‘I’ve come to see my son,’ Berta said carefully.
He eased himself into the opposite chair, laying his arms on the padded armrests. ‘You never have before. Why now?’
He could see his mother thinking of a response, but he didn’t want that. He wanted anything she said to be completely unfiltered. After Katherine and the article and the fake relationship, he didn’t have it in him to be patient with anything but the truth.
‘I want the real reason.’
‘A young woman came to see me this weekend and she brought me here, but she wanted to keep it a secret.’
Katherine.
‘Who was it?’ He held his breath almost praying for his mother to say her name.
‘Katherine Ward.’
Lukas closed his eyes tightly. This was why he hadn’t seen her for two days. She had flown to Salzburg. It was a long flight to get from Australia to Austria. She could have missed the whole race weekend. Shehadmissed most of it. Why did she do this for him?
‘She didn’t want you to know but suspected maybe a talk would help us both.’
What did that mean? Had Katherine confronted her parents? Lukas found himself wishing he’d been with her if she had. Just like he wished she was with him now, which was ridiculous after she had hurt him.
‘Is that what you want? To talk?’ Lukas refused to allow himself any expectations. He knew what he was guilty of, he also knew how badly he’d wanted his mother in his life growing up and how much it had stung when she refused to see him as an adult.
‘I don’t really know, Lukas.’ His mother wrung her fingers.
‘Then why are you here? Why did you leave Salzburg? It’s a long flight.’
She stopped fidgeting, folded her hands on the table and looked her son square in the eye. ‘I guess I’m here because that young lady gave me a lot to think about.’
Lukas wanted to know every word that Katherine had said but couldn’t ask. He was dying for any kind of information about the past few months and maybe he was regretting the fact that he didn’t take her call. But he also didn’t want to hurt himself by talking to her and making the chasm in his chest yawn wider.
‘Go on.’
‘She made me realise that I’ve hurt you. You see, Lukas, I had a great deal of resentment, and I put that on you instead of where it should have lain.’
‘And where was that?’
‘With your father,’ she said without missing a beat.
‘Don’t. Don’t blame him when he never did a thing wrong.’ His father had sacrificed everything so that Lukas could have the kind of future he was enjoying.
‘Then where do you feel the blame lies?’ she asked, leaning forward just a little.
‘With me,’ Lukas said easily. He knew the truth and no one could tell him otherwise. ‘It was my fault that he had to work two jobs. My fault that you were unhappy. My fault that you left. I know that. But I have been trying to make it up to you. To give you the life you wanted to have.’
His mother’s eyes softened a fraction. ‘I let you believe that, didn’t I?’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Katherine told me I would need to take responsibility for what I had done to you and I see now that she’s right.’
Lukas didn’t know how to respond.
I’m not doing the column anymore.
He knew Katherine was trying to do the same—to take responsibility—but it didn’t change things. He was a private person; he would make her miserable. And what about when she had to report on his team? Chances were they wouldn’t have any big results for at least the first half of the season, how would he respond when she had to be critical?
‘Your father could have said no when you wanted to race after that first time he took you to the track. Do you remember that day?’
Lukas shook his head. Those memories were blurry. He remembered getting into the kart and the feeling but not too much else.
‘One of the families that he used to get your tyres from were getting rid of their kart, so your father offered to buy it from them. They gave it to him in exchange for him servicing their son’s kart for the next year. His labour would be free, and he agreed. I wasn’t happy. That was money we could have used, but your father took you to the track and you listened so carefully to the safety instructions and what to do. Then you got to drive. You went slowly at first because they told you to. They said the tyres would be cold and you did everything as instructed. We thought you would enjoy yourself and then we would go home but the next lap you went faster and the one after that, faster still. I remember it so clearly, Lukas, people started watchingyou. Not anyone else. It was like you were born to race. Afterwards someone told your father he should let you race, and you asked him if you could. You were so excited and he said yes. He didn’t talk to me first. He made the decision.
