He glanced at the pond. “Are you going to watch me go?”
“I hadn’t been sure, but yes. I need to. I was here when you arrived. I will be here to see you out.”
“Promise me something?”
She cocked her head. “It depends on the request.”
“Please finish your book, I mean it, really prove it to yourself. I know Jane Austen is going to be hot shit someday, and good for her, but why not you too? I want to go to some bookstore and find your words there, printed on a page.”
“I will try my best.”
“Try?”
“Oh, fine.” She stamped a foot. “I’ll bloody well do it, and you shall be able to buy that bloody book, put it on your pillow, and I’ll haunt your dreams for the rest of your life. Happy? Is that the promise you want?”
“That, Pocket Rocket, is exactly the promise I wanted. I want you haunting my dreams every night—becoming my own personal sleep paralysis demon.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“But you know you are going to write a book. And I’ll read every word.”
“Very well.” She pushed back her shoulders. “Goodbye, Tucker Taylor. I’m very glad we have met and married. Also, my middle name? It’s Hortense.”
His brows lifted. “You’re joking. Is that even a real name?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I told you it was horrid.”
“On you? It’s lovely. Goodbye, Elizabeth Hortense Wooddash. I’m very glad to have met you, married you, and I hope you have the best widowhood in all of England.”
He took a step into the water. The frogs stopped croaking. The temperature was cool, but not as cold as he had imagined. He took a step and another and another. Nothing happened. Nothing looked different. His heart pounded. Maybe it was all a fluke. Maybe he’d be walking home with Lizzy tonight. Did he want that?
There, just beyond his position, a light emerged from the water. It took him a moment to grasp that it wasn’t a figment of his imagination; it was real. He turned back and saw Lizzy on the hill, her hand covering her mouth. She looked smaller, fragile somehow. He hadn’t even told her the most important truth of all. He’d been afraid it would hurt her. That it would hurt him.But that was cowardly. He knew he had to do it. They’d begun with honesty. They needed to end there too.
“Lizzy. I—”
But he was gone. The night sky vanished. He fought to keep his eyes open, but the pressure was too great. A sickening sensation bore down, his internal compass gone. There was no left or right or up or down. East turned west. North became south.
And then silence. The scent of antiseptic assaulted his nostrils. A rhythmic beeping was in the background.
He tried to open his eyes but they were so heavy. He gritted his teeth and put everything he had into it, and... there. Fluorescent light. He wasn’t in a pond. But he wasn’t in some medieval plague village either. He was in a hospital bed, and that beeping? It was a heart monitor. He glanced over and there was Nora, in a chair, reading by the window.
“Nor?” His voice was so weak. Why was his mouth so dry?
But it was enough. She heard him. The book tipped from her hands as she stumbled to her feet. “Tucker? Tuck! Oh my God, you’re awake.”
“Hey, sis.” He forced a grin. “I’m back.”
Chapter Thirty
All the very best love stories end tragically.
Lizzy repeated this refrain to herself in the days and weeks after Tuck disappeared from her life.
The pain she felt upon waking, lingering until it was time to retire in the evening, the sense that she was missing a part of her body... this was how it was supposed to be. For who could have a love affair and walk away unscathed?
The fact she hurt meant it was a good thing. She should be grateful for the pain, glad that it happened, happy it was over. Now she could get on with her business of widowhood.
Should.Such a useless word. It lingered in the realm of missed opportunities, dwelling on what could have been but wasn’t. It should be relegated to the same trash heap as the wordtry.
