Her eyes widened. “That’s almost exactly what I told him. But he’s still young, it’s hard to process your feelings sometimes. Plus, he’s been through alot.Whenever possible, I like him to have great experiences.”
“Hence the tree.”
“Right.”
“And what else do you do, for Christmas?” He asked, reaching an arm along the back of the sofa, so his fingers dangled close to her shoulder. She jumped a little. He saw, she could tell, because he smiled, and her heart twisted with nerves, uncertainty and a raw, primal need that was pulling her apart at the seams.
“Um,” she winced at the child-like pause. “Well, Dash spends Christmas Eve and morning with his grandparents, then comes home Christmas afternoon sometime. It’s a deal we made right at the beginning—it seemed fair.” Her eyes narrowed as she thought back to that time, that lawyer’s cold office, the impossibly shiny wooden table. “Their daughter, Maggie, was my sister-in-law. They have a home, not far from here—it’s one of the reasons I left London and took this job, so I could be close to family. His family.” She smiled awkwardly, hoping to cover the indication of how alone she was. “They love Dash to bits. They spoil him, actually, which is good, in a way, because I can’t really afford to. I mean, he never wants for anything, but it’s not as if he’s getting a new bike every year, you know? At least, not from me.” She was babbling, and the more she spoke, the more she found her nerves stretching, and the babbling problem grew worse. “They love him a lot.”
“They don’t have any formal custody?”
She shook her head. “Maggie and Michael were very clear. They left Dash to me.” She furrowed her brow. “I don’t think they imagined anything would ever happen to both of them. It’s one of those things you put into your will without imagining it will ever come to pass. Maybe one of them, sure, but not both. Not at the same time. It was so awful.” Her eyes swept shut as memories clamoured against her mind, sharp, awful memories that made swallowing difficult and filled her mouth with the strangest taste, like sawdust and rotten milk.
“They must have felt you’d be able to give him something no one else could.”
“I love him,” she said simply, sadly. “But so do his grandparents. Sometimes I wonder…if he wouldn’t be better off with them.”
“Why do you say that?”
She lifted her shoulders. “There are two of them, for a start. They’re retired. They’d have more time to spend with him.”
“Did your sister-in-law have a happy childhood?”
“So far as I know,” Charlotte nodded. “But her parents were in their forties when she was born. Perhaps she felt that Dash would be too much of a burden for them. I don’t know. They didn’t write an explanation in their will, only a few short sentences with their very clear instructions.”
“And so you’re using that as a guide.”
“What choice do I have?”
“And if you did have a choice? Would you do things differently?”
“If I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Dash was going to turn out okay, that I wasn’t going to screw him up in some way, then I wouldn’t change a thing. But it’s a huge responsibility to raise a child, especially someone else’s child. You have to make sure you’re acceding to their wishes, and sometimes it’s hard to know what they’d want me to do.”
“It seems to me that they’d want you to do whatever you feel is right in the moment. Why else would they have chosen you?”
It was a logical point, and she’d thought that herself, from time to time, but hearing him say it was a balm to her soul.
“Thank you,” she murmured, blinking away.
“Is there anyone who spoilsyou,cara?” His fingers began to stroke her shoulder, slowly, rhythmically, so she could barely think straight.
“I have friends. You met Melody—she’s wonderful.” And even though it was the last thing she felt like doing, she would have felt disingenuous if she didn’t add, “And Caleb and Winnie.”
To his credit, Alessio didn’t respond, and he almost didn’t react. There was only the smallest darkening of his eyes before he lifted his coffee cup and drained it, the rich, black liquid no doubt hitting his central nervous system like a bullet.
“Do you work over Christmas?” He asked, placing the cup on the coffee table and then, whether by accident or design, moving closer to her, so their knees brushed and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
She shook her head, her brain too scrambled by his proximity to form words.
“But the pub is open for lunch?”
She nodded. “It’s tradition—for over a century, this pub has offered meals on Christmas Day. It used to be for the provision of alms to the poor.”
“And now?”
“It still is, really. We charge people for lunch, but Winnie’s always been adamant that the proceeds of the day would be used to feed those less fortunate. It’s a community event, more than anything. Ishouldwork. It’s busy. But I was clear from the very first year: Dash was my priority, and Winnie always understood that. She said I should be with him, too, that childhood passes so, so fast, and I shouldn’t miss any of those important milestones.”
She studied Alessio through her lashes, wondering how even that didn’t soften his attitude to his mother. Whatever had happened between them, it had clearly brought on an enmity that ran deep.