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For the very first time he trusted himself, except now it was maybe too late.
‘Luca?’ His mother knocked and then came into the bedroom, placed coffee on the bedside table and handed him the tray then headed to the window, opening the shutters and letting the sun stream in.
‘You did not have to do that!’ Luca protested. ‘I should be looking after you.’
‘You should be looking after Emma,’ his mother pointed out.
She was dressed in black. This was a dark day, but there was a lightness to her—the absence of fear, Luca realised. Oh, she would respectfully mourn her husband, but her duty was done now, there would be no feigned tears—life could be peaceful now.
For her.
‘I thought I was looking after her,’ Luca said, ‘by keeping her away. I thought I was doing the right thing by her.’
‘How?’ Mia begged. ‘I thought you were happy with Martha, but with Emma I just knew… How could you think you were helping her by ending it? Emma loves you.’
‘I did not want to be like him.’
‘I know I said hurtful things to you, out of fear, out of pain, out of guilt, and for that I am truly sorry. But you are nothing like him,’ his mother said fiercely.
‘I know that now,’ Luca said. ‘But I still wasn’t sure back then.’
‘Leo said you spoke with him.’ Mia sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes sparkling with tears. ‘I don’t understand, Luca. He said you understood your past, and wanted to ask him about it. I know it must have been a shock, that it must have caused you pain to hear the truth, but to end it with Emma! Why, Luca?’
‘Because Leo said it was in my blood, that I could not escape my genes. That the violent traits in my grandfather, my uncle, my father could not be denied. I said I felt nothing like them and he said he knew it was hard to accept, to face…’
A moan of horror escaped his mother’s lips…a sound of such pain that Luca started with concern. She had always been silent, even when being beaten, but she was moaning in pain now, a pain he didn’t understand, her eyes frantic and urgent and loaded with tears when they met her son’s. ‘To accept and face the truth that Leo is your real father…’
It was as if the sun had gone out. Everything suddenly went dark, as if the bed had been pulled from under him, as if the floor had just given way. Every rock, every foundation collapsed beneath him, yet he never moved, never moved a muscle, his mother’s voice seeming distorted from a distance as his mind frantically tried to process the words.
‘I thought you knew,’ Mia pleaded. ‘Leo thought that you knew, that you had finally guessed…’
As he looked back on their conversation with the knowledge the other man held, Luca closed his eyes. And as he did so, he felt the guilt, the shame, the fear truly unravel at last, and when he opened his eyes it was to a world that was brighter, safer. His only regret was that it was a world without Emma.
‘Devo sapere,’ Luca said. ‘Tell me.’ There was a flash of anger then. ‘Did he know, did Leo know how he was treating you?’
‘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?
