Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Nat
The door closed behind his brother, and Nathaniel let out a sigh of relief once they were gone.
Roan had taken his letters.
In his wildest dreams, he never could’ve imagined that Roan would do such a thing.
If he had suspected, he might have gone searching for the letters, because clearly there were more in the bag than the ones he’d written, which meant Thea had written to him. And she had written a lot, despite never receiving an answer.
Bitterness rolled in his gut as he watched Thea’s face for a hint of what she was feeling. She wouldn’t look at him, turning away to help a customer as she wrestled with whatever feelings she had.
It was nearly an hour before they were able to stop working.
“You need an assistant,” Nathaniel said, leaning against the counter and taking a deep breath. “I can’t imagine how you’ve been handling all of this on your own for so long.”
“It has gotten busy,” Thea admitted, leaning against the wall across from him, almost avoiding his gaze.
“We need to talk about it,” he said softly.
“So you wrote to me,” she said. It was more of a statement than a question.
But he still felt like he had to answer it. “I did,” he said softly.
“More than a couple of times,” she said, her gaze straying to the bag sitting on the floor near her.
“I wrote for a long time,” he said, “and so did you.”
“I understand why he did it,” Thea said.
Nathaniel’s eyes widened. “How?” he asked. “Because I don’t.”
“He was trying to help you,” she said gently. “If someone I loved was in a similar situation and I didn’t have our experience, I might have thought to do the same thing.”
“You would have kept someone from someone they loved?” he said, staring at Thea.
“If I thought it was better for them, perhaps,” she said. “I’m not saying it was the right thing to do, but I can understand why he might have thought it was a good idea. And I believe him when he says he’s sorry now.”
“You’re more generous than I am,” he said, the words bitter. “I... I do not think I could be so forgiving.”
“We cannot change the past,” Thea said quietly. “But this changes everything I have thought for the past ten years, and I would be willing to forget the past and move forward.”
Her words gave Nathaniel hope—more hope than he’d felt in years.
“What did you just say?” he asked, the words barely above a whisper. He wanted to hear it again.
“I want to read your letters,” she said. “Let’s separate them, and I’ll read yours and you read mine, and we can talk about it tomorrow.”
Tomorrow? He didn’t want to wait till tomorrow.
He’d just found out that the woman he loved had been forcibly separated from him by his brother…and now she wanted to wait until tomorrow?
The words hurt to say, but he said, “If that’s what you want.”
He’d waited ten years. One more day couldn’t hurt that much…except it did.
Thea reached for the bag and began sorting the letters inside into two stacks—one that he recognized and one he didn’t. She slipped the envelopes with her handwriting on them back into the bag and handed it to him.
“Thank you for your help,” she said. “It meant more than you know, and I suspect I wouldn’t have been able to work today had you not allowed me to rest yesterday. Thank you for that.”
“You know I would do anything for you,” Nathaniel said, the words slipping out unbidden, and she looked up at him with a tentative smile that went straight to his head.
She’d smiled at him.
“Thank you,” she said. “I will close up soon.”
Nathaniel took the words as the dismissal they were meant to be and left the café, the bag over his shoulder. He wanted to read her letters, too. And if there was a chance he was going to turn back into a cat at some point, he wanted to get home and read them before the change happened.
Hopefully he wouldn’t be a cat as long as the last time, if it did happen again.
Nathaniel made his way to the orphanage, lost in his thoughts.
For the past couple of years, he had been transitioning between the orphanage and his parents’ home, and he didn’t want to be alone if, by some chance, he turned into a cat in the middle of the night and woke up trapped in a form that could not open doors.
He would rather be in the orphanage, where the children were inevitably going to come jump on his bed and wake him up—therefore opening the door—than be at his parents’ home alone.
Roan used to sleep there but lately had taken to spending his nights at the tavern, preferring to bunk down in his office rather than spend time with Nathaniel.
Maybe that would change with Abigail’s arrival.
Maybe Roan would be bringing her to their childhood home.
Maybe he would need to vacate it.
It was certainly the first time Roan had found someone. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if they made a match of it.
But it meant Nathaniel would no longer have a home other than the orphanage.
Still, it was better to spend time with children than to be alone, so perhaps it was for the best.
He climbed the steps of the front door and reached to open it, the noise from beyond hitting him before he even did so.
If he wanted peace and quiet to read his letters, he should’ve known better than to think he could find it here. The moment the door opened, a crowd of children converged on him.
“Mr. Nathaniel,” they cried, jumping on him and throwing their arms around him. “Where were you yesterday?”
It had been quite some time since he’d gone more than a day without visiting or even staying over. Part of it was that they wanted a man around to protect the women and children, and part of it was that he had just been so lonely.
“I had to help Miss Thea at the café,” he said. “She was not feeling well yesterday.”
“We missed you,” one of the little ones said, wrapping her arms around his neck as he stood, clinging on for dear life.
“I missed you, too,” he said, tousling her hair as he returned the hug. “I need to go to my office for a little while. I have some papers to read, but then I will come and play with you—if I finish in time,” he added, as an afterthought.
If he turned into a cat, he wouldn’t be able to go and play with them. Not unless he wanted to have his tail pulled.
“But first, I think I need a snack.”
Better to have a full stomach in case of feline shenanigans happening.
“A snack?!” the children shrieked happily, towing him toward the kitchen.
He sneezed and froze, panic coursing through his body at the thought that he might turn into a cat in front of the children.
“Come on, Mr. Nathaniel,” Beth said, yanking on his hand.
“Out with you,” Agnes said, waving her wooden spoon at all the children as they entered the kitchen. “You know better than to all come crashing in here before it’s time to eat.”
“But Mr. Nathaniel said it was snack time,” a tiny voice protested, and Agnes’s eyes softened. Toward the child, not toward him.
“Of course he did,” she said, clicking her tongue at him. “I think Mr. Nathaniel is always hungry, don’t you?”
The children laughed and nodded their heads in agreement as the cook sighed. “Well, I suppose we can get him a snack,” she said. “And I don’t suppose any of you were hoping to join him, were you?”
The children exclaimed, and Nathaniel offered Agnes a grin as she sighed and began to set out bowls.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t expect my urge for a snack to inconvenience you.”
“What did you expect when you brought half the children with you?” she said, but there was teasing in her voice. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“I should hope not,” he said.
Agnes, a widow who had needed an occupation, had been the perfect fit to help manage the orphanage. It didn’t hurt that she was also a fantastic cook.
“Thank you, Agnes,” Nathaniel said, dropping a kiss on her cheek before helping her scrape butter onto bread and put food in front of hungry children.
“What do we say?” he asked the children, who turned to Agnes and said in unison, “Thank you, Ms. Agnes.”
Nathaniel sat down on a stool, and immediately, tiny Beth squirmed her way onto his lap.
“I was going to eat,” he protested, but she didn’t say anything and only settled into his arms. Nathaniel sighed and ate his bread, lifting his arm around her head.
“You’re making this quite difficult, you know that? ”
She giggled as she ate her own bread and butter, and Nathaniel smiled and rolled his eyes.
It might be less convenient to eat with her on his lap, but the snuggles made everything better.
“Now run along with you all,” Agnes said, as the children began to finish their pieces of bread. “You have chores to finish before dinner.”
As the children disappeared, Nathaniel turned to Agnes with a thankful smile. “I’m going to my office,” he said. “Send for me if you need me for something urgent, but I have some work that I would prefer to do undisturbed, if at all possible.”
“The important word there being possible,” Agnes said with a smile.
Nathaniel laughed as he left. The children didn’t understand what the word urgent meant, and it wouldn’t surprise him in the least if they found him. He could at least try to read his letters before they did.
He made his way to his office and closed the door quietly, hoping none of the children would hear him and come running. He took the bag off his shoulder and placed it on his desk, sitting down and staring at it in trepidation.
He didn’t want to read them.
And yet, he did.
Had she gone through a similar experience as him? Had her early letters been full of hope that they would one day be reunited, only to grow less hopeful as time went on?
His jaw clenched. Roan had taken so much from them. How could Thea forgive him? She seemed willing to forgive so easily, but the thought of forgiving his brother for taking away their only point of contact made his stomach hurt.
He reached out and opened the bag, dumping the stack of letters onto his desk.
There were more than he’d expected.
Had he sent this many? How long had she written? There were so many to read… He needed to start.
Before he turned into a cat again.
Nat,
It’s been a long time since I’ve written you, and I don’t know if I’ll even send this letter. But you are the only person I want to talk to right now, and since you’re not here for me to talk to, I thought maybe writing would help.
My mother is gone. She and I kept the business going after my father passed, but now I’m alone. No parents. No you. And soon, no bakery.
I’m leaving Riyel. I have devoted my life to running this bakery, which I can no longer do on my own. This town is too big and our clientele too large, and I cannot even put one foot in front of the other at the moment—much less run the business that my father started so many years ago.
I am ashamed to admit it, but I think a fresh start is needed. I’m selling the bakery to Harold, the boy who took your place all those years ago. He has a sweetheart, and I’m sure that they will make a fine living of it.
I no longer want to do it alone.
I don’t know where I will go or what I will do, but I’m a hard worker, and I know that I will be able to find work somewhere. Maybe I will walk north to find the first village that seems like it has a place for me. Or maybe I’ll go south.
But you came from the north, and if you came from the north, I can only hope for more people like you there. People who maybe, someday, I can learn to trust—even after losing everyone and everything I ever loved.
I still think of you, even when I shouldn’t.
My mother talked about you, especially toward the end, when she was going to leave me alone. She wanted me to look for you, but I can’t. I cannot risk finding you—finding your heart has been stolen by another—because I cannot imagine that after all these years, it hasn’t been.
I’m quite resolved to hate you, you know. It seems far easier than loving you, and it has been for quite some time. And I’m afraid, if I found you, that I would change my mind.
And that seems far harder than hating you.
I only wish things could have been different. Maybe, if they had, I wouldn’t have lost everything. But everything changed when you left, and I don’t think my life will ever be the way it was.
And that’s your fault.
Nathaniel put the letter down, his stomach hurting. He thought that she had been hurting him, but he had hurt her just as much, if not more.
He had been here with his family, helping his mother and keeping busy. Thea had been in Riyel, missing him, with no knowledge of why he was not answering her and no way of knowing where to find him…and no real reason to go find him.
He could have left at any time and gone back to her, and he hadn’t, and she had been left with the consequences of his decision.
No wonder she couldn’t look at him when she first arrived.
He almost didn’t want to read the rest of the letters. What if the other letters were more of the same?
He grimaced as he picked up the next one in the pile.
He didn’t know what order they’d been sent in, so he would just read the next one he touched.
He deserved to feel the pain that he had inflicted on her, whether he wanted to or not, and perhaps reading the letters would help him understand why she had fought him for so long.
Perhaps reading the letters would finally give them closure.
Even if right now, they only brought pain.
Dear Nat,
It has been far too long since I have heard from you, and I pray all is well. I hope that whatever has happened with your father, you are at peace, and that you and your mother and brother are drawing closer together during this time instead of growing further apart.
I wish you were here. Things have been busy, and the boy Father hired in your place isn’t the same. He doesn’t remember how I like my tea, either—not that I want him to be making my tea.
I would rather have you back in the place where you have come to belong.
Missing you,
Thea