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Chapter 7
Jeffrey stood before the estate he’d abandoned a year before. His heart hammered as he pressed his hand against the rickety door and thrust it open. How long had it been? Three years? Four? He lifted a finger to the cabinet on the far wall and slid it through the thick dust. Its grey and black silt caked across his skin.
How strange it was that he’d had an entire life elsewhere. At this moment, he perceived nothing beyond the ghosts of this previous reality.
At this moment, he could remember nothing but his brother and all he’d lost.
“Knock, knock.” The door burst open once more to reveal his dear friend, Peter—a man who’d been Jeffrey’s thick-as-thieves best friend right until Jeffrey had decided to skip town.
Jeffrey peered at his friend for a moment, realizing all the ways in which his friend had changed. His friend’s cheeks sagged slightly now, in his thirty years of age, and he looked a bit thicker around the middle.
In previous years, he’d married a woman he’d lusted after for nearly a decade, and they’d already had two children. Peter had never written to Jeffrey with any sense that he was disappointed in the way things had worked out for either of them. Assuredly, he was far too focused on his career, his wife, his children, to bother much with the dark horrors of Jeffrey’s life.
Still, it was marvellous to see him.
“There you are,” Jeffrey said. “I imagined you wouldn’t stop by till much later.”
Peter beamed at him with all the brightness of his much younger and happier self. For a moment, Jeffrey could pretend that the two of them had lived a far different life—that Jeffrey had never had to run far away and craft another existence. That the two of them could have lived side-by-side, perhaps as fathers.
“I heard you attended the ball last night,” Peter said.
“News travels fast in this county. I’d forgotten that,” Jeffrey said.
“You know that you’re the central thesis of much gossip,” Peter affirmed. He slipped the door closed behind him and scanned the walls, the dusty cabinets, the furniture that had been left behind.
“Of course. I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Jeffrey said sarcastically.
Peter walked along the wall and clucked his tongue. “I’ll bring some of my staff members to this estate,” he said with an air of finality.
“Why on earth would you do that?” Jeffrey asked.
“Because. It’s up to me to. I want to ensure you’re taken care of until you can get back on your feet,” Peter said. He kept his eyes away, conscious that making any sort of eye contact while saying such a thing would craft far too much emotion.
“Regardless,” Peter continued, “I want to ensure that the estate is back to precisely the way you remember it. Don’t you? It was one of the finer ones, especially for a bachelor such as yourself. You took such pride in it.”
“I hardly remember the pride now,” Jeffrey said.
“I suppose that’s the manner of all things, isn’t it?” Peter said. “Time passes, and we lose the emotions we once held so dear.” He swallowed and placed his hands behind his back. “Perhaps the world has been a bit off-kilter since your disappearance.”
“You knew where I was all along,” Jeffrey articulated.
“I suppose so,” Peter said. “But it’s not as though there was any real difference. You were gone. Gone from my life, just as well as the county.” He cleared his throat, as though, yet again, he wanted to forbid himself from such language of emotion, of owning up to what had actually been felt.
Jeffrey cast his arm towards what had once been the parlour and said, “I would invite you to sit, but I imagine it won’t be terribly comfortable on the floor before the sofas have been dusted.”
To Jeffrey’s surprise, Peter disappeared for a moment before returning with a dusty bottle of whisky. He lifted it, blew on it to cast the silt to the ground, then shook it about.
“It’s supposed to age beautifully, isn’t it?” he said, his eyes sparkling.
Jeffrey’s heartbeat ramped up. He followed Peter into the parlour and sat upon the floor with his legs stretched out. Peter took a large gulp of whisky, then passed it towards Jeffrey.
“I’m sorry I can’t offer you a glass,” Jeffrey said with a slight laugh.
“I think this suits us,” Peter said. “At least, it suits the old us. My wife wouldn’t think kindly of the sort of men who choose to sit on the hardwood of a parlour and sip whisky in the middle of the afternoon.”
“How is the old wife, then?”
“Not so old. I suppose she’d resent the idea that she was old,” Peter said. He latched his hand around the bottle of whisky and chuckled inwardly.
