When I entered the drawing room, I found him standing near the cold fireplace, his arms crossed, waiting.
I missed Austen’s smile. I missed the way he used to playfully tease me and bring me gifts and sit with me for hours, talking about nothing and everything.
Now, he scowled and acted like I was an inconvenience.
The drawing room was decorated much differently than my own. Mother kept the furnishings in ours up-to-date and changed the wall color whenever she felt the need. Austen’s drawing room looked exactly as it had fourteen years ago when his parents died. The entire house was like a time capsule.
“Should we take a seat?” I asked him.
“Just tell me what you want so I can refuse you and then get on with my day.”
“Hiding in your study? Pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist?”
“Did you come here to badger me in my own home?”
“Where else can I badger you?”
“Tell me what you want.”
“It’s not what I want—it’s what I need. Ineedto know if my sister is the woman who will be killed on November 9th. And the only way I can do that is if I go to 13 Miller’s Court to see if she’s living there.”
“And if she is?”
“I’ll find a way to get her out of there.”
“You’ll change history and forfeit your time here even sooner.” There was something in the tone of his voice that I hadn’t heard before, or perhaps I hadn’t wanted to hear.
I stared at him, surprised. “Are you angry with me for choosing my other path?”
“What?”
It all returned to me, like a movie playing across a flickering screen in my mind’s eye. The day before we’d learned about his parents’ death was the day I had told Austen that I had to make a choice when I turned twenty-five—and I’d told him I was choosing my other path. Even then, I’d recognized that all my hopes and dreams were centered on that life. I suddenly recalled how he’d left me in the garden, confused and angry at my words. I planned to go to him, to try to make him understand. But then, we’d heard about his parents the next day and that had overshadowed our previous conversation.
I’d always assumed his anger had to do with his parents’ death.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
“The day before we learned about your parents,” I said, slowly, trying to remember all the details as I studied him. “I told you that I wasn’t staying here, and you got upset.”
He stared at me but didn’t respond.
“Is that why you’ve been pushing me away all these years, Austen? I thought it was simply because of your grief. Now I’m not so sure.”
“You didn’t even give me a chance.”
My lips parted. “What?”
He ran his hand through his hair and walked to the window. “You made up your mind that you were choosing the other path, and you rejected me and everything about this life.”
“Rejectedyou?” I was at a loss for words. “You’vebeen rejecting me!”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said, not looking at me. “I was a foolish child who thought the world was a better place. I quickly learned that anything I loved would be taken from me, so it was easier not to care.”
I walked to him, uncertain. “Fourteen years ago, I knew it mattered to you. But since then, you’ve done a good job showing me it didn’t.”
He turned to me then, and I saw the truth in his eyes. It mattered far more than I’d ever realized—far more than maybe he even wanted to acknowledge.
I took a step back, shocked that I’d never noticed it before.
