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I don’t want to encourage the guy but he’s been pretty low-key and respectful of my decision—well, once he’d gotten over the shock that is. The least I can do is keep things cordial. I don't want another unhinged ex on my tail.
Locking my phone, I head downstairs, calling out for Grey.
I check the living room, the library, the study, the kitchen—nothing.
Not even a note.
And in the kitchen, no sign that anyone was even up.
I fill the electric kettle with filtered water from the tap and set it on its dock, picking out a tea from the box and putting some leaves into the tea strainer which I place into a white cup I grab from the cupboard.
As I bathe in the ethereal shimmers of the morning sunlight stroking the garden, I decide to get some fresh air while I wait for him to get back from wherever the hell he is.
I head to the mudroom behind the kitchen and put on the new boots he bought me for the garden. I don’t bother with a scarf or coat for the sun is bright and my T-shirt and fluffy sweater will suffice. And anyway, I like the feel of brisk air on my body.
I wander through the garden, inhaling the fresh air, very naughtily imagining the frankly barren place full of herbs and vegetables and hummingbirds.
I glance at the gap in the hedge at the back, looking out onto that untended field of wildflowers and weeds encased by woods, but decide instead to head over to the little opening in a large hedge to the right, closing off the barn behind it from the rest of the garden.
As I make it through, my gaze climbs up to see the wood weathered, the barn, where they once kept horses, clearly in need of repair.
As I make my way over there to check out the inside, my eye is caught by a large rectangular stone nestled in the grass twenty feet or so away between the left-hand side of the barn and the right-hand side of the tall hedge closing off the garden.
I walk past it, checking out the rotting wood of the huge barn door only to stop in my tracks, my heart skipping a beat.
Not knowing why, I turn towards that stone slab, my boots flattening the overgrown grass around it.
As I make it to within feet of it, I see flowers—a bunch of flowers, wild, no string to bind them, no order to their placement. They look fresh, as if having been cut within an hour and are lying over the top of what I now see is a tombstone.
Here lies our beloved
Vivien Ellson
Mother, daughter, sister, friend
Taken too soon.
Forever loved.
Forever missed.
Forever in our hearts.
I inspect the birth and death dates.
She was thirty years old when she died, and it was over twenty years ago. Twenty-two to be exact.
Which would have made Grey seven years old.
The age he was when he was in that car crash.
When a woman died.
My body freezes, rigid and cold.
She doesn’t have his surname. Maybe it was his maternal aunt.
