How To Mend A Broken Heart. Amy AndrewsЧитать онлайн книгу.
arriving.’ He remembered how close he’d come to calling her name. ‘I thought you might come back the next year. You did. And the year after that. So now I … wait for you.’
The lift dinged. The doors opened. Neither of them moved. The doors started to close and Fletch shot an arm out to push them open again. ‘After you,’ he murmured.
Tess couldn’t move for a moment. She stared at him. ‘Why?’
‘I know you think that your grief is deeper than mine but he was my son too, Tess. I also like to visit on the anniversary.’
Tessa flinched at the bitterness in his voice. And then again when the lift doors started beeping, protesting their prolonged open state. She walked out, dazed, conscious of Fletch slipping past her, leading the way down a long plush hallway with trendy inkspot carpeting. She followed slowly, still trying to get her head around Fletch’s revelation.
She drew level with him, glancing up from the floor. ‘I meant why wait for me? Why not just visit for a while and leave?’
Like she did.
Fletch wished he knew the answer to that question. It was the same thing he told himself every year as he set out for the cemetery. Go, talk with Ryan for a bit, then leave.
But he didn’t. He’d sit in his car and wait for her. Watch her kneel beside Ryan’s grave.
Torture himself just a little bit more.
He shrugged. ‘To see you.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘MUM, we’re home,’ Fletch called as he opened the door, checking behind him to see if Tess was following or still standing in the hallway like a stunned mullet.
He wasn’t sure why he’d said what he’d said. Except it was the truth. He just hadn’t realised it until right that moment. He’d kidded himself that it was to check up on her but now he knew it was more.
That there was part of him, no matter how hard he’d tried to move on, that just hadn’t.
He walked into the apartment, throwing his keys on the hallstand. ‘Mother?’
A voice came from the direction of the bathroom. ‘I’m in here, darling, there’s no need to shout.’ Jean appeared a moment later with a spray pack in one hand and a mop in the other.
‘Mum, you don’t have to clean the apartment,’ Fletch said, trying to keep the exasperation and relief out of his voice as he unburdened her of her load.
He didn’t like to leave his mother alone for too long these days. She seemed so frail and unsteady on her feet and he worried she might fall and injure herself while he was out.
Especially if she was mopping floors.
‘I have a cleaning lady for that.’
‘Nonsense, darling, I have to make myself useful somehow. Now, is Tess working late or shall I put something on for tea for her tonight?’
Tess stepped out of the shadow of the entranceway where she’d been frozen since Jean had entered the room. Jean, who had once been a towering Amazon of a woman and was now white-haired and stooped and looked like a puff of wind would blow her over.
She sucked in a breath at the absurd urge to cry. ‘No, Jean, I’m here.’
Jean looked over her son’s shoulder and smiled. ‘Oh, Tess! There you are!’ She hurried forward and pulled Tess into an effusive hug. ‘Goodness, you’re getting so skinny,’ Jean tutted, pulling back to look at her daughter-in-law. ‘And your hair! Did you have that done today? I love it!’
Tess swallowed hard at the shimmer of moisture in Jean’s eyes as her mother-in-law wrapped her in another hug. She shut her eyes as she was sucked into a bizarre time warp where the last decade and all its horrible events just didn’t exist. She held tight to Jean’s bony shoulders.
Her mother-in-law had become an old woman while she’d been away. Guilt clawed at her.
‘How about a cuppa?’ Jean said, finally letting Tess go.
‘Great idea, Mum,’ Fletch agreed. ‘Why don’t you take Tess through and I’ll get the tea?’
Jean smiled and nodded. She turned to go then stopped, her smile dying as a look of confusion clouded her gaze. She looked at her son blankly.
‘Over there,’ Fletch murmured gently as he pointed to the corner of the open-plan living space where a leather three-piece suite, a coffee table and a large-screen television formed a lounge area.
Jean’s gaze followed the direction of Fletch’s finger. It took a moment or two for the set-up to register. ‘Of course.’ She shook her head. ‘Come on, Tess. Tell me all about work today.’
Tess moved off with Jean but not before her gaze locked with Fletch’s. She saw his despair and felt an answering flicker. No wonder Fletch had looked tired earlier—this had to be killing him.
Jean patted the cushion beside her and asked, ‘How was the unit today, dear? Busy as usual?’
Tess sat beside Jean, bringing her thoughts back to order. ‘I …’ She glanced at Fletch for direction.
Since moving to England Tess had changed her speciality to geriatrics so nursing Alzheimer’s patients was part and parcel of what she did every day. But each patient was individual and responded differently to having their misstatements corrected.
He nodded his head encouragingly, which didn’t really tell her very much. ‘I didn’t go to work today,’ she sidestepped. ‘It was my day off and I had … some business to attend to.’
‘Ah, well, no doubt Fletch will know. Fletch?’
‘It wasn’t too bad, Mum,’ Fletch said as he placed a tray with three steaming mugs on the coffee table and apportioned them. He sat on the nearby single-seater. ‘Still a lot of kids with the last of the winter bugs getting themselves into a pickle.’
Tess picked up her mug and absently blew on it. So they were validating Jean’s false sense of reality? At this stage of her disease it was probably all that was left to do. Too many dementia patients became confused and distressed when confronted with their memory loss, and to what end? They were too far gone to realise what was happening to them.
Jean sighed and looked from one to the other. ‘I’m so proud of both of you. It can’t be easy going to work each day looking after such sick little kiddies.’
Tess squeezed Jean’s hand in response. What else could she do? She and Fletch hadn’t worked at St Rita’s Paediatric Intensive Care Unit together for ten years. Not since Ryan had died there. In fact, she hadn’t been able to return to that field of practice at all, hence her move to the other end of the spectrum altogether.
Fletch changed the subject to the weather and they let Jean lead from there, navigating a maze of patchwork conversation—some lucid, some not so lucid. They got on to the spectacular view from the floor-to-ceiling glass doors, with Jean teasing Fletch about his fancy apartment. ‘I can’t believe you two got this thing. What happened to that gorgeous little cottage you were renovating?’
Fletch smiled at his mother. ‘We sold it. Too much hard work.’
‘Oh, pish,’ Jean said, swatting her hand through the air. ‘As if you’re afraid of hard work.’
Tess swallowed a lump as Jean, despite the dementia, looked at her son the way she always had, like he could hang the moon. Fletch’s father had died when he and his sister, Trish, had both been very young and Fletch had been the man of the house for a long time.
‘Gosh, Tess,’ Jean remarked, shaking her head. ‘Look how skinny you are! And where did that lovely tan go? I can’t believe how quickly that gorgeous tan of yours has faded. It hasn’t been that long since you’ve been back from Bora Bora.’
Fletch