He’d looked pale before, but as he thought about that, every drop of colour drained from his complexion. ‘He was telling the truth about the baby. I already told you, to be absolutely certain Langford hadn’t lied about it I read the articles, her online profiles. Hattie Hood doesn’t have children.’
‘Like I said, I really think you should hear her side of the story.’
Aidan Hunter swore under his breath, picked up his bag, and – I later discovered – drove straight to Riverbend.
* * *
Riverbend
As an artist, Hattie Hood had long prided herself on having a flourishing imagination, but never in her darkest dreams could she have conjured up something as brutal and wretched as her first round of chemotherapy. She’d expected her hair to fall out, although that wasn’t as drastic as she’d feared. She’d been warned about the tiredness, possible nausea, various other unpleasant side effects that began to blur together in the mush inside her head.
It was going to be tough. She’d got the message. But it had to be done, so what was the point in fretting when she could be in her studio, sketching herons?
Tough, she laughed bitterly to herself a few days later, as her son gently picked up the bag of bones that had once been her beautiful body and carried her back to bed. Tough was living in a freezing cold attic, when at least you had the strength to get yourself to the bathroom to throw up.
Tough was giving birth without pain relief, and someone taking your baby at the end of it.
Tough was…
Ugh. She was too sick, too exhausted, too wracked with bone-screaming agony to come up with anything else.
Either way, the only thing keeping her from calling Dr Ambrose and cancelling the remaining five treatments was owing her son every extra week, day, hour that she could give him, having denied him that for so long.
He’d said nothing about his discovery during the three days of chemo, taking her to the hospital and then refusing to leave her side until she was ready to come home again. Heating up the meals the Gals had left, stubbornly neglecting the mother who’d raised him until Hattie summoned enough strength to send him back to the boathouse.
Hattie wasn’t fooled for one moment by Sophie’s letter explaining that a family emergency had come up. The timing couldn’t be coincidental and, even with her mind feeling as though it had been ambushed by Gideon’s chainsaw, she struggled to accept that Sophie would either leave without explaining this mysterious emergency or fail to check up on how her treatment was going.
Something had occurred that was big enough to ensure Sophie had left Riverbend with no plans to return.
A week after the first treatment, when she could get herself from the sofa to the kitchen and back without dry-heaving, and her muscles felt as though they were starting to solidify into functioning body parts again, Gideon told her.
She’d have thought herself too weak to cry, but she managed it.
She also found the strength to reply to some of her son’s questions that she knew the answers to, along with fervently repeating how much she loved him and how sorry she was, until he replied in no uncertain terms that he knew, and she mustn’t waste any more precious energy trying to convince him.
It was a monumental, grief-stricken few days. Gideon and Agnes moved into the main house, although Hattie and Gideon would not reveal the truth to Agnes or anyone else, at least for the time being. They talked, when Hattie was up to it, and when she wasn’t, he walked Flapjack or read while she slept.
He found alternative landscaping firms for most of his current clients. Others who knew Hattie were sympathetic about their projects being postponed.
‘You’re thinking about her, again,’ Hattie pointed out as they sat in the garden watching the sunset one evening.
Gideon didn’t bother denying it. It was ridiculous how often he thought about her, considering the other, far more important things he had to focus on.
‘Give her a call.’
Gideon’s brow furrowed. ‘I don’t know what to say. Even if I did, I don’t think I could say it on the phone.’
‘Then go and see her.’
He shifted in his chair. ‘I’m not leaving you to go and talk to someone who doesn’t want to see me, when I don’t even know what I want or need to say, just because I still think about her sometimes.’
‘Tell her that. You still think about her.’ Hattie smiled. ‘All the time.’
Gideon gave a dismissive shake of his head and went to fetch his mother a blanket.
* * *
The second round of chemo was, if possible, worse than the first. Bloated thanks to the steroids, now more bald than not, skin the colour of an old dishrag, eyes sunken, mouth blistered and draped in a baggy T-shirt and leggings, the only items she could bear next to her skin, Hattie Hood was slumped on her garden sofa, trying to distract herself by watching a particularly fat bumblebee feasting on her flowers, when she looked up and saw a mirage.
