Malcolm nodded, as he didn’t quite trust his voice at the moment. Ethan’s words were blazoned on his soul.
I bear with me always a weight.
It rests, a heavy knot of stone
Upon my neck, sinking down straight
Into the memory of you now gone.
“I bear with me always a weight,” she whispered, repeating the first line. “That poem was about you.”
He nodded again.
Ethan, for all his endless cheerfulness and unflappable eagerness, could be deeply empathetic and profound. His words had acted like honey on a burned finger, soothing the wound of Aileen’s loss.
Viola glanced again at the tombstone. “I recognize the futility of what I’m about to say—that it is too little far too late—but I am truly sorry for your loss. For the painful weight of it.”
“As am I,” he managed to say.
And those spare words, a concession to the ache inside him, breached any remaining hesitance to speak. He felt words rushing upward, spilling out, compelling him to confess the most painful irony of all.
The one that he scarcely admitted to himself, much less anyone else.
Until now.
“Loss is a terrible thing . . .griefis a terrible thing.” He looked up at the puffs of clouds chasing one another across the blue sky. “Not only does it hurt more than ye think ye can bear. But . . . it changes ye beyond recognition.”
He blinked, hating the moisture gathering in his eyes but helpless to stem it.
Viola took a tentative step closer to him. As if wishing to lend him the support of her person.
“How so?” she asked.
“Because—” His voice broke.
Malcolm paused, releasing the air in his lungs, breathing through the pain of speaking aloud words he never imagined saying.
“Because,” he repeated. “I am no longer the Malcolm who loved Aileen.”
Viola studied him, bonnet dangling from its ribbons between her clasped hands, her beautiful face brimming with compassion.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “That you are no longer the Malcolm who loved Aileen?”
How remarkable that he had garnered the attention of this extraordinary woman. He felt compelled to share his deepest thoughts with her, as if she alone could untangle them.
“Just that,” he said. “The pain of losing Aileen as I did . . . the relentless grief . . . it changed me. Imagine it like a flood. How at first, the water simply surges in, obliterating everything in its path. But as the floodwaters recede, ye see that the land is forever altered. New channels have been carved where none existed, new formations revealed.”
“And that is what happened to you?”
“Aye. It is the most bitter irony of all. Aileen died and, in a sense, the Malcolm she loved died with her. The anguish of losing her has shaped me into a different man.”
“Oh.” Viola appeared to be blinking back tears.
“’Tis the final injustice of her death. That if Aileen and I were tae meet now, I cannae say that we would be taken with one another. She would see me as too stern, too serious. And she would be correct. The man who loved her was less careworn, less philosophical. A more optimistic, buoyant human being.”
Malcolm dashed a wrist across his eyes, attempting to banish the wetness there.
“As for myself,” he continued, “I would probably see her as not serious enough . . . too eager to take risks, too carefree for the man I’ve become.” He dragged a shaking hand over his beard. “I hate that grief and loss have forced me, in a sense, tae outgrow her. That we lost the chance to age together. It’s the final, awful blow.”
