Chapter 41 Isobel
Isobel
Isobel watched Arthur take in the cottage’s ruined state with an ache in her chest. The house, at least, had finally stopped sinking, the front door half buried in moss and soil. They could walk onto the roof if they wanted, though doing so seemed ill-advised.
The smokeless chimney was a lonely beacon.
Isobel could tell by the stiff way Arthur walked that his side was still aching, though he didn’t say so. He never was one to complain.
“You okay?” she asked.
“It’s all gone,” he whispered, a ragged, broken sound that cracked something right in the center of Isobel’s chest.
“Not gone completely,” she said, thinking back to what Dr. Rosen had said about her father.
“Just… different. But different can be good.” All of their possessions were buried beneath a thick layer of overturned soil, yes, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t rebuild.
Hell, maybe Dane could urge the judge to slap Arthur and Eva with nothing more than a bit of community service, and they could all dig out the past together.
Isobel knew that in the coming days the grief of losing this place would catch up with her, but right now all she felt was a weight being lifted off her chest. She and Dane would need to sit down and talk, once everything calmed down.
She wasn’t sure how that conversation would go.
Maybe he would sever things between them.
She had, after all, spent the last eight years lying about what she remembered from that night, afraid of exposing Eva’s involvement.
Maybe her full confession had come too late.
But for the first time, Isobel felt peace. It had been the right thing, telling him. Maybe it had been the right thing a long time ago, but that didn’t dilute her relief at finally having done it.
“How…” Arthur said, a vulnerable sound pushing past his lips. It made him sound younger. “How did this happen?”
“I’m not really sure,” Isobel admitted, sidling up next to him. “The earth just opened up and… swallowed it.” She let out a rueful laugh, hearing the words spoken aloud. “That probably sounds ridiculous.”
“No.” Arthur met her gaze, his expression shifting to one of understanding. “It doesn’t.”
Isobel’s brows came together, and she cocked her head, curious at the sudden tightness in his jaw.
“Was anyone hurt?” Arthur asked.
Isobel could still hear her father’s bellow of pain when he’d snapped his branches clean off, just to get out the window in time. “We’re okay now.”
Arthur’s face was the picture of grief. Of course. This had been his home too, for a time. There was always more to a house than brick and mortar and stone. Hope lived there too.
“We’ll dig out what we can,” she said. “Or start anew…” Isobel trailed off when she noted Arthur running his palm down the steep gable. He didn’t wear gloves, and a thick layer of moss had grown over the roof tiles. It didn’t shrivel back at his touch.
She cocked her head. “What are you doing?”
“Where are my mother’s ashes?”
Isobel didn’t like where this was going. “They’re in Eva’s room,” she hedged. “But it’s not safe to go in. The roof could collapse.”
“I need those ashes, Iz.”
The weight in his voice took Isobel back to when she’d lost her own mother. “She’s at rest, under there,” she said softly.
“Actually,” he murmured, “she’s not.”
Isobel’s nose wrinkled. “What do you mean?”
But Arthur was already circling the cottage, quiet as the kitten he and Eva had insisted on bringing back with them in the helicopter. Isobel glanced back toward the Walker farmhouse. They’d left the rescue sleeping on a soft rug in a ray of sunlight in the den.
“Here?” Arthur asked, pointing to Eva’s partially buried bedroom window.
“That’s the one,” she admitted.
This was a bad idea.
Butterflies and honeybees stirred the air overhead as Arthur ran a hand along the lichen-covered sill, his eyebrows drawing together in contemplation.
Though the window was still open from their earlier escape, it was now so deeply buried that the chances of his fitting through the slot seemed slim.
As Arthur bent to study the opening, his knees pressed into the earth and tiny green blades of grass pushed through the soil. Isobel drew in a sharp breath. Was it him doing that?
He drew back. “Help me dig?”
Isobel laughed. When she saw he was serious, the sound went flat. Make that two for two on bad ideas. “Oh. I, um, don’t think that’s the best idea, Fairy.”
“Please.” He stared at her, eyes pleading. Isobel was struck suddenly by how well the expression matched that of a very sad puppy.
She sighed. “Who can say no to that face? Go. There are shovels in the greenhouse.” Her sister’s sanctuary had somehow survived the earth’s shaking, its glass walls miraculously intact.
Arthur popped to his feet and dashed off in the direction she indicated, and soon the sounds of rifling metal and wood met Isobel’s ear. He returned holding a garden hoe in one hand, a shovel in the other. He passed the latter to her.
They dug as one, widening the opening until it was sufficiently large for Arthur to squeeze his body through.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Isobel said uneasily as he disappeared out of her line of view into the bedroom within.
When she heard the sound of books being lifted and discarded as he searched, Isobel got down on her hands and knees, craning for a better view of the dimly lit room.
She could just see Arthur’s silhouette, but the angle strained her neck.
“Watch the floor,” she called out. “It might not hold.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Isobel’s chest tightened. Why had she agreed to this? They could have waited until they had more help, more equipment, more—
“Found it!” Arthur’s silhouette lifted an arm in triumph.
Isobel sighed and sat up, cricking her back from side to side to make it pop. A door slammed in the near distance, and she looked up in time to see her sister stomping toward them through the rows of pear trees in the pink sundress Isobel had brought to the hospital for her to change into.
“You might want to hurry,” Isobel said as the storm of Eva’s emotions flooded the grass at her feet in furious thistles. “Someone is here to see you.”
“What? Who?”
But Eva was already there. “Where is he, Iz?” she called out. “Where’s that son of a—”
“I’m here, Ev,” Arthur called out, waving a hand through the window’s opening.
Eva came to a sudden halt, and her eyes bulged, her apple cheeks wearing the sun in pink confession. “What the hell is this?”
“I’ll be up in a minute.”
Isobel had never seen her sister look so murderous. “Is that all you have to say?” her sister shouted. “‘I’ll be up in a minute’? ‘I’m here, Ev’? Why the hell are you here, Arthur? You’re supposed to be in a hospital bed!”
Arthur handed the box of ashes up to Isobel, then tried once to lift himself out, grunting as his ascent proved significantly more difficult than his descent had been.
His touch should have made the grass under his palms wither and die. Instead, tiny yellow chamomile flowers bloomed around his hands.
He’d hugged her father at the hospital, too.
Isobel sucked in a breath as the pieces clicked into place.
She didn’t know what had happened up that mountain or how this was possible, but just now, she didn’t care.
Setting down the ashes, she grasped Arthur by the arm and hauled him up.
His skin was smooth and slightly chilled, his body smudged in dirt.
She laughed, delighted. She’d never been able to touch him before, and she wanted a moment to take in this new revelation.
Or better yet.
Isobel threw her arms around him, squeezing tight.
After a few prolonged seconds, Arthur hugged her back.
She didn’t miss the shake in his breath.
“Fries are getting cold,” she reminded him.
“Don’t take too long.” Then she retrieved the box of ashes off the ground. “I’ll take these back to the house.”