He wasn’t necessarily much of a catch, a too-serious biology student obsessed with his research. But his family was wealthy and not without influence and she had adored that part of their life far more than the quiet world of an Oxford professor.
She had never said so outright but he suspected that wealth and influence was the main reason she had dated him in the first place.
“We tried to make it work for the children’s sake,” he said now to Samantha. “Whatever else I could say about her, she was a good mother who loved her children. We might have stayed together and figured out a way to cobble together a happy life but three years ago she fell passionately in love with a visiting guitar instructor from Spain.”
“Oh, no.”
Samantha sounded so distressed he had to sigh. “My heart wasn’t broken, I promise. At least not for myself. Divorce is always hardest on the children. Thomas was young enough he didn’t really know what was happening but Amelia was struggling to process all the changes. We were figuring things out together and then Susan was diagnosed with cancer after a routine mammogram.”
“What happened to her guitar instructor?”
“He decided radiation and chemotherapy weren’t what he signed up for and went back to Barcelona.”
“I would say that’s just what she deserves but that seems a little cold since she was dealing with such a hard diagnosis.”
He had thought much worse than that, he had to admit. “Susan was devastated, of course. On both counts. By then I was mostly numb. My brother had died a few months earlier and Gemma was seriously injured in the same accident. Our family was still reeling from that.”
Again, he couldn’t believe he was telling this woman he scarcely knew all his deep, dark secrets. If they had been sitting beside the lake in the warm light of a sunny summer afternoon, he probably couldn’t have been able to be so honest, but there was a quiet intimacy here in the dark.
He didn’t tell her the rest of it, how he felt as if his entire life had completely spun out of his control.
In a handful of months, his world had turned upside down—one minute he was a relatively happy if boring fisheries biologist, coming home each day to his wife and children and secure about his place in the world; the next he was the custodial parent of two young children and trying to adjust to the idea he would have to give up everything he loved.
And then his children’s mother had been diagnosed with a terminal illness.
“You took her back.”
“Technically, yes, but not really. We were still divorced. But yes. She lived with me and the children as she went through cancer treatment. We were able to let go of some of the bitterness and anger between us and become...friends, of a sort, I suppose you could say. I am sorry she lost her battle with the illness, but for the children’s sake much more than my own.”
“You cared for her at the end?”
The shock in her voice made him wince. “You sound like Gemma. She thinks I was crazy to let Susan come back to live with us during her treatments after she walked away from our marriage.”
“I don’t think you were crazy.” Sam’s voice was soft.
“I don’t, either, for what it’s worth. Susan had nowhere else to go and was frightened and terribly ill. Whatever else she might have done, she was still the children’s mother. Caring for her was the right thing to do.”
“Of course it was. You gave her the chance to be close to her children toward the end of her life. She was lucky to have you,” she murmured.
He wanted to close his eyes and let her words heal the raw places in his heart.
“Thank you for saying so. It was an easy decision but not an effortless one, if that makes sense.”
“It makes perfect sense to me.”
“I couldn’t have lived with myself if I had known I allowed the mother of my children to die alone.”
“Of course you couldn’t. You did exactly the right thing.”
He didn’t know precisely why but her firm approval warmed a cold and hollow corner inside him. So many of his friends and associates had believed him crazy to allow Susan back. Even his own parents questioned the wisdom of opening that door to her again after all the harm she had caused.