There was no doubting the sincerity of his words, and Thea nodded awkwardly.
The silence was slightly less taut than it had been before and they sat sipping their coffee as logs crackled in the fire. Thea even unzipped her fleece quietly.
‘I have a picture,’ she said suddenly. ‘A scan.’
Ben’s head snapped up. ‘Of our baby?’
Our baby. She’d never expected to hear those words drop so easily from his lips. She nodded, ducking into her room to fish her purse out of her bag. She almost hesitated by the door, but then she drew together whatever courage she could and propelled herself forward.
Ben took the scan picture without a sound. His eyes never left the black and white image, and his finger almost imperceptibly twitched, as if to stroke the tiny peanut shape.
‘You can keep it. If you like,’ she offered tentatively. ‘I have another.’
He nodded, slipped his wallet out of his pocket and slid the image inside.
But as he went to close it Thea’s hand stayed the movement. A single photo had caught her attention.
‘May I?’
He looked as though he was going to object, then abruptly handed the wallet to her. She turned the image towards her, her heart thudding. The man in the photo was younger than he’d looked on the two occasions she’d seen him observing Ben’s recovery in the hospital, but it was definitely him—the man she’d assumed was some kind of psychiatrist or counsellor. But what would that man be doing in this old photo, with his arm around Ben, and next to them Daniel, looking proud. She peered closer at the man’s rank.
‘This is the Colonel who commanded you and Daniel?’
Ben stayed silent.
She was pretty sure the answer was obvious but she needed to hear it. ‘Ben?’ she pushed.
‘Yes, that’s the Colonel when he was younger,’ Ben said eventually. ‘And, yes, to what you’re thinking. He’s also my father.’
That wasn’t what she’d been thinking, and now the wheels were spinning in her head as she tried to catch up. So this was Ben’s father—the same man who had commanded Ben and Daniel, and of whom Daniel had always thought so highly. The father Ben had cut out of his life on any personal basis. And yet he still kept this photograph in his wallet.
‘Have you ever thought about talking to him?’ she offered tentatively. ‘About what happened? How you feel?’
Ben snorted. ‘About Dan’s death? Me getting blown up? No. He wouldn’t care. His only priority is for me to get on with my recovery and get on with the next mission.’
‘His only priority? How can he not care? You work together every day.’
‘It’s not like that. You don’t understand.’
Ben sighed, as though the whole topic of his father was too tedious for discussion.
‘When I say he’s my Commander, you think we work together in the field hospital like some cosy father-and-son duo. We don’t—we never have. I’m a trauma surgeon—one of around two hundred medics out there, with a Lieutenant Colonel as my direct Officer in Command. My father is a full Colonel—IC of the whole battalion, with up to four thousand men under his command. My unit of two hundred is a drop in the ocean. Granted, we might cross paths occasionally out there, but he would never go out of his way to talk to me. He probably wouldn’t even know if we were at the same base. The last time I saw him was about a month before my accident. He was holding a command briefing for the Lieutenant Colonels on our camp and he conducted a quick check of my field hospital with my Commanding Officer. But we barely saw each other, let alone exchanged pleasantries.’
It would seem for all the world as though he didn’t care. Only Thea knew Ben did care, deep down, whether he realised it or not.
Thea thought back to the times when she’d seen his father in the hospital when Ben had first been brought home. ‘And what about him coming back here?’
‘And leave his command to someone else? He wouldn’t consider it for a moment,’ Ben refuted flatly, then added dismissively. ‘Even if he wanted to he couldn’t.’
She wavered. Ben needed to know. He carried a photo of the man in his wallet.
She licked her lips. ‘You do know he was at the hospital, don’t you?’
Ben jerked his head up. The look of hope that flashed through his eyes, if only for a fraction of a second, was heartbreaking.
‘When?’ Ben peered at her, then shook his head. ‘No. I told you—he was in Afghanistan. He wouldn’t have returned.’
‘He did,’ Thea insisted. ‘I saw him several times outside your room when you were first flown back, consulting with your doctors. They definitely seemed to be deferring to him. The other time was in the gardens, the day you decided to take your souped-up wheelchair for a test drive into the hospital bushes.’