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‘I was lucky, actually,’ Ivy pressed on, with forced positivity in her voice. ‘There was a specialist visiting from Greece. He explained how severe it was, but he told me how good he was,’ she said with a smile. ‘And he was true to his word. My sight will never be fully back, but he gave me more than I thought I would get.’
AntonioknewIvy was downplaying how dangerous and terrifying it must have been.
‘And now? What is it like for you now?’ he forced himself to ask.
She took her time answering. ‘It’s better now. I struggled. Before,’ she said, avoiding his gaze. ‘But now it’s better. I have double vision all the time, though. My brain can’t seem to marry the information from both eyes,’ she admitted, taking another deep breath. ‘If I close my left eye then my right is okay, but it’s a lot of strain on one eye.’
She pushed the food around her plate as if her hunger had fled as much as his.
‘You struggled?’ he dared to ask.
She pinned her lip with her teeth. ‘I was on my own,’ she confessed defiantly, as if he might judge her somehow.
‘Where were your family?’
She looked at him as if he were crazy. ‘My brother had just started Basic Training with the army, and I told you yesterday that my mother was abroad…’ She looked off to the side. ‘In America, I think.’
‘She didn’t come for you?’
Like I didn’t come for you?he thought, guilt a fierce punch to the gut.
‘No,’ she said, wincing a little. ‘The last I heard, she’d split from Ted, changed her number and moved on.’ Ivy offered him a small smile. ‘She was always terrible at being alone.’
He wanted to tell her that her mother hadn’t been alone—that she had two children—but he knew that Ivy already knew that.
The waiter arrived and took their plates away, saying something about dessert that Antonio didn’t catch as he stared at this woman who had battled so much for so long in silence.
‘Was there enough money left over from what I gave you to cushion you?’ He hoped to God the question didn’t sound crass, but he wanted—needed to know, that something he’d done had helped her.
He watched her swallow before answering, looking off to the side as if she could hide the emotions behind her words.
‘I used the money you gave me to pay for my brother’s rehabilitation,’ she said with a true smile. Small, but true. ‘I think I told you that he got into trouble when he was younger?’
‘You told me a little about it, that day in the café,’ he admitted.
Ivy caught his gaze, then looked away.
‘I shouldn’t have,’ she said, as if she felt ashamed for having shared her burden.
‘I’m glad you did,’ he said truthfully, admiring the woman he had married beyond anything he could have imagined.
Antonio swallowed in her silence.
‘It took a few years,’ she pressed on, ‘but he’s sober. And he fights for that, every single day,’ she said, a gleam of pride bringing life to her eyes once more.
‘And you? Did you use the money for yourself?’ he asked, guilt settling uneasily into his gut. He’d judged her for not doing more with the money, when in actual fact she deserved praise for achieving what shehad.
Dio mio.What had he done?
‘I was able to put down a deposit on a flat for us and that would never have happened were it not for you. That was security and stability that neither I nor Jamie had ever experienced, and you made that happen.’
‘He came to my rescue.’
Antonio clenched his jaw. But he hadn’t, had he? He had paid her to marry him and then he had forgotten about her in his determination to make something of himself, to prove himself to his family. He hadn’t been there for her when she’d needed him most.
‘And that’s the flat you share now?’ he asked.
She didn’t want to lie to him, but she didn’t want to admit the truth. That in the months following the accident things had got so bad that she’d been forced to sell it. But now was not the time to be squeamish. She had gone this far, she might as well tell him everything.