Chapter Twenty-Four #2
“Yes,” Lizbet said, with a certainty she hadn’t known she possessed.
“That’s enough,” John confirmed. “Just go to him, and when you get there, do what your heart tells you to.”
Easy for him to say.
What if Gabe got angry, sent her away, not only from the graveside, but from his house—his life?
She soon came to the conclusion that, at this point, such fussing was selfish. What was happening here was about Gabe, not her, not Frankie and Jubal.
Gabe.
So she trudged on alone, holding the lantern John had handed to her moments before, and when she rounded a little bend in the pathway, there was Gabe. He was kneeling near the grave where Bonnie and Abigail had been laid to rest, his face buried in his bare, cold-chafed hands.
“Gabe?” Lizbet ventured silently, sidestepping her way around to stand where she could face him.
He said nothing, not at first. Perhaps he hadn’t heard her or noticed her approach.
She waited. Watched.
And then he spoke, not to her, but to Bonnie and little Abigail.
“It’s time to let you go,” he said, with great sorrow and yet with resolution, too.
“Both of you. You made me promise to live, Bonnie—remember? And it’s time I kept that promise.
There’s a woman—Lizbet is her name—and I care for her.
I care for her a lot. So I’m saying goodbye. ”
He began to weep again, albeit silently, and not with the ragged sobs she’d heard from a distance. Still, she could sense the despair rising within him like lava in a volcano, fixing to blow at any moment.
She wasn’t afraid, though. Not for herself, at least.
She set the lantern on top of a nearby grave marker, knelt, facing Gabe, feeling the cold and the wet seep through the fabric of both her dress and her coat, turning her knees numb, and not caring about any of that.
The despair finally grew too great and too powerful to be contained, and Gabe gave a cry so primal and so heartrending that Lizbet thought something had torn his very soul from its moorings and tossed it aside.
Awkwardly, she scooted forward, laid her hands on his shoulders. “It’s all right,” she said softly, with tears slipping down her cheeks. “It’s all right, Gabe.”
He made no move to dislodge her hands from his shoulders, but he didn’t acknowledge her, either. He just threw back his head and howled once more, in an agony she couldn’t begin to imagine, then he howled again.
Lizbet waited until the cries had dissolved into sobs, and she leaned forward, then, and rested her forehead against Gabe’s.
She could feel her tears mingling with his, and there was something sacred about that. It was a communion of sorts, though explaining it was and would remain far beyond Lizbet’s powers of description.
When Gabe had quieted down enough to speak instead of crying out, he did. His voice was hoarse and ragged.
“I love you, Lizbet,” he said. The statement was more confession than vow. “I love you and I need you.”
Lizbet cried harder and kissed Gabe on the mouth that had just given her the promise of everything she’d ever hoped for in her life. “And I love you, Gabe Whitfield.”
“I’m not ready for a wedding,” he told her frankly. “I can’t be a husband to you, not yet, but I want to, Lizbet, and when I said ‘I love you,’ I meant it.”
“I’ll wait,” she said.
He was looking into her eyes by then, though they were both half blinded by the ever-thickening snow. “I have some healing to do,” he said, “but you have my word, Lizbet. If you’ll have me, I’ll marry you, come spring.”
She cupped his beloved face between her mittened palms. “We’ll heal together,” she promised. “In the meantime, I think we ought to get back to the house before we both catch our deaths.”
Too late, she realized that she’d chosen that last word badly, but before she could change it, Gabe was getting to his feet and bringing her with him.
He looked down at the gravestone, marked with the names of his wife and daughter, but there was something different in his expression now, something glowing behind the ravages of the sorrow he’d just released.
“They’re not here,” he said, and Lizbet knew he meant that Bonnie and Abigail had long since gone on to an infinitely better place.
“No,” Lizbet confirmed, holding his hands in hers. “I never knew Bonnie, of course, or Abigail. But from what I’ve learned about them—from John and Ornetta and Finn and you, I think it’s safe to say they would want you to live and be happy, Gabe. I think they would want that more than anything.”
He gave a brief nod of agreement, but said nothing.
He took Lizbet’s chin in his hand, tilted her face upward and kissed her deeply and for a long time.
When the kiss ended, Lizbet almost collapsed from the loss of it.
Gabe, holding her upright with one arm, actually chuckled at her reaction.
Then he reached for the lantern, casting a golden glow into the swirling snow and gloom, and, still holding Lizbet’s hand, he led her away from what was gone, toward the endless possibilities of what was yet to come.
Spring was still a way off, and so was the wedding.
But the process of healing had definitely begun, for Gabe and for her as well.
And that was enough.
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