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“Mrs Tanner would like to go home, Jackson,” Gray says. “Can you get her clothes and bag from the guest suite in the west wing please.”
Home? I have no home. I listen to Jackson disappearing, and think on the only place that even remotely feels like home - Malachi’s castle with its snow and ice. That’s not going to get me anywhere. It’s no more truthful than this place is in some ways. He’ll twist things, make up games and talk in riddles like he always does as if I’m some tournament to amuse himself with. There will be no peace there, no silence to think in.
I stare aimlessly at the open door to the car, unable to move forward and still gripping tight to this jacket. “I don’t know where to go,” whispers out of me. Not my apartment either. Rick’s there still. Rick and the lies and a failed marriage. “There’s nowhere that feels like truth.” Nowhere where I can just be me and try to find reasoning and feelings that make sense to me.
A card gets pushed towards me, and his hand slowly takes mine and folds it around the piece of plastic. “Go back to mine. You have all the answers you need there. It’s as honest as I am if you look closely enough. Explore. I’ll stay away until you tell me to come back. Make a decision so I can make mine. Take as long as you like.”
I look at him, confused with the offer and his words. “I don’t understand.”
He sighs and looks out over the view again. “I’m in love with you, Hannah. It’s not something I know how to feel and I need to know if you want more or not. I don’t know how this works, but I’d like it to.”
He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear, both a smile and a huff coming out of him as he stands and takes a step away from me. I stand with him, mouth open to reply, to tell him how I feel about him, this place, her, but the words won’t come out yet. They’re muddled. No order to them. No order to anything in my mind.
“If we’re moving forward,” he says. “If you want that, then I won’t live in the past anymore. I’ll need to do what needs doing so we can be honest with each other from this point onwards.”
He backs away further until he’s under the porch and I’m left alone between him and Jackson waiting quietly at the car. “Go Hannah. Think.”
I don’t want to.
But I turn for the car anyway.
~
It seems no time at all before we’re pulling into an underground parking lot I’ve never been in and Jackson is opening the door for me again. I look up at him, my body still shrouded in this jacket, and wonder where time went on the journey. He holds a hand out to me, a kindness etched into his eyes that I’ve never seen from him before.
“I’ll take you up, Mam,” he says.
Up. All the way up. Not down anymore. Not into rabbit holes and tunnels where life spirals and nothing matters other than fun. I take his hand and get out, then walk, barefoot, across the concrete and glance at all the highly polished cars lined neatly around us.
Spoils of the rich, I suppose.
“Does he use these?” I ask, still looking at the array on show, as we pass them.
“No, mam. Not for the six years I’ve been with him. He barely leaves the building most days.”
Has he really been so reclusive because of the last ten years? Because of a lie he couldn’t get the truth for? Some would call that madness. Who would do nothing with their life because of a lie? He has everything money can buy, all the wealth needed to live a full and good life. And instead of living it, he’s done nothing other than rot in memories of a thing he can’t get answers to.
Following Jackson into a concealed elevator, I rub my eyes and wait for the doors to open again so I can be alone. That’s all I need now. Some time. Why I think being in Gray’s apartment will help me achieve that, I’m not sure, but anything is better than going back to somewhere that I’ll never get the truth from.
My eyes tip up, looking at the ceiling as we travel. At least up there I have truth. It might be the most disturbing truth I’ve ever dealt with, and it might not be something I can’t come to terms with, but it is truthful. He is.
Love.
“Mam?” What?
I look back down and find the elevator door open, his hand offered forward for me to exit. I do slowly, bare feet padding the floors in another sense of silence. More comforting this time, though. More familiar at least.
“Just press this button if you need me, mam,” Jackson says, pointing to a small remote on the table. “I have an apartment beneath this one. Unless you’d rather I stayed?”
“No. Thank you.”
He nods and turns to leave, his body getting straight back in the elevator, and I look away to gaze at the view. “Mam?” My head twists back, brow arched, to find him holding the elevator open as if he’s got something else to say.
“Hmm?”
“He never smiled before you. Not once in the six years I’ve been with him, other than necessity for courtesy, have I seen him smile about anything. He does for you. I just thought you should know that.”
My body turns fully, perhaps desperate for more information like that to help me make decisions, but the doors are sliding closed before anything else can be asked.
