“Come inside me,” Maddy demands, and those few words are all it takes. Molten heat surges up my body, boiling over like a volcano, and then I empty every last desperate ounce between her thighs. On and on.
It lasts a long, long time.
Long enough that I’m probably dehydrated.
But when I collapse down onto the bed beside my girl, sticky and sore… I’ve never felt better.
* * *
Five years later
“Look at this!” Maddy says, stopping beside a stone wall and bouncing our son on her hip. She points at the ivy climbing up the wall with grasping tendrils, but our son is too busy playing with a fistful of her caramel hair to pay attention.
I know how he feels.
“Look at this plant, Harry. Do you like these leaves?”
Standing beside my wife and child, I stuff my hands in my pockets and hide a smile. Truth be told, Maddy herself doesn’t have any particular awe for plants. She knows thatIlove them, and so she makes a heroic effort to show enthusiasm too, but really it’s a demonstration of her love forme.
Every time she stops and tries to show Harry a moss or a wildflower, my chest glows with affection. And every time our toddler fails to take an interest, I have to fight tooth and nail to hide my amusement.
“Perhaps he’s not a botanist,” I suggest for the dozenth time.
Maddy blows out a breath and turns away from the wall, squinting into the late morning spring sunshine. “Or perhaps notyet.”
I hum, noncommittal.
The truth is, our son is free to love whatever lights him up inside. Maddy and I are in agreement about this, because we’ve both found that for ourselves. For Maddy, it’s the array of new towns and cities and wildernesses we travel to each year, losing ourselves in the thrill of adventure. For me, it’s plants.
And her. Always her.
This morning, the trees lining this country path are a riot of pink and white blossoms. Birds flit busily between their branches, carrying twigs and scraps of fur to make nests, while emerald hills roll away into the distance. The sea is distant, a strip of pale blue on the horizon, but we’re not far now. It’s been a long time since we came back to the manor to visit, but I could follow this path to the land bridge with my eyes closed.
“Is your leg okay?” Maddy murmurs, mistaking my quiet for hidden pain.
“Fine,” I assure her.
I’m not in pain. I’m nostalgic, replaying the memories of our other times spent in the manor on that windswept isle. The long,hazy summer nights. One memorable white Christmas. Our first nights together, and later on, the greenhouse where I proposed…
“Come on.” Maddy plants a big kiss on Harry’s cheek and sets off down the path. “Let’s get your dad into a hot bath.”
“I’m fine,” I call after her, following at a leisurely pace, and it’s true. Our bags were sent on ahead, and there’s nothing weighing me down except the clothes on my back. After so many years buried under the weight of guilt and grief, it’s a blissful relief.
I still miss my friends, of course. I’ll always miss them like an amputated limb. And I’m still chipping away at the piles and piles of our expedition notebooks, writing up our lives’ work.
But I’m not trapped any more. Not frozen in misery.
“Keep up,” Maddy sing-songs, and I chuckle before quickening my pace. The sunshine is golden, and the breeze is fresh. My cane clacks against the stone path, and the island with its manor comes into sight.
Home.
Or as close as a building can get. My real home turns around to poke her tongue out at me over her shoulder. My son giggles, his fat little fists waving. Grinning wide, I stride faster to catch up.
There are so many places to travel. So many plants to study; so many nights to spend worshiping my wife.
Really, we’ve just begun.
* * *
