His father shook his head. “No, she would not have agreed to it. She herself was too honest. She would never have colluded with me. She believed—” his voice twisted suddenly “—what you believed.” His eyes went to Laurel. “That you were a thief,” he said.
“And all along,” Xander said slowly, the words coming from somewhere very deep inside him, “you were the thief. And so much worse.” Cold was filling him. He got to his feet, looked down at his father. The father who had done what he had shamelessly. Shamefully.
“I would like you to leave,” he said now. “You are not welcome here.” He spoke English so Laurel would understand.
He walked to the sitting room door, held it pointedly open. Slowly, heavily, his father got to his feet. But he did not leave immediately.
He turned to Laurel first. “I am sorry,” he said. “But I did not want you delaying my son from marrying. I did not personally wish you any harm.”
The dam inside Xander broke. “You say that?Thee mou, you expose a woman who was entirely innocent to accusations of theft and lying! A woman I then threw from me in anger and disgust! A woman—” his voice choked on the storm of emotion inside him “—who left carrying my child! A child she raised on her own in endless financial struggle, bereft of support from the one person who should have been there to support her, marry her, be a father to the son your shameful act deprived him of! For seven years—seven years—I’ve condemned her because of you and have been deprived of my son because his mother could not bring herself to admit me into my son’s life because of that unfair, unjust, unforgiveable condemnation!”
His face iced. “Leave,” he said. “I don’t want you in my life. Nor—” he took an arctic breath “—in my son’s life.”
For one endless moment he felt his father’s eyes on him. He would not meet them.
His father walked towards the opened door. His shoulders hunched, head bowed. He turned, looking back at Laurel, still sitting immobile on the sofa, her face blank with shock.
“My punishment,” he said to her, “for what I did.” His voice low and heavy. “And it is only just. So I shall bear it.”
He walked past Xander, not looking at him. Xander made to precede him down the hall, yank open the front door, thrust out the man who had done so much damage to so many.
But behind him a voice spoke.
“No, wait!” said Laurel.
She propelled herself to her feet. They were unsteady, but she hurried to the sitting room door.
“Wait!” she cried again. Urgency in her voice and more.
Paulos Xenakis turned. And in his face she saw what she had just caught sight of as he’d turned away. A single tear coursing down his wrinkled cheek.
She caught his arm. “Wait,” she said a third time.
She drew him back, and with her other hand seized Xander’s.
“We can’t end like this! We can’t!” she said, the same urgency in her voice, the same emotion that was filling her.
She let go of Xander’s arm, turned to his father. Looked at the man who had done her so much harm, whose son was now banishing him from his life as punishment, denying him the grandson he’d been longing for through all the barren years of Xander’s marriage to the woman he’d been manipulated into marrying.
Emotion filled her. She herself had denied Xander his son, clinging to her hatred of him. But Xander’s father had also been denied him, too, through his own heinous act.
“You have already had your punishment for what you did,” she said quietly. “You saw your son’s marriage—which he never wanted to make, I know that now and so does he—end disastrously. Without the children you’d longed for. When all along—” her voice filled with emotion “—you had a grandson here in England who would have been legitimate, the son of a woman your son would have married—a happy, fruitful marriage, unlike the one he did make!—had it not been for you.” She paused. “That is your punishment. To know you prevented your son making a happy marriage of his own choosing. To know you ensured he knew nothing of his own son and that you caused him—and yourself—to lose precious years with him. I don’t,” she said, and took a breath, holding his eyes, that one tear still wet on his cheek, “want you to miss any more.” She swallowed. “My father died when Dan was three, so Dan has no other grandfather, and both his grandmothers are dead too. So you see—” she could feel her throat closing now, tears welling in her own eyes “—I don’t want Dan to lose another grandparent, the only one he has now.”
Her eyes went to Xander now, standing behind his father. “If I can forgive your father,” she said, her voice low, “as I have forgiven you, so can you. So can we both.”
She swallowed again. Spoke to them both, father and son. Grandfather and father of her most precious son. “Things went wrong seven years ago. Now—” she drew breath again “—we are putting them right.”
She felt her hand taken, clasped tight, by the man who had parted her from his son, and lost his own grandson thereby.
Emotion filled his voice. “Thank you! From my heart, I thank you, whom I wronged so deeply!”
Her own tears were spilling now, and she could see, through the mist, that Xander’s father’s eyes were filling too. She blinked hers away, clearing her vision. Then with her free hand she took Xander’s, drawing him fully back into the room. She lifted her mouth to his cheek.
“It’s the right thing to do, Xander. You know in your heart it is.”
She led them both forward. “To a happy future,” she said. “For all of us.”
She kissed Xander’s cheek again, and then, softly, his father’s tear-stained cheek. She felt her hand that he was holding so tightly wrung more fiercely.
