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“You say that as if I don’t know what’s best for Dante. As if I don’t want what’s best for him.”
“I know you love that child,” Mother Superior said soothingly. “And you have worked so hard to give him what you think you lacked. But Cecilia. I don’t think it’s ever occurred to you that when your mother left you here, she made certain you would be tended to by an entire order of surrogate mothers.”
“Of course that’s occurred to me. It’s why I wanted to join the order myself.”
It was also why she had stayed here even in the darkest hours of her disgrace instead of leaving the valley behind. How could she leave the only family she’d ever known? No matter how disappointed they were in her?
“But she also made certain you would never know the faintest bit of information about your own father,” Mother Superior continued. “I flatter myself that the sisters and I have done our best, but we can only be surrogate mothers, aunts and sisters. You may not recall that when you were about seven, all you wanted was a father. And you cried and cried for what could never be.”
She’d forgotten that. But she shook her head. “It was a phase. It faded.”
“Child. Why would you choose to do to Dante what was forced upon you? Would you not spare him that pain if you could?”
And that was the question that stuck with Cecilia as she finished up her duties in the abbey that day, then took the longer walk home so as to make sure she didn’t stray too close to the clinic. It was the question that echoed around inside her when she picked Dante up from her neighbor and gazed down at him with the usual mix of fondness and exasperation as he shouted the events of his day at her. Rapid and loud, the way he always did when he was overexcited—and he was usually overexcited.
She thought about the question all throughout their normal afternoon and evening. She considered it during bath time, when Dante leaped out of the tub and ran in circles around the cottage, laughing maniacally and waving his hands over his head until Cecilia could do nothing but laugh with him.
She read him a story, heard his prayers and tucked him into bed, and when she turned out the light and left him to sleep, she could still hear Mother Superior’s calm, measured voice inside her.
She’d forgotten—or she’d tried to forget—how much and how often she’d imagined herself with a real family when she’d been young. Cecilia had loved growing up in the abbey. All the sisters had treated her as their own, a very junior sister or everyone’s child, and she had never doubted that she was loved. And by many.
But she wasn’t like the other children in the village. All the intricacies of family dynamics were lost on her. And as Mother Superior had said today, she had found it especially trying when she was a little bit older than Dante and entirely too consumed with making sure that she wasnormal. It had been clear to her that she was not, and it had bothered her. How had she forgotten that?
She supposed she’d set so much of it aside when she decided to join the order herself that she’d somehow managed to wipe it all out in her memory.
Or perhaps you wanted to join the order because it tied up the story of your life in a nice, neat bow,a voice inside her suggested archly.
She scowled at herself as she cleaned up the kitchen. Then she went to sit out in the main room of the cottage. It was a pleasant, open space that felt airy and large when it was neither. She curled up in her favorite chair before the fire, where she liked to read or sew, and did neither tonight. Instead, she stared into the flames, able to see nothing at all but Mother Superior’s deft, dear hands wrapped around her tea. And that voice of hers, so gentle and so soft, that sat in her like a stone.
Why would you choose to do to Dante what was forced upon you?
Cecilia blew out a long, hard breath, and then made herself get up again. She crossed back to the kitchen drawer where she’d thrown the bit of paper she’d found thrust beneath her door one morning. It was a mobile number written in a bold, impatient hand and an initial.P.
And maybe it was telling that she hadn’t tossed it straight into the fire, but she hadn’t.
She stared down at the number and thatPfor a long time.
And when she couldn’t put it off any longer, she decided she couldn’t face a telephone call. She picked up her mobile and texted him instead. Simple and to the point.
This is Cecilia. We need to talk. Can you come to the cottage?
She told herself he would likely take his time replying, but his response came within seconds.
On my way.
And then Cecilia was treated to some more hard truths about herself, because she…dithered.
There was no other word for it. Before she’d texted him, she hadn’t given a thought to her appearance, here at the end of a long day cleaning ancient buildings and tending to an active five-year-old. Or her clothes. The moment he replied, she rushed into her bedroom and found herself changing from her usual loose shirt and comfortable lounging pants into a wholly uncharacteristic shift dress she usually wore only to church. And then smoothing her hair and coiling it into a tidy knot at the nape of her neck.
Then she charged back out into the main room and threw herself into a whirlwind tidying session that had her breathing a little too heavily by the time she’d made the place look less like a child’s gymnasium and more like an adult’s serene living room. Or as close to such a thing as she could get as she was not a billionaire with staff.
That thought kicked her temper back into gear, and she frowned at herself in the reflection of the windows, because why was she trying toimpressPascal? Surely she should have gone the other direction and left herself and the cottage as slovenly as possible, the better to drive him away.
But she didn’t change her clothes again.
Nor did she empty the basket of Dante’s favorite toys across the rug, the better to be crunched painfully underfoot.
And at some point she would have to face what it meant that she wanted so desperately for Pascal to see her, and this home she’d made for their child, at their best. Just as she would have to face the electric charge within her at the notion he was coming here, and her sneaking suspicion that it was not agitation that was so bright inside her.
