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‘Well … I’m not sure that’s …’ She paused, totally nonplussed now. Where was her non-violence speech when she needed it the most? And how could Aldo be so blasé now, after being so distressed downstairs?
‘But Trey didn’t punch Lizzie’s dad back,’ Aldo continued, sounding disappointed. ‘So it probably didn’t even hurt Trey that much.’
‘Right,’ she said, still struggling to follow Aldo’s ten-year-old logic while coping with the growing realisation that it probably wasn’t that far removed from Luke’s logic. Or Trey’s logic, either. Because when she had waylaid her fleeing au pair at the door, his bloody lip already puffing up like bread dough in the proving drawer, and apologised for Luke’s punch, all he’d said was ‘I’m so sorry, Ms Best’, as if he were the guilty party.
Bloody men! Are they born emotionally obtuse, or is it just the inevitable result of having too much testosterone poisoning
their bloodstream?
Because it was beginning to look as if she had been much more traumatised by Luke’s punch than either her son or the young man Luke had attacked.
‘OK, well …’ She hesitated, remembering Aldo’s original question. ‘The thing is, nobody hates you, Aldo. Even Lizzie when you and she argue.’
‘I know,’ he said with complete conviction. ‘Me and her are friends now,’ he continued, confirming what she’d noticed when she’d walked into the room. Something had definitely changed in their relationship. Something for the better. ‘She took me to the movies while Trey’s mum was sick. And she didn’t moan once.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ she said as more of the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Lizzie must have stepped in to take care of Aldo while Trey’s mum had been dying.
Why hadn’t she ever considered putting them together more instead of trying to keep them apart? It chimed with what Luke had said, about trusting their daughter more. Maybe if she had trusted Lizzie and started treating her like a young woman instead of a snotty teenager, given her more responsibility instead of less, she and Aldo’s relationship wouldn’t have been so fractious these past few years.
‘Lizzie doesn’t hate me, but I know someone who does.’ Aldo’s matter-of-fact comment cut neatly into Halle’s guilt trip.
‘Who?’
‘My dad.’ His whisky-coloured eyes, so like her own, suddenly seemed much older than ten years. ‘That’s why he never wanted to see me, isn’t it?’
Blood slammed into her heart.
Unable to bear the blank acceptance in Aldo’s gaze, the answer came to her. Why not tell him Claudio was dead? Then he’d never have to know the truth. Claudio didn’t hate him. It was worse than that. Claudio didn’t even care he existed. How could you tell a ten-year-old that and not expect them to be devastated? Especially a ten-year-old like Aldo, whose confidence had taken so many knocks in recent years.
The urge to tell her son anything that would make the pain of rejection go away was as strong as it had ever been. He was just a child—the wadded-up piles of dirty socks stuck at the end of his bed, the comics strewn all over the floor, the hamster rattling its cage as it sprinted to nowhere on its wheel, the piles of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards neatly stacked on his desk, probably in order of greatest hit points or something, the smell of bubblegum that lingered in the room were all testament to that.
But as she opened her mouth, swearing to herself this would be her final white lie, Aldo said, ‘Is it because I did all that bad stuff at school? Is that why he doesn’t like me? Could you tell him I’m much better now? And I don’t do that stuff much any more?’
And the lie died on her tongue.
‘Oh, Aldo.’ She dragged him into her arms and hugged him hard. The guilt all but destroying her at the eagerness, the hope in his tone.
How could she have gotten things so wrong? By not telling him the truth, by almost lying to him again, she’d made him believe her mistakes and Claudio’s character flaws were somehow his fault.
He struggled out of her arms, his expression earnest and confused. ‘It’s all right, Mum, don’t cry. What are you sad about?’
She scrubbed the errant tears away. ‘I’m not sad. I’m emotional. Because I’ve just realised how amazing my son is.’
‘Really?’ He wrinkled his nose in astonishment, making her realise that while she may have told him that a hundred times, she’d never made him believe it.
‘Yes, really. Do you want me to tell you about your dad?’
He nodded, the eagerness still there. She hated that she would have to crush his hope, but there were much worse things than not having a relationship with your father. And one of them was having a father as selfish and self-absorbed as Claudio in your life, or one who was a violent alcoholic, like Brian Best.
The thought brought with it thoughts of Luke, a man who had been terrified of becoming a father and yet had risen to the challenge despite his fear. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind.
Don’t start getting overemotional about Luke again, or you’ll start blubbing like your namesake, Halle Berry, on Oscar night and never get this done.
‘Your dad, your biological father,’ she corrected, because Claudio had never deserved to be anyone’s dad, ‘is called Claudio Benedetti. He’s Italian. And we weren’t going out for very long when I discovered I was going to have you.’
‘Did he know about me?’
She gulped past the huge lump blocking her throat. ‘Yes, he knew I was pregnant. And he did meet you once, when you were a tiny baby.’
