AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Evelyn—’
‘Are you?’ She looked up at him as if she wanted this over and quickly.
‘Yes,’ he replied, the word ground out between clenched teeth, ignoring the swipes his conscience was taking at him.
‘Here,’ she said, reaching into the briefcase she had brought with her to retrieve the notebook she’d taken from his estate in Spain. ‘I never should have taken it. And if I had any other option, I would not be bartering the octant for it now. But before I go, I want you to see something,’ she said, unwinding the leather string keeping the cover bound and preventing several loose pages tucked neatly into the spine from coming free. She turned to a page bookmarked by an old Polaroid.
Just the sight of the black square backing the old photograph brought a deluge of memories of the way his father had eschewed the modern technology of digital cameras over the old-fashioned physicality of his Polaroid camera. His mother still had several pictures his father had taken from when he was younger and when they were still together.
‘I know that things had become strained between you. And I know—more than most—how lost your father could get in his work. His focus and drive was something that very few people could match, but it came at a cost. One he regretted bitterly.’
Her words should have soothed—wasn’t it what he’d always wanted? For his father to have known how much he’d missed out on? For his father to have recognised the damage he’d caused? But they were too little, too late, and he wanted her to stop. Stop explaining and justifying his father’s absence.
She plucked the Polaroid from the notebook.
‘We were coming back from a conference in Toronto and he’d made sure that our flights stopped in New York. He’d been so excited. So proud.’
Mateo’s jaw was clenched so tight, a headache had begun to form. He didn’t want to know what she was alluding to, didn’t want to hear it. He’d become a child again, pressing his hands over his ears so as not to hear his mother’s heart-wrenching sobs.
‘We arrived just as you were being interviewed,’ she offered as she held out a photograph he couldn’t bring himself to look at yet. ‘You’d just taken your company public in a record-breaking launch. And they were asking who you had there with you to celebrate.’
‘And I said I had everyone I needed,’ Mateo replied, remembering how angry he’d been that his father hadn’t been there. ‘My mother, my grandfather and my friends,’ he said, repeating the words he’d said to the journalists that night. It had been the final straw. That his father hadn’t been there for his greatest achievement had drawn an uncrossable line between them. But now Evelyn was saying that hehadbeen there?
‘We left shortly after. He didn’t want to spoil your day.’
Finally, Mateo looked at the Polaroid she held out to him.
In the picture his father was standing in the foyer of the New York hotel Mateo had hired for the launch party celebration. His father was staring straight at the camera, beaming with a pride Mateo barely recognised. Mateo’s heart pounded as he searched the image for the incontrovertible proof of what his heart wasn’t ready to accept. And there in the background, over his father’s shoulder, looking up and staring towards the camera he sawhimself. Goosebumps broke out on his skin as he stared at the little Polaroid. A moment in time he’d never known about.
His breath left his lungs in a gush as if he’d been punched in the chest. ‘I...’ He didn’t even know what to say.
‘I know that this doesn’t make up for things, Mateo, but you should know that he did love you,’ Evie said, hoping that he believed her. ‘He did regret the distance between you.’
‘Why didn’t he just stop? Stop this ridiculous search,’ he asked of the only person who might be able to answer.
‘I think...’ She hesitated and his heart held its beat. ‘I think it’s because he wanted to prove to you that it was worth it. That his sacrifice had been for something real.’
‘Then why didn’t he say anything?’ he demanded, his voice like gravel.
‘He didn’t think he deserved your forgiveness,’ she said quietly.
Mateo cleared the thickness from his throat with a cough and reached for the whisky to swallow all the other emotions clamouring to escape. He couldn’t stop himself from wondering if things had been different, if he’d seen his father there before giving that interview, would there have been peace before his father had died? Would they have reconnected?
He felt the weight of Evelyn’s gaze on him, almost as palpable as the dawning realisation that he had got things so very wrong.
‘Who was he to you?’ Mateo asked, looking to Evelyn, now standing by the window, having given him some space to process his emotions.
The question might have appeared strange but Evie didn’t mistake it for anything other than a child trying to understand their parent.
‘He was a lot,’ she admitted truthfully.
‘How did you meet?’
Evie huffed out a gentle laugh. ‘Carol and Alan, my adoptive parents, took me to meet him when they realised my interest in Iondorran history wasn’t just a phase. We’d taken a summer holiday to Iondorra when I was about five. They’d already started to notice that my intellect was high. I was apparently dissatisfied with explanations that would pacify other children; my reading skills were beyond above average. At first it was thought that I was an only child used to adult company—Carol and Alan were hardly ones for baby talk or play. But they’d been advised to take me away on holiday and it happened to be to Iondorra.’
Evie turned away to the stunning nightscape reflected in the river just beyond the hotel. ‘They had picked up a travel book, hoping to perhaps keep me from asking them questions every two minutes, and I’d read it front to back in less than an hour. There was a small history of the monarchy in it and something about Isabella caught my imagination. I wanted to know more. I needed to know what happened to the woman who had been sent away from her home and never reached her destination.
‘We visited the museum and there was a section with Isabella’s room recreated with some horribly frightening waxwork figures and pieces of her clothing and jewellery that had remained behind to be sent on once she’d arrived in the Dutch East Indies. And that was it. I was fascinated by the idea that there were belongings, proof, evidence of a life even after it had been left behind.’ Evie ran out of steam and realised that she’d just let that all blurt out and her cheeks flamed, and she was suddenly embarrassed. Pressing her cool hands to her skin, she smiled ruefully.
