Page 160 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

She found the strength to look up at Diego then. His gaze on hers was one of pain and confusion, matching what she was feeling right now.

The past hurt, the future confused, but the present was just a series of days to get through, and wasn’tthatdepressing? Why was her present so depressing? And what would her future ever be if she stayed stuck right here?

His gaze was back on the book as he turned more pages. “I’m sure there will be pictures of the ball if we keep looking,” he said, sounding uninterested and in control.

While her heart was soft and bruised in her chest, uncertainty shaking all her foundations.

Diego finally moved past his parents as a happy, wealthy couple who loved pictures of themselves—far more pictures of the two of them than their children—and found a few pages that depicted some of the Christmas balls in his early childhood.

Amelia took careful notes about the decor, what she could make out of the pictures. Sometimes she talked about a plan that would be adjusted or something she’d already had just right.

She didn’t mention her father again.

He didn’t mind pushing daggers into his own pain and grief and guilt, but seeing it reflected in her changeable eyes as a deep, abidingsadness, that held nothing bitter in it…

He was the reason Bartolo Baresi was dead. And his daughter sat next to Diego now, trying to accomplish…something by bringing him back here.

He wanted to believe there was something deceitful in it, in her, but he just didn’t think it was underhanded at all. She didn’t seem to haveunderhandin her. Which made her feel…

Dangerous. Like she had all the power and he had nothing. She pulled every string, and he would simply dance. Because she was good and right.

Which wasnonsense, but he felt…unsteady all of a sudden. As if her innocent nature, trying to do something out of kindness, was a weapon.

He closed the album, not sure how it could leave him feeling bruised. He’d seen no happy memories of his own in there. Only his parents’ smiling faces.

And the haunting explanation Amelia had offered, that they had loved each other but simply hadn’t known how to be parents. Likely they’d never been taught. What he remembered of his grandparents wasn’t warm in the least. They’d all been cold and removed. They hadn’t liked thenoiseof children, so he and Aurora had not often been around them except to perform.

Diego didn’t even think he’d gone to their funerals. Had his parents? Had they grieved?

What a strange thing to wonder. He tried to shake the thoughts away. The past was gone. He should be punished for his, but not for whatever had gone on with his grandparents. They had been a nonentity in his life.

Amelia carefully set the album aside, then pulled out another one of similar size and heft.

Diego did not reach for it. He could not make himself. “Perhaps that is enough for one morning.”

She gave him one of those warm, sympathetic looks and nodded. “Of course. I thought this afternoon we could go into Dolcina and take in the nativities.” She smiled a little ruefully. “I wasn’t aware this was where your parents got engaged, but nonetheless. It’s a good Christmas tradition.”

He could see the picture of his mother grinning with her giant engagement ring perfectly in his mind’s eye. A woman whom only adulthood and loss had taught him he hadn’t really known.

Hadn’t tried to know, because to him she had been one-dimensional, impossible to impress or make happy, so he’d given up. Stayed away.

Because Amelia’s, or Bartolo’s, supposition was correct. For whatever reasons, his mother—in fact, both his parents—had not known how to get to knowhim. He and Aurora had existed only in the context of doing what was expected or not.

They had mostly not.

He hated that he had reasons for it. That Amelia had somehow forced him into looking deeper into a past he did not need to see clearly. It changed nothing. Because of him, everyone involved was dead, and there was no rectifying any of it. Understanding was a waste. A bigger loss.

And it was all her fault.

“And what exactly do you think comes from this?”

She frowned quizzically and looked over at him. “From what?”

“From shoving Christmas and memories down my throat? What do you get from this? What do you want to accomplish?” If he knew, he could fight it.

Fight her.

She studied him. If she was afraid or irritated by the snap in his tone, she didn’t show it. She kept her gaze and her tone even and calm.