“Yes.”
“If you’d known about…Lily?” River began to slice mushrooms for beef Stroganoff.
“Would I have felt differently?” Newt exhaled. “Not at that time. I was so…hurt and furious. I get that Phelan wouldn’t have wanted to miss those early years with his child. He really would have made a great dad. But he was prepared to sacrifice my freedom for that. I’d never have done it. Phelan’s weak. He was always under the thrall of Sean. He let himself be talked into it. But I know what my parents are like. My father has always been a bully and my mother was manipulative. And I was weak too.”
“I think you…were strong.” River passed him the mushrooms to put in the pan.
“If you’d met me when I was a teenager, you’d have seen someone so lacking in confidence, you’d have walked away in disgust. I didn’t think I could do anything. Nobody did, apart from Phelan. After I was locked up, I had to be resilient. I stopped doubting myself, learned that self-pity was okay sometimes, just not all the time. I grew up.”
“You said…you forgive him. Do you?”
Newt took a while to answer. “I spent years thinking I never would, that there was nothing that could make me feel I would. But maybe it was seeing him like that… and knowing he did what he could to keep me safer in prison…thinking about how it mattered not just to him but to me… I do forgive him.” Newt added the cooked onions to the mushrooms and stirred. “It felt right. There’s no point hanging on to feelings that don’t make you feel good.”
“Some things can’t…be forgiven.”
Newt glanced at him. “Would you have forgiven him?”
River shrugged. “Hard to say.”
“I think unless you’re actually in that position yourself, you can’t know what you’d do. Phelan’s betrayal hit me very hard because he was the only one in the family that I loved.”
“Could you forgive murder?”
“Of someone you love? That would be very difficult. Or even if they weren’t killed but hurt in a terrible way. Deliberately blinded or scarred. I just don’t know. We all want life to be fair, for justice to be done, but that’s not the way lifeis. Doesn’t mean you ever forget what happened.”
Newt stirred the rice.
“Could you…kill someone?” River asked.
Newt frowned. “I don’t think I could deliberately plan to kill someone even if they’d badly hurt or killed someone I loved. But if someone was trying to kill me or someone I loved… Actually, maybe not anyone I even knew but I could see they were about to get badly hurt or killed, maybe then, but I’d be hoping to subdue them not kill them. What about you?”
“The same as you.”
Newt’s mouth quirked. “You were supposed to give me a well-thought-out longer answer than that.”
River got the dishes out of the cupboard. “Just need one word. D…depends.”
“That’s true. It depends on a lot of things. See if you think the rice is done.”
River forked up a few grains, blew on them, then put the fork in his mouth. “Yes. Done.”
They ate sitting at the island unit. River had opened a bottle of red wine and poured them both a glass.
“Treat,” he said to Newt. “Hard day.”
“It was.”
The Stroganoff was delicious. The beef strips melted in the mouth, the sauce was perfect… For the first time, River cleared his plate before Newt.
“Like the wine?” River asked.
“I do. Damn you! Don’t feed me lobster or caviar, just in case.”
“Don’t like them.”
Newt finished eating. “I did like that though. It was a recipe Linda left.”
River took a deep breath. “I want to tell you…about my…family.”
