A tear trickled slowly down Persephone’s cheek.
“I failed you,” Adam said. “I failed you, and he would have been disappointed in me, just as you must have been.”
“Oh, my dear boy.” Mater took one of Adam’s hands. “Do you not think I know you well enough to understand the way you mourn? To know that you isolate yourself when you grieve? I knew why you didn’t come. I understood. I missed you, but I understood.”
Heavens, theirs was far more tender a connection than Artemis would have guessed, even having heard him recount their history.
“I told myself you didn’t truly care for me, that you never had.” Adam shook his head. “The lie eased some of the pain.”
“Your heart always was tender,” she said with a motherly smile.
A tender heart? Artemis had seen it when Adam interacted with his wife and children, and she had experienced it briefly during their stroll around the grounds. But to hear Mater talk of his softheartedness with such conviction was jarring.
“I felt so hopeless,” Adam said. “I’d given up, resigned myself to misery. Without Lucas, I—I was lost.”
“I worried when I heard you’d chosen an arranged marriage,” Mater said. “I feared it meant you had decided to fully cut yourself off. But then you invited me to your wedding, and I knew you wouldn’t have done that if, in your heart of hearts, you didn’t have some whisper of hope that your marriage could be a happy one.”
“I looked for you.” His voice dropped to an entirely unusual quiet, uncertain tone. “I knew logically you could not come while in deepest mourning. But then you didn’t come after that, and I worried you stayed away because... you were embarrassed at the idea of people knowing you’d helped raise someone you were ashamed of.”
Adam, the Dangerous Duke, the most infamous and feared man in the kingdom, was laying bare this very personal vulnerability in front of a room full of people.
Mater set a hand on either side of his face—and he didn’t snap at her. No one was permitted to touch his scars other than Persephone and his children. Artemis watched with wide eyes, her mouth a bit agape. This was a different Adam than she had ever seen.
“My brave Adam,” Mater said.
“You always used to call me that,” he whispered.
“And you used to call me Mother Julia.”
Artemis thought she saw the slightest hint of a tear in Adam’s eye.
“I have never and could never be ashamed of you,” Mater said. “I have watched you from afar and have seen my Lucas’s influence in your life. He would have worried to have seen you undertake an arranged marriage, as I did, knowing your parents’ unhappiness in theirs and our early struggles in ours. But you followed his example and loved and respected your wife and worked to build a life together that is happy and beautiful and hopeful. That is his influence.”
“And yours,” Adam said.
Mater turned and looked at Persephone. “You loved my darling Adam when he was very much alone. You saw the good in him when he struggled to see it in himself. For that, I will love you for the rest of my life.”
Persephone wiped a tear. Many in the room did. Artemis herself was not immune to the enormity of the moment.
Mater returned her tender and loving gaze to Adam. “We brought you to our home more than thirty years ago, my brave boy, because we loved you. And we were family because—”
“Because family is who you choose.” He finished the sentence in a voice that clearly indicated he was completing verbatim an established phrase between them.
“That lesson, offered so long ago, has created this beautiful family you have now. Your sisters-in-law and brother-in-law are family to you not because they were required to be but because you chose them. In that, I see Lucas’s influence in your life.” Mater took his hands and held them tenderly but firmly. “His heart broke at not being able to save his Princess. But she found her way to you, and the foundation Lucas laid thirty years ago saved her. Through you, his beloved Adam, he saved her.Yousaved her. He would be beyond proud of you. Do not ever doubt that.”
Tears pooled in Adam’s eyes. Artemis was certain of it now. Never could she have imagined such a thing.
“It sometimes feels so cruel that he hasn’t been here,” Adam said. “Having him be part of these past thirteen years would have been... perfect.”
“Miracles are not found in perfection, Adam. We too often miss the crucial connections we have because we think they exist only in the intersections of our lives and fail to see the importance of the parallels. Lucas might not have had a direct hand in the miracles that have brought us to this point, but he laid the foundation. He is the reason for all of this.” She indicated the gathering. “And he did it by loving and caring and serving every day. Small things change the course of lives more readily than all the grandest coincidences ever could.”
“I wish I could thank him for all he was for me, all he taught me,” Adam said.
“I think he is with us in more ways and more often than we realize.” Mater smiled softly. “If there is any means at all of influencing our lives from heaven, I have not the least doubt he is doing precisely that.”
Adam smiled a little, something he seldom did. “He would insist upon it.”
Mater stretched and placed a very maternal kiss on his unscarred cheek. “Yes, he would. And he would be so pleased to see that you have been for this family”—she motioned to the gathered Lancasters—“what he was honored to be for you: a brother and father, a source of support and love.”
