He touched the boy’s face. “That’s like asking why I’m tall and why you’re short. Why your mother is beautiful and that woman over there is still gawking. Sometimes things happen. Sometimes bad men win. Then sometimes, sometimes, judgement comes, and everything is made good again.”
“Oh.” Chris frowned and then turned back toward the approaching island.
The attention of a child.
“Look at the foam cresting on the water. Mrs. Wilky, Master Wilky, this is why we have to have days like this. We are made to enjoy the water and the sun, all these creations. We live to remember this joy, not the bad.”
Chris reached back and grabbed Wycliff’s jaw and leaned his forehead to Wycliff’s. “You talk smart. That’s what Grampa says.”
“Yes, I’ve been told that.”
“Grown-folk things. That’s what Gama says.”
Ruth’s smile possessed a smile.
It hit him. The elusive peace Wycliff had been chasing was here in his arms. He needed to protect it at all cost.
The bad men that threatened this peace had to be finished sooner.
Adam—his memories and his faults—also needed to die.
Then Wycliff would be resurrected as a friend, Ruth and Christopher’s friend.
He could be that and be content.
But Ruth was a truthteller.
Truthtellers needed truth.
Why did the truth and peace have to be diametrically opposed?
Why did grown-up things have to be so hard?
…
I truly needed opera glasses, something on a chain that I could slip on and off my nose with ease to avoid a headache and enjoy wonderful Vauxhall Gardens. The colors, the sights and sounds of the island, were brilliant.
This place was big, loud, and bright. It was wonderful. I purposed to be me, the me before all the bad, before Gretna Green, before everything. I’d be the me who’d talked to a cute boy on the docks.
“Twirl me, Wycliff.”
“What, Ruth?”
“Twirl me, my lord.”
“What? Now?”
Gripping Wycliff’s hand so tight, I spun myself, then he caught on and whirled me past the musical hexagonal stand.
A horn sounded. The notes vibrated through me.
Chris jumped up and down as I fluttered about Wycliff. I moved so close to him that I could be a part of his waistcoat. I definitely wore his fragrant Bay Rum cologne.
The baron smiled, a full one with his kissable lips.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t seem to mind.
I felt nonsensical having told him to leave and never come back. He was kind, and I was blessed.
