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‘You were,’ Maria agreed with a delicate lift of one shoulder. ‘But you were also doing it for Jake.’
‘And the second difference?’ Flávia demanded.
For a moment, her sister just watched her. Studied her.
‘The second difference is you, Livvy,’ she said at last. ‘It’s how you feel about each man. You could never have contemplated changing any part of what you do for Enrico. But your heart hasn’t been in it at all since Jake left. That’s your main difference.’
‘It’s my career, my life, and I love what I do.’
She always had loved it. So why didn’t it hold quite the same power that it had before?
‘I know that,’ Maria acknowledged. ‘But we both know you’re going to change it, anyway. For your baby. Besides, no one is saying give up your career completely.’
‘Then, what?’ Flávia asked.
Her head was a mess from all the back and forth. If only she knew what she really thought. What Jake really thought.
‘You can keep doing your work in the sanctuary, and you can raise awareness. Just give up going into the pits for the collections. You said Cesar was thinking about doing so because he was getting old and his grip was weakening. Isn’t that why Fabio and Raoul have been drafted in? To start taking on that side of it? And there are two other employees now, aren’t there?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, there you go. You ease back on the hands-on, just like Cesar is. But no one’s asking you to give up the sanctuary altogether, Livvy. We all know it’s part of who you are, and what you love.’
And it was odd, wasn’t it, that the suggestion didn’t fill her with indignation, like it would have even two months ago. But still, something bubbled away inside her. Low yet lethal.
She tried to articulate it, but the words wouldn’t come.
‘What if I’m not cut out for it?’ she settled for instead. ‘What if I give it up for him, for the baby, and then I end up resenting him for it?’
‘You won’t.’
She almost envied Maria her certainty, because her own fears were starting to eat away inside her.
‘You can’t know that.’
‘I can.’
‘How?’
And the beat hung between them for such an interminably long moment.
‘Because you’re not our mother,’ Maria said quietly. Angrily.
Everything around Flávia started to spin, and it was impossible to keep the pleading from her voice. All this time, she’d thought Maria hadn’t known her deepest fears.
‘How can you be so sure?’ she whispered.
‘Because I am. Because you’re a completely different person than her. You’re a loyal sister, a loving aunt and a compassionate woman. You love your job, but you didn’t put it ahead of your family... Well, sometimes you did, but nothing like the way that she did.’
And despite everything, they both laughed, albeit weakly.
‘You’re not like her, Livvy. You never were. But especially not now.’
Flávia didn’t know how long they stood together, whilst she absorbed what her sister was telling her. She might look tough but deep down she wasn’t, she never had been, and right now she didn’t even feel herself. She felt stripped down, fragile, broken. Just like the delicate back of her beloved bushmasters.
But finally, finally, she lifted her eyes and looked at Maria.
‘So I decide to do that...to throttle back on the hands-on work at the sanctuary. Then what?’ And there was no way she could keep the shake from her voice.
