I watched as my beautiful mum sauntered into the coffee shop in Leeds city centre, just three days later. Her grace, her presence and her ability to make heads turn her way, without actually doing anything to earn their stares, always blew me away. It was obvious who Elizabeth had inherited her charm and personality from. It was easy to see who she had taken her bright aura from, too. Mum glowed, just the same way Lizzy had, and as I watched her walk casually over to my table, I couldn’t help but smile.

“Natalie, sweetheart,” she sang quietly. With a quick kiss to my cheek, and after I told her I’d already bought our usual drinks, she sat opposite me, unwinding her thin scarf from around her neck with little effort.

“Should I be nervous, Mum?” I asked.

She looked up at me through beautiful, big doe eyes as she folded the scarf on her lap. “Why would you be nervous about meeting your mum for coffee?”

“Because it’s midweek and when you ask to meet me here after work, there’s usually some bad news that goes along with it.”

“That’s not true.”

I sighed, looking down into my coffee cup as I shook my head and tried not to laugh. “I think last time you were telling me that we needed to send Dad to see a specialist about his snoring.”

“And that’s what you consider bad news these days?”

“It is when you ask me to be the one to broach the subject with him,” I said quietly, looking up at her with a raised brow. “You know how much he hates being fussed over.”

Her small, shy, but oh-so-knowing smirk broke free before she busied her hands again by pulling her latte closer to her. “Yes, well, your father can be a stubborn man and sometimes I need… reinforcements... to help.”

“Scaredy cat,” I joked.

“Or wise tactician,” she whispered as she reached over for the sugar before tearing the small sachet apart and pouring it into her drink.

“You say potato…”

Mum giggled to herself, a glint of mischief flashing over her eyes as she concentrated on her drink. “Can’t a mother just miss her daughter and want to spend as much free time with her as possible?”

Even though I smiled back, I struggled for something to say right away. My mother wore her grief well most days, like an accessory that would always be in fashion in her world so she may as well just accept that it was there instead of making a big fuss about it. But every now and again, like then, I would force myself to try and look at her life through her own eyes, and that’s when the loss of Elizabeth tended to hit me the most.

I couldn’t imagine anything worse than losing a child.

I didn’t want to.

“Of course she can,” I answered softly. “I love meeting up with you.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

We spoke freely then for a good thirty minutes, each of us getting caught up in small talk and life musings. Her hands moved every time she spoke, weaving a story and making it more intricate by drawing shapes, gesticulating around at nobody in particular, and occasionally going wild in the air when she became exasperated by something. I loved to watch her in those moments when she was so lost in herself.

She and my father came as such a tight unit, a pair, two magnets that were never meant to be apart, that it was easy for me to forget that they were their own people, too. As I tilted my head to the side, resting my cheek on my fist, I watched her with a dreamy smile on my face, wishing I could have known the younger versions that lived before I was born.

How old was she when she first felt butterflies for a boy?

What colour lipstick did she used to wear when she snuck out of the house to meet a stranger her parents wouldn’t have approved of?

What was it about Dad that had swept her off her feet?

I wondered what she looked like to him the first time they danced together. I wondered how much she laughed and joked before she had the responsibility of two girls at her feet. I wondered about all the things she wouldn’t want me to know. What was the biggest mistake she’d ever made? Was there ever anyone before Dad?

Was there a boy who once told her to leave him alone?

Before I knew it, I was lost in a daydream, my smile dropping from my face with each passing second until her voice broke me from my reverie.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she said, leaning to one side to rest her cheek on her fist as if to copy my pose.

“Huh? Oh. You caught me.” I blinked slowly to refocus. “I was just hoping that one day I will end up as beautiful as you.”

A small blush crept onto her cheeks, and even though she tried to hide how flattered she was, I saw it there in her eyes. “Natalie, please,” she breathed out on a nervous laugh.

“I mean it, Mum. Life hasn’t been easy for you, yet here you are, laughing and smiling and living.”

“I have to live, sweetheart. I owe it to you, my daughter who is alive and bright with plenty of breath in her lungs. I owe it to your sister to keep on living until I get to see her again.” She smiled. “What kind of mother would I be if I disrespected her by sulking all day, drowning in my own misery? What kind of lecture would she give me when she finally let me through those pearly gates?”

I sighed, trying to keep my mood as light as I could. It was always difficult to talk about death in any capacity, but death and family was something else entirely. Still, I tried. We all tried. “I think it’s safe to say she would put a hold on your heavenly G&T until she’d given you a few choice words.”

“Precisely,” Mum said triumphantly, clasping her hands together as I watched a layer of impatient tears coat her eyes. “And this is why we go on. Life, it has to be lived.”

I was about to ask her if she was okay, even though that was one of the biggest no-nos for any of us to do. I was about to lean over, touch her hands, show some kind of silent sign that told her it was fine for her to cry. I wanted to cry, too. But then something stopped me. Something over my mother’s shoulder caught my eye, outside of the coffee shop window.

Or someone.

My father.

Squinting to get a closer look at him, I kept my eyes trained in his direction, leaning farther over the table as I strained to speak. “What’s Dad doing here?”

“Excuse me?”

“Dad.” I pointed over her shoulder. “He’s out there, looking, well, sheepish.”

I watched as my dad paced back and forth, one hand shoved deep within his trouser pocket while the other ran up and down the side of his jaw. His lips were moving, but only subtly, and the frown on his face looked like it had been there for the last twenty years, it was so deep and set in place.

“Oh gosh,” Mum whispered to herself, and it was only when I looked at her briefly that I saw just how much she had paled.

“Oh gosh what?”

“Nothing,” she rushed out, her hands flapping wildly until she spun back in her chair and waved her fingers over her shoulder. “Ignore him. Silly old fool.”

“Mum…”

She reached for her latte, pulling it closer with both hands as she stared down at it. “Did I tell you that our next door neighbour got a new car? A fancy BMW thing that looks like it could carry a bus load of children.”

“Mum…”

“Which I don’t particularly mind, of course. It’s their money to burn as they wish, but they ordered it in yellow. Why would anyone want a car in yellow? People would think you’re a taxi cab from New York City.”

I glanced back at my dad, my frown quickly matching his as I tuned my mother out completely. Something wasn’t right, and if she wasn’t willing to tell me, I would go and find out exactly what was going on myself. As I pushed up from my seat, the noise of my chair scraping backwards seemed to fill the air a little too harshly, but I moved anyway. I moved and made my way to the door until some of my mother’s words registered with me from somewhere over my shoulder.

“I told your dad to stay away from here, Natalie. He wasn’t meant to come near here today.”

Looking over my shoulder, I shook my head in confusion and felt a shiver of something creepy crawling over my skin. “Why would you do that?”

Mum’s shoulders sagged suddenly, her face falling in much the same way, before she looked up at me as though she was pleading for my forgiveness. “Because…” She stopped herself, the taste of whatever she had to tell me obviously proving a little too bitter for her tongue. “It doesn’t matter. It’s too late now.”

“What’s too late? What’s going on?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, her eyes drifted over my shoulder to my father, and I was once again forced to look his way. Only when I did, this time, he was standing there with someone else. His hand was reaching out, his smile was now brighter than ever, and his eyes were alive as he looked up at the towering, muscular form in front of him.

Alex.

The sight of him sent me stumbling backwards momentarily until I managed to regain some composure and I opened my mouth to speak. Another chill ran over my skin, a cold feeling of betrayal as I watched my dad laughing up at the man who was once a boy I knew so well. I couldn’t move for a while. I couldn’t do much of anything as I stared, wide-eyed, caught in the scene of the two men outside the coffee shop.

A gentle hand on my shoulder, followed by a whisper in my ear had me blinking quickly as I tried to wake up from whatever this was. “He’s got your best interests at heart,” my mum said. “Don’t go too hard on him.”

Then I moved without thought as anger, a feeling of rage, sparked to life in my stomach and everything else around me didn’t seem to matter at all. I was furious at being lied to. I was angry that my mother was obviously in on something I wasn’t, and I was mortified for Marcus. I was angry because not once had my dad ever looked at Marcus the way he was looking at Alex.

The man who hurt me, Dad loved. The man who healed me, he disliked.

Storming out through the door, I pushed on the wood and glass panel harder than I realised, causing it to fly open with an almighty bang before I marched over to where the two of them were standing.

Alex saw me first, and the slight flinch of surprise in his eyes told me enough.

Dad must have caught sight of the look he was wearing because with a double take, he glanced over his shoulder and instantly made eye contact with me. If I hadn’t known any different, I could have sworn that my dad was scared.

His hands flew up in defence, or maybe it was surrender, before he took two steps backwards and pulled his chin against his chest. He didn’t get a chance to speak before Alex’s body came in front of him, his hands, too, going up in the air as he glared down on me.

“This isn’t what you think,” Alex said firmly. “Don't say something you'll regret.”

My face was set to thunder mode. I flared my nostrils, and my jaw twitched as I ground my teeth together before growling up at him. “You can’t just leave it alone, can you?”

“Natalie, listen to me. I didn't–” Alex started.

“No!” I cut in. “No, you don’t get to do this right now. You don’t get to play this game. You promised me you weren’t back here to do this.”

“Do what, exactly?” he asked, those perfect eyebrows of his pulling together as he leaned closer. Too close. Not close enough. No, definitely too close. The smell of him washed over me once again, and my breath stuttered as I tried not to taste what called to me.

“You know what. This. This…” My finger flew up into the air, and I pointed between the two men wildly.

“I have to wonder what you must think of me to assume that I would want to do anything that would hurt you again.”

“You really don’t want to know what I think of you.”

Alex’s eyes searched mine, and I tried to look away, I really tried, but they were there in front of me, trying to dilute my fury with just one look when all I wanted to feel, for just one ridiculous moment of possible irrationality, was anger. Couldn't he allow me that?

My mother’s hand landing on my shoulder once again had me flinching, and I was grateful for the distraction that allowed me to look away from him and down at her touch.

“It’s not Alex’s fault, darling. Please, calm down.”

How could she betray me this way, too? How could the two people I trusted with my life do this to me? They knew the pain I’d gone through, didn’t they?

It was all too confusing. I turned in a mindless circle, looking them all in the eyes as my own words choked me into silence. I wasn’t one to get angry that way. I wasn’t one to let things boil over unless I was pushed, but something about them all doing this behind my back – before I even cared to let them explain – had my hands balling into fists by my sides.

My dad was the first to step forward. With one look at Alex, he gave him a small nod and sighed. “Go inside the coffee shop, son.”

I expected Alex to argue, but like a good little lap dog, he gave me one last parting look of confusion, nodded his head and did exactly what he had been told to do. The copper on the ends of his hair shone against the late afternoon sun as he walked by me, and I couldn’t help the way my body turned to watch him leave, taking in everything there was to take in about him from behind.

“Rosie,” my dad called to her, and by the time I’d turned around, Mum was standing by his side, their arms linked together as they pushed their shoulders back and stood firm. Two people as one. A unit again.

“Why do I have a feeling I’m not going to like this?” I asked cautiously, looking between the two of them with a feeling of complete dread.

Dad swallowed and Mum bowed her head.

“This has nothing to do with anyone else. I asked Alex to meet me here today,” Dad began, “and it was me who asked your mother to keep you occupied, only I must have caught the wrong name of the place where she was meeting you. You weren’t meant to see me or the lad at all.”

“What?” I breathed out, my shoulders falling forward like I’d been punched in the chest. “Why would you do that?”

Sucking in a big breath, Dad schooled his face as best as he could. “Because I wanted to see him properly for myself. I needed to talk with him.”

I frowned hard while narrowing my eyes at him. “What do you care about him? Alex has been gone from our lives for five years.”

“Five years too long,” my dad said boldly. “Five years of me knowing what his father was capable of, and five years of me feeling regret for letting him go back to that house, and letting him walk away from you, from us.”

“Excuse me?” I gasped, taking a step closer. “Did I walk into some weird kind of alternate life here or something? Weren’t you the one who told me to let him go the day his father beat our door down? Weren’t you the one who told me he was fine and to leave things be after he stopped calling me and began to break my heart?”

“You’re right, I did all those things. But do you know what, sweetheart?”

“No, Dad. Right now, I don’t know anything.”

“I realise now what a mistake I made. You were young and I was protective. I thought there would be a million boys like Alex that would come and go in your life before you settled down with the one. I didn’t want to see you hurt. I didn’t want to see you caught up in a storm you couldn’t get out of. I thought time away would make things easier for you. But now…”

“Now?” I repeated, raising a brow as the hairs on the back of my neck rose tall.

Breaking away from Mum, he came as close as he could get to me and let out a shaky, emotion-filled sigh of regret for whatever it was he was about to say.

“Before now, have I ever interfered in your life or argued over the way you choose to live it?”

“No,” I answered truthfully.

“And do you honestly think I would ever do anything to purposely hurt you?”

“No.”

“Good.” He nodded once. “When you were a young girl, that bubble we said you always lived in – it wasn’t just a bubble of ignorance. It was what made you who you were – my daughter who didn’t need much of anything to be settled and content. You were a girl who I never had any doubts would grow into the kind of woman that the world would silently fear because you never lied or pretended. You had no reason to. You didn’t do things just to make people happy. If you didn’t want to smile, you didn’t smile. If you didn’t like the neighbours’ children, you wouldn’t play with them just to keep us happy. If you wanted to read solidly for a week instead of talking to us, that’s what you would do. You were never rude, no, but you had no desire to please people for the sake of pleasing them. You had this quiet strength and certainty about you. Somewhere along the way, all of that changed, and nothing makes me ache more than seeing you looking so lost.”

“My sister died,” I told him quietly, my voice trembling as I begged for the tears to stay away. “That’s what changed.”

“Losing Lizzy wasn’t what made you who you are today. Alex was there to catch you back then. He brought a side of you to life we’d never seen. All those late night phone calls. All those trips to the park. All those times he would just turn up on our doorstep with a smile on his face, not saying a word until he saw you walking towards him. I don’t think even you realised just how happy you were – both of you. I’d never seen you smile that way before. He lit up your eyes. It was magnificent to watch. Losing Alex was what changed you, darling. It turned you into a person who would rather spend their whole life worrying about others and trying to keep everybody else happy, instead of dealing with their own pain. I don’t want that for you. I don’t want you to live scared like I have done. The bad things happen whether we fear them or not. Hiding in bubbles doesn’t work. I’ve been too stubborn. I tried too hard to protect your sister from death, and I lost. Pretending things aren’t real or true only makes it harder to accept them when you can’t outrun them anymore.”

I stared at him, aware that my breathing was becoming heavy as his words seeped into my bones.

“I’m scared that you’re trying to outrun yourself, Natalie. I’m scared you’re ignoring your own heart, and that will only ever end up with you being unhappy.” His chin trembled ever so slightly before he pressed his thumb against it, taking a moment to compose himself.

My eyes drifted to my mother, only to see a face filled with a mixture of both sadness and pride staring back at me, before Dad’s voice brought my attention back to him.

“I am so sorry for going behind your back like this, but I had to see Alex for myself. I had to see if that boy from all those years ago still had that spark in his eyes, or if he, too, had lost it, the same way you have done.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but it was impossibly dry, and I was too afraid of what might come out if I said anything at all, so I remained quiet and waited for him to continue.

“As soon as I saw him just then, I knew what had happened. All my suspicions were confirmed. The boy, the man... He's lost that spark, too. Those kids I once knew are gone now.”

“That’s life, isn’t it? That’s what happens. You get hit, you get back up and you move on. You can’t stay stuck in the past. You don’t need to fix my life for me, Dad. I’m not a child anymore. I've seen too much of life to have that childish twinkle in my eye. Don't you see that?”

“You’ll always be a child to me,” he whispered roughly, his voice getting caught in his throat before he was forced to clear it away. “And I’ve already lost one daughter to a broken heart. I won't lose another. I won't let your heart tire too young. I’m determined to protect my other baby girl, no matter how unpopular that makes me with the rest of the world. You and your mum, you’re the only ones I care about now, Natalie. Other people’s opinions, other people’s lives, they don’t come into it. Not for me.”

The mention of our loss mixed with the pressure of the moment had me taking a step back and bowing my head. I knew, deep down, that my father loved me so much he would do anything to protect me. What I had trouble expressing to him was that I didn’t need protecting. I was a big girl now – maybe not in his eyes, but to me, I was – and if anyone was going to figure out what was missing from my life, if anything, it had to be me.

“I never meant to hurt you,” he whispered before he reached around to hold the back of my head and pulled me closer to kiss my forehead. “I’ll go tell Alex to go home if that’s what you want. I'll tell him I made a mistake.”

When he pulled away, I looked up at him and let the weight of the world pour out in one long stream of air. “Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you like Marcus?”

His brows furrowed before he shook his head in protest. “I've never said I don’t like Marcus.”

“Then why don’t you look at him the same way that you look at Alex?”

“Because you don’t look at him the same way you look at Alex.”

“You really think I’m not happy?”

“All I can ever do is hope that you are. I just don’t want you to have any regrets, Natalie.”

He moved to step around me, forcing me to follow him with my eyes until my body followed suit and I turned to watch him go inside. I could feel Mum’s uncertainty behind, and I could see Dad’s disappointment in front as he dragged his feet forward, but all I could hear was my own heartbeat trying to break free from my chest.

He still loves you now.

You don’t look at him the same way that you look at Alex.

Don’t have any regrets, Natalie.

“Dad, wait!” I called out. When he turned, I saw hope staring back at me, and I felt it pressing at the small of my back, too, I took a step towards him and shook my head. “Let me go and talk to him. This is my mess to clean up. You should take Mum home. I’ll be okay, I promise. I... I’ve got this.”