Chapter 42
Cora
Howard has taken Kep for a walk. Cora offered to go with him, to tread the fields at his side, but he huffed in that impatient way that means he needs space. Time. A lungful of new spring air not perfumed by her words. So she washes up the breakfast things, muttering to herself, taking her time over the caked-on egg yolk on their plates. She’s fastidious, always has been, scrubbing at her life until it’s pink and shiny and just so.
She never really felt the absence of a baby in her life until Carrie. Never wondered too much what that weight would feel like in her arms. Most of her friends were enthusiastically filling their arms and their lives with children, their worlds revolving around playdates and new bikes and family camping trips. Cora never quite understood it, never felt that internal tug from some cord draped around her heart. She knew Howard wanted a big family—a loud, shouty, messy family—to help on the farm and to surround himself with. But as every month passed and it still didn’t happen, she would try not to dwell on it for too long. After Carrie, though, all that changed.
But by then it was too late.
“You’re a silly old woman. A silly, silly old woman,”
she berates herself now, the teaspoons, covered in soap suds, clattering on the drainboard. She can usually pull herself out of this spiral, raise her chin, and get on with things. But this morning . . . not this morning.
She stares out at the chickens, now gone back to their lazy clucking, and feels a pang of something. Is it remorse, or shame, about those chickens? But she can’t put her finger on it. She’s lost again, lost in a labyrinth of yesterdays, feeling her way through dimly lit tunnels, clutching a spool of unwinding thread.
She’s searching for the moments with Carrie, the times that light up her memories like flares. The first time Carrie chose her instead of Ivy to bandage a skinned knee. The times Carrie cycled over on the weekends and Cora would feed her apple pie and custard, lend her books, show her the latest sepia photograph find, or a trinket from a car boot sale. Anything to lure her back, her magpie findings for a girl who loved glitter. She would tell Carrie the old tales, giving her a glimpse of the book, turning a blind eye whenever she and Jess leafed through the pages. She wondered if this was what it would have been like, to have her own daughter. If this was what she gave up to have the book all to herself. She would do anything on those days to keep her grandniece lingering, to keep Carrie near her, if only for a few minutes more.
Cora is so lost in days gone by, in all those memories of Carrie, that she doesn’t hear it at first. There’s a scratching, yipping sound coming from the front door. She blinks, vaguely aware of a bark, of more scratching, and she dries her hands, muttering as she walks to the door. She pictures Jess, her nails and her wide, pleading eyes. She mutters again as she fumbles with the door handle, readying herself for an onslaught of desperation from Jess or someone else from Woodsmoke. But when she pulls the door open, letting in a gust of sharp air, it’s not Jess at all, or anyone else.
“Kep?”
she says, confusion pooling in her gut. She leans down to scratch the dog’s head, feeling the silky warmth of her fur. “But you’re with Howard, you’re not meant to be here . . . you’re not . . .”
Cora feels the first stirrings of alarm as Kep stares at her, eyes doleful and brimming. Cold creeps over her, as though the frost has returned.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
Cora turns, finds her jacket, and stuffs her mobile phone in her pocket.
“Come along, then,”
she says to Kep in false, bright tones as Howard’s dog yips, checking that she’s following. Cora makes her way on stiffened joints into the fields, the mud sucking at her boots as she stumbles after Kep. Twice she has to stop to gulp down air as fire burns in her chest, unease builds in her belly, and sharp twangs knot in her joints. Kep circles back each time, waits for her, waits as she stifles a gasp of pain, then continues to hobble after the dog.
It’s his back she sees first. He’s lying on his side in the grass, like a lump of abandoned sacking. She’s never liked that coat of his, how it blends into the landscape, how shabby and unkempt it appears. She’s had to stitch up tiny tears in the lining, patch up a hole that appeared on the left elbow. But Howard still wears it, still reaches for it, just as he did this morning. Kep races ahead, tail brushing to and fro, barking at the lump of him, nuzzling his still form.
“Howard?”
she croaks, dread whipping up inside her, closing the space between them, ten paces, five, two—
She topples over to her knees, joints barking as she slams her palms on the ground. The soft mud and grass give beneath her, and she breathes heavily, trying to turn him from his side.
“Howard, you old fool, give over, turn, damn it,”
she mutters at him, dragging his body over so his face is raised to the clouds. She drops her cheek to his chest, finds a fast rise and fall, like a rabbit caught in a snare. “Oh, Howard.”
He blinks, looking at her, as though trying to fix his gaze on her face. He’s sweating, and his breath is a stale muddle of toast and copper. Blood, she realizes. “Cora. Why are you here? I don’t know . . . I don’t know what happened . . .”
She drags the mobile phone from her pocket, squinting at the screen. It takes a few stabs of her index finger, but finally the phone slowly churns to life and the screen lights up. “I told you not to go too far. What did I tell you? You’re a fool, a damn fool,”
she says, her voice filled with breathy tremors. She finds Carrie’s number in the address book, presses it firmly, waits for the tinny dial tone . . .
It rings out once, twice, while Cora holds her breath, holds everything inside herself, focused only on Carrie, on her hope—
“Damn thing. Damn bloody thing!”
she says, wet tears threatening to rise up from her throat, from her chest. She sniffs, looking down at him, this man she’s traveled through the years with, this man who was always her sensible choice. She does love him. She knows that now. Maybe not in that fiery way shown in films and novels, but she truly does. “Howard, I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do.”
Her fingers are moving to another name, another number, before the thought is fully formed in her mind.
“Woodsmoke library. How can I help?”
“Jess. Jess, it’s Cora.”
“C—Cora?”
There’s a static buzz, a brief whistle down the line. “Is everything okay?”
Cora looks down at Howard, fumbles for what to say. “The mountains . . . they always want something. I’m afraid, I’m afraid that maybe I asked too much over the years—”
“Cora, where are you?”
“With Howard,”
she says, patting his cheek. “He needs help this time. We need help.”
“Stay where you are. Are you at home?”
“No, I followed Kep into the fields. He was just out for a walk, silly sod . . . just out walking.”
“Stay where you are, don’t try to move him. I’m going to hang up and call an ambulance, okay, Cora? Stay where you are, and try to keep him warm.”
The line cuts out. “Hello? Jess, dear?”
Cora looks at the phone screen, sees it’s dead again. She rummages for a tissue, blows her nose, and swears quietly. When she looks down at Howard, she sees he’s smiling at her, just a little, his face softened by the kind of love she’s never sure she’s been able to return. “They’ll be along,”
she tells him, taking his hand in hers, feeling the damp from the grass seep inside her clothes as she gets comfortable next to him. “They’ll be along soon.”
Howard says nothing as his fingers grasp hers and his gaze fixes on her features, on the aging folds where once there was only youth. But he can see what’s underneath. He can peel it all back, layer by layer, moment by moment, and see what was there all those years ago.
Radiance.
Cora Morgan, a precious jewel that never seemed to belong to him, not fully. His wife, this sharp-edged diamond, the woman he’s been chasing his whole life. He watches her, the bright sky above, and knows there’s nothing more he would have done. Nothing more he would have been than what he was. Everything is just as it should be, and at last he can see the love he’s craved shining from her. Love for him, love for the life they’ve shared. It’s enough. It’s everything.
He sighs, letting his mind buckle and drift, carried away on a wave of love for their life together, for the gentle, unhurried world they wove.
For her.
“Don’t worry, my love,”
he manages to croak. “It’s not time yet. Not just yet.”