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He squeezed her hands tenderly, his eyes closing against the brimming tears that threatened to fall.
The guilt was as bad as the sorrow because he wouldn’t miss who she’d become.
But he’d forever miss who she had once been.
But that…that woman he’d lost a long time ago, long before his brother died. And now all that was left was a shell that wasn’t a shadow of who was once the grand Duchess of Westmore.
Saying goodbye was bittersweet. Sweet because she would suffer no longer. Bitter because it meant that he was the last one.
The only surviving member of his family.
He breathed in slowly, the stillness alerting him. He turned to his mother, watching for the panting breaths and finding none.
Stillness.
Frozen.
He held his own breath, waiting to see if she’d take a belated breath, shift, do anything to remind him that she was still present.
A moment later, her body relaxed, releasing its final breath as her chest settled forever, a quiet heart and a mind finally at peace.
Rowles bowed his head, not knowing what to say to the God he’d studied so much.
But study was different than actually knowing someone.
“‘He is close to the brokenhearted…’” The verse floated through his mind on a whisper, and he allowed the tears to far freely, thankful for the privacy of the room as he mourned the loss of his mother. Bittersweet, it was so deeply bittersweet. He kept reminding himself that she wasn’t suffering any longer. She was at rest, she was with Robert and their father.
But the hard part about grief was that it was selfish. Because the one hurting wasn’t the one who was lost.
It’s you.
The one left behind is you.
The one going on with life is you.
The one dealing with the aftermath is you.
The loss is irrevocable.
And there was no way to deal with the pain, but to acknowledge it. So Rowles mourned the fresh loss of his mother, and the earlier loss of his brother, and even the long-ago loss of his father. So much loss.
It weighed on him, like lead weights on his shoulders as he allowed the broken parts of his heart to be heard, as the tears flowed.
Yet the beautiful part of loss is the remembrance.
You lose someone because you once had them in your life, and that was the beauty. You cannot have one without the other, two sides of the same coin. So as the fire burned in the grate, as his mother’s body lay at rest, Rowles remembered.
Everything his mother was—good and bad, kind and shrewd, unwell and healthy.
He remembered everything his brother had been, and spent time reminiscing about his father.
The memories breathed, even when the people in them had long ago stopped. As time passed, the fire turned to coals and Rowles stood from his place beside his mother’s deathbed and walked toward the door. The doctor had left, probably long ago, and the nurses stood as he exited the room.
“She passed,” he stated simply.
“Our condolences, Your Grace,” they each said in turn. “We will begin the preparations.”
“Thank you. I will be by later. I need to make some further arrangements,” Rowles said in a wooden voice, then took his leave. As he descended the stairs, he took a deep, cleansing breath. Soon he was back in his carriage with instructions for the driver to take him home. He needed to inform their solicitor and make arrangements for the burial. But most importantly, he needed to send word to Joan.
