‘Oh, God, Max... I’m so, so sorry. I had no idea.’
He huffed out a dry laugh. ‘How could you? I did everything I could to avoid talking to you about it.’ He grimaced. ‘Because, to be honest, I’ve done enough talking about it to last me a lifetime. I guess, in my twisted imagination, I thought if you didn’t know, I could pretend it hadn’t happened when you were around. Outside of work, you’re the first normal, unconnected thing I’ve had in my life since I lost her and I guess I was hanging on to that.’
He turned to look at her again. ‘I should have told you, Cara, especially after you moved in, but I couldn’t find a way to bring it up without—’ He paused and swallowed hard, the look in his eyes so wretched that, without thinking, she reached out and laid a hand on his bare forearm.
He frowned down at where their bodies connected and the air seemed to crackle around them.
Disconcerted by the heat of him beneath her fingertips, she withdrew her hand and laid it back on her lap.
‘It’s kind of you to consider me normal,’ she said, flipping him a grin, hoping the levity might go some way to smoothing out the sudden weird tension between them.
He gave a gentle snort, as if to acknowledge her pathetic attempt at humour.
Why had she never recognised his behaviour as grief before? Now she knew to look for it, it was starkly discernible in the deep frown lines in his face and the haunted look in his eyes.
But she’d been so caught up in her own private universe of problems she hadn’t even considered why Max seemed so bitter all the time.
She’d thought he had everything.
How wrong she’d been.
They sat in silence for a while, the only sound in the room the soothing tick-tock of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, like a steady heartbeat in the chaos.
‘How did she die?’ Cara asked eventually. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t be keen to revisit this conversation and she wanted to have all the information from this point onwards so she could avoid any future blunders.
The familiarity of the question seemed to rouse him. ‘She had a subarachnoid haemorrhage—it’s where a blood vessel in the brain bursts—’ he added, when she frowned at him in confusion. ‘On our one-year wedding anniversary. It happened totally out of the blue. I was late for our celebration dinner and I got a phone message saying she’d collapsed in the restaurant. By the time I got to the hospital she had such extensive brain damage she didn’t even recognise me. She died two weeks later. I never got to say goodbye properly.’ He snorted gently. ‘The last thing I said to her before it happened was “Stop being such a nag; I won’t be late,” when I left her in bed that morning and went to work.’
Cara had to swallow past the tightness in her throat before she could speak. ‘That’s why you didn’t want me to leave here with us on bad terms.’ She put a hand back onto his arm and gave it an ineffectual rub, feeling completely out of her depth. ‘Oh, Max, I’m so sorry. What a horrible thing to happen.’
He leant back against the cushions, breaking the contact of her touch, and stared up at the ceiling. ‘I often wonder whether I would have noticed some signs if I’d paid more attention to her. If I hadn’t been so caught up with work—’
She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to make him feel better—though maybe there wasn’t anything she could say. Sometimes you didn’t need answers or solutions; you just needed someone to listen and agree with you about how cruel life could be.
He turned to look at her, his mouth drawn into a tight line.
‘Look, Cara, I can see that you wanting to help comes from a good place. You’re a kind and decent person—much more decent than I am.’ He gave her a pained smile, which she returned. ‘I’ve been on my own here for so long I’ve clearly become very selfish with my personal space.’ He rubbed a hand across his brow. ‘And this was Jemima’s house—she was the one who chose how to decorate it and made it a home for us.’ He turned to make full eye contact with her again, his expression apologetic. ‘It’s taking a bit of adjusting to, having someone else around. Despite evidence to the contrary, I really appreciate the thoughtful gestures you’ve made.’
His reference to her gestures only made the heavy feeling in her stomach worse.
‘I’m really sorry, Max. I can totally understand why you’d find it hard to see me meddling with Jemima’s things. I think I was so excited by the idea of living in such a beautiful house that I got a bit carried away. I forgot I was just a visitor here and that it’s your home. That was selfish of me.’