Page 45

‘Stella isn’t…’ Gabe stopped himself. Why not let him think that his grandson had found someone?

‘I saw her leave last night.’ Geo actually smiled.

‘So you were watching?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Good for her for leaving. You are too used to getting your own way with women.’

And so he went along with the little white lie that was actually true. ‘She didn’t think it appropriate, under your roof and all that.’

‘A nice girl.’

‘Yes,’ Gabe said.

By far too nice for him.

He thought of his cold black heart, the one he refused to share. Yesterday had been an aberration, one never to repeat.

‘She would make a beautiful Contessa.’

‘Geo,’ Gabe warned. ‘Stella is…’ He didn’t know what to say. ‘It’s early days.’

‘I saw the way she looks at you.’

That was the part that worried him—the responsibility of a tender heart.

Yes, a difficult day.

Later, he asked Gabe to open up the windows so he could feel the breeze as they watched the sunset.

His eyes scanned the cliffs and he saw not his family car dangling precariously, but the trail he and Stella had taken yesterday, could just make out the crevasse they had entered for a moment, before the shadows closed over it.

And he thought of laughter and making love, and things less painful than the loss that was happening now.

Geo asked that he bring out the albums again, and his heart squeezed as he turned the pages for his grandfather, though they started at the back, and then, when he came to the pictures he had avoided last night.

Beatrice.

‘She knew nothing but love,’ Geo said.

Oh, he hoped so.

He’d tried so hard to keep her from being scared.

‘Instant,’ Geo said. ‘Like a light going out.’

‘Yes.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Yes.’

Then he turned the page and there was his mother, a little bigger than he recalled, and so he asked his grandfather a question.

‘Was that before I was born or after?’

‘Let me see…’ Geo peered at the photo. ‘She bore you within her then.’

‘Are you sure?’ Gabe looked more closely. ‘I was born in December—I’d barely have been a blip.’