“It could be.”
“You were walking along and ran into something you didn’t know was there. And it hurt the way it always hurts when you walk into something you didn’t see in your path—a doorknob, a chair leg, a secret your lover of nearly twenty years was keeping from you. You didn’t stub your toe here, however. You stubbed your soul.”
“He never told me he wanted that—that in the picture. He never said a word about it,” she said.
“If he had, what would have happened? If five years ago, let’s say, he sat you down in his living room and said, ‘Eleanor, I want you to have my children.’ What would you have said to that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I do know I wouldn’t have had his children. Not even for him would I have had a child I didn’t want to have.”
“If he had asked you, would you have said no right away? Or would you have had to think about it?”
“I wouldn’t have said no right away. As much as I love him, I would have at least thought about it, if I could go through with it, if I could change who I was enough to be something I didn’t want to be.”
“And when you told him no, would that have been an easy conversation?”
She whispered her one-word answer. “No.”
“Why not? Yes or no is such an easy answer.”
“Not when the question is ‘Will you have my children?’ The no would have been as hard to say as the yes.”
“Do you think he wanted to spare you that? Do you think he was trying to protect you from having to answer that question?”
“I’m sure he was.”
“And that photograph you found…that photograph he keeps among his most private and cherished possessions…when you saw it, perhaps you saw a side of him you didn’t know was there. The side of him that does want, you know…” Stuart’s voice trailed off. It was better to let her say it.
“He wants to see the mother of his child nursing his son.”
“That,” he said.
“It’s something I could never give him. Maybe that’s why it hurts. I don’t know.” She closed her eyes again.
“It hurts when we realize we can’t give everything to the person we love, that we can’t be everything to the person we love.”
“It hurts,” she said, nodding.
“You had a gap in your knowledge of him. And that must have hurt because surely after so many years together you would know his soul by heart. But you don’t know everything there is to know about him. You learned he had a side of himself he never shared with you.”
“I thought I knew everything. I thought we’d reached that point where we were honest with each other, truly honest. After all we’ve been through—”
“After all you two have been through, it’s a miracle you can even be in the same room together, much less still in love with each other. Devotedly and passionately in love.”
She gave him a wan smile. Such a pretty girl. No wonder Marcus couldn’t get enough of her even after decades of loving her.
“I have to remember I’m his lover, not his confessor,” she said.
“I am his confessor, lass. Even I don’t know all his secrets. And I don’t want to know them. You see all this gray hair? Each strand is one of his bloody secrets.”
She smiled again, but didn’t laugh. He could tell she wasn’t quite ready to laugh yet. But they were getting there.
“How do you think you sinned here?” he asked her. “Do you think it’s a sin for a woman to not want children?”
“I spent a year in a convent with women who didn’t want children, and they were some of the godliest women I’ve ever known.”
“Do you think it’s a sin that a tiny part of you wishes you could have been everything to him?”
“Yes, I think that is a sin,” she said. “Pride. Thinking I’m enough to be everything to him. And I’m not. I already knew that because of Kingsley, but I’ve known about Kingsley for decades. Kingsley was S?ren’s first love, and I respect his primacy. But this is different.”
“It is different. Kingsley is a man,” Stuart continued. “He can’t have children. You’re a woman. You can. And you chose not to, and now he’s had a child with someone else. You love the woman. You love the child. You love him. But…”
“But.” She squeezed his hands in hers. The girl had a strong grip. Lots of hidden strengths in this lady. No wonder she’d survived so long with Marcus. “Once upon a time I said something breathtakingly cruel to S?ren.”
“What did you say?”
“We were standing in his church and we…we’d been broken up for a few years by then. There were children everywhere, all around us. They were doing something—practicing for the Easter pageant, I think. Anyway, here we were, broken up and he wanted me back, a very vulnerable, horrible, hard place for anyone to be in. And while we were there surrounded by dozens of kids, I said, ‘I wanted to have your children once.’ ”
“That was cruel, wasn’t it?”
“Unconscionably cruel and the worst part is that I knew it. I said it to hurt him, and I knew it would hurt. And he responded…not very well.”