Chapter Thirteen
THE SOUNDof the fund-raiser opposite filtered through the long, clean glass walls of the bookshop cafe in a white-noise mix of earnest conversation and elevator music. Cal stood at the counter and stared through the plastic at plates of sugar-glittered pastries, waves of lemon fondant, and a small pile of chocolate-covered marshmallow top hats.
Behind the counter thebarista stifled a yawn and clicked her tongs impatiently. “What do you want, sir?”
Cal didn’t know. What sort of cake did people have when they’d had an expected kicking? He knew they didn’t have jammie dodgers, his grandad’s choice of biscuit for hard conversations.
“Three doughnuts,” he said after a second.
“Jam, lemon, or chocolate?” she said blandly, her tongs poised over the tray.
“Oneof each,” Cal said with a glare. It didn’t have much impact. She piled the doughnuts up on a plate and turned to finish the drinks.
Abigail drank chamomile tea. The cafe didn’t have any, so she’d get lemon and honey instead. If she didn’t want to drink it, she could sit and sniff it. Once the drinks were finished and awkwardly fitted onto the tray, Cal swiped his card and picked them up.
Hewalked in at the middle of Abigail’s explanation. She stumbled to a stop as Cal handed over the coffee and sweets.
“Thank you,” she said as she nudged the plate away. “But I’m not hungry. I think I ate something that didn’t agree with me earlier.”
She touched her stomach and pulled a small face.
“My dad always said you were my mother,” Joe said. “Why lie?”
Abigail sighed and took her glassesoff. She pulled the sleeve of her dress down and fastidiously polished the lens. Without them her face looked oddly unfinished, her eyes smaller than they looked through the frames.
“I couldn’t tell you,” she said. “Maybe he thought it would save on explanations. He used to tell a lot of stories that way—edit out the parts that distracted from what he wanted you to realize. In the end, though,that’s something you have to ask him. I’ve not spoken to Harry in nearly thirty years.”
Cal sat down next to Joe, close enough that their knees touched. “He also said you were dead.”
“Even fewer explanations,” Abigail said with a small, wry smile. She seemed less annoyed to have been relegated to the grave than Cal would have been. Then her mouth twitched and she gave Joe a guilty look. “Ormaybe he meant your real mother. She died.”
She waited for a reaction. Joe didn’t give her one. He looked composed and his hands were steady as he lifted his coffee off the table. It wasn’t real. There was a muscle that twitched below the hinge of Joe’s jaw, and the leg pressed against Cal’s under the table was clenched as though Joe was ready to run. Cal could tell that, but from the flash ofjudgment that passed over Abigail’s face, she couldn’t.
“What happened?” Joe asked.
Abigail wrapped her hands around her coffee cup as though she were cold despite the lingering heat of the day. Her throat worked as she swallowed.
“It wasn’t a good time,” she said. “I don’t think about it often. I don’t talk about it at all. I’m Mrs. Abigail Beranger now, Clement’s widow instead of Harry’sex. Ask Harry.”
Joe gave a small, bitter laugh. “We both know he’d not tell me,” he said. “I know you’re not my mother, that you don’t owe me anything, but for the last month, I thought my mother was alive. Now I know she’s not. So it would bekindto give me something.”
“I’ve not got long,” Abigail said. She glanced at her watch, shifted in her seat unhappily, and then nodded slowly. “Fine.ThatI, maybe, do owe you, Joseph.”
It still took a second to collect herself. While they waited, Cal felt his phone buzz in his inside pocket. He fished it out quickly to turn it off and saw Van’s number on the screen. He held down the power button to switch it off. He could call back later.
“I used to tell this story at fund-raisers,” Abigail said as she took a sip of her tea. “How my motherdied of breast cancer when I was thirteen, my dad of bone cancer when I was nineteen, how I got ovarian cancer at twenty-four, and the charity helped me through all of those things, whether it was hospice care for my parents or the nurse who came to sit with me at night when I was scared. The bit that wasn’t their business was that I got married at twenty-eight to a man who said he didn’t care Icouldn’t have a child.”
“Harry,” Joe said. “My dad.”
It had been a long time. A lot of the bitterness had worn off, but there was still a hint of it in the corners of Abigail’s tight little smile.
“I cared,” she said. “In the end, I guess he did too, despite everything he said. He had an affair, he got her pregnant—I didn’t know anything about it, it went on for two years—and he left me. Eventually.Maybe a month or two later, he turned up with you. You were only a baby and, God, you had terrible burns on your face and your little arms. Cried all the time. He told me your mother had died—in a fire and that’s what happened to your poor face. He wanted me to take him back. Your mother’s ex-husband wanted custody of you too, to keep the family together, and Harry said that if we were togetherhe’d have a better case against the ex.”
Joe’s jaw was clenched so tightly that Cal didn’t think he could get any words out. So he asked the question.
“But you didn’t want to take on someone else’s kid?”
“Oh no,” Abigail said. She reached over the table and covered Joe’s hand with hers. “I wanted to take you so badly. You were hurt and you could have been mine, but…. For a while I did, youknow. But I couldn’t forgive Harry. I couldn’t forgive myself.”
