Page 74 of Promise Me This

“I want to talk to my mom.”

Siobhan nods and gives a gentle grin. “Then let’s go give your mam a call.”

“She’ll be busy with dinner,” I mumble.

“It’s earlier there,” she says, guiding me toward the inn, past the simmering pot of curry and up the stairs to my room. She opens the door for me and walks me over to my bed, retrieves my phone from the bedside table, and settles it in my lap. “And besides, no matter the time, she’d want you to call her.” She presses a kiss against my forehead. “That’s what mothers are for.”

“Thank you,” I say, my voice wavering.

“Anytime.” She pads over to the doorway but turns to look at me before disappearing into the hall. “Oh and Leona?”

“Yes?”

With a gentle smile and a sympathetic tilt of her head, she scans my face. “It takes time. But time is all it takes.”

I nod because it’s all I can do, and the door snicks closed behind her.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Callum

“Daddy, come have tea with me!”

I glance up at Niamh’s little face peering out of the window of her tree house. She’s clutching her raggedy bear to her chest and pleading with large, round eyes for me to scurry up the ladder and stuff myself through that impossibly small entrance Padraig mismeasured. Even if I were a contortionist, there’d be no getting through it without detaching my arms.

“Sorry, love, I can’t fit up there,” I call with a shrug. “Too broad.”

Her eyebrows scrunch together. “What’s broad?”

I cast my hands wide and puff out my cheeks before stomping around my back garden. “Big, like a giant troll!”

She giggles but then brings her bear’s muzzle to her ear and tilts her head like she’s listening. “Sleepy says he’s a bear and he still fits.”

“Rather small bear,” I huff.

“Rude!” she shouts, and then she drops away from sight. The only hint of life coming from the plain wooden tree house is a trill of giggles floating on the breeze.

A half smile is all I can offer. For the past twenty-four hours I’ve been desperately trying to grasp this new reality. One where Leo and I had a child. One where that child is no longer in this world.

Suddenly the timeline of her cutting me off makes so much more sense. She’d grown distant around the time she would’ve discovered she was pregnant. Her responses went from instantaneous to sporadic to meager at best. Then I reached out to wish her a happy birthday, and I never heard from her again.

For years I’ve been feeling sorry for myself. In those weeks and months after, I would work long hours just to fill my time with something other than staring at the phone, waiting for her to call. Many nights were spent lying in bed with my eyes wide open and watering. So this is my life, I thought back then. I’ve had the very best, and nothing else will ever compare.

Now I look back and realize that on the other side of the ocean, Leo was probably lying awake as well. But it wasn’t me she was missing desperately. It was never about me at all.

Maybe it was never about me with any of them.

I should’ve gone to her, I realize. I should’ve bought a ticket and showed up on her doorstep. Imagine how differently it would’ve all turned out if for once I hadn’t let my fear of being left behind overpower the possibility of having something good in my life. Something—someone—I could keep.

“The garden looks so different without all the flowers.”

I turn to find my mother standing with the garden gate thrown open beside her, both hands buried in her trouser pockets. Her hair is pulled back from her face and pinned behind her ears, making her appear younger. Even though her curls are silver. Even though the skin on her face falls in soft folds around her sympathetic eyes.

I nod while digging the tip of my shoe in the grass. “They’ll be back come spring.” Pausing, I glance at the enormous hydrangea bushes that have gone dormant for the winter. “Always are.”

“Nothing if not dependable, those things.” She makes her way to my side and loops an arm around my waist. “How are you holding up?”

The snort that rips out of me is entirely involuntary and far too harsh. There’s nothing I can do but let it dissipate in the wind. I quickly glance up. Niamh goes on playing, random squeaks and babbles coming down from the tree house as she hosts a tea party with her closest stuffed friends. Satisfied that she’s out of earshot, I smile grimly at my mother.

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