“When will I meet her?” his aunt asked.
“Soon,” he said, hoping it was not a lie. He thought, with a touch of frustration, of the remaining outings Lady April had yet to arrange. Three more. He needed her to move them along, so she could reach her decision.
And he needed—God help him—to be ready when she did.
They spoke of lighter things after that. Of books and the dreadful weather and the antics of her pet cat, who stalked the window ledges like a jungle beast.
“You always did favor the heavier poets,” Aunt Eugenia obserbved with a chuckle, reaching for a worn volume on the side table. “Read to me, Theo. It has been too long since I heard you.”
He hesitated then took the book from her—an aged copy of Edmund Spenser’sThe Faerie Queene.
“Choose something hopeful,” she teased, “or I shall think you mean to depress an old woman.”
Turning a few pages, he selected a passage he had always remembered for its strange, aching beauty:
“For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”
“A good beginning,” Eugenia said, her hands folded serenely on her lap.
He continued:
“In vain it were to think to turne the streame, when roaring with the lashing raines it flowes.”
“As stubborn as you,” she said, her voice bright with teasing.
Theo gave a slight tilt of his head, the barest hint of surrender, and read on:
“But yet the end is not so desperately desperate, since by seeking still, it may be wonne.”
“Hope,” she said, her voice softer now. “There’s always hope, Theo. Even when you least believe it.”
He finished the passage, letting the final words hang between them.
Eugenia shifted, tugging her shawl tighter around her shoulders.
“When I was a girl,” she said after a moment, “I loved a young man named Jonathan. He had hair the color of ripe wheat and a laugh that could coax flowers to bloom early.”
Theo listened in stillness, the only movement the faint tightening of his jaw.
“He went to war,” she said simply. “We wrote letters—so many letters. I promised to wait. And I did. But he never came home.”
The fire cracked softly.
“I thought,” she said, staring into the flames, “that my heart would stay broken forever. But the heart… it mends. Not cleanly. Not perfectly. But it mends.”
Theo bowed his head slightly, a gesture of reverence.
“Sometimes,” Eugenia said, her smile wistful, “the cracks let the light in.”
Theo’s fingers tightened around the book’s spine before he laid it gently on the table.
He rose soon after, bending to kiss her brow and murmuring something about returning soon. She caught his hand as he straightened, giving it a small, firm squeeze.
“Don’t let fear cheat you, Theodore,” she said. “You deserve joy, even if you must fight for it.”
As he stepped back into the brittle sunlight, he drew the handkerchief from his pocket, feeling the frayed edges under his thumb. He didn’t need to look at the handkerchief to know what the haphazardly embroidered flowers, butterflies, and his crooked initials looked like, for he had every detail committed to his memory.
He folded it carefully and tucked it away. Hope, he thought grimly, was a dangerous thing. And yet, for the first time in years, he found himself wondering…
