“Your father did not leave you,” she said gently.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
Anne exhaled slowly, looking up. “I survived grief once. Barely, some days. I do not believe I could survive grief like that a second time.”
Eleanor’s expression softened into something deeply understanding. “I think it might already be too late for that. You are afraid of losing your husband as it is.” She squeezed her arm lightly after a moment. “You know, there is a difference between protecting yourself and imprisoning yourself.”
Anne gave a quiet, humorless laugh, then her smile faded again. “I just…” She hesitated. “Sometimes he looks at me, and for a moment I think perhaps I could trust happiness again.”
“And then?”
“Then I remember what it cost me last time.”
Eleanor remained quiet after that, allowing the silence to settle instead of rushing to fill it.
The gardens stretched wide around them, late afternoon slipping gradually toward evening, though Anne barely noticed any of it. She hardly ever spoke of her father. She hardly ever dared, but now that she had started, she did not know if she could stop.
After several moments, Eleanor spoke again, her voice gentler than before. “You rarely talk about it anymore.”
Anne knew immediately what she meant. Her father, the grief that had rearranged her life so completely that she still sometimes failed to recognize herself inside of it.
“There is not much left to say,” she murmured.
Eleanor gave her a look that suggested she disagreed entirely. “There usually is. You simply stop letting people ask.”
Anne looked down at the gravel path beneath them. For a moment, she considered dismissing her friend’s words. Instead, she found herself unexpectedly tired of carrying her grief so privately, tired of pretending it no longer reached into parts of her life it clearly still controlled.
“It happened so quickly,” she said. “He had been tired for weeks. Not seriously unwell, only… tired. He kept dismissing it. He hated being fussed over.”
“That sounds familiar,” Eleanor remarked softly.
Anne laughed faintly under her breath. “Yes. It is something we always had in common.” The smile disappeared almost immediately. “Then one morning, everything changed. He collapsed.”
The memory still hurt.
“The physician came,” she rasped. “Then another. Everyone kept speaking quietly, as though lowering their voices might somehow change the outcome. I remember thinking someone would tell me everything was fine. I kept waiting for it.” Her throat tightened slightly. “But no one did.”
Eleanor rubbed her arm soothingly.
“I stayed beside him for hours.” Anne’s breath hitched. “Sometimes he slept. Sometimes he pretended everything was normal. He even apologized for frightening me.”
“Oh, Anne.”
“He knew,” she sighed. “Before anyone said it aloud, I think he knew. I wish he had told me, so that I could have been more prepared for it.”
The ache of it settled between them.
“What happened?” Eleanor asked softly.
Anne hesitated. If her father knew what she had done, he would not have been proud of her at all.
“The last proper conversation we had… he told me not to stop living after him.” She chuckled under her breath, though there was no humor in it. “I remember thinking it was a ridiculous thing to say. As though there could be a version of my life that continued normally afterward.”
The wind stirred lightly through the gardens around them.
“He asked me to promise to keep riding,” she said quietly. “To stay near the horses, to stop hiding from happiness because of fear.” Her eyes burned slightly. “I promised him, and then the moment he was gone, I broke every part of it. For months, everything felt unbearable. People expect grief to look soft and graceful. They expect sadness. No one tells you how angry it makes you.”
