A Sicilian Husband - Kate Walker [40]
‘Was there a problem?’
‘No.’
Gio’s voice sounded as if it came from a long, long way away.
‘No problem. The birth was fine. The baby was fine. Lucia…was fine. Or so everyone thought. We brought the baby home…’
Without warning he swung round, and, having hoped that he would no longer turn his back on her, Terrie now desperately wished the opposite. His face was almost unbearable to see. It seemed impossible that the deep lines of pain and distress etched around his nose and mouth, the bruised shadows in his eyes, could have appeared in such a short space of time.
‘What happened?’
‘Ten days before Paolo’s first birthday, Lucia was alone in the kitchen and she collapsed. Suddenly and unexpectedly—there had been no sign of anything wrong. She’d complained of a faint headache, but that was all.’
He drew in a long, rawly rasping breath before he could go on.
‘She died that night. There was nothing they could do for her. A brain haemorrhage, the doctors said. Something that could never have been predicted.’
‘Oh…’
It was all that Terrie was capable of managing. She wanted to hold him. To weep for him. To do anything that she thought might help. But at the same time she didn’t dare.
Her hands went to her face, covering her eyes for a second, then her mouth. Then she half extended them towards him, but almost immediately rethought and pulled them back. As long as she didn’t know how Gio was going to react, she wasn’t going to open herself to an attack or a rejection that would destroy her. She couldn’t take any more of that.
‘And every day since then I’ve never gone to sleep without wishing that I could tell her how much I loved her just one more time.’
‘I’m—’
‘No!’ he cut in savagely, eyes blazing dangerously. ‘Don’t say you’re sorry! I never want to hear that word again, at least not in this context. I had a bellyful of “sorry”s in the months after it happened—after Lucia died. Everyone I met said they were sorry—how sorry they were…’
‘They were only trying to help.’
‘Maybe they were—but it doesn’t help. Nothing helps at a time like that. What makes them think that “sorry” will somehow put it right?’
‘I don’t know,’ Terrie admitted. ‘I’ve never been through a loss like that.’
Somehow her words got through to him. She saw his head go back, a tiny hint of the tension leaving his long body, a calmer light coming into his eyes.
‘Well, that’s honest at least. You wouldn’t believe how many people will say that they know how you feel.’
‘I couldn’t begin to imagine how you feel. I wouldn’t even try.’
It would hurt too much, even to feel it for him, never mind to have to go through it herself.
She wished there was something—anything she could do that would help. But all that her numbed, bruised mind could come up with was the simple, practical matters that would ease the here and now, because they could do nothing about the past.
‘You look as if you could do with a drink. Why don’t you sit down while I get you something?’
‘Do you mean to say that I get to drink the brandy this time?’
As an attempt at humour it was weak and disturbingly shaky, twisting in Terrie’s vulnerable heart. And the obvious effort that it had cost him to say it spoke much more of the way he was feeling than any outpouring of words could ever do, so that she struggled to raise even the faintest glimmer of the smile that she felt he had been aiming for.
‘Perhaps it’s a little early for the hard stuff. How about a coffee? I’ve only instant, I’m afraid.’
‘Coffee would be fine—instant—anything.’
Did he know how grateful she was for the excuse to get away from him, escape into the kitchen just for a minute? Terrie wondered. Would he realise how much she needed to gather herself, collect her scattered thoughts, recoup her shattered defences? Or would he just think she was so totally switched off from him that she didn’t care one way or another and she was simply going