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“I do believe you,” Ellie said with a crisp nod.
“They got married.”
“I know. It seems everyone was trying to do what was right for Xavier.”
Maria lifted a hand to her head, pressing her palm to her brow. Sympathy flooded Ellie, but she wished, in that moment, that she could be colder.
“You phoned to tell me about the baby?” Maria asked, and then she took a step forward, curving her fingers around Ellie’s wrist with urgency. “That’s why you called me?”
“Yes,” Ellie agreed, her gaze level despite the rapid beating of her heart.
Maria’s eyes blinkered shut. “And I told you how happy he was with Bella.”
“How they were planning a family of their own,” Ellie reminded the older woman.
Maria winced. “I needed you to disappear. Life is so precarious, happiness even more so, and you were a threat to all that.”
“I was a woman he’d fallen in love with,” she corrected, her voice shaking with indignation. “Who loved him very much. I was his happiness.”
Maria’s expression was heavy with grief. “You must understand, Elizabeth, that I had no idea about your pregnancy or that my son was unattached when you met one another. I would never have interfered if I’d been in possession of the facts.”
And then, something inside of Ellie snapped. It was all so reasonable; so logical, but the pain was as real and as strong as it had been back then. “I do believe that.” She clipped the words out tersely. “That doesn’t make any of this right! I lost years of my life - a life I could have spent with Xavier. He lost a chance to raise his son from birth. And yes, that was my decision, and if I could do it all again, I would have told him, regardless of what you said to me. But I was a young woman, terrified and alone, ostracized by my parents, pregnant, worried about the future and how I’d manage, and you treated me like dirt on the floor.”
Remorse flashed on Maria’s face. “For his sake! For Arabella…”
Ellie ground her teeth together. “Yes. For them! You said whatever you needed to get rid of me – and you did a great job.”
Maria’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry that I hurt you –,”
“You did hurt me,” Ellie agreed angrily, before sucking in a steadying breath. “You told me I meant nothing to him, when he was my whole world. I was pregnant with his child and I couldn’t believe that the man I loved had used me like that. But I did believe it, because you’re his mother and you told me you’d talked to him about me! You told me he regretted what had happened between us! Do you have any idea what that felt like?”
Maria didn’t respond.
“I was pregnant, and I called to tell him – to find out how to contact him. And in the face of what you told me, I knew I could never interfere with his life. He wished he’d never even met me, according to you. Why would he want to know about my baby?”
“Because it was his baby, too,” Maria whispered, strangled, pained words.
“And I have raised Josh on my own, every day missing Xavier, wishing he was a part of our life, wishing my son had a father, and believing that Xavier was happily married with a family of his own. Because of you.”
Maria’s face had drained of all colour and there was a very small part of Ellie that took satisfaction from that. “I only wanted to protect my son’s marriage.”
Ellie sucked in a breath, trying to calm the raging fever in her blood. “You were wrong to lie to me. You were wrong to treat me like that when you knew nothing about what Xavier and I had shared.”
A single tear escaped from the corner of Maria’s eye, but Ellie ignored it, refusing to soften. “But I was wrong, too. I believed the worst in Xavier so easily. I’d loved him with all that I was and yet, at the first sign of difficulties, I gave up. I should have fought for him, and what we were, but I didn’t. And that’s not your fault – it’s mine.”
Maria shook her head grimly. “I made it easy for you to believe my son capable of those deeds.”
“Yes.” Ellie’s expression shifted. “But you know Xavier, as I do. Do either of us really think he would sleep around behind his fiancé’s back?”
It was like perforating a dark storm cloud. Everything shifted into blinding clarity for both women.
“No,” Maria frowned, and she said the word over and over, and then sank into a chair. “Of course he didn’t cheat on Arabella. Xavier once walked out of a shop holding a pen because he’d been distracted – he was only six or seven years old – and he didn’t realise until he’d made it home. He walked the three miles back, in the middle of the day’s heat, because he couldn’t bear the thought of having stolen.” Her eyes lifted to Ellie’s face. “He didn’t cheat. He would never do that.”
Ellie nodded, breathing easier. “I know that, now. And I should have known it then.” She moved towards the kettle, lifted a hand to flick it and then changed her mind. She turned back to face her future mother-in-law. “My point is that you were only a part of the problem. I didn’t have faith in Xavier, nor my feelings for him. He needed me and I wasn’t there, and that was my choice. I chose to walk away.”
“You were a child,” Maria soothed.
“In any event, it’s my wedding day,” Ellie said quietly. “Soon we’ll be family, and I believe it’s better if we never speak of this again.”
