Summer heat had finally driven away the brisk feel of spring. Verdant foliage replaced the brilliant flowers, all dulled by the mask of industrial haze. Four weeks passed since he left Oxford and Alex knew it was time to go back. He had business to attend to, primarily deciding how he would spend the rest of his life.
“I hate to leave you, Mum,” he said as they sat on the newly built and painted bench in her back garden at dusk, sipping his father’s favorite spirit. The fragrance of her lingering flowers, lilacs and gardenias, was powerful enough to mask some of the fetid cloud of coal dust hanging heavy over the city.
“I hate to see you go, but you can’t hide here forever.” She wrapped her slim shoulders in a tartan shawl, one he recognized as a gift from his father.
Alex dropped his head. “Why do you think I’m hiding?”
“You’ve been here for nearly a month and haven’t posted or received a single letter. You’re working yourself to exhaustion, and…” She placed a comforting hand on his forearm. “Your eyes, darling, they show everything. This pain goes deeper than only your father’s passing.”
Alex said nothing. With his body exhausted, his mind couldn’t think. The thoughts keeping him up at night were not related to his career. Work would always find him, and his skills would be in demand somewhere. The family solicitor surprised him with the news that Alex had more than enough money in trust to live comfortably for at least a year without employment of any sort.
It was Fern haunting his dreams. Memories of her soft skin, how she came alive in the lantern light of the rotunda. The sensation of his body lost in hers, possessing her completely while he gave himself to her. How he felt like more of a man in her presence, like he had found a kindred spirit in the quirky woman from the library. Fern had unbound him, had allowed him the freedom to enjoy his life, to see a future where he could actually be happy instead of merely accomplished.
He remembered the pain when he awoke, the treachery she had committed. He could not forgive her but he could not forget her either.
“Are you going to tell me about her?” his mother asked.
Alex let out a humorless laugh. “You know me too well, Mum.”
She shrugged, taking a dainty sip of whisky. “You also talk in your sleep, dear. It’s a small house.”
He laughed, the sound echoing off the close-set houses ringing the garden.So much for my dignity, he thought wryly.
“She’s a mathematician.” His mother’s face softened when he finally spoke. “Brilliant, and kind.” He let out a low chuckle. “She’s terribly awkward, and funny. She made me happy, made me want to be a better person. And then she destroyed me,” he said, his breath hitching. “I loved her, I thought she loved me.”
“How do you know you were wrong?”
“Shelied.” He leaned on the word, the ferocity of the pain enough to make his stomach twist angrily around the whisky. “She lied to me from the very start.”
“And you fell in love with her because of this lie?”
Alex hesitated. “No, I think I fell in love with her despite it.”
An owl called over the neat gardens of Shard End as the lazy sounds of crickets mixed with distant voices calling in the street. “Your father and I used to argue about who you most favored,” Catherine said. “You looked just like him, the spitting image of your father. But you think like I do. You have my mind, for better or for worse.”
“Certainly for the better,” he said with a half smile. His mother was undoubtedly a brilliant woman. Had she been born in a different time and under different circumstances, he could see her studying at Oxford. His heart twisted seeing how his mother was not terribly unlike Fern.
“Andfor the worse,” she said. “Your father always hated how stubborn I was, how quick to place blame and reluctant to forgive. I fear you carry the same traits.”
“Mum, I know where you’re going with this—”
“You always wanted everything to be black and white, the solution there if you worked hard enough. You never accepted anything that wasn’t absolute and had a keen sense of right and wrong. Mathematics was such a perfect field for you, after all. You hated the gray space in between. But life exists in the in-between, all those messy, indistinct places with no easy solution.”
Alex sighed and shook his head. “I wish it were so simple—”
“You never knew about Hutchinson and his printing press, did you?” Catherine interrupted as though Alex had not even spoken. “You had just started at Oxford, you were so busy.” She pursed her lips tight then bolted the remnants of her whisky. “Gerald Hutchinson was closing his shop and offered to sell your father his press at a discount. Your father was thrilled. He had visions of expanding the business because of the new capacity. I didn’t trust Hutchinson, but Matthew convinced me it was the best thing for our family. We took out our meager savings and planned to buy the press.
“Weeks went by and I never heard more about it. When I asked how the sale was coming along, your father was evasive, wouldn’t answer my questions. He stopped coming home after work, wouldn’t let me come by the shop, was out all sorts of hours.” She sighed. “He stopped sleeping in my bed, and wouldn’t even look at me. I found notes in his pockets, addresses I did not recognize, requests for meetings late in the evening. I was certain he was having an affair.”
Alex was thunderstruck. His father, the man who loved his mother more than anything on the earth, worshiped the ground she walked on—he had beenunfaithful? The notion was incomprehensible.
“I confronted him,” Catherine continued. “He was angry, I was livid, shouted horrible things…then he began to cry. I was certain he was going to leave me.” She looked up and met his blue eyes with her own. “He told me he had lied. Hutchinson had cheated him, he had already sold the press to another man but took our money and skipped town before your father could catch him out. He was humiliated and didn’t have the heart to tell me what happened. I had warned against the deal, mind you, so he expected me to be angry. So he lied.
“He took one-off jobs wherever he could to make up the money, hence the notes and strange hours. He couldn’t sleep for fear of being found out.” Her voice shook. “When he told me the truth I was furious. I thought I’d never forgive him, not just for the lie but for the stress, the pain he caused me. It took ages for me to stop being so stubborn and forgive him.”
“You had been together for years,” Alex said, his voice low. “You had decades of shared trust, you didn’tstartwith a lie.”
“Alex, your father died a year after I forgave him.” The air hung thick around them, weighted by her words. “I wasted the last years of our time together angry, keeping him away because he was trying, in his own misguided way, to protect me. Every day, when I wake up to see the bed empty beside me, when I wish to hear his voice or see his smile… I wish I had forgiven him earlier. I wish I had been strong enough to accept he wasn’t perfect and loved him anyway.”
