Adam looked with disgust at the food. Anna loved it and always prepared it for him. But he forced himself to sit down and help himself. He could no longer associate everything with Anna, or he would never forget her.
When he did, he could taste the dish. It was the most delicious food he had ever eaten. As soon as he'd finished, he picked up his glass of juice, and Kate approached him with some pills in her hand.
"What are these?" Adam asked suspiciously.
"They're your antibiotics. Don't be a difficult boy, and take them soon."
Adam accepted and took the pills, popping them into his mouth. Kate watched him with her arms crossed.
"I've already taken the medication, Kate." Adam said, annoyed by her attitude.
"We need to have a talk, but you're not very well. So it's going to happen with you lying down and resting. I've taken the liberty of preparing the room down here for you and I've had everything you own brought up to it. No more living in the past."
Adam said nothing and walked with difficulty to his room. The doctor didn't say, but he knew that any other werewolf would be dead with the amount of shots his body had taken. However, he had to admit that if he had to climb the stairs, it would have been much worse. He entered the room and realized that it smelled clean. He lay down on his bed, and Kate covered him with a sheet, since the air conditioning cooled the place down too much. She sat down on the bed, close to the headboard, and ran her hand tenderly over his face.
"I shouldn't have left without talking to you about Anna. She's a wonderful woman, but she was torn between you and your brother. She loves you both, but the scales always tipped in Maxwell's favor, because he helped her and took her son into his care. It weighed up the gratitude she feels towards him and the hurt she feels towards you. That made the difference when she made her choice."
"Kate... I don't want to talk about Anna anymore. I need to forget about her. I... I prefer to believe that she's still where I buried her."
"You won't be able to forget her by sublimating your feelings for her, or by not hearing her name. But you can live on, loving her, and still love other women. That's what she did. You can become her friend and have a much healthier relationship than if you were married or together."
Adam remembered that Bruma had awakened Luna, and almost smiled for the fourth time.
"Do you think I'll ever really love again?"
"Yes, you will. But in the meantime, live! Go out with women. Give them gifts. Be kind. Leave each woman with the feeling of being special. You're charismatic and beautiful. AND RICH! You can do these things. Look for people who will be a balm for your life. Leave the storm for when you fall in love again. Think of yourself as an artist. And that you take an ordinary young woman and transform her into someone who feels special and important, transform her into something sublime, and in the end, you'll realize that the person who transformed the most was yourself. Let good things happen in your life. Make room for the impossible. Make good things happen in other people's lives. You'll only gain." Kate said, and stood up. "I'll let you rest. And before I see this child born, I want to see you happy." Kate said and left.
Andrey would come to be as she said. But he would only know his greatest suffering for love in a few years' time. He picked up the remote control on the bedside table and turned on the television. He wasn't really paying attention to what was on. He was just thinking that Kate had just given him the escape he so desperately needed. One day he would return the favor.
...
Anna arrived at the mansion in Ireland with Maxwell and was greeted by her children, who rushed to meet her as soon as they saw her. They were all talking at the same time, and she couldn't understand any of them, or who to answer first, but in the end, the question that was bothering them the most came out in unison; where was Tayme? Anna had prepared herself for this moment, and yet she still found it difficult to start explaining what she had memorized. Only when Maxwell took her hand did she gain the strength and courage to kneel down, to stand at the same height as her three boys, and look into their eyes.
"Tayme is having some problems with her head. She needs some time away from us so that she can think things through. Forget what she shouldn't have known and remember that her family loves her and misses her."
"She didn't tell me anything about it... She didn't say she was leaving." Ian complained, with his arms crossed.
"She didn't know, my son. We decided that she wouldn't know until she was on her way to the place that would become her home until she came home."
Ian wondered.
"Why did you do that?" He asked incredulously.
"Why don't you and your brothers go for an ice cream with the nannies? In the meantime, your father and I will rest and we'll talk again later." Anna proposed, because she wasn't willing to answer Ian. He didn't deserve to hear lies and the truth wasn't for a child's ears.
David and Donald accepted the answer and the proposal, and went skipping around the house, with the nannies following them. But Ian stood there with a determined look on his face.
"I want to spend my vacation at Uncle Adam's house. And I also want to see, visit and talk to Tayme."
"Your uncle's got you all wrong, my son." Maxwell said, without a trace of hurt in his voice. "You can't have everything you want. You can talk to Adam whenever you want, but we can't allow you to see and visit Tayme. She's in a kind of punishment, you see."
"I need to talk to her... Maybe on the phone?" Ian insisted.
"Yes. By phone, we can manage, a way." Maxwell said, and remembered Adam's request, and knelt down next to Anna. "Ian, there's something you need to know..."