Emmeline’s gaze moved to Rowan.
He felt it. He did not look at her at once, though every nerve in him noticed her attention. When he finally allowed his eyes to shift, she was watching him with that same softness he resented. Hope, perhaps. Or the willingness to believe he could be better than he was.
It made him want to stand. It made him want to lean across the table and put his mouth on hers just to erase that expression before it found some place inside him to live.
Instead, he reached for his wine.
Aaron pushed a pea across his plate with the back of his fork, eyes fixed on it.
Emmeline noticed immediately. “You have gone quiet, Aaron.”
Aaron looked down. “I am thinking.”
“What are you thinking about?”
Rowan’s shoulders tightened at the question. He did not like open-ended roads with children. They wandered too quickly into places no one could govern.
Aaron’s fork stopped. His face changed with such sudden seriousness that Rowan set his glass down.
“I am sad,” Aaron said.
The words landed in the room with an awful softness.
Emmeline went still.
Rowan looked at his son. “Why?”
Aaron swallowed. His small throat moved visibly. He glanced toward Emmeline first, then Biscuit, who was asleep beneath a side table with his nose tucked under one paw. Only then did he look toward Rowan.
“I do not remember Mama.”
The air left Rowan’s lungs in a slow, silent pull.
Across the table, Emmeline’s hand stilled against the stem of her glass. Her expression did not crumple. She was too disciplined for that. But her thumb shifted, pressing once against the crystal before she eased her grip and lowered her gaze to the tablecloth.
Aaron kept speaking, each word careful, as if he had rehearsed them alone and feared they might disappear if he did not place them quickly enough.
“I know she was my mother. I know she… she h-held me. People say she loved me.” His brow furrowed, and frustration pulled at his mouth. “But I c-cannot see her in my head. I try. There is nothing. Only Aunt Juliet s-sometimes. And you. And…” His gaze flickered to Emmeline. “And now Emmeline.”
Emmeline’s eyes shone.
Rowan saw it and felt something sharp twist behind his ribs. Aaron had placed her there so simply, among the few faces he could trust. Rowan’s hand tightened against his knee.
Perhaps she could help. Perhaps if he told her what had happened, if he let her see the river and the ice and Catherine’s hands locked around their son, she would understand why he could not bear to remember.
“There is no fault in that,” Rowan said at last.
Aaron blinked.
Rowan continued, choosing the safest ground, the practical ground. “You were very young when… when she died. It is natural that you do not remember her clearly. There is no purpose in distressing yourself over what cannot be recovered.”
Emmeline’s head lifted.
Rowan saw it from the corner of his eye and knew, even before she spoke, that he had failed.
Aaron’s face did not collapse. That might have been easier. Instead, it folded inward, his mouth pressing tight as though he were trying to be reasonable about his own wound because Rowan had told him reason was required.
“I know,” Aaron said softly.
