“You don’t know that, and you had no place to form that assumption. Certainly not to act on it.”
She closed her eyes. Breathing was difficult. What could she say to him? What explanation could she offer that would make amends?
“I thought … I truly believed … that you would be glad. If I had imagined you would feel this way …”
“I am not expecting you to have a crystal ball. Only a mouth and the ability to use a telephone.”
“Cristiano,” she whispered softly. “I came to you.”
“Yes. And you left. You left when you should have stayed and made me hear. Admit it, Ava, you didn’t really want to tell me, or you would have.”
“I travelled to Rio; does that really sound like I didn’t mean for you to know?”
“Yes,” his laugh was without humour.
Ava would never get through to him. Cristiano had made up his mind, and perhaps he was right. She certainly could have left a note with the housekeeper, or emailed him with the words I AM PREGNANT WITH YOUR BABY in the subject.
She’d been playing chicken with the truth, though. She had believed he wouldn’t want to know, but she’d indulged her conscience just far enough to be able to justify keeping it from him.
And he had missed out. Milly had missed out.
“What now?” The words were a plea in the car.
Cristiano flicked the engine back to life. He turned the Range Rover away from the beach without speaking. The whole of the valley opened up to the right of the car. A pristine area covered in vines and kissed by the glimmering sea. “Now?” He eyed the landscape with a sense of apprehension. “Now, I stay.”
“You’re not going to take her away.” Relief throbbed in her chest.
He gripped the steering wheel tight. “No. At least not yet.” He frowned. “This is the only home she knows. I would be wrong to take her from it just to hurt you.”
She expelled a slow breath. Relief was pounding through her blood. “What about the American? Won’t she be upset?” She couldn’t help quipping.
And purely because he could see it would become an issue that Ava couldn’t move past, he slid her a mocking sidelong glance. “You’re jealous of her.” It was a statement of fact that sent Ava’s mouth working overtime as she tried to swallow her embarrassment.
“I … I’m trying to understand your situation more fully,” she lied unconvincingly.
“My situation is simple now. I am here for Milly. Cindy doesn’t matter.”
Ava closed her eyes. “So you’re just going to leave her like you did me?”
His laugh was without humour. “For a start, Cindy is nothing like you. What she and I are …”
“Yes? What are you?” She begged, her desperation for the truth obvious in her tone.
He expelled an angry breath. “We’ve known each other for years. We flirt. That’s it.”
Ava’s stomach constricted with the force of her jealousy. “You were moving to Napa for her.”
He laughed again. “Bullshit. I was moving to Napa for the vines and the climate. I assure you, Ava, Cindy will not think of me again when she leaves here.”
And Ava truly was reassured. Their situation as so messy, so murky, that it was a blessing not to have to factor in yet another person’s heart and hopes. She ignored the part of her brain that was rejoicing in Cristiano’s being available. It was wrong of her to even think of such selfish pleasures in that moment.
“So you’ll stay here? For how long?”
He nudged the car out of the car park and onto the road. “Around sixteen years ought to do it,” he quipped, though there was nothing amusing in what he was contemplating.
“Sixteen years …? You can’t be thinking you’ll move in with us?” She said quickly, her words tripping over themselves.
“Of course not,” he agreed. “I will stay in the villa I’m in now, until I find somewhere more permanent.”
The idea of having him on the property sent her pulse skittering. “Surely there’s somewhere …”
“Ava, stop speaking now. I have missed two years of my daughter’s life. I do not want to miss any more. Do not argue with me over something as irrelevant as where I’m going to live.” He angled his face to hers; his expression was loaded with sardonic coldness. “You can’t think I’ll want to have anything to do with you?”
Her cheeks flamed. The finality in his words cut her to the quick. “It would just be easier …”
“I don’t care what is easy for you.”
He hated her. In that moment, he truly did. She could feel the emotion pulsing from him, and she understood it. Every justification she’d told herself was showing itself to be flimsy and poor.
“Cristiano,” she said, as the car clipped along the road to Casa Celli. “I’m so sorry. I truly believed …”
“That you were doing the right thing. You’ve said that before, and I’ve already told you: I don’t believe it. So stop wasting your breath trying to convince me that this wasn’t you being selfish.”
“Selfish,” she said with a nod. Selfish. Is that what she’d been?
“Yes, selfish. You chose to cut me out. You chose to raise our daughter on your own. I call that selfish indeed.”
His temper was a beast he could hardly control.
“You know how I feel about family. You know how I love my family. You accuse me of wanting to travel; and I do. But you also know that I have always dropped everything to return to my home when my parents needed me. Did you really convince yourself that I would feel differently about my own child? Did you not think I would want to be here for her first year of life? Her second? And every year after that?”
“Please, stop shouting at me,” Ava cried, gripping her seatbelt to stop from bursting into tears yet again.
“I can’t!” He said angrily. “I have been robbed of that – and I’ll never get those years back. I’ll never know what she was like as an infant. When she crawled. What she ate. I have missed it, and I am not going to miss anything else.”
“I know, I know. I understand. What do you want me to say, Cristiano? I messed up? I did! I thought … I really thought at the time … that I was saving you from a life you would hate. I thought I was the one who was missing out – on you, and your help, and sharing this life with you. I was wrong. I wish now that I could go back in time and do it all differently.”
“And yet, if I hadn’t come to the house today, and if we hadn’t got distracted and made love; I would never have heard her laughing and found her. I might still not know about Milly. Was it your plan, even this week, to keep her from me?”
Ava was pale. She squeezed her eyes shut rather than look at him. “Yes,” she said; for how could she lie? “At least, it was at first. But I went back and forth. Some moments, I just wanted to get it over with and tell you. But then I’d see you and your life, and those people you consider to be your friends, and I would remember why I kept it from you. What you would lose if you knew.”
“What I would lose?”
She shook her head. “I already told you that I was wrong. What more can I do?”
He turned into the driveway of Casa Celli and pulled the car up in front of the house. “You can leave me alone,” he said seriously.
“Cris …” Her heart was breaking. But what could she expect? He had every right to be furious with her. She would certainly never forgive someone if they’d kept her from Milly.
“No.” He stepped out of the car but stayed within the door, so that he could address her clearly. “You and I will have to find a way to get along, for the sake of our daughter.” The word was heavy in his mouth. His daughter. “I intend to be a big part of her life, starting immediately. But do not forget, Ava, that I hate you for what you have done.”
In the two weeks since discovering that he was a father, Cristiano had, to his credit, rolled up his sleeves and done everything he could to discover what he’d been missing. With the exception of Tom’s wedding, he’d com
e to the house every evening to bathe Milly and read her stories. He’d spoon fed her risotto and copped yoghurt down his shirt more times than Ava could count. He’d sung A Borboleta over and over again. When Ava had asked him what it was about, he’d responded coldly that it was a children’s Christmas carol about a butterfly.
And that was the only problem Ava had to face.
For as warm and loving as he was towards Milly, he was equally cold and hateful to Ava. He missed no opportunity to remind her of the blame he put at her feet, and to make sure she understood how dreadful a mistake she had made.
And Ava felt it. She felt it every time she looked at the two of them together, and saw the way Milly adored Cristiano.
It was one such afternoon, when the sight of them together was too much for her to handle, that Ava escaped to the kitchen and poured herself a large measure of Shiraz. She rarely drank more than a sip of wine, to taste and appraise. But her heart was broken and having already been taped back together so many times, she wasn’t sure it could be healed this time.
She sat despondently at the kitchen bench and stared at the rolling vines and glistening ocean, and cradled her chin in the palm of her hand. Her phone made a buzzing vibration in her pockets; she fished it out and checked her emails.
1 December, 18.08pm
From: A Petrides
To: Ava
Ava, Sophie tells me you have the most exquisite collection of decorations. I want to make this Christmas special for her. She’s missing home, and you, very much. Is there any chance you can arrange to send some care of our London address?
With warmth,
A.P
She stared at the email and was no longer able to hold the tears back. Was it really the first of December? Christmas was so close, and she was alone. Even Milly, who had always been hers – just hers – had now to be shared.
Her sisters were spread across the globe, and the only man she’d ever loved now hated her with a passion that was arctic and overpowering. She lifted her wine by the bowl of the glass and carried it with her through the reception area into the downstairs lounge. The bookshelf had doors across the bottom shelves; she kept all the heirloom ornaments there.
She sipped the wine and placed it beside her carefully, then pulled the first box out. It smelled of gingerbread and dust. Her throat clogged with emotion and her fingertips ran over the worn cardboard.
The box itself was a nineteen eighties shoebox that had once housed a pair of boots Meredith had bought in Perth. She’d been so proud of them, even though – as she’d been fond of saying –they’d cost all of their arms and legs! Ava smiled weakly at the memory and unfolded the tissue paper.
The ornaments from Meredith’s childhood were individually wrapped in tissue paper; Ava had stored them neatly in January, ready to be unboxed for Christmas
She had never intended to keep the decorations. She was custodian of them for her sisters, until they settled down. And now? Sophie was married to a Greek billionaire and seemed to have no plans of moving back to the Valley. And so, the collection would be forever split asunder. Like the sisters?
A tear rolled down her cheeks and she dashed it away impatiently. She had turned into a maudlin mope lately, unable to keep her thoughts from straying to the decisions she’d made more than two years earlier.
One by one, she set aside Sophie’s favourite decorations, and then Olivia’s. For surely she too would one day want her share of the beautiful ornaments.
And as she worked, she began to feel a calmness spread over her. Meredith and Ava had been the Christmas fairies; that’s what the others had called them. Though Sophie and Olivia loved Christmas too, it was Ava who glowed with her mother’s magical festive spirit. She alone had inherited the love of every single one of their traditions. She sipped her wine again, before pulling out the next box. This one had their stockings and the plates they put by the fireplace each year, for Santa and his reindeer. She smiled as she closed the box up and pulled the next selection from the cupboard. More ornaments.
An hour passed in the blink of a decorating eye. Ava rested back on her haunches and eyed the mess she’d made.
It was chaos. Paper and decorations were everywhere, though there was some system to it, she supposed.
“Come and say goodnight to mamãe,” Cristiano’s voice startled her and she glanced up at the door with an expression of surprise.
“Is it that time already?”
He nodded gravely, eyeing the mess she’d made. And for the first time in a fortnight, Ava saw the hint of a genuine smile on his lips. Only for a moment, before he smothered it, but it was there, and it was so striking that it sent a frisson of loss dancing down her spine. She stood gracefully and held her hands out to Milly. The little girl smelled of vanilla and coconut after her bath.
“I love you, Milly,” she whispered against her curls.
The little girl snuggled softly to her mother, her round fingers splayed wide against Ava’s shoulder. “Eu te amo,” She said haltingly and Ava froze. It was a phrase she had heard intimately, for Cristiano had said it to her often. In the past. The beautiful, shimmering past that could never be touched again, he had often spoken of his love in Portuguese.
Ava had become used to feeling like an outsider in her own home. She flicked her gaze to Cristiano. “Here you go,” she said, aware that he was intent on making up for lost time. She was desperately missing her special time with Milly, but how could she possibly object to letting Cristiano be involved?
“You take her,” he said thickly. His smile, Ava presumed, was for Milly’s benefit. She wrapped her arms around Milly’s little body and carried her upstairs, wishing life had been simpler. Kinder. Easier.
But it wasn’t right for her to feel so sorry for herself. She had Milly. An angel sent to her from heaven at a time when she most needed love.
She didn’t rush back downstairs. Judging by the stack of books on the floor, Cristiano had already read several stories to their daughter. But Ava read two more, and then sung Milly’s favourite nursery rhyme, before tucking her beneath the sheet and kissing her forehead.
“Sleep tight, my little love,” she whispered, tiptoeing to the light switch and flicking it off.
Ava contemplated hiding out in her bedroom, to avoid Cristiano, but that reeked of cowardice. She moved down the stairs with what she hoped was nonchalance, and returned to the lounge room with every intention of continuing to sort the decorations. Perhaps she and Milly could even raise the tree the following day, if she determined which decorations would go up that year.
The sight of Cristiano standing in the midst of the mess cradling two glasses of red wine forestalled anything she’d been thinking or planning. His gaze was focussed on a photograph above the mantle and she followed the line of his sight.
It was a photograph of Milly as a baby, with her two aunts Sophie and Olivia. Milly was so tiny, with the plastic tube in her nose that helped feed her. “How old was she?” He asked, holding a glass of wine out to her.
She took it carefully, so as not to touch his fingers. “About three days, I think.” She stepped toward the photo, unconsciously bringing her body next to his. She reached for the frame with her spare hand and lifted it down. As she looked at it, she felt herself drifting through the veils of time, falling into the past. A time that was painful and miraculous all at once.
“She looks so small,” he marvelled, running a finger over her face in the picture.
Ava made a throaty noise of assent. “She was born two months premature. She was so small she could fit in Angus’s hand.”
Cristiano lifted his head, and fixed her with an enquiring look. “He was there?”
“Yes.” There was no sense lying about it, after all. “He is a good friend. Even after I left him, he’s been a part of our lives.”
“I see.” Envy flashed in his gut at what this man had enjoyed so easily, that Cristiano had been denied. But his feelings for Ava were beneath him. She no longer m
attered to him. All that mattered was Milly. “Were there any health complications from her prematurity?”
Ava handed the frame to him and then eased herself down to the floor. She sat back in position, in front of the bookshelf, her legs crossed beneath her. “No. Not long term. She was in hospital for a month while she built up her weight and learned to feed.” Ava didn’t say that it was also to allow her time to adjust to her condition as well.
“You must have been surprised to go into labour so soon.”
She ran her finger around the rim of her wine glass and focussed her attention on a point just beyond his shoulder. “Actually, I didn’t go into labour,” she said. The day had been etched into her memory. It was a nightmare that often came to her. That feeling of powerlessness and worry as she had begun to lose so much blood she had been absolutely certain that something was wrong with her child.
“Isn’t it sort of a pre-requisite of having a baby?” He said, humour in his voice.
She blinked, but she was in the past. Her smile was tight. “Sometimes.” She sipped her wine, and felt the edges of her brain start to buzz. It was beautiful; not one from her vineyard; it was unfamiliar to her. “What is this?”
“It’s a Tempranillo. You mentioned your vine keeper is interested in experimenting with it.”
“I did?” She frowned. “When?”
“When I checked in. I had a case sent over from Spain. I crafted this three years ago. Do you like it?”
“Yes,” she said honestly. “It’s light, but serious.”
He narrowed his eyes. How had he forgotten that they shared the same taste in wines? Her palette was excellent; he’d noticed it the first time they’d tasted together. He eased himself onto the ground opposite her, a vision of virility and strength in the midst of her festive mess.
“What was she like, as a baby?”
Ava’s smile was genuine. “Delightful.”
He stared down at the picture. “I wish … I wish I’d …”
“I know,” she interrupted, guilt searing her stomach. She reached into the cupboard, and pulled out yet another box. “Here. These are some pictures of her first year. I never got around to filing the second year. We got busy with the accommodation and the new vines. But maybe this would … fill in some gaps for you,” she finished awkwardly, pushing the box across the floor.