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Ethan looked at her blankly.
'Emma. She really is all right, is she? The doctor said...' Panic was beginning to build up inside her. What if he'd just been humouring her? She tried to raise herself up on one elbow but the intravenous line in her arm got in the way.
'Emma's fine, thanks to you.' The dark colour ran up under his tan. 'It was the most criminally stupid thing I've ever seen!' The words rammed home as he viciously enunciated every syllable. 'And the most brave.'
'I didn't think.' She endangered his daughter; he was bound to be angry. His anger couldn't hurt her. She was numb; she didn't feel anything—even when she made herself remember that her body no longer carried their child. Had anyone told him? The odd expression in his eyes as he'd muttered the taut afterthought did puzzle her.
'Tell me something I don't already know.' The nurse returned with a doctor and Hannah watched as her husband was bustled from the room.
'I didn't expect to see you, Ethan. Aren't you going to fetch Hannah home this morning?'
Ethan nodded as he kissed his mother's cheek. I’m on my way.'
'A very round about way. What's wrong?' she enquired shrewdly. Her son wasn't a man who showed strain externally, but right now he looked tense enough to snap.
'Hannah was pregnant when the car hit her. She lost the baby,' he said abruptly.
'Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry.'
'She didn't tell you, then,' Ethan muttered. He'd hoped that she'd confided in his mother; he'd wanted to think she'd had a shoulder to cry on. After what had passed between them it didn't surprise him that she hadn't wanted his shoulder.
It was such a lot of grief for one person to bear alone, and it tore him up to think of her holding onto all that pain. Seeing the sheen of tears in Faith's blue eyes, he turned away and walked to the window. A long way below the city traffic crawled along.
'No. No, she didn't.' Faith watched the tall figure of her son with a thoughtful expression tinged with concern.
"The thing is...' Ethan turned and faced his mother '...every time I try to discuss it she changes the subject. It's as if it never happened,' he said incredulously.
'People have different ways of coping with these things.'
Ethan glared at her with frustrated anger. 'I know that!' he snapped. Taking a deep breath, he controlled his temper. 'She needs help and I don't know how to help her. I don't think she even wants me to help. It's all very well for the doctors to say I have to be patient and not push things.' He snorted impatiently. 'Oh, she talks—she talks to me as if I'm a stranger. She's polite, the way she used to be,' The way he had thought he wanted her to be. 'She's shutting me out.'
'Perhaps it will help being home.'
'I hope so,' he said heavily. 'She misses Emma and Tom,' he admitted. 'Perhaps you're right.'
'Alexa!' Hannah stiffened as she recognised with shock the figure who walked through the door into her anonymous hospital room. 'I was expecting Ethan. I'm going home today.' Home. What had he said? As for this house, you're the hired help.
'What a lot of lovely flowers,' Alexa observed in a brittle tone.
'Yours were lovely, thank you.' She waited tensely to hear what the other woman was doing here. Then thought, why waste time wondering? 'Why did you come, Alexa?' It was pointless pretending—the enmity Alexa felt towards her was out in the open now.
'I did a terrible thing. It was wrong of me, very wrong...' The young woman opposite Alexa sat with a face of stone. There was no encouragement in the calm hazel eyes; there wasn't much of anything. Alexa rumbled in her handbag for a tissue and cleared her throat. She nearly lost her nerve, but the agony of guilt she'd been experiencing made her plough on. 'You saved Emma's life—my grandchild. I lost Catherine. I couldn't bear to lose Emma too. It made me realise how selfish I've been. I've been feeling so guilty.'
And I'm supposed to assuage that guilt by forgiving you, Hannah thought. It would be the mature, adult thing to do, but she wasn't feeling very adult today. The compassion was still there somewhere, but she couldn't tap into the source.
When Hannah didn't respond, Alexa swallowed hard before continuing in a quavering tone, 'When Ethan told me he was taking you away for a belated honeymoon I knew I had to do something. He was Catherine's. It didn't seem right—he belonged to her. Do you see?'
Hannah saw. He still does, she thought. She knew she should feel something—pity, anger, compassion—but she couldn't get past that great empty space inside.
'I could tell something was going on between you, the way he was looking at you, touching you... I lied to him to make him think you were selfish and irresponsible.' The tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks now. 'Can you ever forgive me?'
