Ben released him and stepped backwards. “What is this? You–you–who are you?”
“You don’t recognize me?”
Ben shook his head, hoping to clear it. “You cannot be the one I recognize. He’s dead.”
“Benjamin–” the man said gently.
Ben ignored him and turned to Fable. He didn't know if he could trust his eyes or his ears. But he could trust her. “Is this real?”
“It’s real,” she told him. “The pocket watch transported them here–
“Them? My mother’s here?” he asked on a stilled breath. He returned his attention to the man. He didn’t realize tears were streaming down his face. When he did, he did nothing to stop them.
“Yes,” the man he’d meant to kill let him know. He spoke slowly, softly, as if he feared anything more would chase Ben away. “She is here. Somewhere.”
It couldn’t be true. Could it? Ben didn’t know what he was thinking. Was this a dream? His parents weren’t dead? What? He was afraid to doubt it, to move, to breathe.
“Benjamin,” he said in a sorrowful voice. He didn’t move to go to Ben, but remained in his spot, “it’s me, your father. I’m real and I’m so very, very sorry, Son”
Son, the word echoed through Ben’s blood and shook his bones. He thought he would never hear either of his parents call him son again. Slowly, he took a tentative step toward him to have a closer look. Was it possible that this was his father? Ben resembled him–his seventeen-year older father.
Then his father reached out and wiped Ben’s tears with his thumbs. “My Benjamin.”
At the sound of his father saying his name, the floodgates opened. Ben wept and the two of them threw their arms around each other.
Did he truly have his father back? Was it possible? “Father,” he whispered, then repeated again and again as years of revenge and hatred faded into the four winds. But Ben’s turmoil and shattered past weren’t healed so easily. “What happened? Why did you never return to us?”
“I could not return on my own. I must return with the one who traveled with me, and that is your mother, otherwise the pocket watch brings me where it wants. I learned that the hard way. I had meant to use Fable to keep the lawmen away that night, instead she brought me home. I wanted to go to you and your sister…” While he spoke, tears streamed down his face. … “But I had to return here to get your mother. I was home. Just feet from Colchester House, but I couldn’t leave your mother. I had to return here, but the only way to do that was to bring back the original one who had left.”
Ben looked at Fable. She’d come into his life for a reason. He knew it, but he thought it was only for him. To bring happiness into his life. She’d already done that, but to reunite him with his father and mother was something he couldn’t truly comprehend yet.
“Maybe we should go someplace more private to sit and talk,” Fable suggested, looking around at the people slowing their place to watch the two men embracing and weeping.
They went to Tess’ Diner and as they stepped inside Ben took Fable’s hand and brought it to his lips for a kiss. “I feared I lost you.”
“I feared the same.”
“She shed buckets of tears for you,” his father added, listening.
When he saw her, Ben smiled at Bernadette and introduced her to his father. “And this is Fable Ramsey, my beloved.”
“Your beloved?” the waitress asked, staring with curiosity lifting her dark brows.
Fable gave him a nervous smile and then slipped it to his father. Ben suspected what was troubling her. But he was happy his father met Fable. He seemed fond of her, smiling at Ben when he told him how she‘d wept for him. Who wouldn’t be fond of her? She had even broken through Pru’s armor.
He sat with her opposite his father and held her hand. She tried to separate her hand from his or pull their entwined fingers under the table. But he wouldn’t let her. He was beyond thankful that he had been given another chance to make his father proud of him because of the woman he chose to wed.
And she was not one of the ladies on his sister’s list.
They agreed with Bernadette when she remarked how close they had come to reuniting yesterday.
When they ordered breakfast Ben and his father’s order made them smile that they ordered the same thing.
“How is Prudence?”
“Haughty.” There were a dozen more things Ben wanted to say. Things like; obnoxious, selfish, overbearing and more,but why upset his father? “Somehow she has managed to sink her claws into my friend–do you remember young Sudbury?”
“Of course, his father was a close friend.”
