Agnes poured tea with the solemn concentration of a woman performing a sacred rite, though I knew her well enough to recognize the quiet surveillance beneath it. Her gaze lingered on my hands, my normal complexion, the ribbon at my throat, the amount of sunlight touching my face, and the untouched sandwich waiting on the little plate beside me.
“I am eating,” I said before she could scold me.
“You are looking at it,” she replied. “That is not the same thing.”
I picked up the sandwich and took an obedient bite.
Agnes gave a terse nod, though her eyes softened as she watched me. I knew she was remembering the same thing I was—the scalpel, the table, the blood, the stubborn miracle of lungs continuing to move when they had every right to stop. Perhaps none of us would ever fully leave that room. Perhaps some part of us would always remain there beneath the lantern light, opened and remade, held together by thread,root, and the desperate hands of a woman who had refused to lose us.
A shadow fell across the path.
I glanced up to find Nicholas standing beneath the arbor, framed by cascades of wisteria and summer light.
Breath left me with the same startling force it always did when I saw him unexpectedly, though now the ache that followed was no longer the hollow pain of missing what I did not remember.
My husband, alive and standing in the garden we had once planned together, the sun touching the dark waves of his hair and catching in the amber of his eyes.
He looked well, though not unchanged. None of us had escaped that.
The green ascot at his throat was tied perfectly neat, its velvet a darker shade than my ribbon but close enough to make Agnes sniffle every time she saw us standing beside one another. Beneath it lived the scar I had given him, and beneath that, the graft Agnes had made to save him. Sometimes, when the light struck just so, I could see the faintest pulse of green moving beneath his skin, a secret rhythm answering the one beneath my own.
He caught me staring and arched a brow. “Am I in trouble?”
“I was merely admiring your vanity.”
“My vanity?”
“You are looking quite dashing today.”
His mouth curved. “A man must have standards.”
“A man with a vine in his throat especially.”
“Naturally.”
Agnes made a faint sound of disapproval over her teacup. “I do wish the two of you would not discuss your throats at tea.”
Nicholas glanced at her. “Come now, Agnes. We are only admiring your skill.”
“And I regret nothing except allowing either of you to recover enough to be insolent.”
I laughed, and the sound surprised me with its ease.
Nicholas crossed the path toward me, moving with that familiar controlled grace that had once made him seem untouchable. Now I knew better. I knew the vulnerable places beneath his restraint, the grief he had carried, the love he had held, the terrible tenderness that had made a monster of him long before any vine touched his flesh.
He stopped before me and extended his hand.
I placed my hand in his without hesitation.
His fingers closed around mine, warm and steady and alive.
“Come walk with me,” he said.
I glanced toward Agnes. “Will you permit it, or must I finish the entire tray first?”
Agnes narrowed her eyes with theatrical severity, then waved us away. “Go on, then, but slowly. Your wounds are still healing, remember.”
“Yes, mother,” Nicholas said.
