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‘It must have been devastating for you both. And I’d never take that away from you, I’d never ask you to cover that, or hide it. But what I want—as selfish as it is—is for my son to laugh, to smile and to love. I want to see those things again, the ones I heard through the phone and on Skype before such tragedy stole those abilities, those feelings, that happiness from my child.’
‘I love her.’
‘I know.’
‘And she left. Again.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she fears that I will leave her like her mother did.’
Elizabeth seemed to take this in. Her sigh was just as heavy with the feelings that were crying out in his own chest.
‘Did she say she didn’t love you?’
He paused, for the first time since confronting Mason in the stables. ‘No.’
‘And you allowed her to leave.’
Danyl cursed, out loud. ‘I can’t keep her here against her will, Mother.’
‘Then perhaps she was right to walk away.’
‘How can you say that?’ he demanded, his voice full of a pain he could no longer hide.
‘Danyl, I love you. But when she left you, it took you ten years to put your faith back together. Put your love back together. She was a child when her mother left. What would that have done to her? How long would it take to recover from that?’
The question stalled him, robbed him of breath and thought. His mind careening from one fact to another, but snagging on what seemed like the most unimportant one.
‘How did you know she was a child when her mother left?’
‘I know a lot of things, Danyl.’
‘Clearly.’
‘Mason McAulty is a woman who has led a very different life from ours.’
‘I know. Aussie outback—’
‘That’s not what I’m talking of. How old was she when her mother left?’
‘She was two.’
‘And her father?’
Danyl smiled at the memory of the bluff, hard man who had sent him to his daughter without a tent, on the back of a horse he slapped for good measure.
‘Good. Honest.’
‘Loving?’
‘Yes, in his own way.’
‘A way that is perhaps not so much about talking, and more about showing?’
He looked at his mother. Tried to read between the lines, tried to come to the conclusion she was leading him to.
And finally the question he asked himself... How had he shown her that he loved her? He had expected her to undo a lifetime of hurt in a day. He had expected her to jump at his declaration of lov
