“What?” Marnie snapped. “What would you have done?”
“Stayed,” Tom whispered. “Stayed, whether she was married or not. But the baby was still a baby. Little enough to need carried around still. She was small and I did the maths in my head and realised that she couldn’t possibly be mine.”
“But she is yours,” Marnie replied, drumming her fingers on the tabletop again. “And why you didn’t stay until you ascertained for certain her parentage, I’ll never for the life of me understand.”
“I told you, she was little, still being carried around, she didn’t look like an eighteen-month-old—”
“Because she was still being carried?” Marnie asked, rolling her eyes. “For fucks sake, Tom, your father and I carried you around until you were nearly six, and you were a big kid. You should have demanded to see Ari and asked her for yourself—”
“What, in front of her husband?”
“He wasn’t her husband, you idiot,” Marnie seethed. “He was her brother-in-law. He’s married to her brother Sebastian and helps Ari out with childcare when she’s working. You fucking idiot, Tom.” Marnie shook her head. “You’ve wasted so many years, and all because you lied and then ran away when your pride was hurt.”
“My pride? You mean my heart, Mom. My heart broke when I saw that man and the baby,” Tom whispered, hardly able to look up. “I thought that she was married... She broke my heart.”
“Except that she didn’t,” Marnie snapped back. “You’re the one who did the heart-breaking here, Tom.”
Tom nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he agreed sadly, “yeah, I did.”
“So, what are you going to do?” Marnie asked quietly. “You can’t run from this now, Tom. You have a child. Responsibilities. And Ari, you need to consider her too. You owe her the truth, if nothing else.”
“You saw her?” Tom asked, looking into his mother’s eyes. “You met her?”
Marnie nodded. “Yes, I did.”
“And?”
Marnie’s face softened. “She’s a lovely woman. I can see why you fell in love with her.” She paused. “Can I ask something? Do you still love her?”
Beneath the table, Tom clenched his hands. He could feel his fingernails digging into his soft palms, could feel the hard lines of his knuckles under the pads of his thumbs. He chewed on his lip, contemplating his mother’s words. It would be so easy to lie. So easy to shrug and mutter something about time passing and feelings fading. So easy to wipe Ari from his life and take the easy path, the path that led to Sasha, and life going on much as it had for the past six years.
But he’d lied enough. To Ari, to his family and to himself. He looked his mother directly in the eyes.
“I’ll always love her,” he confessed. “I’m never not going to love her, Mom. She’s my other half.”
Marnie reached over, taking one of his hands in her own. She nodded. “Okay, okay,” she said, and Tom could hear the cogs of her mind working. “So, what will you do?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know where to begin with this. I have adaughter,” he said, and the enormity of the words hit him hard. “I have a daughter, Mom.”
“Yes, you do,” Marnie nodded. “And acknowledging that and acknowledging her seems like a good first step to take right now.”
“I saw her, you know, on the road headed here,” Tom confessed. “She talks and walks like Ari... But she has my eyes.”
“I can’t wait to meet her,” Marnie said softly. “I can’t wait to see her for myself.”
“She’s going to be so overwhelmed by all this.” Tom squeezed his mother’s hand. “So overwhelmed by us, and this house, and—”
“Tom!” A screeching sound echoed through the dining hall, and both Tom and Marnie looked up into Sasha’s giddy face. “Oh my God, Tom, he’s here!”
Tom felt his stomach sink even as his heart began to beat quicker. “Who?” he asked, though he knew.
“Luis De León, my dress designer,” Sasha squealed. She grabbed Tom by the arm and hauled him up, and for a woman who was a quarter of his size, the strength in her grasp was truly frightening. Clearly all the hot yoga was paying off.
“He’s with Ari,” Sebastian added calmly, although Tom could see a nervous twitch to his eye. “And Reine.”
“We can deal with the kid later,” Sasha shook her head, holding her nails up to the light and inspecting them closely. “Come on, Tom, come and greet him. He’s flown all the way from London to design my dress — we have to be nice to him.”
She began pulling him across the room, Marnie following behind, and only stopped dead when they reached the entry hall. She flung her arm around Tom’s waist, and he could feel the excitement through the bones of her thin body.
