Constantine was not convinced he had ever seen her smile. Not a real smile. Not one that required anything more from her than good manners.
And he had loved his mother, truly he had, but looking back he could not say with any conviction that she had felt the same. They had been raised as much by nannies as by her, which had suited everyone.
Particularly when she had started taking lovers of her own.
And then, when Demetrius had thrown her out, it was not as if she had worked tirelessly to make sure she maintained contact with her children. She had always been far too busy recapturing what had been taken from her—or at least, that was his memory of the excuses she’d made at the time.
His father had delighted in calling her selfish, which had been laughable coming from him.
The truth was, Constantine thought now, she had earned that selfishness. She had earned any life she wanted after surviving Demetrius.
Why don’t you deserve the same? something asked inside him.
But he put that aside, because he knew better. He was a Skalas male, not the victim of one. It was different.
“I’m so sorry, mitéra,” he found himself saying, there alone in the room with only the quiet beeping machines that kept her alive for company. “I put you on a pedestal. And how was that so different from what my father did, if in reverse? Who knows how things could have been if I had only let you be who you were. Not what I wanted you to be instead.”
He understood that the opportunity to know his mother had been taken from them both. And it was possible that had he come to know her, he might not have liked what he found. He understood that his mother was weak in many ways, but so, too, had his father exploited that weakness for his own amusement. Most of all, Constantine understood that he had been young when his parents had made the decisions that would mark them all.
Too young, and time had not been on his side.
Still...wasn’t that what he did? He decided that there was a certain truth, and then he charged directly at that truth, forever. He would accept no complications, no complexities, no mitigating circumstances. Only what he accepted as truth existed, nothing else.
How else could he have missed the fact that Molly had been an innocent?
He thought that might haunt him forever.
Constantine kissed his mother on her soft cheek, whispered a goodbye he knew she couldn’t hear, then rose.
And when he turned, there was a woman standing at the door.
For a moment he didn’t recognize her. Perhaps he didn’t want to recognize her.
He took in the pretty face, the quietly elegant way she held herself. And how startled her cool blue eyes looked as she beheld him.
Isabel.
The first thing he’d done after leaving Molly in Paris, when he’d returned to his offices in a fury, was to restore everything he had taken from Isabel over the years. And from Molly.
With interest.
He’d considered it wiping the slate clean.
And he couldn’t tell if he was pleased to see Isabel now, or if it only added to how hollow he felt. How dark and empty, all the way through.
Constantine held himself tightly, as if standing at attention would make this confrontation easier. A confrontation he knew, if left to his own devices, he would have avoided forever.
“If you came here to thank me for not ruining you, or indeed to take me to task for coming so close in the first place, I’ll save you the trouble.” He inclined his head. It was not Molly’s majestic act of kneeling, but then, he doubted he possessed her strength. “It is I who owe you an apology, Isabel. For too many things to count.” The words he needed to say clogged his throat. They actually hurt, but he made himself say them anyway. “I am sorry, Isabel.”
It occurred to him that it was possible she’d come here to gloat. To taunt him. To take a piece out of him for what he’d tried to do to her daughter as well as to her. And he would take it, because he’d earned it, and he—
“Oh, Constantine.” Isabel let out a laugh that reminded him entirely too much of her daughter. It was warm and husky, filled with life even as it sounded a bit rueful. “You have always been so touchy, haven’t you?”
If he stood any straighter he would break in half. “...touchy?”
The older woman sighed. She gestured toward the bed. “I come to see your mother all the time.”
Constantine stared at her, because her words didn’t make sense. On any level. Isabel Payne came to visit his mother? Whatever for? Dimly, the nurse’s chatter about a Good Samaritan came back to him. Could it be?
He shook his head, baffled.
And found himself wholly unable to speak.
“She and I have a lot in common, for our sins,” Isabel said, sounding far too wise for Constantine’s taste. “I like to think we could have been friends, if things had been different.”
“I’m not entirely certain my mother was capable of having friends,” Constantine forced himself to say, as a kind of olive branch, though tearing the words out of him felt more like ripping trees apart than extending branches.
“Everyone is capable of having friends,” Isabel replied. Her eyes were too blue. Too much like Molly’s. Too capable of seeing straight through him. “But like most things, not just anyone will do. It has to be the right friends.”
Isabel moved further into the room, holding herself like a person who had every expectation of being welcome wherever she went. Something, he could see now, she had handed down to her daughter, along with those blue, blue eyes. Because Constantine was the one who suddenly felt out of place. Who stepped back as if this was
