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Long enough to set my hands to two small tasks and spoil both of them.
My own thoughts are not fit company.
Every time I close my eyes, I see it again—that strange, impossible light threading outward like roots seeking water, like veins beneath skin, like some hidden truth made visible.
And him.
It wasn’t only the sight of him in the breakfast room, nor the violence of what had nearly happened, but the strain of what lingered after—the colour drained from his face, the hard set of his mouth, the way he stood as though something had struck where no hand could ever reach.
He said very little, but I saw him, and some treacherous part of me couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him there. I wanted to reach out and pull him from that silence.
I tell myself I go out because the air within these walls has grown too close. Because I need wind. Space. Something open after the old, impossible truths Mannie laid at our feet.
That lie lasts until I’m halfway down the path.
After that, I don’t bother with it.
I know where I’m going long before I let myself name it.
The little bank where the primroses come in spring lies beyond the rise, tucked where the land softens and dips before lifting again toward the trees. There’s nothing remarkable about it now. August has had its way with the place.
Despite that, I can’t look at it without seeing spring.
The first time I saw him again after all these years, it was here.
Broad-shouldered, sun-browned, and possessed now of a rougher, more dangerous handsomeness than I remembered, standing among primroses. I’d thought then that the strangest part of the day was not the place itself, nor even finding him in it, but how wholly he belonged there.
It’s not the strangest part now.
The wind catches at the edge of my shawl as I crest the rise, and I’m held fast by the sight of him.
He stands a little way off, one hand braced against the low stone wall that borders the slope.
I ought to turn back.
The thought rises cleanly, sensibly, but I ignore it.
“James.”
He turns at the sound of his name and starts, just enough to tell me I’ve dragged him from thoughts far removed from this place. The surprise that crosses his face is so unguarded it strikes me harder than any easy charm could have.
“Ellen?”
My name sounds roughened in him. By weariness, perhaps. Or the plain fact of finding me here when he hadn’t expected me at all. He looks as though he hasn’t slept. As though sleep came near him and thought better of it.
I draw nearer. “My apologies for sneakin’ up on you.”
His mouth nearly bends toward a smile. “I seem to recall you did some sneakin’ the last time we found ourselves in this very spot.”
“That was different.”
“Aye?” he says, the word touched with the faintest thread of humour. “It didnae feel so different from where I was standin’.”
He straightens then, though not fully, as if his body objects to the effort. “Though I suppose I was elsewhere then, too.”
The smile never quite settles. Up close, he looks worse. There’s a darkening bruise along his jaw I hadn’t seen clearly this morning, and a cut hidden behind tendrils of hair.
“You should be restin’,” I say.
