They walked together through that enormous workshop, the tapestry laid out on long tables, the images Isabel Raveneau had created telling their own story—of love, war, and death, and another young girl who had donned armor and taken up the sword.
“She had enormous faith,” Diana explained. “It was her strength. You see, this image woven throughout, the trinity knot and thistle, like your medallion, the things she believed in—God, and the man she loved.”
If we lose our faith, we lose ourselves.
She stared at those images in the tapestry in the quiet stillness of the university museum. She had lost her faith when Mark died. She had walked away from it, in pain, angry. And for a long time she had lost herself.
She continued to think about that when she returned to London and she threw herself into work on the book with Trevor Allen, coordinating the marketing for the launch.
She had dinner meetings with Alec and Trevor, working weekends, and she met Danny when he first returned to London.
“I thought I picked up the scent of perfume at my flat after you were there,” he had teased her.
“'Splendor,' is it?” he asked with a grin. “In the bath and on the sheets.” He had given her that look then. “Nice.”
She hadn't worn that scent or any perfume since that horrific evening at the Blue Anchor. In that way that something stayed in one's memory—a sound, a song, or a particular scent—it reminded her of that horrible night and the chaos on the patio where four people had died. Things that mattered.
Over the months, she and Danny met occasionally for drinks, or supper when they were both in London. He became a connection to James, someone who understood the reasons he had to go back, who had experienced some of the same things.
“He'll be all right, you know,” he tried to reassure her. “But he needed to go back, you see. It wasn't finished, and that's the hardest thing for all of us. It's not the risk that it might be us one day, it's the ones we leave behind.”
Danny became a good friend, someone who understood in ways that Alec Cameron didn't.
On a trip to New York a couple of months earlier, she had connected back with a client they had worked with a few years before. He was an avid rock-and-roll collector and the book had been about some of the rock artists he had worked with. He had a rare, original studio recording of 'Running on Empty.'
It took several conversations and her agreement to take a look at another book project he was working on, in exchange for that original recording. She had it sent to Danny, a way of saying 'thank you.'
Then, in that way that things had of speeding up, everything happening at once, even with the best-laid plans, Cate's book went into production, marketing kicked into high gear, and it was coming out in twelve different languages, with the e-book version available in thirty days.
They had been burning the midnight oil for weeks, and now it was on the shelves with that line out the door and down the street in the drizzling rain eight days before Christmas.
Everything that could go wrong hadn't materialized, except for that delayed delivery. Clerks appeared rolling book carts from the back of the store. Copies of Cate's books were stacked on the table, and Trevor Allen smiled at the next customer. He was successful in his own right, but the collaboration would boost his career to the next level. Cate would have liked that.
Editors didn't usually attend book signings. Those were all about the book and the author. But she had wanted to make certain every detail had been handled, and it was the same location where Cate had her first book signing.
“Has anyone ever mentioned that you can be very stubborn about things?” Trevor had asked as she had gone down the mental checklist again, ticking off each item—plenty of copies of the book now, several pens in front of Trevor, bottled water, several staff on hand to assist customers.
She smiled to herself. She could probably exit now, leave the rest to Trevor and the store managers, grab something to eat, then head back to the office. She turned toward the entrance, and suddenly stopped.
Customers pushed past her—students with backpacks, older men who waited in line for a copy, several women, older people, younger people who had never known Cate but identified with the stories she had written and with a woman who had kicked down barriers for women in journalism, stopping in for a copy their teacher or mother had recommended, chatting among themselves with cups of coffee from the coffee bar in their hands.
And a face in the crowd.
The long military overcoat with brass buttons and the uniform just visible at the collar, had replaced jeans, the sweatshirt, and the leather jacket.
He was leaner, older, even though it had been less than a year. It was there in the expression on his face, in his eyes, of things he had seen and done, and had spoken about only once in the middle of the night, the raw and dark places that had brought them together.
There had been no text message, no Skype conversation, no hastily sent e-mail that he was back. It didn't matter.
Thank you, God, she silently whispered, then took a deep breath and slowly walked toward him.
“Danny didn't mention that you were back.”
A tired smile, and some other expression behind the smile—weariness and the shadows of other things.
“The last few days have been chaos. Communication was sketchy until we got to Germany, a late flight, then debrief...”
He knew he was staring at her, but he needed to see the deep blue of her eyes that he'd thought about a hundred times, convincing himself they weren't that color. They were. And a hundred other things he remembered from that time in France.
