I watch Isaac walk away, heading through the trees and taking a different path back towards the track that he’s driven down about a mile away. He’s wrapped up, heading out under the guise of needing a walk, and given that the castle’s in mourning no one is going to question it.
Blair’s resilient. She’s strong. She can be emotionless and cold. She can be too tough, too selfless, too insular. And she hurts.
I don’t want to be here now. I want to be with her, holding her, there for her to shout at, hit, cry to. All of that. And I know she’ll have Isaac and I’m jealous that he can be there and I’m here, watching him leave. Watching him head back to the woman I’m in love with.
For the first time in my life, I feel a pain I’ve only heard of. I’m lost.
I want to be found.
Part Three
March
“In March, winter is holding back and spring is pulling forward. Something holds and something pulls inside of us too.”- Jean Hersey
Chapter Thirteen
Blair
It’s been longer than I can remember since I saw my mother in the stables. When I was a little girl, and she had fewer commitments, she’d spend time out here, grooming the horses, maintaining tack, mucking out. This was her safe space, the place where she would come to when she wanted to be herself.
It was my mother who taught me to ride when I think I’d only been three. The horse had been magnificent; a king in his own right, and he’d known that I was just a child, walking slowly, keeping his posture so I never felt like I was going to slip or fall, and never being skittish.
He was my mother’s choice. She picked him for me and in those early years that was how we spent time together. Snow, rain, sun, we’d head out on our horses at least twice a week when I wasn’t away at school.
Sometimes we didn’t talk. There wasn’t always the need for words, just being outside with our mounts and in the fresh air was all the communication we needed, unless there was something I needed to ask her about.
The man who was my father and her husband has been dead two days. I keep rolling the word around in my mind, every phoneme that makes up such a base word. Dead.
Not alive.
Passed away.
Suffering has ended.
The euphemisms are endless and I think between us we’ve heard every one. In the space of months both men in our nuclear family have died and now we are a matriarchy by default.
In the stables we work in silence, mucking out the stalls, checking over the horses, saddling up. There are a team of stable hands who would do this for us, but that isn’t the point of riding. It’s everything from choosing the diet to the hacks across country that take a whole day and sometimes longer, because this is where we can be.
My mother taught me more than how to ride. She taught me how to escape and this is what we’re doing now. After two days of dealing with the darkness of grief and the sympathetic words and hushed voices when all you want to do is shout and yell and cry, we’re escaping into the frigid air of the Trossachs and a long ride while my father’s advisors start a list of the options we have for his funeral and the lying in state that will doubtlessly occur so the people of the country can pay their respects.
We set off, heading away from the castle and ascending the path into the forest that surrounded one side of the loch, only becoming thinner as the altitude rose. We don’t speak until we reach the clearing where I was with Ben the summer before and then she slows, waits for me to catch up.
“Are you okay?”
The words seem wrong given she’s lost the man who’s been her partner for more that thirty-five years. And lost isn’t the word. We will never find him.
“No.” I look at her. I’ve never lied to my mother. “And please don’t tell me that you are.”
She shakes her head. “I prepared myself for months, longer maybe, for this to happen. But you can never be prepared.”
“What are you going to do?”
She laughs and it’s a strange sound. “Look after you. That’s my priority. Support you with what you choose to do. Maybe one day be a grandmother if that’s what you choose; have a son-in-law.” She looks at me, her eyes dancing. “Or sons-in-law.”
I feel my cheeks redden and heat. “Mum…”
She shakes her head. “Don’t, Blair. Life isn’t always black and white or even shades of grey. Sometimes it’s magentas and ochres too. And you don’t always need to justify every decision or everything you feel. Sometimes you can just live.”
