The last note faded into silence. They sat there, the echo of the song between them, both remembering different mothers, different times, when life had been simpler and gardens were just gardens, not metaphors for everything lost.
"Your mother had a beautiful voice," Gabriel said quietly.
"You remember."
"I remember everything about that time. It was the last period of my life when I was genuinely happy."
"That's not true."
"Isn't it?"
"You were happy at Eton. Your letters, before they stopped, were full of adventures."
"I was pretending."
"You were happy during that last summer. Before you left."
"I was saying goodbye."
"You didn't tell me that."
"I couldn't."
"But you knew?"
"I knew something was ending. I didn't know it was everything."
Clara extracted her hand from his carefully. "It wasn't everything."
"Wasn't it?"
"We're here now."
"Yes, in my crumbling estate, with you as my servant by contract, and I, a maimed hermit hardly suitable for public view. A wretched destiny, to be sure.
“It is barely the ending.”
“Nor is it the beginning…”
“Then, to what, then, are we condemned?”
Gabriel considered. "A middle. The messy, complicated middle where nothing is clear and everything hurts but somehow we keep going anyway."
"That's disheartening."
"That's life."
"Your life, maybe."
"As opposed to your life of stolen boots and desperation?"
"I prefer to think of it as borrowed boots and determination."
"You're impossible."
"We've established that on more than one occasion.”
"It bears repeating."
