‘I HOPE the fox will be okay,’ Nicolas said.
He was sitting with Serina in the vet’s waiting room, Felicity having taken her patient into the consulting room fifteen minutes earlier. Although the hospital wasn’t open for surgery for another hour, there’d been a bell on the front door to ring for emergencies, and luckily the vet—who lived at the back of the building—had been at home.
‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ Serina replied. ‘Ted’s a good vet.’
‘Let’s hope so. Felicity’s somewhat obsessive about saving wildlife, isn’t she?’
‘Mmmm.’
‘Do you think she has any idea of the risks she took today?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘She needs a firm hand, Serina, and a protective one.’
‘I do my best, Nicolas.’
‘She needs a father.’
Serina gave him a panicky look. ‘You promised you would never tell her.’
‘And I won’t. But how about a stepfather?’
‘Stepfather?’ Serina echoed, her eyes blinking wide.
‘Yes, Serina, stepfather. I was going to wait till tonight to propose to you over a candlelit dinner with a big diamond ring in my pocket. But I doubt you’ll come out with me tonight after what happened today. I also doubt that a big diamond ring would impress you, anyway. So I’m asking you now—will you marry me?’
Serina just kept on staring at him.
Nicolas sighed. ‘I can guess what you’re going to say,’ he went on before she could argue with him. ‘We come from different worlds. We don’t really know each other anymore. We’ve left it too late. Well I have the perfect answer for all of that and it’s balderdash! All that matters is that we love each other. We’ve always loved each other. If there’s anything that today should have shown you, it’s that all life is a risk. We could have fried in there today. All three of us. Instead we’re alive and well. Look, I promise you that I won’t ask anything of you that would make you unhappy. I won’t ask you to move, or change, or anything. We can make this work, Serina. I’ll make it work. Trust me, darling, and just say yes.’
Serina closed her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again, they were awash with tears.
Nicolas thought they were tears of happiness.
But he was wrong.
‘Oh, Nicolas…if only you’d asked me to marry you twenty years ago. Or that night at the Opera House. Or even yesterday. Yesterday, I might still have said yes. Though of course that would have still been a big mistake. What happened today showed me that I can’t marry you. Ever. Neither can I have a relationship with you. Not one around here, anyway.’
‘What? But why?’
‘Because I couldn’t bear it.’
‘Couldn’t bear being what?’
‘Couldn’t bear keeping another secret. Couldn’t bear being afraid all the time of the truth coming out. It was bad enough when I was married to Greg. I coped because I was the only one who knew. And because you were another world away. I nearly died today when I said what I said. I felt ill. I still feel ill, thinking about it. Because if Felicity ever found out Greg wasn’t her real father, she’d never forgive me. She’d hate me. Yes, life is a risk, but I can’t risk that, Nicolas, no matter how much I love you. I’m sorry.’
Nicolas just sat there. Stunned, hurt, devastated.
He struggled to find the right words to say. The right questions to ask.
‘When you said you can’t have a relationship with me around here, what exactly did you mean?’
‘You know very well what I meant, Nicolas. I’ll visit you overseas every now and then, but I don’t want you coming here. Not anymore. Because one day, one of us might say something in front of Felicity—or someone else—like we did today.’
Nicolas’s head understood her reasoning. But his heart reacted very badly. ‘I offer you marriage,’ he said, bitter resentment in his voice, ‘and that’s what you offer me in return? Well I’m sorry, too, Serina, but a dirty weekend here and there is not enough for me. I love you and I want to spend quality time with you. I also love my daughter. That’s something I discovered today. I would never do anything to hurt her. I gave you my word that I would never tell her I was her father, and I will keep my word. But I want to be able to play some kind of role in her upbringing. I want to watch her grow up. I want to watch over her. It seems, however, that you’re going to deny me even that.’
‘Nicolas, I…I…’
‘Please don’t say another word,’ he snapped. ‘The subject is now closed. We are now closed. Finito.’ He made a chopping gesture across his throat as he stood up. ‘I will wait outside for you. Then, when Felicity is finished, I will drive you both home and say my goodbyes with our daughter present. That way I can be assured that I will not say anything further that I might later regret. No, Serina,’ he snarled when she opened her mouth again. ‘Do not waste your breath. I have always been a very black-and-white person. You don’t love me the way I love you. You never have. So please, let’s just leave it at that.’ And whirling, he stalked out of the waiting room.
Serina stared after him, her head whirling, but her heart like lead in her chest. He doesn’t mean it, she reasoned. He’s just angry with me. He can’t mean it.
But he did mean it, she was to discover to her despair. He’d meant every word.
He drove them home and said his goodbyes, Felicity quite upset by his decision to leave Port Macquarie the following day.
‘But I was hoping you’d be with us for Christmas,’ she said plaintively. ‘Mum, tell him he has to stay.’
Serina just shook her head. She could already see that Nicolas was not about to change his mind. And she couldn’t trust herself to speak.
‘I have to go, Felicity,’ he said, and gave his daughter a quick hug. ‘I’m needed back in New York. The show must go on, sweetheart. Look after your mother for me. And give my regards to Mrs Johnson.’
Felicity waved him off from the front porch, her goodbye smile fading once he was gone.
‘I don’t see why he had to go back to New York in such a hurry,’ she grumbled whilst Serina set about feeding a noisily complaining Midnight. ‘Unless, of course, he does have a girlfriend back there. Did you ever ask him, Mum, if he was dating that Japanese violinist?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘He said he wasn’t.’
‘I didn’t think so. Kirsty and I reckon he’s still in love with you.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘The way he kept looking at you.’
‘What way is that?’
‘Like he adored the ground you walked on.’
Serina swallowed the great lump in her throat, then forced out a small laugh. ‘You two girls. You’re just like Allie and Emma, incorrigible romantics. If he adored the ground I walked on then what’s he doing going back to New York? Look, could you put this cat food away for me, love? I have to go to the bathroom.’
She just made it into the bathroom before the tears came.
It was not the first time she was to cry uncontrollably during the following few days.
She cried when the mobile phone arrived for Felicity, posted from Sydney airport. Then again when she had to go into Port Macquarie to buy Christmas presents. And again when she passed the spot where Nicolas had pulled the SUV off the road and kissed her.
She dreaded Christmas, fearing she would not get through the day without breaking down, especially since that year they were holding their family celebrations at the Harmons, in the house where Nicolas had lived. Serina managed to keep it together till Felicity’s grandparents requested Felicity do an encore of the medley she’d played at the talent quest…on Nicolas’s old piano, no less.
Serina started weeping shortly after her daughter started playing and she just couldn’t stop.
Fortunately, Greg’s parents didn’t connect her distress with Nicolas. They thought she was still grieving for their son.
In the end, Serina had to go home where a very upset Felicity demanded to know what the matter was.
‘It’s Nicolas, isn’t it?’ she said when Serina didn’t enlighten her. ‘He’s broken your heart again like Grandma said he did once before. You still love him, don’t you?’
Serina just couldn’t bring herself to lie.
‘Yes,’ she confessed brokenly. ‘Yes, I still love him.’
‘But he doesn’t love you?’
‘Oh, yes, yes, he does. Very much.’
‘Then why did he go back to New York?’
Serina looked deep into her daughter’s eyes.
‘Because I asked him to go,’ she admitted.
‘Mum! But why?’
‘Because I was afraid…’
‘Afraid of what?’
Serina’s face twisted, her courage failing her once more. ‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Of course you can, Mum. You always say that we can tell each other anything!’
‘If I tell you, you might hate me.’
‘I would never hate you, Mum. You are the best mother in the whole wide world.’
‘Oh. Oh, dear…’
‘Mum,’ Felicity said firmly. ‘You have to tell me what’s making you so unhappy and we’ll work it out together.’
Could she really tell her? Dared she?
Serina thought of Nicolas, all alone in New York and wanting so much to be a part of their lives. And then she thought of herself, living the rest of her life the way she’d felt this past week. Not just lonely, but horribly guilty. More guilty than she’d ever felt when she’d been married to Greg.
No more guilt, she decided. No more secrets.
Serina said a little prayer first, then started talking….