“That’s all right. You both keep running. We’ll be waiting when you’re done,” Meredith says.
Bobby looks up to meet her eyes. “Mere.”
Meredith only smiles. “It will be all right, I promise,” she says. “Now, I need to go make sure Gwen and Beth have my mother in hand.”
“I should come with you,” Bobby says quickly. “Apologize.”
“It’s unnecessary, but you may,” Meredith agrees. “She went snooping. What she found is entirely her own fault.”
Bobby blushes up to his ears. “We shouldn’t have been...”
“We’ve all been there,” Meredith says with a coy little shrug that makes Bobby choke out a true laugh. “A few games of whist, she’ll forget completely.”
“I doubt that,” Bobby says, but he rises and helps Meredith from her chair all the same.
“Be glad it wasn’t Beth and Gwen—you’d never hear the end of it,” Meredith says, leading him toward the door.
“What, you think I will now?”
Meredith looks over her shoulder with a slightly evil smirk, eyebrow raised.
“You’re awful, you know,” Bobby tells her, feeling himself smile as she cackles.
But his brief good cheer evaporates when someone knocks lightly on the door. Meredith squeezes Bobby’s hand and then lets go, opening the doors to reveal Albie waiting there, pulled up to his full height in the dim hallway. Dread creeps into Bobby’s chest as he watches Meredith lean up to give Albie a brief kiss before disappearing out the door.
Bobby scuffs a foot against the ground, bracing himself. Albie slips into the room and closes the doors behind him with a light bang. A dressing-down will feel much more fitting than Meredith’s soft, encouraging words, and he certainly deserves one, no matter what Meredith—
Albie wraps his arms around Bobby, pulling him into his chest. Bobby exhales in surprise, hesitantly wrapping his arms around Albie in return.
Then the tears he’s barely managed to withhold burst forth and he finds himself suddenly weeping into his brother’s shoulder. All the pain of the last year, and the grief, and the anger pour out on top of the hurt of seeing James run away—of realizing that he alone isn’t enough to make James want an alternate life. Heartbreak, that’s what he’s feeling. And Albie just takes it all, rubbing his back, a stoic rock.
After what feels like an eternity, his tears finally stop, and Bobby pulls back, blinking up at Albie with hazy eyes. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
“I’msorry,” Albie says. “We’ll find a way for the two of you to be together.”
Bobby shakes his head. “James won’t want to find one.”
Albie sighs, holding Bobby by the shoulders. “Then we’ll findsomeone who will,” he says firmly. “I should have said something ages ago, made it clear. I will love whoever you choose to love, and I will treat them like family just the same.”
Bobby feels one final tear slipping down his face, his chest expanding.
“We’re in this together. Gwen and Beth too. We make a good team, remember?” Albie smiles as he wipes the tear away.
“Meredith reminded me,” Bobby says hoarsely.
“Good. We’ll be okay.”
“Yeah,” Bobby says, bobbing his head. “Yeah, we will.”
Albie squeezes his shoulders. “Now, Lady Harrington is telling Beth and Gwen about the woman she was in love with at finishing school, and we’re missing it.”
“What?”Bobby exclaims.
“A schoolgirl fancy, she’s calling it. Grew out of it, apparently, but she remembers her fondly. She was just telling us about scaling the dormitory wall to sneak into her room, if you want to get in there?”
“Why are we just standing here?” Bobby asks, wiping sloppily at his nose and smiling tremulously up at his brother.
Albie laughs brightly and takes his arm, the two of them hurrying out of the office and across to the sitting room.
