“What I mean is . . . what are we doing, Delilah?”

I smiled and tried to make light of it. “What are we doing? We’re having lunch, of course.”

He put his knife and fork down, the cutlery clattering against the plate. “I’m too old for this. We’re both too old to keep up with this cat-and-mouse game that we’ve been playing for the past year. Every time I think we’re getting somewhere, you withdraw from me and I don’t know why. You know how I feel about you. You know how I’ve always felt about you. I don’t see any reason at all why we can’t be together. What’s stopping us?

“Do you not have feelings for me? Is that it? I know things were complicated when you left all those years ago but things are different now. We can have a life together. What’s left of our lives anyway. But obviously not if you don’t feel the same way I do.”

“I do care about you, Riaan, more than you know.” And as I said it, I realized how true the words were.

The past sixteen months since Daniel’s death had been the hardest of my life. Over the years, I’d lived through cholera and war, famine and genocide, and yet none of it had affected me like my son’s death. And in the darkest depths of my despair, as I grappled with my loss and cowardice—even as Ruth made it all so much harder for me by bringing Mandla into our home—the one person who’d tried to make it better was Riaan.

He’d called and visited time and again despite my refusal to see or talk to him. He’d provided distraction with the digs, and even as I kept my distance, he’d intuited what I needed most and had tried his best to provide it for me even though I’d completely severed ties with him for almost forty years.

“I’m sensing there’s a ‘but,’ Delilah,” Riaan said, reaching for my hand and squeezing it. “I’d rather know now where I stand with you than have to live through another year of guessing and feeling like everything I do is wrong.”

I squeezed his hand back and then pulled away, reaching for a tissue in my handbag. And it was while I was feeling around for one that my fingers brushed against Daniel’s letter. I’d been carrying it with me since seeing Sister Marguerite. While I hadn’t had the courage to open it, somehow having it with me made me feel brave. “There’s something I need to tell you. About what happened when I left.”