A hint of a smile hovered around his father’s lips and he nodded, but he said nothing. It appeared Fable and his father had become friends. He spoke very casually to her, calling her Fable instead of Miss Ramsey. Of course his father liked her, Ben thought watching her lift her fork to her open mouth. She closed her eyes as if she missed pancakes slathered in butter and sweet syrup more than she missed anything else. She opened her eyes and plucked a slice of bacon from her plate then shoved it into her already full mouth. Cheeks bulging, she looked up to find him staring at her with warm amusement in his smile.
He laughed softly and took a bite of his omelet.
“You seem happy, Son.”
Ben looked across the table and set his fork down. “I’m happier than I’ve been since you left. I grew up without you. Your death shaped me. Before Fable came into my life–even after, all I wanted to do was fight. Almost dying on the battlefield helped me live. But my lust for Jacobite blood grew like a dark disease within me. Happiness was not something I sought.” He set his gaze on her nibbling on more bacon. “And then light burst through the darkness and I lived again.” She looked up fromher food. His heart sounded in his ears. “When I first awoke in Central Park, I thought I was still home and that I’d lost you forever. Dying would be less painful. I will not lose you again, Fable.” He wanted her to know it and he wanted his father to know as well.
“Ben,” she said his name softly, meaningfully. “Try this.” She held out her cup to him. It was covered with a lid, and in the lid an X was cut to fit a thin tube from which to suck.
“What is it?”
“Cola.”
He would have drank no matter what was in the cup. She had but to ask. He didn’t care if he’d fallen for her without any hope of return. He didn’t want to be anywhere without her.
He bent his head and put his lips to the tube and sucked. At the same time, she inclined mouth to his ear. “I love you.”
His head was reeling, either from the sweet, fizzy, refreshing drink, or from her warm breath against his temple, her words settling on his scarred heart.
He let go of the tube and smiled at her, then turned to his father. “I’m happy now.”
“Son, I would have you know there was nothing I could have done. I had to follow your mother. Even if it meant leaving you and your sister. I knew you would both be well cared for.”
A cold, dreary day in December drifted through Ben’s memory, when he and Prudence were thrown out of their home by Lord Addington.
“I understand,” he told his father, and he did understand. He’d followed Fable into her future, and he would do it over again. Fortunately he was able to find her–and get his father back also. He wasn’t about to waste more time being angry or resentful over something he, himself, had done.
“Let’s put all effort into finding her, Father.”
His father stopped eating and wiped a tear before it fell onto his plate.
“What is it?” Ben asked him.
“There were days I wasn’t certain I would ever hear you or your sister call me that again.”
Ben nodded, understanding and wiped his own eyes. His heart swelled with affection for Fable when he felt her hand along his back. She sought to comfort him. The gesture was so unfamiliar Ben didn’t know how to react besides to gaze at her as if she was the answer to his prayers dropped from the heavens at his feet.
He smiled yet again, and then returned his attention to his father. “We will find Mum and then go home to Prudence. I think she may never leave Colchester House once you’re home.”
His father agreed with a chuckle, then “I will remain here while you two do whatever else you feel would help us find her.”
“No, I’m not leaving you when I just found you after seventeen years.”
Fable agreed not to separate, and went back to eating. When they were done, Bernadette suggested they have some coffee. Ben remembered Stephen buying coffee beans and making Fable coffee at his request. He remembered how she had invited the steward to sit and drink his coffee with her at the duke’s table. He smiled now recalling how stunned and angry Prudence had been…and how easily Fable had won her over with a simple compliment. Had she done the same to his father?
“Fable,” Bernadette said, handing Fable two little yellow paper packets. “Try these instead of having more sugar in your coffee. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but try not to consume any more sweets today. He’s a nice guy,” she said, pointing to Ben, “and I’d hate to see him lose you again.”
“All right,” Fable agreed, “but what’s wrong with sweets?”
Bernadette stared at her and then blinked. “Diabetes? Didn’t your mother ever warn you against so much sugar?”
Fable shook her head. “As you know we had no money for food, and when we did, we didn’t waste it on food that had no value. This was a treat.”
Ben found that he couldn’t swallow with his heart in his throat. Of course, he felt pity for Fable, but what he felt more now that he’d come to know her, was how little she pitied herself. She spoke to Bernadette with a soft, satisfied smile. She had lacked everything and yet, she lacked nothing. Contentment shaped her mouth and gratefulness sparked her eyes with life. She made him want to live and not die on the battlefield. She was balm to his weary soul.
A few moments later, when Bernadette overheard them about their search for Dorothea West, she offered them her phone to search her name. None of them knew what to do with the apparatus. Fable was able to make a set of numbers appear on what she called the screen. But then handed it back to Bernadette. “I don’t know anyone to call.”
Bernadette sat with them and wrote his mother’s name with the alphabet scrambled on tiny buttons. Ben and his father stared at the device in awe and surprise that such a thing existed. It could call someone, tell you who someone was, where they were, and how much they owed. It spoke, and even had a name. But it had no information on his mother. When Bernadette went on her break, she invited Fable to sit with her at the counter while she searched herphone.
