The Piper's Son Read Online Free PDF Page B

a six-year-old who represents the greatest betrayal of her life.
    She walks alongside Sam as they make their way up Norton Street. Years ago it’s what they used to do during the week at this time of the night. Come down for a coffee or a quick pasta and glass of wine. They loved it here on weekdays because it belonged to the locals. All the people they wanted in their lives lived within a ten-minute radius. Her brother Dominic had started the vow of not moving away from each other just because they’d be able to afford bigger houses in the outer suburbs. “Let’s stick together, no matter how poky our houses are,” he had made them all promise. “Better to be able to pick up each other’s kids and hang out together than have bigger backyards and rumpus rooms.”
    Outside Sam’s mother’s house on Crystal Street, the kid waves up at her like he does every time they do this.
    “Hi, Georgie.”
    “Hi.”
    Sam’s mother watches from the patio of her tiny semi, and Georgie has no choice but to walk toward her. The older woman kisses her, clutching her tightly, as confused as everyone is, and Georgie hears her whisper, “It’s a miracle, Georgie. It’s a miracle.” Which is strange because Sam grew up with people who didn’t believe in anything. And she thinks of those times she’d joke with Lucia and Jacinta and Bernadette that she was the only one of the four who wasn’t named after someone who saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Georgie didn’t believe in miracles. It was as though God had said she didn’t deserve them.
    They walk toward Stanmore with Sam between her and Callum. As always. As he would when he waited for her at the station in those numb days. The boy was four when Joe died and didn’t question who Georgie was or why she was so silent. She remembered once, when they stood at the lights and Sam’s phone rang and it was time to cross, how the kid took hold of her hand as if she was the only person who could get him to the other side alive. And Georgie felt eleven years old again, holding her little brother’s hand.
    When they reach Sam’s house, on Myrtle Street, he unlocks the door and sends Callum in.
    “Why don’t you stay?” he asks quietly.
    She shakes her head. They have a strange silent agreement. Georgie being under the same roof with Callum isn’t part of it.
    “Don’t let Lucia stay upset at you for too long.”
    “How do you know it’s not me upset with her?” she asks sharply.
    “Either way, it will cut you up. You know that.”
    He knows her well. He had slept beside her often enough to know that Georgie needed to be connected to her world. Years ago he’d reach over and grab the phone and hold it out to her. “Ring them and sort this out, or I don’t get to sleep,” he’d snap.
    But this is now. He doesn’t say anything. They neither greet nor bid farewell with a kiss or a touch. Their physical relationship only happens in bed. So the unspoken lingers between them. He’s a stranger, this man, with his vulnerability and his empathy. She liked him better with the arrogance. She could fight that with sharp tools of her own.
    “They’re hurt,” he says.
    “Sorry?”
    He sighs. Everyone sighs in front of Georgie these days.
    “They’re hurt that you haven’t told them about the baby.”
    “Why can’t they just ask?” she asks bluntly.
    “It’s not their business to. It’s yours to tell and they can’t understand why you won’t.”
    She sees it on his face, the recognition of her shame.
    Because you don’t get pregnant by a man who’s betrayed you and boast about it to the world. Because you don’t forgive his relationship with another woman, no matter how nonexistent or brief it was.
This is shame,
she wants to shout at him.
Not getting pregnant, but getting pregnant by
you. You don’t forgive a child coming out of that relationship. Not unless you’re desperate or part of some
Cosmopolitan
magazine article. And he knows.
    “I don’t know