His eyes glowed with emotions she couldn’t comprehend. “You’ll forgive me if I find it hard to believe your moralistic outcry, given the depth of your deception.” His words held a darkness that caused her to shiver. “Did you lose my number, Elodie?”
The question stopped her in her tracks. She shook her head.
“You knew who I was. How to contact me. You chose to do neither –,”
“How do you know?”
“I know because I discovered six weeks ago that I am the father to a two year old boy.”
“I tried to tell you.”
“Oh, yes, how clearly I recall this. The conversations, the meetings, the lengthy discussions about custody –,”
“Don’t be glib.” She was shaking. She dug her hands into the pockets of her jeans, her stomach looping like an out-of-control figure of eight.
“Don’t lie to me then.”
“I’m not lying!” The words came out louder than she’d intended but she didn’t apologise, nor did she make any effort to soften her voice. She had the feeling that she’d been pushed from the safety and sanctuary of the hospital into a wild and untamed jungle, and that Fiero was a lion hunting her track, toying with her for a reason she couldn’t make sense of.
“Then tell me of your attempts to contact me,” he encouraged sarcastically. “Was there perhaps a dead battery on your mobile phone? A poor connection? Did the dog eat your homework?”
“Wow,” she shook her head angrily. “Fine. Have it your way. And you’re right. Kind of. I didn’t want to tell you. Not at first. Not when I saw who you were and I googled you and learned that you weremarried.” Her eyes flashed with silent rage. “Can you blame me, Fiero? I wasfurious.I hated you that morning, I hated you so much. To have woken up and found you gone after what we’d shared,” her voice wobbled and she shook her head to break the threads of those memories, memories that warmed her even when the aftermath was chilling. “That was bad enough, but to see photos of you and your wife all over the internet?”
His chest moved with the rapid rise and fall of his breath, but his face maintained a terse mask of disgust. “So you thought you’d keep him from me as what? A punishment?”
“NO!” She roared the response. “When I found out, my first instinct was to not tell you. It was a one-night stand and you’d disappeared into thin air, forgetting all about me. Why bother involving you? You were married, for God’s sake.”
“As you’ve said.”
“But then I had his twenty week scan,” she spun away from Fiero, focussing her gaze on the view of the roses growing beneath her window. “And I saw his little face and his nose and heard his heart so loud and strong, and I knew that you had a right to know. I could hate you for what you did to me, but that didn’t change the fact that you were his father.” She swallowed, that day burned into her memory. “I flew to Rome, and came to your house. I waited there, screwing up my courage to tell you about Jack.”
“So? Then what? Go on, I’m intrigued.”
His scepticism was obvious.
“Right as I was preparing to cross the road and knock on the door, it opened. You walked out. With her. Alison.” She felt that it was a betrayal to the sisterhood that she spoke the other woman’s name with disdain. The other woman had, after all, done nothing immoral. It was she, Elodie, who’d been in the wrong.
His features briefly shifted to show a greater level of cynicism. “I see.”
“I’m telling the truth. I saw the two of you together and I realised that you were happy. No, it was more than that.” Tears cloyed at her throat. “You were a family, and I had no right to come into your life and destroy that. I wanted our baby to bring happiness and love, and if I told you, it would likely have destroyed your marriage and I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want that to be Jack’s legacy.”
He was quiet for a moment, his eyes scanning her face. “That’s a very convenient story, except for one salient detail.”
“Oh?”
“My wife and I had separated six months before I met you. She moved out of my home; we stopped living together. We were as good as divorced the night I met you.”
Elodie had suffered a traumatic accident a month and a half ago, but the pain in her head now was blinding. It was like being slammed with a mallet. “I don’t believe you.”
“So here we are, man and woman, both determined not to believe the other. Unfortunately for you, only one of us has to bear the proof of a lie.”
Elodie frowned.
“Whatever you thought, whatever you felt, you chose to keep my son from me. There is no excuse – none –niente– that you can offer to make that okay.”
“You were married,” she responded softly, the words swallowed up by her confusion. Hehadbeen. There were thousands of photographs on the web, Alison and Fiero at charity balls, concerts, dinner, walking hand in hand in Cannes. Bile rose through her. She ground her teeth and tried to grab onto her anger again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t magically intuit the situation, that I didn’t somehow know you were separated. If I had, believe me, Fiero I would have told you about Jack sooner.”