whole heart, but keeping her father from her had hurt her and shaped her in ways Mariam could never have realised.
And in that moment, in that half breath between that thought and her next, she realised something that would change her life irrevocably. She could never do that to her child. No matter what happened between her and Theron, no matter what, her child would know their father. They would be a part of each other’s lives if she had to move heaven and earth to make it happen.
She looked up and blinked back a shimmer of tears as Theron’s gaze searched hers as if he wondered where her thoughts had taken her. She shook thoughts of her child from her head, memories of her own childhood in her heart. Now wasn’t the time for that conversation with Theron. There was so much more to speak of first. She bit her lip and looked out of the kitchen window at the night sky beyond.
‘So yes, absolutely, growing up without a father hurt. But it was a hurt that I had made peace with. Until I found the photo.’
Theron put down the pan and walked to where she sat.
‘Before then, it wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was a horribleabsence. But finding the photo... She’d lied to me and I can’t even tell her that I know. She betrayed me and I have so much... I’m soangry.’
He reached her on the first sob of breath and pulled her out of the chair on the second. ‘Oh, God,’ she half cried. ‘What if we don’t find the diamonds? What if Mum doesn’t get the treatment and what if I am still angry with her when she...?’
She couldn’t bring herself to even say the words.
Theron held out his hand. ‘I’d like to show you something.’
Summer followed Theron as he led her down a hallway and through a door to the garden that had become devastatingly overgrown. In a strange way it reminded her of the roses around Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
The evening air was surprisingly warm and the sky was a blanket of stars, shockingly bright and clear. The sight of it burned away some of her anger, but not enough. She could still feel it roiling, barely a millimetre beneath the surface. She hated it. She wasn’t this person. She was practical, not emotional. Logical, not irrational. But ever since her mother’s diagnosis, ever since the discovery of her father’s identity, ever sinceTheron, she’d been behaving completely out of character.
She inhaled the scent of honeysuckle and frowned. She’d not seen the beautiful fragrant plant out here. In the dark, Theron seemed to be looking around.
‘Neighbours are quite far away?’
‘Yes. Why?’ she asked, very confused now.