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“Luca….” Melanie repeated, dragging out the vowels. “Corbin’s son.”
“Uh-huh.”
If it was possible to physically feel blood drain, down and down and down, that was what Melanie was experiencing right now. That dizzying sensation that everything inside her was sliding away. The death of a child was the world’s worst tragedy, the loss of all that potential, and the separation from such unabashed and boundless love. Corbin had gone through that.
Then a second thought hit her, one that threatened to sandbag her for good. The angry words she had hurled at him back in the parking lot. That cruel, ignorant remark about taking parenting advice from a childless man. Oh, how badly that must have hurt him.
She remembered his silence on the way back, his dark and reddened eyes, and knew that it had been she who had inflicted that pain upon him. Clawed the scab off the wound.
Jeez, she had messed up.
She looked across at Rhys and noticed that he was lying down now, still trying to focus on her, but his eyelids were beginning to dip. It had been a long day, with huge emotional ups and downs. It really would be better for him to get some sleep.
“I’m just gonna….” She pointed backwards out of the room with her thumb, but by now, Rhys was barely listening.
“Night, Mom,” he slurred.
“Love you, sweetheart.” She bent forward and pressed a kiss on his forehead, and slipped out, gently closing the door.
She had to find Corbin. She’d done something awful, said something unforgiveable. She had to make things right.
She hurried downstairs, taking them two at a time and not caring that a single misstep would send her tumbling. She followed the sounds of activity to the study at the back of the cottage. It was still to be painted but the flooring was in and Corbin had excitedly showed her a new fireplace grill that he’d salvaged from a 19th century farmhouse on the other side of the lake. He’d installed it himself with great pride.
He was standing in front of it, arms folded, staring into the fire he had just lit.
She could tell he knew she was there, but he didn’t turn to greet her. Instead, he murmured. “The chimney is working fine. One of the guys found an old stork’s nest up there, but he took it down and cleared out the stack….”
“Corbin.” She paused a few feet away from him, not daring to get any closer. Scared of what she would see in his eyes. All she could think of were her mean hurtful words, how each one must have landed on his skin like barbs.
He quit poking around in the fireplace and turned to meet her voice, and immediately the expression on his face changed. His broad shoulders dipped just a little, and he squeezed his eyes shut. “Your boy has told you, I see.”
“Corbin, I am so, so sorry. I had no idea.”
He made a slight, dismissive movement with his head. “Why would you? The life I had, it is not something I speak of often.” Then he seemed to have made a decision. He held out his hand, and with the other, gestured to the couch, the largest new piece of furniture in the room after the bookshelf and oak desk. “Sit with me.”
Taking his hand was so odd to her, not because it felt strange but because it felt familiar. Comforting, calming, almost as though the curve of his palm was a niche carved out just for her. They sat shoulder to shoulder, momentarily mesmerized by the flicker of the fire. Then, he unpinned his body cam, checking it closely to make sure it was off. She didn’t need to be told. She removed her own and handed it over. This was not a wound to be shared with the world. He dropped it into a little ceramic platter on the coffee table.
She wanted to say so much, ask so many questions, but didn’t know where to start.
He put her out of her misery by beginning his story. “As I told you before, my life was once very different from what it is now. I had a business, and a wife. Her name was Fabienne. We were married eight years. We had a son….”
“Luca.”
“He was seven when he died. That was three years ago.”
He was quiet awhile, enough time for her to calculate that the child would have been around the same age as Rhys was now. “What happened?” she asked in a whisper.
The fire seemed to provide him with answers. “I wasn’t a very good husband, or a good father. I mean, I loved them both, dearly, but in my mind I showed that love by working harder and harder so they could have more and more. They didn’t have me on the weekends, because I would be in my home office. They didn’t have me on weekdays, because I came home late and left for the office early, because somewhere in the world, a financial market was either opening or closing.” He sounded incredulous, as if even he couldn’t believe that the man he was talking about could do such a thing.
“One evening, I was chairing the quarterly board meeting, and it ran later than usual. My wife was in Aix, visiting her parents, so I was supposed to pick Luca up from school. We were discussing some particularly difficult negotiations with another company, and I couldn’t leave the meeting.” He stopped and made a face rife with self-disgust. “I thought I couldn’t go; the truth is, I didn’t want to. The situation was tense and I hated to leave it unresolved. So I phoned Paul, a neighbor of mine, a teenager who lived just past our house, and asked him to collect Luca and bring him to the office. I’d done it before; he was a good kid and always willing to help, especially if there was a tip involved. He collected my son from school.”
Dread clawed at Melanie’s chest. “And?”
“I didn’t know it, but Paul was high that day. He’d been popping pills all afternoon with friends but didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to make a few euro. Just minutes after collecting my son, he crashed through a railing. Both of them….”
She covered her face with her hands. “Stop!”
“No. It needs to be said. I want you to understand.”
