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‘Never!’ Mia sobbed. ‘Only you, my son, only you know my pain. I was always promised for your father—our two families were friends. I knew I would marry him, but I did not like to think about it—sixteen seemed a long way off. Always I liked Leo—he was so clever, we all knew he was destined for better and sometimes, when he came home in the holidays, I felt his eyes on me. One time we kissed…’ She sighed and then visibly shook herself and continued her story.
‘I worked in the baker’s, my marriage was two weeks away. The village was celebrating because Leo had passed his exams and was going to study medicine in Roma; he would return a doctor. I was sad. My wedding was soon and your father had slapped me, he had pushed me, he had made me do things that shamed me…’
‘He is not my father,’ Luca corrected her, and how good those words felt!
‘Rico had hurt me.’ Mia nodded in acknowledgment. ‘We closed early one day and I was walking home and I met Leo. He was leaving the next day and he said he was sorry he would not be at my wedding…then he admitted he was not sorry. That it would hurt to see me marry another. We went to the river and I nearly told him…’
‘Why didn’t you?’ Luca asked.
‘How?’ Mia asked. ‘Leo was a good man, even as a teenager he was a good man, a man who cared for me. He would not have gone away to get his medical degree.’
‘He could have taken you with him.’
‘His family would have been shamed and would not have paid for his education. After all, I was another man’s bride-to-be, and this town would have never forgiven that. How, in one conversation, could I change his life when neither really knew how the other was feeling?
‘We kissed, and you were made that day, Luca. It was the best day of my life, and every night I fall asleep with that memory… Yes, in hindsight I should have told him, but we were young, and I loved him and wanted him to do well, to be happy. I would have brought him so much pain…’
‘Did my fa—?’ Luca stopped himself. ‘Did Rico know I was not his son?’
‘He never said, and sometimes I wondered if he had guessed, if that was why he was so angry with you, with me, but really he was angry with me and treated me badly before I was ever unfaithful to him.’
‘And Leo?’ Luca swallowed. ‘When did you tell him?’
‘I didn’t for a long time. He was a man when he returned, and I was married with two children. He was married later too. I was friends with his wife.’ The pain of her secret silenced her for a moment. ‘He ended up being friends with Rico as well. No one knew the man Rico was in private. It was one time, Luca, and a long time ago, not much to ruin so many lives. When Carmella, his wife, died, Leo came over one night. He was chatting to your father and going through albums, talking of his wife, and there was a photo of you there when you got your degree. I remember him looking up at me, his eyes asking me, and I looked away, red and blushing—and from that moment he knew. He must have seen something of himself as a young man in that photo of you.’
‘Have you talked to him about it?’ Luca asked.
‘I spoke with him a few months ago, yet we could not properly talk. He was treating Rico, his friend, but we knew we would talk one day soon.’
‘And have you?’
‘Soon,’ Mia said. ‘Still I have to break his heart by telling him all I have suffered, how you, his son, have suffered over the years.’
‘How do you know it will break his heart?’ he wanted to know.
‘Love does not just go away, Luca.’
‘I know.’ He stared out the window at the Mediterranean.
‘You can push it away, you can deny it, you can make excuses, give reasons, but once love has been born, once it has existed, it cannot simply cease to be.’
There were so many questions, so much more he wanted to know from his mother and from his real father, but he didn’t need those answers right now.
It was Emma he needed to see and regardless of whether or not it was too late he had to tell her, which meant there was someone he had to speak with first.
‘You cannot leave now,’ Mia pointed out as he packed his case. ‘There is mass tonight, one more duty, Luca—for familia…’
‘No, Ma.’ He kissed his mother’s cheek to show he was not angry. ‘My duty is to Emma—she is familia now.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘CAN I pay Dad’s account?’
‘Of course.’ The supervisor was unusually friendly as Emma came into the office, just a little bit flushed in the cheeks and, well, just a little nicer. ‘You’ve sold another painting.’
It was actually the supervisor who handed her an envelope with a cheque in it and there was a flurry in her stomach as Emma took it. That feel of her baby moving still caught her by surprise, and she smiled, not just at the kicks from her baby but that she had almost paid her debts—and all by her own hand.
All was well.
