BAGS PACKED, AUBREY took one last look around her fancy hotel room, making sure she hadn’t left anything behind.
Anything, that was, apart from her heart. Busted as it was, she’d miss it. It had served her well. It had led her to Sean, after all. The man who’d kick-started her dreams again. Dreams that weren’t to be.
In their place, international co-parenting.
They’d find a way to make it work. Even while it would ache, seeing him. Unable to hold him. To kiss him. To lean into him when tired. To fall apart in seconds when he did that thing with his pinkie finger.
Till then…she’d decided it was best to go home.
Her parents would be so excited. Another grandchild in the mix.
Though they’d protest, she was doing this on her own. She’d find a cute little cottage with a yard. Room for a paddling pool. And maybe even a dog. A little smaller than Elwood. A lot more smarts.
Her life hadn’t ended when her heart had stopped. It had been given a new start.
And she was still determined to follow her curiosity and see where it led.
But first, sitting on the edge of her bed, she nibbled on a cracker, sipped a little warm water, had a quick suck on a lemon to make sure she didn’t throw up, then returned the call she’d missed the day before.
The first step towards filling in the rest of her world on what her new normal was about to become.
Daisy answered first. “Morning, sunshine!”
Who’d stolen Daisy and put this Daisy-shaped person in her place? “You’re chipper.”
“Yeah, I am!”
Jessica popped up. This time she was yawning. “We really need to line up our chat times better. Who called? Aubrey? Everything wonderful and brilliant wherever in the world you are today?”
“Still Florence.”
“Huh, thought you’d have seen half of Italy by now.”
“I’m actually leaving today.”
“Perfect timing!” That was Daisy. “Guess what? We’re doing a surprise gig in Copenhagen! The boys and I. An anniversary gig, though on a much smaller scale. Jay owns this club there. It’s brilliant, like an old-fashioned speakeasy. And we’re going to make a surprise appearance. It’s three days from now and I want you guys to come.”
A tiny spark lit inside the wasteland that was Aubrey’s enthusiasm, as if the peanut were cheering, Yes! Travel! I love to travel! Let’s do it.
“And bring Sean! I promise not to drool on him. And I’ll make Jay promise the same. When he found out you guys were friends, he turned into a blushing schoolgirl. Apparently, Malone’s chairs are like rock-star porn.”
Aubrey shook her head, infinitesimally. It was too much. The talk of drool. And Sean’s beautiful chairs. And, well, porn.
Jessica, being Jessica, noticed. “Aubs? You okay?”
“What? No. I’m fine. But it’ll just be me.”
“No hot wood guy?”
“No hot wood guy,” she parroted back, her voice sounding clownish. She cleared her throat, settled herself down. And said, “Just me. Which is fine, because I have so much I want to catch you guys up on! But I’ll save it till in person. Much better that way.”
Besides, she needed to get off the phone. Her throat felt as if it was closing up. And the backs of her eyes were burning.
“No,” said Daisy. “You don’t look right. Tell us now.”
Aubrey blinked and a single tear fell down her cheek. And that opened the floodgates. She told her girls everything. Well, everything bar Sean’s magical pinky-finger move. That she saved just for her.
“A baby,” said Jessica, her eyes round. And full of wonder. “Oh, Aubrey. That’s wonderful. And when you thought it wouldn’t be possible.”
While Daisy stared down the phone as if she wished she could jump through the thing and hold Aubrey close.
“Daisy?” Aubrey said. “You okay?”
“What? Yes. I’m assuming Sean’s the father?”
“Of course he’s the father. Jeez!”
“I’m in London right now but I can get to you in a matter of hours. You know, if you need me to have a word.”
“With Sean?” Aubrey felt laughter unexpectedly bubble into her throat. “No! He’s promised to ‘contribute’. And I fully believe him. He just…he just doesn’t want me as part of the bargain.”
The girls all let that sit, like a dark foggy cloud making it hard to breathe.
“How can that be? We saw the way he looked at you on the phone that day, when he so kindly greeted us in nothing but a towel.”
Aubrey rolled onto her back, holding the phone above her face. A complete glutton for punishment, she asked, “And how was that?”
“Like he couldn’t believe his luck,” Jessica said.
Aubrey let the phone fall to her chest for a moment, while she collected herself.
“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” Daisy’s voice hummed.
Aubrey lifted the phone, and nodded.
“But I’m guessing, by the way things turned out, you never said so.”
“Not in so many words. More like I made him promise to keep things light and easy and fun. I rarely called him by his first name. And any time things became serious, I cracked a joke.”
“That’s our girl,” Jessica murmured.
“Look,” said Daisy, glancing over her shoulder, “I really have to go. We’re in final rehearsal for the gig before we fly out tonight. Tell me you’ll be there.”
“I’ll be there,” Aubrey promised. “So long as you have crackers and lemons on hand so I don’t hurl.”
“Done. I’ve just sent all the details. Time. Date. Name on the door. All you have to do for me is be far less maudlin.”
“Done. A good sixty…sixty-five per cent less.”
“Good girl. Jess?” Daisy asked.
“Yes! I’m in. I’ll get someone to cover me at work for a few days. This is going to be brilliant. We can all finally debrief about the crazy last few months in person. And do the ring test on Aubrey to see if it’s a girl or a boy. All good things.”
When the girls looked to her, in the hopes of having cheered her up, Aubrey forced a smile. “First thing on the agenda? Viv’s new boyfriend.”
“What?” the girls said in unison, before Aubrey hung up.
She watched her friends disappear from their squares, one after the other. Then stared at the little pop-up that came up at the end of the call.
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After a beat, Aubrey clicked. Her heart racing, just a little, when she saw all her video chats had been saved into a folder.
Thumb racing now, she scrolled and scrolled and…there!
Her third morning in Florence. The conversation from Sean’s bed.
She fast forwarded, through Daisy’s frowns and Jessica’s sighs, until…
She paused on a shot when Sean had walked into the room. The moment she knew he was coming up behind her.
She looked so happy. And relaxed. As if she had not a care in the world. When before meeting Sean, she’d been a right mess.
Whereas he…
Attempting to look beyond the towel slung low around his hips, the super muscles and tanned skin, his hair falling over his eye, she saw the smile. Honest. Sensual. And a little surprised. As if he didn’t know what he was in for, but it was too late now. He was already on board.
She played it again, and paused on the moment his eyes met hers.
Her heart clutched. She rested a hand on her chest. And remembered back to how she’d felt in that moment. To think how much deeper her feelings now went. Now that she knew him. Now that she’d seen how he treated others. Now she knew how hard he was on himself.
Yet, in the hospital room, she’d pushed for an answer. Knowing he didn’t respond to that kind of pressure. When what she ought to have done was be there. Beside him. Supporting him. Holding him. Giving him the chance to catch up to her much faster schedule in his own time. Then, when he came out of his cave, she’d be there. Loving him.
But it was done now. Over. She couldn’t wait for ever. Not only because she’d finally given the hotel her notice of departure. But because she wasn’t making decisions for only herself any more.
But she had an hour. Maybe a little more before she had to hand in her key.
And there was one more thing she had to do before she left.
* * *
Sean would have liked nothing more than to hole up in his workshop, alone, with a hunk of wood and a piece of sandpaper, for the next few months.
It used to soothe him when he was a kid. Finding some place quiet in his head to turn over his thoughts. Turning the rough to smooth. The rugged into something that made sense.
Only now there were people everywhere he looked. People he’d been stupid enough to hire.
He could feel Flora’s angry gaze burning between his shoulder blades. Even Angelina couldn’t look him in the eyes. Only Hans had said good morning, but likely because—hailing from a tiny village in Germany—he spoke little English and less Italian, so had no clue what was going on.
Sean had tried whacking on a set of headphones, pumping up the Puccini, grabbing a heavy-duty chisel and just hacking at a plank of Baltic pine in the hopes of finding inspiration.
Or a way through the heavy fugue that had draped over him ever since leaving Aubrey at the hospital. He was beginning to think that fugue might linger. That it might have a terribly long half-life. Because Aubrey had been an extinction event. She’d crashed into his life like a meteor. And when the first dust cleared, the landscape was not even close to recognisable.
Problem was, he was having a hard time remembering why that was a bad thing.
Ben cast a shadow over him, waited till he made eye contact, and asked, “How long you gonna keep that up, boss? Till you chisel that stump into a toothpick?”
Wishing for the good old days when they’d all been scared of him, Sean grabbed his laptop, left Elwood at the villa, and headed into town. He’d do some admin in the quiet privacy of the showroom.
In Via Alighieri, key in hand, he turned as Gia appeared in the doorway of her leather shop, murmuring, “Keep walking, Malone. Just keep walking.”
But it was too late.
“Gian!” Enzo called, descending from his bistro, hands wringing a tea towel. “What is this I hear about our Aubrey? She is gone?”
Sean hung his head, breathed deep. He had a splitting headache, his ears felt as if they were full of cotton wool and he had some kind of constriction in his chest that just wouldn’t ease no matter what he ate. He didn’t want to play these games today.
But Enzo was a kind man, with a good heart, and didn’t deserve his bad mood. He regrouped. Took a Sean moment, as Aubrey would call it. If she were here. At his back.
“So you’re Aubrey’s Sean; the one who called me the other day.”
Sean turned to find a woman he’d never met—posh accent, expensive clothes—and something twigged. “Vivian Ascot.”
“I am she. Where’s my girl?”
Aubrey was pregnant. Off her medication. Fragile. And frustrated. And disappointed in him. And yet she was okay. Always would be.
While he… He already missed her with an ache he couldn’t contain.
“Mr Malone?” Vivian Ascot chastised, using the voice that had built a business empire.
Sean’s hand gripped his keys. Then he breathed out hard. “She’s on her way to Copenhagen to catch up with her friends. Your friends. Jess and Daisy? She sent me a message this morning.”
They were keeping in touch, as promised. It was all very civilised.
“Thank you.”
Sean nodded, and moved inside, locking the door behind him.
Civilised. How had it come to that? From the very moment they’d met their relationship had been built on friction. His obstinate grip on the status quo. Her determined need for change. She was dauntless. Presumptuous. Meddlesome. And she’d won out, more often than not.
Except this last time. This time he’d won. Though it sure didn’t feel like any kind of victory he’d care to choose.
Sean took a step, his foot slipping on a piece of paper on the floor.
He recognised the slanting script on the front as Aubrey’s hand.
She’d taken to leaving notes around his workshop. On his bed. In the fridge—‘When life shuts a door…open it. It’s a door—that’s how they work’ and ‘Always trust people who like big butts—they cannot lie’—in case he ever wanted a tattoo.
It took him a moment longer to notice it wasn’t a note, but an envelope. With only one word written on the front. His name.
Not Malone.
Sean.
His lungs tightened. He breathed through it. Told himself not to read into it.
He’d been reading into her expressions, her movements, her attention, her smiles, for weeks. Looking for signs that she might be feeling as he did. Falling deeper and deeper with each passing day. Each sublime night.
But he’d never been able to feel any assurance that she was all in. How could she be? She’d come to Florence to suck the marrow out of life; he’d come to Florence to hide.
Still, there had been moments when he’d seen past her humour, to a glimpse of something deeper. Some flash of desire. A wash of affection. A moment of true, rare connection in which he saw a vision of what a future, together, might look like.
Then she’d say, “Fun! Light! Easy! Casual!” And she’d call him Malone.
So he’d held back. Kept his feelings in check. Until he’d walked into the Galleria to see her faint. Her face deathly pale. Her eyes rolling back in her head.
He’d never run so fast, getting to her just before she hit the floor.
The feel of her in his arms—limp, a rag doll—had been the single most terrifying moment of his life. His shout for the guard to call for an ambulance must have made every statue in that place flinch.
Hearing the doctors say that she was okay—that it was heat, not her heart, that had knocked her out—had made his legs near give way with relief. Promises had tripped over themselves in the back of his head. Promises to tell her how he felt the moment she woke up.
That he adored her, and that she had saved him, and that while he wanted her to travel, to see the world, he wanted her to know she could always come home to him.
And then to find out she was pregnant…
He knew it was possible to breeze through pregnancy. But he also knew a child could wreak havoc on even the healthiest body. His own mother had pulled that one out of the bag whenever Carly was acting ungrateful. That she’d nearly died on the table having her.
Their mother had wondered, out loud, just the once, in a rare moment of frailty, if that pressure was why Carly acted the way she did. Each of them burdened with their share of guilt.
When in the end, the truth was far more simple. Carly was an addict. She made many bad choices. One of which had ended her life.
Choices. Choices were hard enough for someone whose head was clear.
Love me! Aubrey had cried, while curled up on the hospital bed.
Seeing her in the hospital gown, so big it fell off her shoulder, her face pale, her eyes scared, he’d taken too long a moment and the moment had been lost. Any other day, if she’d looked him in the eye and said, Love me, he might have made the better choice. To grab her, hold her close and say, Always.
Sean looked down at the envelope in his hands. How long had it been there? Days? Weeks?
He couldn’t open it. Not now when he still felt so raw. He went to put the envelope onto the bench but at the last second said, “Screw it,” and tore the edge open.
What he found inside was no joke at all.
The very first thing he saw was a photograph. Black and white. A speckled grey mass, with a dark splodge in the middle.
A sonogram. Aubrey’s name in one corner, Baby Malone written in the other. And in the centre, a peanut. Clear as day.
Sean moved to sit on one of the stools by the bench.
Why had she sent this to him? Was it a parting gift? Or a last-ditch plea?
Look what we did.
Look what we made.
Love me.
Aubrey never had been afraid to play dirty.
Adrenaline bucketing through him, Sean opened up the other papers inside the envelope. Stationery from her hotel. Each piece of paper branded with a sketch.
A hand holding a lathe. A finger—short nails, scarred—running across a pair of closed lips. A pair of eyes, looking directly at the artist. His eyes. His hands. His lips. His father’s nose. His mother’s dark hair. And Carly’s stubborn jaw. A dozen drawings. Each with the fluidity he’d seen in her that first day. But it was the detail that had his lungs emptying in a rush. The study.
The intimacy.
He went back through them till he found the eyes.
He’d avoided mirrors for years; the pain he’d see in his face, the guilt, only piling on. But in the drawing, his eyes were clear. Laughing. Charmed. Was this how he looked when Aubrey was in the room? If so, there was no way she didn’t know his feelings for her.
But for all her joy, her spirit, she’d been through the wringer too. Her faith in her own happiness was shaken. She might not trust all the good she saw. She’d needed to be told.
All people needed to be told. To hear the words. I want you. I can’t live without you.
I forgive you.
Gathering the scattered papers in one hand, Sean dialled her number with the other, then tucked his phone beneath his chin. But it rang out. She was probably already on the plane to Copenhagen.
He hung up. Locked up.
Striding down the street, he called another number. His own.
“Sì,” said Flora, the only one who ever answered the landline.
“Hey, it’s me. Can you look after Elwood for a few days?”
“Of course. So long as it means I can stay here. And have full use of the bar. Papa has a new girlfriend, some rich English lady, and I can’t watch. Do I need to guess where it is you might be going?”
“Yeah,” he said, surprising himself. “I think maybe you do.”
* * *
A little over thirty-six hours later, Sean’s driver pulled up outside a Melbourne building covered in scaffolding. A man in a suit, and a black and white striped tie, president of the football club and old family friend, barrelled his way towards him the moment he got out of the car.
“Sean! So good to see you my boy,” said George. “When I got your message, I was thrilled. Can’t express how much. No luggage?”
“Not staying long.”
George nodded. “Fair enough. Come on in so I can show you the space.”
Sean followed. Taking a moment to breathe in his surroundings.
Midwinter and the weather in Melbourne was as per usual: chilly, with sunshine beaming through the grey clouds. It hadn’t been the weather that had kept him away.
“He here?” Sean asked.
George looked over his shoulder, didn’t have to ask who.
“He’s inside. I didn’t tell him you were coming. That was how you wanted it, right? I want you to know, it doesn’t feel good not telling your mother.”
“She knows. I went by home to see her first.” Sean scratched the edge of his nose. “Was worried she might keel over from the surprise.”
“And did she?”
“She took it well.”
Better than well. Sean’s mother had dragged him into her arms and not let go for a good five minutes. After which she’d made him a coffee, forced him to eat cake the cook had made, and held his hand tightly as he’d given her a rundown of the past five years of his life.
When he’d asked after her, she’d just shaken her head. Sniffed loudly. Looked at him fiercely. And said, “None of that matters. It all begins again from here.”
And he’d believed her. Believed that they could overcome the mistakes they’d made in turning away from one another and not in. He’d seen it happen. A life beginning anew. Hinging on a single moment. Nothing that came after ever the same as what had gone before.
He’d not planned on telling her about Aubrey, but as if he’d needed to tell someone, to say the words out loud, it had all spilled out. How they’d met. How she’d infiltrated his life. How she’d shifted his perceptions of everything. From time to forgiveness. To the limits he’d put on his life. His capacity to feel joy. To feel at all.
When he’d got to the ending, the ending as things stood now, a child, her grandchild, his mother had swallowed hard, a torrid mix of happiness and sadness behind her eyes. Then she’d hugged him hard, told him she was sure he would find a way to make things work out for the best. That it was his gift. And his burden. But if she had a say, she’d very much like to meet this young woman one day soon.
And Sean knew, more than he’d ever known anything his entire life, that if he had a say, he’d make that happen.
“Well,” said George, tears welling, throat clearing. “Then you’ve made my day, boy. My year. Don’t much care if you refuse to take my commission now. Actually, I do care. Would put us on the map, culturally speaking, so do consider it rightly.”
The doors to the front of the building whispered open, a pair of famous footballers in black and white tracksuits shouldering their way past with polite nods.
And inside, standing by the front desk, in a hard hat and tweed jacket, Sean’s father.
“Brian,” Sean called. But his voice barely travelled past the tightness in his throat. He cleared it, took a breath, and called, “Dad.”
He saw his father still. Breathe out.
And turn.