The fall happened as the door flew open, and piercing pain shot through her before she even hit the ground. The anger in her brother’s eyes faded into terror as he stared down at her.
There was the strangest sense of déjà vu as she awoke.
Zarios was sitting in the chair beside her bed, and her body was racked with a piercing sense of loss that she dared not explore.
‘You’re okay…’ In a second he was beside her.
‘The baby…’ Her hands moved to her stomach, trying to fathom change.
‘We’ll know soon.’
His hot hand found hers as her lips and eyes moved downwards in a spasm of pain at the helplessness of it all. Her face crumpled as she remembered what had happened.
‘Jake?’
‘Don’t worry about Jake.’
‘Oh, but I do…’
‘I know.’
‘He didn’t hit me.’
‘I know,’ Zarios said again.
‘He wouldn’t have—’
‘Yes, Emma, he would have,’ Zarios cut in then, clutching her hand gently as he made her face the unpalatable truth. ‘He’s already pushed Beth, and he would have hit you. That’s what terrified him the most—the things that made him finally admit he had to get help. When he realised that he could have hit a pregnant woman—could have been responsible for the loss of your baby…You fell trying to lock your door on him. You have to stop making excuses for him, Emma.’
‘He’s my brother.’
‘I never said you had to stop loving him.’
He was right. That much she had already decided for herself. Talking to the lawyer, choosing to take back control, to refuse to be manipulated, to own what was hers…none of it meant that she didn’t love him.
‘Where is he?’
‘At a clinic.’
Zarios held her hand as if he was imparting bad news, but all Emma could feel was the flood of relief, and years of anxiety, of worry, of fear, lifted as Zarios uttered the words she had fought against yet longed to hear.
‘It’s for three months minimum—he agreed to go.’
‘Rehab?’
‘He will get rehab eventually, but for now they are dealing with his depression. Then he will get all the help he so desperately needs. It’s a top centre. I have guaranteed…’ He didn’t finish. Somehow they both knew that it didn’t matter—that this wasn’t and never had been nor could be about money.
‘How’s Beth?’
‘Beth is at my home in Sydney with her mother and the twins. She wanted to stay to see that you were well, but I wanted her out of the way while I dealt with Jake. She is very tired and she needs to rest. She has carried so much…’
‘The baby…’ she said again. She cared about Beth, but she cared about her baby more. Not a single thing could hold her attention till she knew the answer.
‘Don’t distress yourself.’ He attempted to soothe her. ‘You must rest. The doctor says you must not get upset. You’ll be having an ultrasound soon, and we’ll find out how our—’
She turned her head to face him. ‘Our? How come it’s our baby suddenly?’
‘I’m sorry, Emma. Sorry for not believing you…sorry for the terrible things I said. Sorry for the stupidity that made me nearly lose you both. When I saw Jake charging off for the first time in my life I tasted fear. I realised that I loved you.’
‘No.’ She shook her head on the pillow. ‘I don’t want to hear you say that you love me. Now, when you find out that I have been telling the truth, that I am having a baby, that I’m actually a decent person, you suddenly decide that you’ve loved me all along.’
‘No!’
He had always been brutal in his honesty, so why, Emma reasoned, should she expect any less now?
‘I have been doing my level best not to trust you and certainly to never love you—I didn’t admit it to myself till today at one-forty-two p.m. For the first time in my life I listened to my father, and I realised that maybe being in love with a compulsive gambler, a self-confessed gold-digger, who had told me that she only wanted me for what I could give her, maybe wouldn’t be so bad if at the end of each and every day I got to hold her.’
‘I can never trust you.’ Emma shook her head at the hopelessness of it.
It was too late.
‘Never?’ Zarios checked, and resolutely she nodded. ‘Even if I told you that since that morning on the beach, since the first time we made love, I have not slept with another woman?’
‘Please!’ Emma managed a thin laugh.
‘We’ll need you to excuse us now!’ A bossy, old-school nurse popped her head around the door.
She was the first woman Zarios had met who was impervious to his charms—because very clearly she told him that, no, he couldn’t have five more minutes, that Ms Hayes was due in ultrasound soon, and after that needed her rest.
‘Maybe just till the porter arrives?’ It was Emma who asked—Emma who was told that she had two minutes, and that if she needed anything—the elderly nurse shot Zarios a venomous look—she was to ring the bell.
‘You went back to Miranda—do you really expect me to believe you didn’t sleep with her?’
‘When I left you that morning I was fully intending to begin a relationship with you. I couldn’t wait for the christening to be over so that I could call you. Miranda was waiting for me, though. She told me she was pregnant…’ He frowned, as if just realising how very careless they had been that day. ‘Until that morning with you I had always been careful, but I knew these things happened…’
‘I thought she couldn’t have children?’
‘I don’t know if she can…’
His voice was a whisper, a croak, his words confusing her. She opened her mouth to argue, to tell him she was tired of his lies, but she recoiled at what she saw. Zarios, who was always so together, always so ahead of the game, looked utterly destroyed. Grief was stamped on his face, and his mouth opening on words that wouldn’t come out.
As the porter swished into the room with the trolley that would take her for the ultrasound it was Emma who asked again for one more moment—Emma who just didn’t get what he was trying to say.
The door closed, and Emma knew that she had to listen without interruption. She wanted to rattle him, to shake him, for him to just tell her—except she had never seen a face so haunted with pain, and knew she couldn’t rush him now.
‘I was stunned…’ Zarios shook his head as he relived it. ‘I was thinking of you—of seeing you again on Monday—and suddenly Miranda was telling me she was pregnant, and that we must keep it quiet as she had some big work coming up. I was disappointed for you and me—for us.’ His black eyes met hers. ‘But I told myself that it had been one day, one night… I could not weigh that against a baby.’
She nodded—because that much she could get. ‘Did you feel trapped?’
‘No.’ Zarios’s answer seemed to surprise him as much as it did her. ‘Emma, my mother left us because she felt trapped—she felt she was not a good enough mother and that I was better off without her. No matter her reasons, she was wrong. A poor parent is still that child’s parent. I always promised myself that I would never do to my child what was done to me. I had never considered having a baby, yet when the idea presented itself I was happy. I was determined to do my best, to build a home… I fell in love with that baby within a minute of Miranda telling me.
‘But we did not sleep together. I was still unsure—not about the baby, but about her. I told her I was worried that sex might affect the baby—a stupid excuse. She flew to Brazil for her photo-shoot and I joined her. But she wasn’t taking care of herself. I arrived unannounced. She was drinking and smoking when I got there, taking laxatives—all the stuff she did to stay thin, all the stuff that drove me crazy when we were together. We argued.’
‘I can see why,’ Emma admitted.
‘She accused me of being old-fashioned, of trying to police her…which I guess I was. When we came back to Melbourne I as
ked her to come here, where I have now brought you, to see the top specialist. She insisted on seeing her own doctor. She kept on trying to sleep with me, but I was angry. I wanted to be sure that the baby was okay. And then—’ He started to run his hand through his hair then stopped, screwing his fingers so tightly together it must surely have hurt. ‘I had never seen a scan—she had never let me come with her to the doctor. Finally, after an argument, she agreed to come here. I drove her and she kept the lie going right to the receptionist’s desk.’ His eyes were two deep pools of pain. ‘There never was a baby. It was to get us back together. She was hoping she would quickly fall pregnant…’
‘She never even was…?’ Emma couldn’t keep the shock from her voice.
‘Which meant there was nothing to be upset about—nothing to grieve. Because it had never existed. Nothing had been lost. I was just a fool who for a little while had believed…’
‘You’re not a fool, Zarios.’
‘I loved that baby.’
It was hard for men—that much Emma could see. Her body was a melting pot of hormones, of changes not yet visible, but her pregnancy was real just the same. All Zarios had had was Miranda’s word—a word he had believed. And just as Emma loved her baby, just as she would move the world to make it right for the little life inside her, he had loved his, too.
Even if it had never existed.
‘I’m sorry.’ It wasn’t her mistake, it wasn’t her lie, but she truly was sorry. ‘It must have been hell.’
‘I found out there was no baby the week before you came to see me at my office to ask me for money. And when you told me that you were pregnant…’ Zarios closed his eyes ‘…it felt as if it was happening again.’
‘This one’s real!’ She tried to smile, tried to be brave—but what if she was wrong? What if it was already too late?
‘I know.’ He held her hand. ‘And, whatever the outcome, this little one is loved.’
There was no delaying the porter this time. Emma climbed over onto the trolley, trying to fathom the mind of a woman who would lie like that—and trying to fathom Zarios’s pain at being told that the little life wasn’t just over, but had never even existed in the first place.
‘Can he come with me?’
The bossy nurse was actually very kind. ‘What do you want, Ms Hayes? Of course it’s in all the papers that your relationship is over—and I don’t want any of my patients feeling pressured…’
‘I think I’d like him to come with me.’ Emma swallowed, terrified of the outcome, but knowing now that Zarios was just as scared, too.
‘Just some cold jelly on your stomach.’
It was routine to the sonographor. Oh, she was kind, but she was efficient and just a little bit distant—maybe she had to be? Emma thought. Having to regularly face parents whose dreams had been dashed.
‘I want this baby,’ Emma said, because it was imperative that she voiced it, that this little scrap inside her knew that it was wanted and loved.
‘I know.’ Zarios’s hand was over hers.
‘Do you want me to turn the screen away?’ the sonographor offered, but Emma shook her head, feeling the probe move over her stomach, watching great black and white shapes swoop and swirl on the screen, clouds dashing in and out of focus, like travelling at speed through a tunnel.
And suddenly there it was….
Floating in its little universe, safe and unperturbed by the drama that had taken place, its whole chest a heartbeat that pumped and moved, their baby swung as if on some invisible trapeze, whooping and wriggling and very much alive.
‘About ten and a half weeks…’ the sonographor said, clicking away. ‘Too early to tell the sex at this stage.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Zarios spoke when Emma couldn’t.
‘I’ll print off some photos.’
Those were the sweetest words she had ever heard.
Rest and more rest were the doctor’s orders.
A slightly irritable uterus, a bruised lower back and an emotionally exhausted mother—there was nothing else he could prescribe.
Sitting in Zarios’s car, pale, shaken, clutching her photo, Emma stared at a world that seemed just a bit brighter somehow. All the dirty secrets were out in the open now, and the world was a better place for it.
Jake was getting the help he needed and her baby was alive.
Closing her eyes, she rested against the passenger window, locked in a twilight world between waking and sleep, vaguely aware that the car-ride was taking ages, but too sleepy to question why.
She was imagining herself on the beach road, but in control now—her parents were riding safely along with her, no crumbling cliffs or murky waters, just the shriek of gulls and the delicious salty fragrance of her home…
The car door opened.
‘We’re here.’
She blinked, seeing her home, her family home, for the first time since the funeral.
And she wasn’t so much in shock as he helped her up the stairs and into her familiar bedroom as simply at peace. There were no more questions.
The answers could wait till later.
She could hear banging, but she ignored it. Later—ages later—she was woken with grapefruit juice and toast by an unshaven, tatty-jeaned, strangely calm playboy, who stretched out on her single bed, watching her from its foot, his head on his hands, smiling as he watched her eat.
‘You look better.’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’
‘You do.’ He smiled over to her. ‘However, I have taken an executive decision and told my parents that you are not up to receiving visitors just yet.’
She didn’t say anything—scared she’d misheard, scared she might rush in on what was such a sensitive area—but Zarios was still smiling, a lovely self-mocking smile that quenched her thirst as much as the grapefruit juice did.
‘At thirty-four years of age I now have a mother who thinks she can tell me what I should be doing—I am to feed you soup, apparently.’
‘Sounds nice.’
‘And we are not to have sex till the baby is here.’
‘We’ll listen to a doctor on that one.’ Emma smiled.
‘And I am to “communicate better”, she has told me. Something apparently my father failed to do.’
‘I’m beginning to like her.’ Emma’s smile faded; suddenly she was serious. ‘When did you buy my house, Zarios?’
‘I put an offer in two days after the funeral.’
‘You were with Miranda then.’
‘I know.’
‘Did you tell her?’
He shook his head. ‘I cannot justify or even explain why I did it. I knew it would be tearing you up, having to go through things. I thought if I could just buy it as it was, maybe at some stage… I don’t know…’
‘You shouldn’t have…’ Emma gulped. ‘On so many levels, you shouldn’t have.’
‘Don’t make me feel guilty for not being open with Miranda—just know that it would never be the same with you. I tried so many times to close the door in my heart to you, and it kept springing open. I wanted to dislike you, to use you as I thought you were using me… Yet I couldn’t.’
He was playing with her feet, which she’d always hated. In fact she couldn’t imagine letting another person massage her soles or toy with her toes. But she let him.
‘I want to see you happy, Emma.’
‘I want to see you happy, too.’
‘I am happy…now that I know you are okay.’
‘So the board’s decision went your way?’
‘Naturally…’ He smiled—a different smile, though, a smile she had never seen before, one that made her want to smile, too.
‘What?’
‘When you are ready to read the newspaper, you will find out that “in a surprising move”, I, Zarios D’Amilo—’ he spoke in the deadpan voice of a news reporter ‘—have declined the board’s unanimous offer, choosing instead to amalgamate with associates so that I can spend more time with m
y family. That’s you, by the way,’ he added in his own voice. ‘Just in case you hadn’t worked it out. I know it is too soon now for you to be happy—that you haven’t had a chance to mourn your parents and that these last months have been hell—but one day I am going to make you happy…’
Tears slid down her face. Only this time she didn’t sniff them back. This time she just let them run unchecked, a salty catharsis showing that she didn’t have to go it alone any more.
‘I just miss them.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m glad they never found out about Jake. I’m glad they died thinking he was doing okay. But I wish—I just wish they had lived to find out about me. That I’d had more time to make them proud. They’d have been so proud now. Not…’ she gulped ‘…because of how rich you are. I know what I said, what my mother said…’
‘They wanted you to be happy, to be secure, and now you are.’
‘They don’t know that, though. They don’t know about the baby, about—’
‘Hey.’ Now he halted her tears. ‘Do you think this is an accident?’ His hand crept up to her stomach. ‘Can you not see that this is their gift—their way of letting you know that they’re okay? Of course they know.’
Oh, she wanted to believe that—so badly she wanted to.
‘Come here.’ He helped her out of bed, and on legs as wobbly as a foal’s she was led to her parents’ room. ‘Look.’
She hadn’t been in her parents’ bedroom since before they had died, but there, above the balcony doors, was her painting.
‘They put it up?’ Emma blinked.
‘They did,’ Zarios lied, hoping she wouldn’t notice the edge of the hammer sticking out from under the bed. If she did, he decided then he’d make something up.
It was a good lie—a white lie—and anything was admissible if it made her happy, gave her peace.
‘Look closely, Emma.’
And she did.
Looked at the one piece of work in which she’d drawn faces. Her mum and dad, smiling, walking hand in hand along the beach. A laughing couple with a little girl and boy, running ahead. She’d known even as she’d drawn them it was Beth, Jake and the twins.
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