She knew he’d started the conversation in order to find some common ground between them. Talking about the case was the first real conversation they’d had without awkwardness or disagreement in the last forty-eight hours and it felt like a real step forward. Proof that they could work together and agree on a solution that would be in their daughter’s best interests.
‘I want to do it to show how I appreciate your earlier apology,’ Max said unexpectedly. ‘And I think it’s time I made one of my own.’
‘An apology?’
‘I feel I guilted you into coming to stay with me. As though you owed it to me for not telling me about the baby. Deep down, I think I can understand some of your reasons even if I don’t agree. But I wanted you to know this isn’t just about the baby...sorry, Imogen...this is about wanting to help you, too.’
‘Really?’
She watched him carefully, surprised as he took his eyes off the road for a moment to meet hers.
‘Yes, Evie, really.’ He turned back to the road. ‘I think you should stay with me because I think it will be better for your recovery to stay close to Silvertrees for as long as possible, in order to be checked over by the transplant team themselves, rather than being handed off to a follow-on team too early.’
‘And you do want to get to know your daughter, right?’ She had to check.
‘Of course I do. It’s important to me that my daughter knows she is loved and never feels she wasn’t wanted. More important than I think you can realise. To that end, I want to make sure I do what’s best for her, yes.’
He was choosing his words carefully, but it wasn’t necessarily helping her. Was he alluding to his parents? She couldn’t even ask, without revealing her own experience of them. It left Evie feeling thwarted.
‘Which brings me back around to how you and I are going to proceed from here.’
‘You and I?’ Her mouth felt suddenly dry again.
‘You and I,’ he confirmed calmly. ‘I’ll admit I’ve been angry that I didn’t know about Imogen before now, and I’ve been punishing you for it. I was too wrapped up in myself to consider that you’ve got enough to deal with at the moment with your imminent transplant without additional stress from me.’
Evie squirmed in her seat. This was the perfect opportunity to admit the truth to him.
‘You do have every right to be mad...’ she began.
‘Maybe so, but it won’t help you get through this transplant. You know as well as I do that a patient’s mental well-being can influence not only how their body copes during the operation itself, but how their recovery goes afterwards. In your case, how your body responds—or rather doesn’t—to a foreign organ.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she managed shakily, not fooling him for a moment.
‘I understand that you’ve felt like you have to stay strong for your family all this time, especially with Annie being your donor. But you can let go a little now and lean on me.’
Hope flickered tentatively, but she still couldn’t relax.
‘You must still be angry, Max.’
‘Evie, I don’t know what happened, or why you...didn’t get in touch. But I’m not going to push you on it any more. However, when you’re ready to talk to me, I’d like that.’
‘As easily as that?’ She tried not to feel suspicious.
‘Why not? We can’t dwell on what’s happened if we want to find the best future for our daughter.’
It sounded too good to be true, but Evie wasn’t about to spoil it by arguing. It didn’t change the real issues, not least the money, or the fact that she still hadn’t told him about it. But it did go some way to re-establishing a rapport between the two of them so that, when she did eventually find the right moment and place to confess, Max wouldn’t be so inflexible and impersonal in how he reacted to everything she needed to tell him.
She just needed to buy herself, and Imogen, some time.
‘You can’t go forwards into the past,’ she said softly.
‘Say again?’
She startled, not realising she’d said it aloud.
‘Oh, nothing. It was just something my mum used to say. You can’t go forwards into the past.’
She listened as Max repeated it, mulling the words over as he did so.