Chapter 8
He’d stood up for her! Rhys had stood up for her. Putting Alf in his place by telling the story of a big, dim-witted man who’d raised a child other than his own. And what a story! The change that had come over Rhys. Bridie couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment but, somewhere between Rhys’s awkward interruption of Alf and the final, soft-voiced conclusion of his tale, a transformation had taken place. Gone was the the white-knuckled clench of Rhys’s fists, the haunted uncertainty in his eyes. As he’d jumped from the bench, face alight, and held out a hand to Siân, it was like seeing the real Rhys for the first time.
As Bridie lay awake—eyes wide, skin tight, trying to capture each fluttering elusive butterfly moment of change—she found a new and fragile knowledge. She knew that thi
