She moved to the end of the table, and grabbed hold of the nearest pen, signing the paperwork with a flourish. “This agreement suits me. I will honor it. Down to every last detail.”
“I sense a caveat in there.”
“I think that we need to get to know each other. I think that we should practice abstinence while we…get to know one another.”
“Excellent. I propose we get to know one another after we announce the engagement.”
With that, he walked back to his briefcase, and took out a ring box. He held his hand out, and she went and took it from him. She opened the box slowly, and examined the ring inside. “It was your mother’s,” he said.
The realization of that hit her square in the chest. “My mother’s.”
Of course she hadn’t had it all this time, because Giuseppe had kept it. She hadn’t even thought of it in the aftermath of his death. “Will you wear it?”
It felt like such a double-edged sword coming from him, because he had never warmed to her mother, and had never accepted the relationship between her and his father. And yet for her it held great significant meaning. For her, it mattered.
She took the ring out of the box and slipped it on. “Thank you,” she said.
She decided that she was going to take it the way that it had meaning for her, rather than the way it had meeting for him.
He was silent for a moment. “Your mother was very kind to me,” he said. “Almost unfailingly. When I was not kind in return.”
There was something so heavy about the admission. An olive branch that she hadn’t seen coming.
“She thought you were a very brilliant mind.”
She had been kind to Romeo, but she had concerns about his strained relationship with Heather. But he was Giuseppe’s son, and even if he was difficult, her mom had felt affection for him because she loved Giuseppe so much.
“Thank you,” he said. He looked like he was about to say something else, when his phone rang and he grabbed it quickly. His brow creased as he answered. “Yes?”
He spoke in German, quickly and decisively, and she had no idea what he was saying. There was a placating edge to his tone.
When he hung up, he looked like a haunted man. “I am going to have to fly to Vienna to see my mother.”
“Oh. Is she…unwell?”
“She often is. I told you, there’ve been mental health issues. Ongoing for years. I am going to have to tell her about our engagement, she is already in a bad place.”
“Would it help if I went?”
He considered that for a moment. “I… I don’t know.”
“What if I went with you,” she said, looking to offer an olive branch that was in a similar vein to the one that he had extended to her. If there was one thing that was true about them both, it was that they both loved their mothers. Very much. They both could relate to each other in that way.
“You can come with me if you like. I will…evaluate the situation and see if I want your intervention.”
She nodded. “That’s fair.”
It felt strange, to come to an agreement with him. While the touch of his body still echoed inside of her. While all the lingering memories of every poisonous and terrible thing they had ever said to each other hung between them. While the knowledge that she was pregnant with his baby settled over her.
He packed everything up, and they walked out of the boardroom. She felt disoriented now, getting to the elevator. A wave of sadness washed over her as it began to descend. “I miss your dad,” she said.
“So do I,” he returned.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Shock weighing heavy at the center of her stomach. “I didn’t think that you…”
“You didn’t think that I love my father?”
“You were angry at him. Most of the time.”
