18. Arrested Envelopment
The countryside sped by like a green and gold mass of insignificant color. Unbeknownst to her, somewhere along the way to London, Avi’s subconscious took the wheel from her consciousness. The foggy trance it allowed her to enter sped up the duration of the drive, but it came with its drawbacks. Like the side effects mentioned as quickly as possible in a pharmaceutical commercial, Avi suffered from drowsiness, random bouts of crying, forgetting to signal, accidentally thinking about the person she never wanted to think about again, loneliness, sudden urges to turn the truck around, and failing to recognize posted speed limits.
“Seriously?” she asked aloud as the sirens and flashing lights from the police car behind her snapped her back to reality.
Avi had almost made it. She was only fifteen or so minutes short of her destination when she was forced to pull over. After putting the truck in park, she found her license and began digging through the glove box for the rental papers. By the time she found them, a very young officer was knocking on her driver’s side window.
“Morning, ma’am. Would you mind..?” he asked, gesturing to the glass.
Avi was regressing quite quickly back into her pre-Hawthorne Hall self. Only days earlier she had yelled at and even cracked jokes with the Deputy Constable himself. Now, she could hardly find the nerve to crack a window for a rookie patrol officer.
“Thank you, ma’am. License and proof of insurance, please…thank you. Do you know why I pulled you over?”
“Speeding…I suppose.”
“An American, eh? Where you headed?”
“The airport.”
“Hmm…well…that’s not good. Is it? There you were, thinking if you just raced down the highways you could save five minutes of your precious time. Now…might get there ten minutes later than you wanted. Hope it was worth it, ma’am…hope you don’t miss your plane.”
His attempt at exuding power annoyed her, but she was able to look past it and address him with the respect he obviously craved.
“Yes. Me too, sir.”
“What time are you supposed to be boarding?”
“12:40, sir.”
“Guessin’ takeoff’s at…1:00 then?”
“I’m not sure…probably…yes?” she said, growing increasingly agitated.
“Well, you’re not giving yourself much time then…especially if you’re gonna go and get yourself pulled over like this. Rather peculiar decision-making, if you ask me. Although it does make sense given your nationality.”
“What a wee bawbag!” she thought as she turned to make eye contact with him for the first time.
“Yes,” Avi said, now without a care in the world, “I’m a very peculiar person making very peculiar decisions…blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…can you just go take my paperwork to your car along with whatever shortcoming you’re desperately trying to compensate for, and do whatever it is you pretend to do on your fancy little police computer and write me a…”
“Ma’am.” he interrupted.
“What…sir?”
“Why are your eyes so bloodshot?”
“Because I’ve been crying…”
“Hmm…” he said with a doubtful expression.
The officer leaned into her car window, looked around the interior, and inhaled deeply through his nostrils.
“Interesting…”
“What?” she asked.
“That smell…”
“What smell?!”
“I think you know, ma’am…smells like a skunk in here.”
First of all, she knew what he was implying: red eyes…skunk-like smell… What was it with the British police assuming she was a pothead? How many English officers did she have to convince she’d never lived a single moment not sober? Second, what a rude and preposterous thing to say! True, she hadn’t showered that morning, but she had put on deodorant, and she had taken a shower just before the ball. There was no way she smelled, especially not enough to be compared to the world’s stinkiest creature.
“Well, officer…has it not occurred to you that perhaps the smell is coming from outside? You know…where skunks actually live…and frequently get run over?”
He leaned in once more, this time with a dastardly smug smile, and said, “Ma’am...there are no wild skunks in England.”
She hid her shock well, but he knew he’d won. Still, it didn’t make any sense. He was either lying to ruin her day, or he had some sort of olfactory malfunction he needed to get examined by a medical professional. When he called for backup over his radio, she secretly sniffed her underarms, and sure enough: wild flowers…not wild animals.
“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to step out of the vehicle,” he said as he opened her door.
For over a half hour, Avi sat in the back of his police car uncuffed and unimpressed as three officers rummaged through her rental truck. She could tell they were stalling. No doubt an abuse of power aimed at punishing her for getting chirpy with the first officer. Fortunately, she didn’t much care.
“They want to tear the truck apart looking for imagined contraband? Let ‘em! I have insurance. They want to make me late for my flight? Fine…I’ll get on the next flight! Heck, let ‘em arrest me on trumped-up charges! What are they going to do? Take my visa and deport me? Please do! Save me the cost of a flight!”
Avi was correct to assume they were stalling, but they stalled for an entirely different purpose than the one she assumed.
As soon as a dark sedan with tinted windows pulled up behind the police car she sat in, the three officers ceased searching for illegal paraphernalia and approached the mysterious automobile. On their way, one of the officers opened the locked door and escorted Avi out of her vehicular jail cell. Her legal confidence faded as the fishy aroma of the sketchy situation finally engulfed her senses. She wasn’t being detained. She was being transferred. But where to? With whom? In a state of frantic delirium, she could only think of MI6! But before she could get too carried away, she saw a familiar face that carried her back.
Officer Stanswick exited the sedan with a smug smile that communicated just how pleased he was with himself.
“Did you find any Maui Wowie?” he asked the first officer without taking his grinning gaze off Avi.
“What is this? Some strange joke?”
“I’m afraid not, Ms. Hawthorne. Officer, would you please escort the prisoner to my vehicle?”
“Prisoner?”
“If you go without a fight, I won’t feel obligated to cuff you. However, you are under arrest.”
“For what crime?”
“You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your def…”
“What crime?”
“...ense if you do not mention when questioned…watch your head…something which you later rely on in court.”
After reading the UK’s Miranda Rights, Deputy Constable Stanswick closed the door behind her, thanked the three officers, told one of them to say hello to the officer’s mother on his behalf, and got into the unmarked police car.
“What crime?” she asked for a third time as he merged back onto the highway and took the first available exit. “Aren’t you under some legal obligation to tell me what crime I’m guilty of?”
“Oh no, dear girl. It’s not my job to determine guilt,” he said as he got back onto the M25 in the opposite direction. “But yes…I am obligated to tell you what crime I suspect you committed.”
“And…”
“Hunting without a license…murdering one of my country’s most noble creatures.”
“Bonnie!” thought Avi.
“I didn’t murder the deer. It was an accident.”
“Oh, so you admit to killing it, do you?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t murder. It was manslaughter…deerslaughter.”
“Deerslaughter? That sounds much worse than what I accused you of. You’d better let your lawyers do the talking.”
“Lawyers?”
She’d done it. Avi’s conniving Celtic nemesis had actually done it. She’d exacted her revenge with such precision and swiftness that Avi couldn’t help but feel somewhat impressed. In a matter of hours, Bonnie had reclaimed her man and imprisoned her foe for the murder of a deer.
“Wait! Hold on a second…imprisonment?”
“This doesn’t make any sense. For accidentally shooting a deer without a license, I’m being transported back to the precinct where the so-called crime was committed and will need to get lawyers involved? What does your government plan to do? It can’t be more than a small fine…maybe deportation.”
“I have no say in the matter.”
“I’d imagine the money they make fining me won’t come close to covering the cost of deporting me. Why not just let me go, so I can pay for my own flight, and you send me a bill for the buck when I…”
“Madam, I’ve fulfilled my legal obligations and will say no more. I recommend you do the same before you incriminate yourself any further.”
With that, he turned on talk radio, and they completed the rest of their journey in tense, relative quiet with Avi frequently shaking her head in disbelief.
Her cell was small and empty. It made sense. They were, after all, back in the countryside where there were fewer people and even fewer crimes. But what didn’t add up was everything else surrounding her criminal circumstances.
“Do I get my phone call?” she asked as Stanswick locked the cell door.
“Oh look…an entitled American. How…unique. No ma’am. Here, a phone call is not a right. It’s a privilege and one I don’t wish to provide,” he said as he walked away.
Then, just before he was about to disappear into a connecting room, he added with a smile he’d been hiding for the better part of an hour, “...but I’ll allow you one visitor.”
“If I can’t call, how can I notify my one visitor about where I…”
Mr. MacKinnon suddenly stood nervously in the doorway.
Upon seeing him one time more than she ever thought she would again, Avi broke down. She didn’t weep for joy, and he knew it, though he didn’t know why. Confused by everything - her tears of pain, her silent escape to the airport, the morning she spent hiding - Mr. MacKinnon had no known words to offer her. So instead, he silently watched her cry wishing he could do and be more, and waited for her to begin.
“What is this?” she eventually asked.
“Ah’d ask ye th’ same question.”
“Don’t…just don’t. What is this?”
“If by this ye mean gettin’ ye arrested… ‘tis… ah guess ‘tis juist me doin’ whatever ah had tae dae tae see ye. Ye juist ran off, ‘n’ ah…ah needed tae know why.”
“Why?! Are you kidding me? Because, Dane…”
She hoped calling him by his first name stung more than anything anyone had ever called him.
“...last night you leave to help Bonnie...something happens between then and this morning...then you kiss her!”
“Is that whit this is all aboot? Ah didnae kiss her! She kissed me!”
“I know. I watched her throw herself at you, and I watched you not pull away.”
“Why would ah pull away? T’was a wee kiss on the cheek.”
Avi was almost certain it wasn’t, but her angle and quick tumble at the time gave her reason to pause.
“Ah didnae even speak tae her last night. Ah went after her, she didnae want tae see me, sae ah came back lookin’ fur ye ‘n’ ye were already in bed. There wis absolutely nothing…zero…nil…that happened between th’ time ye and ah kissed ‘n’ this morning. Ah felt exactly th’ same way kissin’ ye…as ah did this morning…as ah dae right now. Nothing’s changed. Nae even a wee bit. If anythin’ ah feel even more…”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”
“Dinnae ye dare tell me ah can’t say whit’s true.”
“Then don’t lie! None of it makes sense, Dane. You’re asking me to believe that Bonnie just randomly went from hating you last night to being all over you this morning?”
“Aye. That’s exactly what am askin’ ye tae believe.”
“It’s ridiculous.”
“Tis true. She wants Mick, nae me. She told me herself. She hugged me, kissed mah cheek, ‘n’ thanked me fur callin’ it off with her. That’s it! She found th’ wealthy guy who kin give her everythin’ ah didnae want tae give her. Ye dinnae believe me? Call her. Ask her yerself,” he said as he tossed his phone in between her cell bars, not caring at all that it hit the hard-tiled floor.
Avi tried to look away. She tried to disbelieve. She tried with every ounce of her, but his eyes weren’t lying. He was being perfectly honest and fidelic. He was faithful. He was romantic.
Still, she fought and ran from him in the confines of her cage by pacing as far away from him as the small walls allowed.
“Even if I believed you, it’s just not going to work.”
“Why?” he confidently asked while mirroring her footsteps.
“Because…can you not see? Look around us…look at everything that’s happened to keep us at a distance.”
“N’ yet…here we are…right ‘ere. Ah’m nae sure ye knew this Ms. Hawthorne,” he said with frustrated sarcasm, “bit bad things happen in this world. All th’ time even. All those signs er whatever ye want tae call ‘em…they were gonna happen either way. Bit being with ye…through it all…made it sae much easier.”
“Stop talking,” she thought. “Stop saying everything right and just let me go.”
“Kin ye nae see? Look at everything that happened tae bring us right where we are.”
The most amazing moments of the previous nine days flashed before her puffy and exhausted eyes. Drained by a full morning of rampant and powerful emotion, Avi rested her hands against the bars to help hold herself up. And just when she did, Mr. MacKinnon gently rested his hands against the parts of hers the bars allowed him to hold.
“Ah’m in love with ye, Ms. Hawthorne,” he quietly and genuinely testified.
His words were wounding but when she felt the weight of something faint resting in her palm, she had hope for healing. Avi didn’t need to open her grip. She knew exactly what it was: the final puzzle piece - the one she deserved. Once again, she felt her ever-guarded heart fall helplessly to the floor. However, she couldn’t help but fish for a double portion.
“You do not.”
“Ah dae,” he said as he smiled in disbelief.
“It’s only been nine days.”
“Ah know, bit ah guess that just means that ah’m nine days in. Ah said in love, nae love, remember? Bit th’ way ah look at it…ah have all mah days ahead o’ me to work towards loving you.”
She wished there were no bars between them, and for the first time all day, her tears flowed from a happy source.
“I’m in love with you, too.”
Her words healed both their hearts that afternoon on the cell block. He lovingly kissed her hand amorously before Mr. MacKinnonizing the overly romantic moment with his characteristic humor.
“Ye know…ah think mah mither would be quite disappointed if she knew her only son was in love with a convict.”
Avi laughed, but his humor did not accomplish its apparent purpose. For just as faithfulness could not be faked, neither could the ability to make the rarity of her laughter commonplace. His humor had become her new romance. Still, sensing his pride, she played along and changed the subject.
“So…this is all fake, right?” she asked as she wiped away two drying streams of tears.
“Na. Ah meant everything ah said...every word.”
“No, I mean…this…whole arrested thing…”
“Oh, aye…definitely,” he said, happily nodding his head. “Ah’m pretty proud o’ myself fur pullin’ it off. See, ah remembered seein’ a stocky, balding policeman around on the grounds quite a bit ‘n’ figured…”
“Mr. MacKinnon…” she interrupted. “I don’t care how you did it. I just can’t kiss you unless you go get Stanswick to open the cell.”
“Why nae? Ye kin kiss me,” he said as he pressed his face and lips between the bars.
“No!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “Don’t you ruin this moment.”
“Ye’re th’ one who rejected mah kiss. Officer Stanswick!”
The plump little man emerged from the other room with a very displeased face.
“I’m not balding, nor am I stocky.”
“Oh…umm…mibbie ye misheard me. Ah think ah said scalding and…blocky.”
“Hmm…I’ll take it,” he said as he unlocked her cell.
“Deputy Constable Stanswick…how could you put me through all this?”
“Well, I couldn’t lose you, my dear; not to that dreadful country you were fleeing to. Besides, it was little more than me calling in a favor from the London Constable, so don’t get overly emotional about it.”
Without warning, she hugged Officer Stanswick and asked, “How can I thank you?”
He thought carefully before responding, “Live well, madam…and no more fireworks after eleven.”
“Aww…but they go so well with my midnight spliffs.”
For a fraction of a second, his widened eyes indicated he’d fallen victim to her sarcasm before retaliating with some of his own.
“You Americans are so funny.”
Outside the precinct, Ms. Hawthorne and Mr. MacKinnon began the three-mile trek back to Hawthorne Hall hand-in-hand. Officer Stanswick’s fireworks comment had reminded her that she still hadn’t told Mr. MacKinnon about selling the estate. She knew it would be fine, but she didn’t know exactly how it would be until she was able to gauge his response.
As she thought about how she wanted to tell him, she got distracted by the faint weight of the puzzle piece still in the palm of her hand. She looked down, smirked, and opened it to find one of Adam’s ribs instead of the cracked cream fresco she expected.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said as she stopped.
“Whit?”
“This is not the puzzle piece you gave me.”
“Aye ‘tis…ah juist gave it tae ye.”
“But it’s not the one you gave me the first night we met.”
“Ah didnae say it was. Ye’re th’ one with th’ photographic memory. Ah have na clue whit that puzzle piece looks like.”
She playfully let go of his hand and walked under the tree-shaded side of the road a few steps ahead of him.
“Whit? Dinnae be like that. Remember, romance is nae a simple romantic gesture that can be faked,” he said as he grabbed her by the hand, and spun her into his embrace.
Staring up passionately into the same blizzard that had made her his more than once before, she beckoned, “Remind me…what is romance again?”
“Tis fidelity…” he said almost under his breath, “honesty…‘n’…”
There on the side of the road, under the long tunnel of overhead shade trees, they kissed, and kissed, and kissed some more, entirely incapable of hearing the encouraging honks and beeps of all who drove past. When they tenderly pulled away with eyes still closed, they did so with smiles spanning the entire widths of their faces. Eventually, a snort forced Mr. MacKinnon to open his eyes.“Oh…here we go,” he said as she laughed uncontrollably. “Whit?! Is mah kiss sae that bad that ye have tae laugh at me like that?”
“No! It was wonderful…I’m just...happy,”
“Remind me nae tae make ye so happy.”
“It wouldn’t be possible,” she said as she kissed him once more, then took his hand and started walking again.
“Sae…ye wanna hear my thoughts aboot givin’ ye th’ wrong puzzle piece?”
“Sure.”
“A’right. First…now ye have two pieces o’ th’ same puzzle with sentimental value. Double th’ mushy feelings.”
“That makes sense. And second…”
“Second, we can make a whole date night out o’ findin’ th’ other piece.”
Well, not really. Not anytime soon, at least. Avi needed to get the mansion ready to sell. She realized then, just how selfish it was to try and leave the rest of the family to take care of everything. The morning had unfolded so fast that she hadn’t even realized all the work she’d left them in the wake of her heartbreak.
“Actually,” she said. “I need to tell you something, but it’s kind of a long story.”
“A’right, well…we still have quite a walk ahead o’ us, sae…go ahead…”
“”Kay…well…the money I inherited to buy the estate…My uncles are contesting it. So…I’m selling Hawthorne Hall.”
He waited for her to continue her story, but when he was met with the silence of completion, he said, “Oh…well…t’wasn’t a very long story…”
“No. I guess it wasn’t.”
“Sae…what…ye juist dinnae want it?”
“Of course I want it. I just told you…I’m being forced to sell it.”
“Na ye’re not. Ye juist said they wanted th’ money, not the house.”
“Right but I don’t have the money just lying around to pay them off.”
“Aye…‘tis nae lying around…‘tis hangin’ up.”
“What? What are you talking about?
“Th’ paintings…ye know…in th’ hidden room ye showed me…”
“Yes…what about them?”
“Whit? ‘Tis nae obvious? Sell ‘em!”
“Sell them?”
“Aye.”
She’d heard of certain works by famous painters going for the sort of money she needed, but…Urias Alrest? Maybe he knew something about the artist that she didn’t. After all, Mr. MacKinnon was the artist and art lover; not her.
“Are you sure? I don’t think you understand…I need millions, not thousands or even tens of thousands. Is that something you think a pair of Urias Alrests can fetch?”
“Urias Alrest? Who in th’ world is Urias Alrest?”
“The painter of the paintings you told me to sell.”
Mr. MacKinnon’s smile stretched miles wide. But she couldn’t figure out why! What was he enjoying not telling her?
He stopped dead in his tracks, looked around, and led her by the hand to a small patch of dirt under a roadside tree. Mr. MacKinnon then let go of her hand and wrote the name Urias Alrest on the ground with his finger just as sloppy and illegible as the inscription on each canvas.
“His signature’s pretty much a Rorschach test, bit look whit happens whin ye realize those two S’s are really E’s…th’ strange lookin’ U - with th’ first stroke shorter than th’ second - is a C ‘n’ an L…th’ A ‘n’ L in Alrest has a very wee line connecting th’ two tae make an M…‘n’ everythin’ else is just gibberish ye came up with tae fill in the gaps…”
He’d said it all too fast for her to take it in, but the edits he’d made in the dirt were somewhat helpful. She looked over them carefully and tried to piece together what Mr. MacKinnon was trying to say.
“Clae Mareet…Cloe Mikeet…Clade Moret…”
“Claude Monet?”
“Aye.”
“Claude Monet!?” she yelled as she stood from the dirt and slapped his chest in disbelieving excitement.
“Aye! Sae…sell ‘em if ye want tae stay here with...wait…where ye going?!”
Avi was already in a dead sprint back to Hawthorne Hall, but seeing that his clothes weren’t soaked like they were the last time they’d raced, he figured he had a chance of catching up to her over the next couple of miles. He figured incorrectly. As Mr. MacKinnon watched her hurry towards the actualization of her every hope, he beamed; a mere reflection of her light and life of which he now was a part.
And she lived every moment increasingly in love with him, happily ever present.