Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
My dearest Philip,
By the time you find this letter, I will be gone. I will not tell you where, not because I do not want you to know, but I think it is best that I don’t. It will be easier that way, a chance for you to remove me from your mind completely as I am sure you wish for.
I need you to know that I do not blame you for this.
And where I should blame myself, I feel also that we are beyond the point of passing blame as if it might make a difference or justify what happened.
Ultimately, what was proven these last days was what the two of us always suspected but refused to admit: that we do not belong together.
I bear you no ill will. I hope the same can be said of you.
I wish things had been different but that they were not is irrelevant.
In fact, I would like to use this letter to instead thank you.
For a short time, you gave me what few others ever have, a fleeting chance at happiness, and I will always hold that dear.
You were my husband, my protector, and for that I will be forever grateful.
My only hope is that in time you come to understand that being a protector means allowing yourself to be protected also. We all make mistakes, we do what we think is best, and though we might be judged and admonished for it, that we did as we thought right and just is what matters most.
May happiness find you,
Iris
Philip read the letter through once. Then, he read it a second time. It was on his third reading that he forced himself to stop, letting the letter fall from his hands because he could not bear to read the words scratched across its face.
She left me… without a proper goodbye… without a chance for me to explain or… or to forgive… gone as if she were never here.
Philip found his body shaking. His mind fractured into a million pieces, unable to be put back together because the picture they formed hurt too much to see.
Philip had known Iris was upset. He had known that she might have wondered what the future of this marriage would bring.
But never, not once, did he consider that she would leave.
His eyes drifted to the letter by his feet and he saw the tear stains; they turned the parchment dark and smudged some of the lettering. Philip winced and reeled back at the sight, the feeling like a knife plunging into his chest.
“Philip!” he heard Percy cry from down the hall. “Philip! Where are you!”
He stumbled back and turned from the letter, determined to leave it be. Isn’t this what he had wanted from the beginning? A marriage in name only. A wife he did not have to care for or speak with or even think about. Was this not the best outcome he could have hoped for?
Philip tried to instill this belief inside himself.
He was desperate to see this as the positive.
After what Iris had done, he had been so angry with her, so enraged that he wondered as she clearly did if this marriage stood a chance.
He’d felt betrayed. Like a damn fool. Unable to get past what was, on the face of it, such a small thing.
Why did he even care that she had learned the truth?
He would have told her eventually. And he knew Iris well enough to know that she would have understood and not judged him.
Was it really because he didn’t want her poking around his personal life, a test to see if she could respect his boundaries?
Or was he just unwilling to move on from a series of tragedies that even to this day still controlled him?
He knew the answer. He just wasn’t willing to admit it. Not anymore…
“There you are!” Percy strode into the room. He was smiling, as he always did. “Where is Iris?” He looked about. “I did not see her at breakfast.”
“She is gone,” Philip spoke into his chest.
“Gone where?”
He said nothing, stepping around Percy as if he meant to walk through the door and never look back. But he couldn’t do it, an unseen force holding him in place as if begging him to change his mind.
“Philip…” Percy looked past him and found the letter. “What is…” He crouched down and scooped it up, eyes scanning the messy scrawl. “Oh no…”
“As I said, she is gone.”
“But you are going to go after her?” Percy was at him, waving the letter in his face. “Let her know that you want her back. Likely, she is at her mother’s. If you leave now, you can catch her on the road.”
“I am not going after her.” He spoke in a whisper, unable to look upon his brother.
“What?” Percy gasped. “What do you mean, you are not—”
“You read the letter,” Philip snapped. “She no more wants me to go after her than I wish to do myself.” He shook his head. “She made her feelings clear, and I will respect them.”
“That is madness!” Percy cried. “Utter insanity! How… what happened? I thought the two of you were… were you not happy? When did things change?”
Philip scoffed. “She did not tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
Philip sighed and turned to face his brother, not caring how broken he looked. He felt it in his soul, and despite wanting to scream and shout and even blame his brother for this, he didn’t have it in him. “About your conversation the day you met.”
“Conversation? What are you…” That was when it dawned on him. “Oh no. Philip, do not tell me this is because of what I told her.”
“It is.”
“Who cares!” he cried. “You would have told her anyway—and it was not as if she pressed me for it. Truly, I did not think it was worth causing such a fuss over.”
“It is not what you told her, but what she did with the information.” He narrowed his eyes at Percy. “Nothing. I told her I did not want her prying into my personal life, she did so anyway, and then she kept it from me.”
“And that is worth throwing away your marriage, is it? Your happiness! Because… because… I don’t even understand!”
“I don’t expect you to,” Philip said simply, letting his shoulders slump. “And while that might have been the catalyst, it was but a fragment of the problems that the two of us shared. This marriage was never going to work, Percy. But as stubborn as we were, we refused to believe it.”
“You don’t believe that,” Percy said. “I know you don’t.”
“I do,” he said, forcing a nod and a grim look that he held on his brother. “And if you know me as you do, you’ll know it to be true.”
This was about so much more than what Iris had done. Now that Philip had time to think about it, he didn’t care nearly as much as he had pretended at the time. Yes, she had broken his trust, but that was something which could be forgiven. Something that should have been forgiven.
The problems went so much deeper. They spoke to who Philip was, and that which had plagued him since he was younger.
His mother and father’s marriage, how that had ended, how he had treated his mother because of it, and the guilt he’d felt ever since.
He was not one to forgive so easily, and he was certainly not one who deserved to be forgiven.
Some men sought marriage. Some sought love and happiness. But Philip? He was better off being alone. He had always known it, for a while he had dared to dream otherwise, but now it was fact. And nothing was going to change that.
“Philip…” Percy rested a hand on his shoulder. “Please, I know you. I know you do not want this.”
“We are done here.” Philip shrugged his brother free and turned about. And then, ignoring the force which tried to keep him in the room, powered through the door and down the hall.
He was hurting now, and he would do for some time.
But the pain would pass. Philip would forget. And in time, all this would be a bad memory. And maybe, hopefully, wherever Iris was and whatever it was that she was doing, she would be happy.
As strange as it was, that singular thought brought a smile to Philip’s lips. She deserved her happily ever after as much as anyone. It was just not to be with him.