“And?”

He took another drag of his cigarette, gave himself time to think before replying.

“I came back to find her gone. No note, just a copy of Villette left on top of an unmade bed.”

“She was punishing you.” Emily laughed as she considered her grandmother’s choice of book. So typical of her to leave nothing but a clue as to what it was she was really thinking: a book about a lonely woman’s love for an unattainable man. Not too dissimilar to a cryptic clue that had led Emily all the way back to him now.

“Again, I deserved it. But after a while she started writing to me. Told me she was happy, that she forgave me my sins.”

“Do you still have it?”

“I have all her letters.”

“Can I…Can I see them?”

He dropped the cigarette to the floor with a slow shake of his head, ground out the embers with the heel of his shoe.

“I don’t know that it would help.”

“Help with what?”

“With saying goodbye.”

She could feel a blockage in her throat—one that swelled and pushed from all sides, fighting to escape. Wet lines appeared on her face as tears fell fast and determined, no matter how many times she tried to wipe them away.

He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her in a hug as the hurt from deep inside eventually let go, and so he held her tighter still, tucked her safe against his heart.

It wasn’t the sight of him, nor the sound of his voice, although the two of them combined had been enough to send her a little off-kilter, ever since she first saw him steering his boat to shore. She couldn’t, up until that moment, quite put her finger on what it was that made her a little less certain today was the first time they’d met. It was what was hidden beneath the scent of clean linen with a hint of lime, the undertones of spice and nutmeg in his aftershave, that made her remember, made her pull away.

“You were there.”

“You remember.”

“Yes. I mean, I didn’t. But, you were there.” In the clinic, where Emily had been taken to recuperate, to recover, away from all the well-intentioned friends and family back in London. A place where she and her grandmother lived for just shy of two years. Where she learnt to walk, to paint, to live once again.

“You used to read to me.”

“I did. Wind in the Willows was your favorite, if I remember correctly.”

A storybook that used to help block out the nightmares. The low rumble of his voice when he imitated Badger, the crazy flap of arms supposed to be Toady that almost, almost, made her laugh.

More often than not, she would turn her head away; close her eyes as she didn’t want to see the way he looked at her grandmother. It was the same way her father used to look at her mother—with so much love. Only their story was tangled up with a lifetime’s worth of pain.