Unease scraped down his spine. He gave up on his restraint and ran up the stairs, taking two at a time. ‘Leah?’
He walked into their room. It felt emptier. He suddenly realised the whole house felt emptier. Suspicion ballooned and he glanced in the wardrobe. Her eveningwear was still there, but those pairs of jeans, those tees, were gone. He pulled open the first of the drawers in her stand. Her silky, scarlet smalls were gone.
She was gone.
He froze, trying to process it. Then panic hit. Where had she gone? Was she okay? Why?
But he knew why. He knew exactly why. He’d hurt her.
He raced back downstairs just as Dimitri came into the house.
‘What’s wrong?’ The old man watched him.
‘I think she’s left me.’ He could hardly breathe as he strode past Dimitri to double-check the lounge.
‘Pardon?’
‘Leah. She’s gone.’ His anger leaked.
‘Pardon?’ Dimitri glowered at him.
‘What part of “left me” don’t you understand?’ he stormed back as rage blew him apart.
‘You’re the one who doesn’t understand,’ Dimitri growled. ‘You think she’s left you? Is that what Leah would really do?’
Theo froze, then whirled to glare at his grandfather. ‘Do you know where she is? Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Why didn’t you ask?’
‘I don’t have time for games, Dimitri. Where is she?’ He needed to know she was okay.
‘Why leave her alone all day? Bored and lonely with no one but an old man for company.’
‘You’re not that old and this place isn’t boring.’ He drew in a breath. ‘I don’t have time for this. I’ll get Philip to help find her. She can’t have gone far.’
‘Philip is with her.’
‘What?’
‘She’s gone to the island.’
Theo reached out and pressed his fingers to the wall to balance himself as he gaped at Dimitri. ‘She what?’
‘She said that was what you wanted.’
She hadn’t run away? She wasn’t alone out there in Athens, checking herself into some boarding house or something? She wasn’t on a plane back to England?
Relief was like a blissfully cool balm soothing the rawness inside but then that very balm began to heat, burning his wounds worse. He’d thought she’d chosen to vanish—to run and hide from him completely because she’d been hurt. But she hadn’t—she’d simply done as he’d originally asked.
He slumped against the wall, his legs empty of all strength. ‘Okay. Okay, good.’
It was good, wasn’t it? It was what he’d wanted. It would make things simple. So why did he feel worse than he had when he’d thought she was missing?
‘You’re not going there now?’ Dimitri looked confused.
‘No.’ He drew a breath. ‘I’ll check in with Philip on the phone. There’s no need for me to go.’
‘I sent Amalia with her.’ Dimitri’s mouth thinned. ‘To care for her.’
The unspoken criticism hung heavy. Theo rejected it. ‘Thank you,’ he said curtly.
He turned his back to avoid his grandfather’s colossal disapproval. Flashes of memory tortured him as he climbed the stairs towards terrible privacy—her laughter that night in the theatre foyer, her latent playfulness, her humour and kindness. But all that warmth was lost to him. Because Theo couldn’t care for her. He couldn’t give what she needed. He’d always known she’d be better off away from him. And so would his child.
* * *
But he wasn’t better off. Three long, hellish days and nights later he was nothing but worse. Nothing but angry. Nothing but poison. He missed her. And he hated that he missed her. He hated that she had got to him in a way no one ever had. That she’d made him want things. Things he was so afraid of losing that it was easier not to have had them in the first place.
‘You need to rest.’ He watched Dimitri silently push his dinner around his plate. The old man looked frailer than ever.
‘How’s Leah?’ Dimitri asked.
He couldn’t answer. He didn’t know.
‘I don’t like to see you like this,’ Dimitri added with a belligerent edge.
Like what? He wasn’t the one who looked as if he was about to keel over.
Theo shovelled a bite of food into his mouth and chewed, tasting nothing.
‘I didn’t think you’d do this.’
Theo looked sharply at Dimitri. He recognised that low throb of anger. He just knew the rarely voiced criticism that was coming—Dimitri was about to blame his mother.
‘That you’d be like—’
‘I’m nothing like him,’ he snapped. ‘I’d never treat Leah the way my father treated my mother.’ He instantly sucked in a breath but it was too late to pull the words back.
Dimitri flinched and turned
ashen.
‘I’m sorry,’ Theo muttered, dropping his fork with a clatter. ‘I didn’t—’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ Dimitri interrupted firmly, despite his complexion. ‘Tell me.’
Conflicted, Theo froze. But he remembered Leah’s entreaty for him to speak honestly with Dimitri. And he remembered that easing inside when he’d talked to her. He ached to talk to her like that again and, thanks to her, he finally realised he ought to with his grandfather too. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘I know my son was not a saint,’ Dimitri said. ‘I know they both suffered.’
‘I think maybe they brought the worst out in each other.’
‘And you were caught between them.’
‘No,’ Theo sighed. ‘They just didn’t care, Papou.’
The pet name for his grandfather slipped out. And then all the secrets slipped—snatches of truth and hurt tumbled free, the memories that had cut most deeply. Dimitri put his hand on his shoulder and just listened and somehow Theo told him even more—even about that awful trip to see his mother. All the things he’d held back for so long because he hadn’t wanted to hurt him. But Dimitri’s low growl wasn’t an expression of pain for himself, but empathy for Theo. There was no changing any of it, Theo understood that. But in sharing there was acknowledgement and acceptance and finally forgiveness—of those parents who just hadn’t had it in them to be there for him. And it was, he finally believed, something lacking in them, rather than something missing in him.
‘I’m proud of you, Theo.’ Gruff and awkward, Dimitri shook him in a fumbling hug. ‘I want to see you happy. I want to see Leah happy.’
‘So do I.’ Theo buried his face in his hands. ‘But I...’
‘What’s worse?’ his grandfather asked simply. ‘The thought of life with her? Or without?’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FIVE DAYS.
No contact.
He’d not called, not left any messages, not visited. There’d been nothing. And that was a good thing. Because Leah was getting on with it.