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He chuckles at that, and a flurry of notes sounds out sharp and disordered. It’s enough for me to imagine him shaking his head and closing the fallboard down along with his emotions. Good. We both need that. Whatever this has been, and however much I lived in it, I’m going home now. It was never anything more than that, irrespective of feelings I now have.
“Goodbye, Malachi.”
One last smile, one last memory thought about, and I stand to find my laptop. I end the call in the same breath and dismiss the need to continue talking to him. It’s done now. No need for more conversation about it. A frown wrinkles back into place the moment I boot up and start trawling through emails I’ve ignored. Nothing extraordinary. Nothing of any intrinsic use, but I answer the ones that need my attention and file ones that don’t.
It should be as easy as that. As simple as going back to a mechanical world that involves nothing but facts and figures, documentation and analysis. Just like it always is when I leave. It isn’t, and my gaze drifting back to the window because the clouds are moving in the wrong direction, away from her, proves it.
~
Jackson’s waiting at the car as I walk down the steps. Pristine black suit in place. Pristine black car behind him. A pristine chauffeur sitting behind the wheel ready to take me back to the apartment and the life I lead. I fix my stare on it all and let my shoes hit New York ground beneath me, attempting to shake off the thought of her in front of me when we arrived here and the thought of the dirt and murk I’ve been residing in these past few days.
“Sir,” Jackson says, smiling. “Welcome home.”
He opens the door and closes it behind me, leaving me in the confines of the solitary existence I’m used to. I look around the space absently, as he gets in the front with Tom, noting all the familiar things that should make me feel welcomed. Black leather interior. The fresh smell of a cleaned car, the same car that takes me wherever I need to go on the occasions I need to leave the apartment. Everything’s just the same as it was before, even the feel of the wheels smoothly rolling over the ground to get me home, and yet now it somehow seems lost because it’s lacking her sound or smell across it.
I shake my head again, annoyed at the way she’s settled into parts of me so quickly, and glare at the back of Tom’s head. A memory is all it is. A memory of a time gone and done. Good times. Honest times to some degree. But now reality is home and Manhattan draws closer with each passing minute of true time. I look out into the skyline approaching, already feeling the anxiety creeping through me because of the traffic and people. Too much. Too many.
Pushing the intercom at the thought, I direct Tom along the freeway rather than head back immediately. There’s somewhere I need to go first, something I need to see so I can discard those times gone and get on with where I’m truly at in life. Maybe it’ll help weave me back to normality, help me settle back into the kind of actuality I lead.
Open roads rumble quietly the further out we get, the mass of noise we were approaching dispersed to nothing but the occasional car passing by. I sigh and look out into it, and then up into the crisp, blue sky above. Clouds still drift, all of them blowing in a wind away from her. I scoff and look back at the interior, focusing on the view in front instead, as we leave the freeway. That should tell me something. Remind me.
Away.
The smaller roads eventually arrive, and those smaller roads become filled with the scent of winter heather I know so well. I frown at it all and stiffen my spine, short breaths pulled in in an attempt to get me ready. I’m not. Never am. But at least this time I have some lingering thought that will help me smile through it.
More countryside, and more heather, and Tom finally pulls through the gates and glides the car down the mile long drive. I cast my gaze around at the grounds and trees. Peaceful still. Kept clean and tidy, the roaming land around us bordered neatly with fencing. More of my wealth. All of it used for a future that is no longer here with me. Maybe it was a farce, but it was a farce I would have endured. Still do endure.
The car finally pulls to a stop at the main portico entrance way and I peer through the smoky glass at the house. Nothing’s changed about it. Still vast. Still colonial. Twenty thousand square feet of prime real estate - luxury and hardwood floors, stables and barns - all of it showing an image of me that wasn’t true when I bought it, and isn’t true now either.
I stare still, unsure why I thought it might have changed. Hardly likely to have, but that’s what comes of losing yourself in time for a while and living a life that isn’t yours. Perceptions change. Thoughts. Wants. Needs. My fingers reach into my inside pocket to pull the bottle of pills out to remind me of something I’m trying to forget. The moment I do, I feel the thread of the gold chain looped around it. Both get pulled into my grip and then tumble into my outspread hand.
One lie, and one truth.
I pick out the chain and run it through my fingers, winding it around my fingers as she used to. Smooth. Cool against me. I smile at it and lean my head back, closing my eyes even though I shouldn’t. The chain heats against my skin, warming as it clings to my fingers like she did me. I don’t even know what that means in the here and now. Nothing maybe, but it’s my memory and no one’s taking it from me, not even myself.
Maybe it’s me that’s changed. Not this place that used to feel so familiar.
I put both things back in my pocket and get out before I turn this car around and head straight back to the airport. More familiarity looms up on me as I approach James, the butler, who’s waiting for me under the porch.
“Sir,” he says, nodding. “Welcome home.”
I don’t acknowledge him or the words other than a curt nod. This isn’t my home. Hasn’t been for ten years and it wasn’t when I bought it either. Still, it is my life. It is all that I am and all that I work for. That work takes me straight along the hardwood floors and through rooms to get to my study, where I pick up the latest data so I can head back through the house to the east wing. Halls pass me by, their colours and the furniture in them ignored. None of it matters to me. It’s barren of connection, empty of true sensation other than anger.
Footsteps mirror my own down by the orangery somewhere, heels clipping on the hardwood this time. I look towards them, at least feeling some sentiment to them alone in this detachment of logic and progression, and then carry on towards the east wing rather than acknowledge conversations I’m not ready to have yet.
The housekeeper approaches me as I reach the music room, her smile as warm as anything gets here. “Sir, he’s out with the horses if you’d like to see him.”
“Thankyou.”
I stop and look through the window towards the red barns, steeling myself for that meeting when it comes, and then keep walking again. I’ve got things to do first. Guilt to get rid of, hide maybe.
And a life to get back to.
Chapter 21
Hannah
Just wandering. Up and down. Down and up.
