The Italian Surgeon's Christmas Miracle by Alison Roberts

and then acting on them. She had to rely on Uncle Vanni and he finally started to come out of the depression he’d been struggling with for so long. And then he got the “great idea”.’
    ‘Which was?’
    Amy stopped and took a sip of her drink and then continued. ‘He decided that if his own son was lost to him, rather than waste the rest of his life, he’d spend it looking after children that other people didn’t want. But he couldn’t do it by himself. He needed my mother as part of the family to get approval to be a foster-parent himself. He found this house and persuaded her to stay at least for a while and that’s where it all started. It’s been my life ever since.’
    ‘But your uncle’s dead now.’
    ‘My mother is just as passionate about these children as he was. When he was dying, she promised she would look after them as if they were her own. And they are, really. She loves them. We all love them.’
    ‘So why didn’t he do something about protecting them? Legally?’
    ‘You mean, the will? I have my own theory about that.’ Amy’s smile was poignant.
    ‘Which is?’
    ‘Uncle Vanni was a wonderful man. He’d do anything for anyone, but he wasn’t perfect by any means and he had a bad habit of convincing himself that he’d done things because he had intended to do them.’ Amy stuck her tongue into her cheek as she pondered and Luke felt an odd twist in his gut as he watched.
    ‘Like—he’d be given a chore like posting a letter or taking out the rubbish and he’d say he’d done it. And then, when he was asked if he’d done it, he’d sneak off and actually get it done before he got caught out. I was there once when he put his hand in his pocket and found a letter he’d forgotten to post and he winked at me, like it was our secret. The thing is, he was a hopeless liar. The real secret was that we all knew. Asking him if he’d done something was just a reminder but he would always say he’d done it because he didn’t like to let anyone down and he always intended to do it.’
    ‘So you think he intended to make a new will and didn’t get around to it.’
    Amy nodded. ‘And nobody would have reminded him because anything to do with death was so upsetting for him. It would remind him of what he’d lost. Maybe that was the reason he couldn’t bring himself to actually go and do it. Or maybe he just kept putting it off, telling himself there was plenty of time.’
    ‘Only there wasn’t.’
    ‘No. It was so sudden. A massive stroke. They kept him on life support for a couple of days but then we had to let him go.’
    Luke was silent. He was struggling with this. Clearly, Amy believed she was telling the truth. The story rang with the resonance of truth and he could sense that faded photograph hidden in his coat pocket. The evidence all around him supported Amy’s account. And ‘Uncle Vanni’ had been a hopeless liar, so he must have believed he was telling the truth.
    But if it was true, it went against everything Luke had been brought up to believe was true, and it threatened to cut deeply into the respect he had for the woman who’d raised him.
    Things that had been so black and white—like the values he’d based his life on—were being held up for inspection and, instead of the solid foundation he’d believed them to be, they were shaky.
    Flawed?
    Luke didn’t like that notion. It would mean that a part of himself was potentially just as flawed, and he wasn’t ready to accept that.
    He got slowly to his feet. ‘I don’t think I’ll bother waiting for a taxi,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk.’
    ‘Is it far?’
    Far enough to give him time to think, at least. Luke put his coat on. He picked up his scarf and gloves. ‘I won’t get cold this time.’
    Amy went to the door with him. She seemed tired, which was hardly surprising given that it was after 3:00 a.m. now, but it was more than that. She was sad. Did she miss the father figure she’d had in her life?
    At least