why?’ There was total confusion in her voice.
‘Because I love you, Laura,’ he said, turning to look her straight in the eye.
Laura’s mouth fell open, her eyes widening at the same time.
‘I love you and I want to marry you,’ he added, knowing that a declaration of love was not going to be enough. For how many men used false words of love to seduce women back into their beds? He had never been guilty of such tactics but he imagined other men had. Certainly dear old Mario and Brad had.
‘You want to marry me?’ she echoed, clearly in shock at his proposal.
‘Yes. And have children with you. I want it all. I’ve been thinking about it for days and that’s what I want with you, Laura. I’m hoping that’s what you want too.’
Laura could hardly believe what she was hearing, or contain the joy that washed into her until then despairing soul. For she knew instinctively that Ryan would not lie about something as serious as marriage and children. Love, yes; he might lie about that. But not the rest.
It came to her suddenly that he must know about her falling in love with him. Alison would have told him something. Dear, romantic-minded Alison who could not resist a happy ending, no matter how unlikely the couple.
‘Did Alison tell you that I loved you?’ she choked out.
‘She said she thought you did,’ he admitted. ‘But I would have come today even if she hadn’t said anything.’
Somehow, his knowing that she loved him momentarily burst her bubble of happiness. It brought doubts as well. Laura needed more understanding of his dramatic change of heart before she could blindly say yes to his amazing proposal. She needed the comfort of knowledge.
‘But you said you would never fall in love, or get married and have children,’ she pointed out.
‘That was before I met you, Laura.’
‘No, you said it after you met me. You said it more than once. You warned me.’
‘I didn’t realise then that I would fall in love with you. I didn’t know what falling in love felt like. I didn’t think I was capable of it.’
‘But why would you think that? Everyone is capable of love.’
‘I know that now. But till I met you I refused to let it into my life.’
‘You have to tell me why, Ryan. You have to make me understand.
I do love you, more than I ever thought possible. But I can’t marry you unless I know why you felt like that.’
He sighed, then nodded. ‘You’re right; I know you’re right. It’s just so damned hard to talk about it, that’s all.’
‘If you truly love me, Ryan, then you have to trust me with your past. I promise I will never tell another living soul. Not Alison. Not anyone.’
Laura could see the difficulty he was still having, opening up to her. What terrible trauma had he endured as a child, she wondered, that would make him retreat from emotion as he had? She hated to think he might have been abused in some way, but what else could it be?
‘I love you,’ she repeated. ‘I will always love you, no matter what you tell me.’
He still didn’t speak so she just sat there and said nothing further. The long line of cars was making slow progress on their way back to the house, giving him enough time to decide whether to confide in her or not.
‘My mother didn’t die of cancer,’ he said at last. ‘She was murdered.’
Laura only just managed not to gasp in shock, for it was the last thing she was expecting.
‘But not by any stranger,’ he added in a rough, emotion-charged voice. ‘By my father. Her de facto husband. The man she said she loved. The man who claimed he loved her, even as she lay battered to death at his feet.’
‘Oh, Ryan …’
‘I found her, you know, when I came home from school. Lying next to the kitchen table in a pool of blood.’
‘Oh my God …’
‘She’d cooked me a cake. It was still on the table. It was my twelfth birthday.’
Laura closed her eyes. Lord in heaven, no child should have to endure that. She’d thought she’d had it bad when her parents had been killed. But it had been an accident. They hadn’t been murdered.
‘He was sitting on the floor next to her, crying. I … I …’
When it was obvious he could not go on, Laura reached over and placed her hand gently over his, which was suddenly gripping the wheel like a drowning man holding on to a piece of flotsam. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more right now. I can see you had good reasons to reject love and marriage and fatherhood. We’ll talk about it later.’ Much later.
Ryan shook his head. ‘No, I want to tell you now. I want you to understand. It had been going on for years—the violence. The beatings. Not me, just Mum. The only times he hit me were when I tried to protect her. Even then he would just push me aside. He was insanely jealous of her. Wouldn’t let her go to work, wouldn’t let her leave the house or have any more babies. When she became pregnant once—I think I was about seven—he accused her of having an affair, then he punched her in the stomach over and over till she miscarried.’
‘Oh my God! That’s appalling, Ryan. But didn’t people know what was going on? Your neighbours? Your grandparents?’
‘Domestic violence was very common where we lived. A lot of the men were unemployed. My father did work occasionally, but he was unreliable. He was a drunk, you see. We mostly lived on welfare, in a housing-commission place which should have been condemned.
‘As for relatives, Dad refused to have anything to do with any relatives, especially Mum’s. Though I knew my Mum’s mother was alive. Mum told me her name and where she lived and said if anything ever happened to her that I was to go to my grandmother’s place. She even hid some money in a secret place which she called my escape money. Many times I thought about taking it and just going, but how could I leave her to him? I begged her to come with me but she wouldn’t. She said she loved him. I could never understand that. It made no sense to me.’
‘I don’t think she loved him at all by then, Ryan. She was simply scared to death of him. I had a battered wife as a client once. She stabbed her husband in the end.’
‘I thought about killing my father several times. I wish I had.’
‘I can imagine. So what happened to him? I presume he was arrested for murder?’
‘He pleaded guilty and got twenty years. But he was bashed to death a few months later in jail. It seems the other prisoners don’t take kindly to wife killers.’
‘I can understand that. And I can understand you now, Ryan.’ Very much so, the poor darling. It was no wonder he never wanted to talk about the past, and no wonder he’d rejected love for so long. ‘I
