was Gretta? Who was this guy?
‘Mike?’ Thankfully it was Em, calling from inside the house. ‘Who is it?’
‘Guy who says he’s a friend of yours.’ Mike didn’t take his eyes off Oliver. His meaning was clear—he didn’t trust him an inch. ‘Says he’s from the hospital. Looks like an undertaker.’
‘Mike?’
‘Yeah?’
‘It’ll be Oliver,’ she called, and Mike might be right about the ‘stuffed’ adjective, Oliver conceded. Her voice sounded past weariness.
‘Oliver?’
‘He’s the guy I was married to.’ Was?
‘Your ex is an undertaker? Sheesh, Em …’
‘He’s not an undertaker. He’s a surgeon.’
‘That’s one step before the undertaker.’
‘Mike?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Let him in.’
Why didn’t Em come to the door? But Mike gave him a last long stare and stepped aside.
‘Right,’ he called back to Em. ‘But we’re on the swings. One yell and I’ll be here in seconds. Watch it, mate,’ he growled at Oliver, as he pushed past him and headed down the veranda with his load of kids. ‘You upset Em and you upset me—and you wouldn’t want to do that. You upset Em and you’ll be very, very sorry.’
He knew this house. He’d been here often with Em. He’d stayed here for weeks on end when, just after they were married, Em’s dad had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
It had taken the combined skill of all of them—his medical input, Em’s nursing skill and Adrianna’s unfailing devotion—to keep Kev comfortable until the end, but at the funeral, as well as sadness there had also been a feeling that it had been the best death Kev could have asked for. Surrounded by his family, no pain, knowing he was loved …
‘This is how I want us to go out when we have to,’ Em had whispered to him at the graveside. ‘Thank you for being here.’
Yeah, well, that was years ago and he hadn’t been with her for a long time now. She was a different woman.
He walked into the kitchen and stopped dead.
Different woman? What an understatement.
She was sitting by Adrianna’s old kitchen range, settled in a faded rocker. Her hair was once more loose, her curls cascading to her shoulders. She had on that baggy windcheater and jeans and her feet were bare.
She was cuddling a child. A three- or four-year-old?
A sick child. There was an oxygen concentrator humming on the floor beside them. The child’s face was buried in Em’s shoulder, but Oliver could see the thin tube connected to the nasal cannula.
A child this small, needing oxygen … His heart lurched. This was no ordinary domestic scene. A child this sick …
The expression on Em’s face …
Already he was focusing forward. Already he was feeling gutted for Em. She gave her heart …
Once upon a time she’d given it to him, and he’d hurt her. That she be hurt again …
This surely couldn’t be her child.
And who was Mike?
He’d paused in the doorway and for some reason it took courage to step forward. He had no place in this tableau. He’d walked away five years ago so this woman could have the life she wanted, and he had no right to walk back into her life now.
But he wasn’t walking into her life. He was here to talk to her about paying for the crash.
Right. His head could tell him that all it liked, but his gut was telling him something else entirely. Em … He’d loved her with all his heart.
He looked at her now, tired, vulnerable, holding a child who must be desperately ill, and all he wanted was to pick her up and carry her away from hurt.
From loving a child who wasn’t hers?
Maybe she was hers. Maybe the in-vitro procedures had finally produced a successful outcome. But if this was her child …
His gut was still churning, and when she turned and gave him a tiny half-smile, a tired acknowledgement that he was there, a sort of welcome, the lurch became almost sickening.
‘Ollie.’
No one had called him Ollie for five years. No one dared. He’d hated the diminutive—Brett, his sort of brother, had mocked him with it. ‘Get out of our lives, Pond Scum Ollie. You’re a cuckoo. You don’t belong here.’
Only Em had whispered it to him in the night, in his arms, when their loving had wrapped them in their own cocoon of bliss. Only Em’s tongue had made it a blessing.
‘Hey,’ he said softly, crossing to where she sat, and, because he couldn’t help himself, he touched her hair. Just lightly. He had no right, but he had to … touch.
It was probably a mistake. It hauled him into the intimate tableau. Em looked up at him and smiled, and it was no longer a half-smile. It was a smile of welcome. Acceptance.
A welcome home? It was no such thing. But it was a welcome to her home, to the home she’d created. Without him.
‘Gretta, we have a visitor,’ she murmured, and she turned slightly so the child in her arms could see if she wanted.
And she did. The little girl stirred and opened her eyes and Oliver’s gut lurched all over again.
Isla had said Em had a two- and a four-year-old. This little one was older than two, but if she was four she was tiny. She was dressed in a fuzzy pink dressing gown that almost enveloped her.
She was a poppet of a child, with a mop of dark, straight hair, and with huge eyes, almost black.
Her lips were tinged blue. The oxygen wasn’t enough, then.
She had Down’s syndrome.
Oh, Em … What have you got yourself into?
But he couldn’t say it. He hauled a kitchen chair up beside them both, and took Gretta’s little hand in his.
‘I’m pleased to meet you, Gretta.’ He smiled at the little girl, giving her all his attention. ‘I’m Oliver. I’m a friend of your …’ And he couldn’t go on.
‘He’s Mummy’s friend,’ Em finished for him, and there was that lurch again. ‘He’s the man in the picture next to Grandma and Grandpa.’
‘Ollie,’ the little
