Too Late To Love Me I Already Left With His Twins (Lydia and Dave) novel Chapter 262

Dave POV

By the time I reached the apex of the stairs, I saw Anna waiting for me.

She stood near the entrance to a room I hadn’t noticed properly when I arrived. She looked different from the woman I knew— or, more accurately, the woman I had heard about through Lydia and the children. The polished, effortlessly composed Anna wasn’t there tonight. Her eyes were swollen around the edges, her face drawn with exhaustion, and there was something unusually serious about the way she held herself.

“Welcome,” she said quietly. “Come into the library.”

I followed her.

The library was enormous, lined with dark wooden shelves and warm recessed lighting. A massive mahogany desk occupied the center of the room, its polished surface reflecting the light from the chandelier overhead.

Anna walked behind it and sat down.

Then she gestured toward the chair opposite her.

I sat

Neither of us spoke.

She reached for a sheet of paper and slid it across the desk toward me.

I looked at it.

“What’s this?”

“Check it out.”

I picked it up.

The handwriting was hers.

At least, I assumed it was.

The first line made my eyebrows pull together.

How do we think we should tell the kids?

Below it:

Should we tell them?

Do we think this was murder or something?

Does she have any serious known enemies?

I slowly lowered the paper.

I looked at Anna.

There was something almost surreal about seeing her like this. This wasn’t the bubbly woman who had somehow become one of the children’s favourite adults. This was a woman sitting across from me trying to make decisions that could permanently shape two children’s understanding of the world.

“Let’s address the most important one first,” I said.

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Her eyebrows lifted.

“The kids.”

She nodded.

“I don’t think we should tell them right now.”

I leaned forward.

“We stick to what you already told them. Their mother is away because of work. We buy ourselves some time.”

Anna’s nose scrunched immediately.

“Hmm.”

I knew that expression.

She disagreed.

“I thought about that too,” she said. “But I don’t agree.”

“Why?”

“Because these are Lydia’s children.”

I frowned.

“And?”

“And you know how observant they are.”

I did.

Painfully well.

“They’re going to expect her to call,” Anna continued. “Maybe not immediately, but soon. And realistically, even if she wakes up tonight-which I’m praying she does-I don’t think she’s going to be physically or medically capable of jumping on a video call with them.”

I looked down at the paper.

“She has tubes. She’s in critical care.”

“Exactly.”

Anna’s fingers intertwined on the desk.

“They’re going to notice. They’ll ask why she isn’t calling. They’ll ask why nobody is letting them speak to her. Then we’d have to keep creating explanations.”

She shook her head.

“And I don’t think that’s something Lydia would want.”

I was quiet.

“She’d hate lying to them,” I said.

“Exactly.”

I rubbed my jaw.

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“Bu wouldn’t telling them the truth be too hard?”

Anna’s eyes softened.

“Of course it will.”

She didn’t sugarcoat it.

“They’re children, Dave. They’re going to be scared. They might cry. They might become angry. They might ask the same question twenty times because their brains are trying to process something they don’t understand.”

I swallowed.

“But that’s different from traumatising them.”

I looked up.

Anna nodded.

“There’s a difference between experiencing distress and being traumatised by how adults handle that distress.”

That sentence stayed with me.

She continued, her voice careful.

“If we lie and they eventually discover that their mother was critically ill while we were telling them she was simply busy, they may not only have to process what happened to Lydia. They may also have to process the fact that the adults they trusted withheld the truth.”

I exhaled slowly.

“That could affect their sense of safety.”

“Exactly.”

She tapped the paper.

“Trust. Anxiety. Uncertainty. They could start wondering what else we’re hiding whenever something feels wrong.”

I nodded.

“That’s valid.”

“But,” I added, “we can’t exactly sit them down and tell them their mother almost died.”

Anna shook her head.

“No. We don’t dump everything on them.”

I looked at her.

“So what do we do?”

“I have a solution.”

No guarantee

Dave pov

She reached for her phone.

“I know someone.”

“Who?”

She placed the phone on the desk.

“Dr. Sana agrees that we should tell them.”

My stomach tightened.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because children generally cope better with difficult realities when they’re given honest, age-appropriate information and a sense of safety around it.”

She paused.

“She said hiding it isn’t automatically protective.”

I listened.

“She explained that if they sense something is seriously wrong but everyone around them keeps pretending everything is normal, they may become more anxious. Their imagination can fill in the gaps with something worse than reality.”

I nodded slowly.

Anna continued.

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“And because they’re old enough to imderstated illness, accidents and separation, we shouldn’t treat them as if they’re incapable of understanding”

I looked toward the door.

The children were downstairs.

Probably eating.

Probably laughing.

Probably unaware that the adults upstairs were preparing to change the shape of their world.

Anna picked up the paper again.

“She gave me four rules.”

“Four?”

“Four important ones.”

She held up one finger.

“First: we need to regulate ourselves before we speak to them.”

I frowned.

“What does that mean exactly?”

“We don’t walk downstairs sobbing. We don’t start hyperventilating. We don’t make them comfort us.”

She looked directly at me.

“They’re going to look at our faces before they listen to our words.”

That hit me.

“Children co-regulate with adults,” she said. “They use the emotional state of the adults around them to judge whether they’re safe. If we look terrified, they will assume there’s something catastrophic happening even before we explain anything.”

I nodded.

“So we stay calm.”

“Calm enough to be reassuring. Not emotionless. We’re allowed to be sad. But we have to remain present and capable of answering them.”

She raised a second finger.

“Second: clear and simple truths.”

She picked up the pen.

“We don’t say, ‘Mommy isn’t feeling well.’ That’s too vague.”

“Okay.”

“We say something like, ‘Mommy was involved in a car accident. The doctors worked very hard to help her, and they were able to treat her injuries. She is unconscious right now, and the doctors are taking care of her.’”

I stared at her.

“That sounds…”

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