Page 54 of Lela's Choice

“Olivia studied law, although she specialised in commercial law. We met at university, mixed with the same crowd. She was fun to be with.” He stopped.

“But?”

“Olivia wanted me to give up my work defending abused women. She supported the international stuff—legislation, treaties—but didn’t want the messy details and spill over of people’s lives into our home, especially when she discovered she was pregnant.” Those arguments had been one of his most closely guarded secrets—until now.

“Did she understand it’s essential to who you are?” A courageous question, but he expected those from Lela by now.

“‘Circumstances change,’ she said. ‘I should change,’” he said.

“Can you tell me what happened to her?” A tentative question, but the time for half-truths was past.

“She was eight months pregnant when she was killed.”

“Killed?” She pressed a hand to her mouth, horror and a kind of bleak realisation flashing across her face.

“Five years ago, the husband of a woman I was representing in a custody dispute shot and killed my wife.”

“Dear heaven,” she whispered.

“Grief catches you in a maelstrom.” He’d lived that, and Lela was one of the few people he’d met who understood it. He glanced at their linked fingers, easing his white-knuckled grip. He’d been crushing her hand. “Sorry.”

He brushed his thumb across the top of her knuckles to soothe. “I don’t remember much immediately after she died, except the numbness, the indifference to everything. Bouts of activity to pretend my world hadn’t collapsed, then nights spent pacing the house, unable to sleep, to think. I didn’t know grief could be like that. For that first twelve months, I was going through the motions. My family made sure I ate. Work saved me from going insane.”

Lela’s phone rang.

“Take that,” he said.

She scanned the screen. “It’s Papa.” She answered the call, her eyes remaining fixed on him until he turned his back. He’d said enough. A hell of a time and place to meet someone who understood him so well—who was his perfect mate—who’d understand his vow.

“They’re leaving now,” she said. “On the return ferry to the mainland.”

He and Lela both turned to look at the ferry port. The ferry they’d watch unload had taken on new vehicles and passengers and now chugged out of port. Neither of them had noticed its preparation for departure or heard its departing whistle.

“Then we go now,” he declared.

* * *

LELA NODDED AND SLIDinto the passenger seat, torn between wanting to continue the conversation with Hamish and wanting to reach Sophie. He’d lost more than most in trying to defend vulnerable women and children. Sophie had always been safe in his care.

She was more familiar than she liked with the need to fill the empty spaces in your heart and head when you found yourself alone. She’d ultimately channelled her despair into her youth foundation. He’d continued to work with, and for, abused women and children. A vocation he’d committed to while still a child—turning a negative into a positive.

If your wife questioned your work, do you blame yourself for her death?

Surely not.

Questions, that it was unthinkable to ask, backed up in her head. Recalling his level voice, the tilt of his head, his unreadable eyes, and the sudden stillness of his body before Papa’s call, her heart thumped against her breastbone. There was more to the story. And maybe he’d already revealed more than he intended.

Rounding the last curve in the road, the bay of Xlendi opened out before them. Tiny, by Australian standards, and picture perfect.

“Malta has exhausted all the superlatives I can muster. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such perfection.” Lela gestured to the beauty spread before them; the azure water dazzling in Malta’s seemingly perpetual sunshine. A rocky cliff on the northern side, with a staircase just visible against the bare grey of the limestone cliff, suggested further coves could be found over the headland.

“Special, isn’t it? But horrific in the season. Can you see a free car space?” His first words since they’d left the harbour.

Lela latched on to his innocuous remark as a way to navigate them back to the present. “You’ve been here before.”

“Once. I came across to Gozo and spent the day touring, skirting the coast, stopping at small towns, staring aimlessly out to sea, letting the heat haze bake the work tension out of me.”

“Hard work, negotiating international treaties?”

---