23
Maggie hadn’t hadthe wherewithal to be terribly social for the two weeks following Harry’s…uh…re-death. She hadn’t wanted to stay in Hawaii, either. After saying goodbye to Rinne and Ally, she caught the next plane off the island and went home.
Home-ish, anyway.
First, she went to France. Wandering around the museum that was once her childhood home, she had to keep her tears to herself. It made the tour guides uncomfortable. Standing in front of a tufted bench she remembered sitting on and reading fairytales to young Henri and the other children, though, she found herself lost in her bittersweet memories.
Henri the Third had apparently lived a wild goddamn life. The flamboyant boy had briefly been the King of France, holding lavish and crazy parties, kept an entourage of male lovers, and eventually wound up being assassinated.
Wild, but brief. All of the children she remembered had died young, leaving Catherine de Medici as de facto Queen of France for most of her life. Bitch. Oh, well. Couldn’t be helped.
She supposed she could raise Medici from the grave just to give her a talking-to, but there wasn’t a point. Besides, that grudge was well and truly over.
There was a strange kind of closure, though, walking the halls of her old home. She took the tour several times over the course of a week, giving the staff some kind of line about how she was researching family lines, and she was distantly related to King Henri the Second. It was mostly true.
She even visited his grave, knowing the carved sarcophagus was empty. But it was nice to see his face again, even if it was made of marble. But after a while, the portraits and the furniture didn’t hold any sway over her anymore, and she left.
And traveled to the next spot in her past that she knew she had to see again.
The castle in Germany.
Hiscastle.
It had taken her several weeks to figure out where it was—or rather, what was left of it. What she remembered of its towering spires and vast halls were now crumbling bits of foundation and overgrown weeds on the jagged remains of rock walls.
She did a bit of research and found out that it had burned to the ground in 1561. She knew it hadn’t been by accident. Sitting down on a boulder, she looked out over the mountain range beyond the valley on which the castle had once stood. She could see the spot where she’d jumped and fallen to her first death.
Opening her bag, she reached in to grab the sandwich she’d packed. The ruins were a bit of a hike from the road, now part of a national park. Well, half a sandwich, anyway. Algernon had already gotten into the other half and was munching away on the crust of what was left. He jumped from the bag, dragging his food with him, and sat down on in a sunny spot on the stone beside her.
He loved anywhere that was warm. Made sense. He had no body heat of his own.
It felt weird, being out in the world by herself, her familiar notwithstanding. With Harry gone, it left her alone to her thoughts more than she liked. But she was supposed it was good for her. This was the time she needed to sort things out, wasn’t it? All this closure?
But it didn’t feel right.
Not really.
Something was missing. She frowned. No, not something. Someone.
Picking up her phone, she took a picture of the ruins of the castle whose name had even been lost to time, and, surprised that she had cell signal, texted it to a number she briefly had debated deleting, but then realized she needed it for more reasons than one.
She followed it with “The old stomping grounds definitely have looked better.”
Three dots began to cycle, then stop. Then cycled, then stopped. Then cycled, then stopped. Maggie laughed, fishing out a soda from her bag, as she watched a visual depiction of someone struggling for words.
Then finally, a message came through.
Gideon: I think it’s an improvement.
It’d been nearly a year since she left Boston. In all that time, she hadn’t heard a peep from him. Her cellphone bill was always paid, and there was always space on her credit card. It was so strange seeing his name on her phone.
Stranger still that she was smiling.
She wrote back. “I miss Harry.”
Gideon: “I know. I’m sorry.” A pause, and then three dots appeared and disappeared as he clearly grappled with something. Then, the dots went away, and nothing came through.
She frowned. “What?”