It hurts like a fucking knife straight through the heart, but it’s the only way that I can deal with this and keep them close. I haven’t forgotten who her father is, or that the baby she is carrying is a Byrne.
But I also know that I won’t be able to share a bed with her and not touch her. I can’t be close to her and not kiss her. I won’t be able to see her naked and not want to fuck her till she begs me to stop.
She runs from the room without a word, and I follow the door’s trajectory with tears in my eyes.
Amelia doesn’t come down for meals.
She resumes her housekeeping duties, moving around the house in silence, eyes averted whenever I am near. When, a couple of weeks later, we attend a meal with some business associates in Dublin, Amelia plays her role as the deliriously happy newlywed well.
Stunning in a shimmering black dress, she smiles at me whenever I speak, leans in close during the meal, our shoulders touching, and flirts as if we can’t keep our hands off each other.
It takes all my willpower to keep my hands from tucking her hair behind her ear, to stop myself from leaning in and grazing her neck with my lips.
In the car during the journey home, she sits as far away from me on the back seat as she can get, back turned, face pressed against the passenger window creating a white patch on the glass with her breath. I want to hold her. It would be so easy to pull her into my arms and murmur, “I’m sorry,” but the lie would still be there, growing inside her.
So, I stare out of my window and fill the ache in my chest with the memories that we made before I discovered who she really is.
Orla raises the subject early in December. “Will you and Amelia go and choose the tree for the living room, Declan?”
Niamh started the tradition when Ruairi and Eoghan were young. Every year we would take the children and let them choose a tree from the local tree farm. When she died, I kept the tradition going because it felt wrong to let them go, like allowing her memories to slip away, never to be recovered.
“I’ll ask her if she wants to go. You could go with her. Maybe it’s time for new traditions.”
She narrows her eyes behind her spectacles. “Is that what’s going on here, new traditions?”
I turn away. “I’m busy. Let me know when you need the truck for the tree.”
I manage a few steps before she says, “I don’t want to interfere, Declan but?—”
“But you’re going to anyway.”
“That young woman is thousands of miles away from home. She’s pregnant with your child. She needs support. And all I see you doing is shutting her out like someone who ate the steak he ordered and then decided that he wanted lobster after all.”
She’s right. Orla is always right, and it would be impossible to hide what’s going on from her. But I can’t break her heart with Amelia’s secret too.
“I liked it better when you didn’t interfere.” I slam the study door shut behind me.
I sleep on it.
I owe it to Orla and to Niamh to keep the Christmas tree tradition going. I probably owe it to the child in Amelia’s belly too. The baby is a Byrne. He or she deserves the kind of holidays that Ruairi and Eoghan experienced when they were children.
But Amelia isn’t in the guest room the following morning.
She isn’t anywhere in the house.
The yeasty aroma of baking bread wafts through the downstairs rooms. Orla is napping in her regular seat in the conservatory. The grounds are covered in a layer of sparkling frost that has been there for several days.
I go to the garage, knowing in my heart that if Amelia were to leave, she wouldn’t take one of the vehicles at her disposal here, and I’m right. All present and accounted for.
Back inside the house, I check every room again. She isn’t there.
Panic courses through my veins. I haven’t seen her since yesterday afternoon when she told Orla that she wasn’t hungry and went upstairs to the guest room. I burst through the door and check the closet, my heart hammering against my ribs. Her clothes are still there.
She hasn’t left me.
Unless she left everything behind because it would be a painful reminder of what went wrong.
Fuck.
