“I want to leave this place.”
So I walked her outside of the building and into the sunshine. A few puffy white clouds in a clear blue autumn sky displayed above our heads. We both looked up at it and I imagined we were both thinking the same thought that didn’t need to be expressed out loud. This day was very much like the final day of George Morrison’s life.
I sat at the table in our hotel room and stared at the box. A box that held some small parts of my father inside it. So many emotions were boiling around inside my head. Things I’d put aside over the years because the passage of time does dull the ache when you have to live daily life. Also, I’d been a child when he’d died, so the more years that passed without him, made the time I’d had with my father become shorter by comparison. In a way, death is easier than letting go. When the person is gone, you have no choice but to accept that fact. Death is final. When they are still alive but lost to you, the grief stays alive.
But Mum had had many wonderful years with my dad. I thought about Neil, and how it would be for me if something like this happened to us. If he was just…gone. And there was never another chance to be together again. I shuddered. Yeah, G&T’s every day didn’t seem like something that far off the mark, when I put it in my terms. My mother had lost her husband, the father of her children, the love of her life. Who was I to judge how she handled her grief? I didn’t even know how I would present this—what should I even call it?—portion of my dad to my mother, when we arrived back home.
“Neil, I can’t bring him back to Mum in this…box. There has to be something better we can find.”
His response was to bring his hand up to the back of my neck and rub with his thumb gently back and forth. He’d been so good about everything, showing me, with his quiet strength and support, how much he loved me, and my family. I’d done a number on Neil when I’d left him six years ago. I realized now, how much my abandonment had hurt him to the point he was unreasonably worried about me going anywhere without him. I suppose he was still afraid I might not come back.
This was something I agonized over each time I saw the signs of his obsessive worry about me. It made me feel guilty and I didn’t like feeling that way. I knew he had me on surveillance in his office at work, that he could watch me at my station and hear me talking to clients and such. I was being patient with him for now, but I didn’t think it was healthy for us either.
“I saw some shops on the street like antiques and such. Maybe you can find something suitable in one of them. You want to go right now?” he asked.
“You don’t have to come with me, you know.” I sighed without meaning to. “I’ll be fine by myself. It’s just a block of shops on the same street as this hotel.”
He shook his head at me and frowned. “I’m coming with—”
“You don’t have to worry anymore, babe. I know I hurt you badly, and I own up to what I did to you by leaving like that.” I put my hand on his face. “But I’ll always come back to you. I love you and I can’t live without you. There is nothing that will ever keep me from my man again. I’ll always come back to you. Promise.”
The look he gave me nearly split my heart in two. His eyes turned glassy and he brought his head to my lap and just rested it there, saying nothing. He reached for my hand and clasped it against his lips. I ran my fingers through his hair with my other hand and we just stayed like that for a while. No words needed. We communicated just fine without them.
Decisions were permanent, and although we could regret some of them, we couldn’t call them back. I had made some poor ones. Neil had too. I guess the best we could hope for, was to love each other as honestly as possible on each day we had left together. And hope for many, many long years of those days in our future.
He still had his head in my lap when he asked, “I want to take you somewhere before we go back to London. Please?”
“Of course,
my darling,” I answered immediately. “Wherever you go, so must I.”
25
From Washington D.C., Neil brought me to Scotland.
He told me he just wanted one weekend where we could rest and be together, without any distractions from work, or the myriad of other problems that had a way of taking one’s attention away from what you really wanted to be doing. He wanted me all to himself.
He’d also said that it was time for me to see his inheritance from the uncle he’d never met.
The whole idea of it still amazed me. Neil, a landowner, and from the looks of it, there was a lot of land involved.
“I can’t believe this,” I mumbled looking from the window as the car pulled into a long drive bordered with more trees.
“What can’t you believe, Cherry?” Neil was doing that thing where he liked to surprise me and gave virtually no information, just to torture me. Made me insane, but he sure seemed to be enjoying himself.
“This is a bloody estate with an enormous amount of land and, well, you made out like it was just an old house on a plot with some trees, not something out of Pride and Prejudice.”
“Is that Mr. Darcy’s house you mean?”
“Yes, it was named Pemberley, if you care to know.” I still hadn’t seen Neil’s house come into view, and was getting very impatient as I peered out the window.
“I’ll make a note of it.” He leaned over to give me a kiss on the side of my temple. “I know how you love your romance books. You’re always reading in bed.”
“And you’re always making a point to distract me when I’m trying to read in bed.”
“Damn straight, woman. Do you think I’m a moron or something?” He nuzzled my neck.
“Shhh.” I pointed stealthily in the direction of our cab driver with my finger.