Chapter Eighteen Mercy #2
It felt like the room flipped upside down, but I was the only thing staying in place, hanging in the wrong direction yet again.
Everything kept changing. As soon as I felt like I’d found my footing, someone, something, yanked the rug out from underneath me.
Grant Hastings wasn’t the man I’d thought he was.
All those moments when I’d assumed the worst felt like an absolute mockery, because it made me cynical where I thought I was being cautious, where I thought I knew everything.
Where I thought I understood him with perfect, unyielding clarity.
I knew nothing. Nothing.
Whatever memories had been torn from my mind, I was being forced to reconstruct the lens through which I viewed him. Viewed his family. His upbringing. Me. Each new thing that I saw, that I learned, made it abundantly clear that he and I were headed toward a mighty reckoning.
His eyes begged me for understanding. Begged me for something else too.
Rose, sensing that I was headed straight toward a cute little mental breakdown, took it upon herself to serve up the lemon squares.
“No candle this year,” he told Rose with a stern expression.
“You’re no fun. Whyever not?”
His eyes found mine again. “I already got my wish.”
If this was an act, the man was giving an Oscar-worthy performance.
The deception of the last few days sat bitterly in the back of my throat, because they were nice and they loved him and he couldn’t possibly be this perfect, could he?
No matter how I tried to swallow it down, I couldn’t.
But if it wasn’t . . . if it wasn’t an act, there was panic, quick and sharp, on its heels.
The lemon bar tasted like ash in my mouth, and I stopped after half, busying myself with cleaning up the leftover pizza.
When I was done, I stood at the kitchen sink, staring blankly into the backyard at lines of brown branches jutting up from the green grass.
Each plant had a mound of dirt built up around the base, and my hands tightened around the edge of the sink while I tried to remember planting them. Tending to them. Anything.
I was surrounded by clues I couldn’t piece together about a life that didn’t make any sense, and at the center of it, my husband was beginning to feel like less of an anchor and more like the biggest mystery of all.
Suddenly, I needed some air. The timbre of his voice—deep and quiet and smooth—was all I could hear, despite the other people speaking in the room.
“I’ll be back,” I told them, and was out through the slider door before anyone could ask what was wrong.
The large deck was empty of furniture, probably because he’d been too busy taking care of me to set anything up, so I found myself sitting on the top step, looking over the sprawling yard, the dark-green leaves on the tall trees and the rows of mystery plants that I couldn’t name.
The greenhouse at the back of the property was tucked out of sight, only the edge of the small building visible through an opening in the maple and oak and walnut trees. In there, I’d find more clues. More mysteries. More pieces of me that didn’t make much sense.
I pressed my fingers against my temples and focused on my breathing. After a few minutes of silence, the tension loosened at the base of my skull, muscles releasing as I took some deep breaths and pried my shoulders away from where they’d bunched high under my ears.
Behind me, the slider door opened and closed, and crossing the deck were short, measured footsteps that definitely didn’t belong to my husband.
Great. I’d love an audience to my moment of complete and utter embarrassment over the fact that I was a clueless wreck and didn’t know how to make peace with it.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve needed a break from us.”
Lady Hastings.
I closed my eyes and tried to shore up my defenses, but I found myself far too exhausted to do anything of the sort.
“I recall finding you on the veranda after an evening with the whole family, staring out at our gardens much like you’re doing right now.”
There was a sickening urge to try to picture it.
To envision myself hiding from the Hastingses then, too, but all I found was a black hole of nothing.
Was it behind a curved row of stone houses in the city?
Or was it the mansion in the fields, facing endless trees and lush greenery and rolling countryside, like one of the paintings on our bedroom wall?
“Was this Blackmoor House? Or London?”
The weight of her gaze was tangible, but I didn’t look up. “Blackmoor. Grant prefers the country when he visits. You did spend some time in London, as you’d never seen it before. I believe the British Library was your particular favorite.”
My fingers twisted in the material of my dress. “Then I guess I’ll get to see it for the first time all over again someday. Lucky me.”
“If you’re seeking pity, you won’t find it from me.”
I snorted. “That’s a strange sort of relief.”
“What I mean to say is, I don’t pity you because I believe you’ll regain what you’ve lost. You’re far too stubborn not to.
But I still recognize how difficult this must be.
To not remember us. To have lost even a small snippet of your life, which by all accounts, was a good one.
” Something coiled tight under my ribs and spread, and I took a shaky breath as that twist ratcheted higher, until the pressure was almost unbearable.
“I imagine I’d be quite a beast if I lost even the simplest of memories. ”
There was something in her voice, a surprising sort of melancholy that did not match the stiff-upper-lip version of her I’d seen. It was enough that I glanced up. Loosened the knotted tension enough that I was willing to ask: “Like what?”
She gave a blink of surprise, her eyes meeting mine briefly, then her gaze shifted back to the yard.
“Oh. Well, I suppose I could think of hundreds of things. Not work, or meetings, or discussion of investments and finances, which I know drive you mad.” I dropped my chin and stared down at my hands, heat crawling up the back of my neck.
“But things such as . . . tucking my son into bed after he’d snuck out of his room to spy on a party.
He was never apologetic, you know. I thought it terribly ill behaved at the time, but now I can see that he wanted to be part of our world so badly.
” Her brows bent over her sharp gaze, a slight wrinkle appearing between them.
“Or when Rose used to follow me around the stables, chattering endlessly about boys and clothes while I tried to teach her how to saddle her mare properly. I never thought she was listening, but she remembers everything I taught her.”
“And Grant . . .” Her voice trailed off, almost as if she couldn’t believe she was saying any of this out loud.
“His visits for tea, as he mentioned earlier, were quite a joy as I aged. All the Hastings men go to boarding school, of course, and I knew when he needed a break, because he’d walk through the doors of my library and sit in the chair across from me, always timed perfectly for tea.
” She blinked rapidly, a sheen of moisture in her eyes, there and gone so quickly I wondered whether I’d imagined it.
“As you know, he keeps a lot to himself. But during those visits is when I learned the most. About his friends. His classes. His life.” She cleared her throat.
“It was lovely, and I’d hate to not remember that. ”
A sick feeling of regret churned uncomfortably in my stomach. Not just because I’d asked. Because of the pretense of the entire visit. Because I’d pegged them all so wrong. Because I wasn’t sure how to respond to something so poignant.
Maybe she didn’t want me to.
If Lady Hastings was anything like me, reluctant vulnerability always chafed, and I let the silence between us stretch a few seconds too far before she pulled in a sharp breath and changed the subject.
“Your roses need tending,” she said crisply, her focus back on the yard.
I glanced out at the branches. “Roses? That’s what they are?”
“Grant must have taken the coverings off, but they need more attention if you expect them to bloom.”
“I don’t remember what to do with them.”
It felt so good to say that out loud. The weight of pretending that I did was so much heavier than I’d realized.
“Right now, I’d clear all that dirt and mulch away from the base. It’s meant to insulate them during the winter, but they need to breathe. Too much protection from the elements at this point, and you’ll ruin them.” She was quiet for a moment. “I can help you, whenever you have questions.”
I turned, staring up at her with my mouth hanging open. “Really?”
The arched brow, imperious and haughty, was a Hastings family trait, one that Grant had inherited directly from her.
“Of course. Some of those are cuttings from my garden, actually.” Her eyes cut to mine. “You had the idea to try after visiting our Blackmoor.”
“I did?”
She nodded. “After I found you on the veranda, you and I walked the gardens—came to a peace treaty, if you will. You asked me about my roses. Asked me what I find so enjoyable about gardening.”
“You might need to explain it again,” I said tiredly. “Maybe I’ll feel the urge to go pull some weeds.”