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‘So this is where you went.’
She didn’t even bother to disguise the accusation in her voice and he didn’t blame her. Even as he lied.
‘I had a teaching operation to get to,’ he said over his shoulder, still not turning.
‘You heard our conversation, didn’t you.’ It was phrased as a question but it was more of a statement. ‘From the gallery.’
He exhaled deeply.
‘I heard most of it.’
‘You heard him say that he never talked about his mother because he was upset that it hurt you too much.’
The admission had walloped into him hard enough when he’d heard it come out of his nephew’s mouth. Coming out of Flávia’s mouth, it lacerated just as much.
‘I heard,’ he managed thickly.
‘And?’
‘And?’ he managed incredulously, finally turning around.
‘Yes.’ She gazed at him evenly. ‘And...?’
‘How do you think it feels?’ he growled.
‘Why don’t you try telling me?’
All of a sudden he realised what she was doing. He snorted. Loudly.
‘You really think me telling you how guilty, how bad, I feel will suddenly put me in touch with feelings we both know I don’t have?’
‘Don’t you think it might be a start?’ she challenged. And suddenly, he couldn’t argue with her.
Or maybe you don’t want to argue with her?
‘Fine,’ he shot at her. ‘I feel like crap. I just had to listen to my seven-year-old nephew say that he has been hiding a box of memories of his mummy because he was trying to protect me. When I’m the one who is supposed to be protecting him.’
‘So talk to him about it.’
‘You don’t think I’ve tried? I can’t—I think that much should be obvious to you by now.’
‘Didn’t your parents teach you never to believe in that word can’t?’
‘My parents didn’t teach me much at all. They expected the private school Helen and I attended to do that. But sure, I never believed in that word up to ten months ago, only now I do. If you hadn’t been there today, I still wouldn’t know any of those things he said. So, I can’t talk to Brady. I don’t know how to.’
‘Then learn,’ she bit out. ‘You’re bright—heck, you’re a top oncologist. You can learn if you want to, and that little boy needs you to learn. He needs you to take care of him.’
‘And I will. Materially, anyway.’
She snorted, throwing her hands up in the air.
‘He needs more than that. He needs your love, Jake.’
‘And I can’t do that. Helen knew that, but she entrusted Brady to me, anyway.’
‘She also believed in you enough to think that you could learn.’
‘She was wrong.’
