A Heartbeat Away (17 page)

I listened with half an ear, struggling to catch Ben's eye again, to no avail. When he abruptly stood up and announced that he had to go, I felt a flutter of panic in my throat, as if a tiny bird were lodged there. “You
are
coming back tomorrow, though, aren't you?”

He studied me for a moment with that strange expression in his eyes, and then he nodded. “Oh, yes, I'll be here after lunch. My train home doesn't go until four o'clock.”

 

“Did you notice something odd about Ben?” I asked Aunt V after he had left.

“Well, I don't really know him, do I?” she admitted. “But he seems pretty down to earth to me. He was such a good help when we went to get your things. I have them in my car, by the way. I'll take them home with me tonight and bring you back something sensible to wear, for when you leave here.”

“You're going home?”

My panic deepened when I realized that she was on her way, too. But she smiled, reaching over to rub the top of my hand.

“I told you before, Lucy,” she said. “Edna and Harry Brown will be visiting you tomorrow and they have been looking after Coco, so I thought I'd better go and make sure that he was okay. Since you brought him home from the kennels, he has never been separated from me for more than a couple of hours.”

I thought about her little brown mongrel, Coco, with a rush of affection, remembering my job at the kennels. A lump forced its way into my throat. I had pushed so much aside in my quest for escape.

“Daisy died, didn't she?”

How could I have forgotten my mother's poor old spaniel?

Aunt V sighed. “Yes, poor old Daisy. Not so very long after your mother.” She leaned toward me reassuringly. “She was very old, you know—Daisy, I mean.”

I blinked away the tears that threatened and tried to smile. “Oh, I am so sorry, Aunt V,” I whispered.

Her response was firm and immediate. “Well, you don't need to be,” she insisted. “No one is blaming you.”

“Not even Edna?” I asked her.

Her voice held a fierce conviction. “Definitely not Edna. And don't you go worrying yourself about me. I'll only be gone for one day, and when I get back, I'll be at that place Ben recommended. He has already booked me a room and I'll be staying put until they let me take you home.”

The panicky flutter of my heart refused to ease, even though I knew full well that I was being totally selfish. “Sorry,” I blurted. “Of course you have to go. I know you do. It's just…”

“Just what?” she inquired, her eyes soft with concern.

“I can't help feeling nervous at the thought of seeing the Browns by myself,” I told her. “Especially Edna. I let them down so badly, didn't I? Look.” I motioned toward the case, and when she opened it, I handed her the box that held all Edna's letters; letters I had never even opened. The expression on her face told all. She didn't understand why I hadn't read them.

I attempted to explain myself. “I was afraid,” I told her. “Afraid of the memories they would bring. Does that sound stupid?”

“Read them tonight,” she insisted. “Face all those memories and everything will eventually get easier. I promise.”

“Oh, I want to now,” I cried. “Really I do. I
want
to go home and just remember Daniel and how it was before—”

“Remember all the happy times,” she cut in. “All the love and dreams you shared. No one can take them away from you, and Edna really does understand, you know.”

 

When Aunt V had gone and I was left alone once more, I read the letters one by one, then placed them reverently back in the wooden box, aware that I would keep them forever and read them again and again. For they'd come from the heart, formed by love and loss, and they echoed all the emotions that I was feeling now, the emotions that I had hidden from for such a long time. Not once did she lay any blame at my door; not once did she reprimand me or even hint at my selfishness. They were letters filled with affection, not just for Daniel but also for me, and I found myself longing now to see her. Oh, why hadn't I read them when they had arrived, and why had she carried on writing to me when I didn't deserve it? And that last letter—what did it mean?
There is something that I would like you to know. It relates to dear Daniel and I believe that it might help you to live with the pain of his loss, just as it has helped us.

What was it that she wanted to tell me? What knowledge could ever help me to cope with the pain of Daniel's loss?

I dreamed that night of Edna's letter, but every time I tried to read it, the words blurred in front of my eyes. Daniel was there in my dream. He was smiling at me with a secret in his eyes, and when I woke up at dawn with a splitting headache and a heavy heart, all I could think of was going home. I longed for the wide-open fells and all those painfully, wonderfully, familiar places. Homewood farm, the green meadow beside the stream at Brookbank, our tiny terraced cottage. Surely the doctors would let me go home this week.

 

Ben arrived earlier than usual next day. He was already sitting by my bed when I roused from my after-lunch nap. I smiled at him drowsily. His presence made me feel safe somehow, safe and warm inside.

I allowed my heavy eyelids to close, and when I opened them again, he was staring at me with a strange, distant expression on his face.

“What?” I asked.

His eyes shifted away from mine, and suddenly I remembered yesterday. Yesterday he had seemed…different somehow, preoccupied, and now all the laughter I had become so accustomed to was gone from his face.

A prickle of anxiety brought me fully awake.

“What's wrong?” I asked him urgently.

“Nothing,” he insisted. “Nothing that you need to worry about.”

“Well, if
you
are worried about it—whatever it is—then so am I,” I declared.

“Are you, Lucy…?” he asked me quietly. “Do you really care that much?”

I squirmed uneasily. “You are a friend. Of course I care. You saved my life.”

For one long moment he gazed at me, and I saw confusion in his face.

“Don't feel beholden to me for that,” he told me. “Anyone would have done the same.”

Did I? Did I feel beholden?

“You are my friend,” I repeated firmly, knowing that it was true.

“The Browns are coming to see you today, aren't they?” he inquired, changing the subject.

I nodded, curious about his question. “Yes. This afternoon.”

“Then I'd better get off,” he announced, uncurling his tall figure from the chair beside my bed.

I felt a rush of disappointment. “But I wanted you to meet them,” I cried. “And anyway, you've only just arrived, and you told me that your train wasn't until four o'clock.”

For a moment he stared at me, as if to imprint my image in his mind. Then he leaned quickly down to touch his lips to my forehead, so that I caught the fresh clean scent of pine.

“I've had to change it,” he said, picking up his bag from the floor. His jaw was clenched and his lips were set in a firm line. What had happened to alter him so?

“But you'll be here next weekend…?”

Suddenly it seemed so important to me to know when I would see him again.

“You'll probably be home by then,” he reminded me. “I'll phone the hospital to check.”

“But you'll keep in touch…?”

My voice petered out as he walked toward the door. Then he stopped for a moment and turned back.

“When the time is right, you'll see me again.”

“What do you mean, ‘when the time is right'?” I asked anxiously. But he simply grinned and raised a hand in farewell. “You'll find out,” he promised. “Just be patient.”

How could I be anything else but patient. I had no choice but to wait and wonder.

 

The Browns arrived at exactly two o'clock that afternoon, just after Ben had left. I felt unexpected pleasure when I caught sight of them in the corridor. I had forgotten how tall and stately Edna was. She moved across the floor with her head held high, and when the scent of violets filled the air, I felt myself begin to shiver with the delicious pain of nostalgia. Mr. Brown held back. He had plastered his bright red hair down, so that it appeared to be darker, and he held his cap in his hands, twisting it nervously around and around in his fingers as he looked at me with Daniel's eyes.

“Hello, dear Lucy,” said Edna. When she leaned down to plant a gentle kiss on my forehead, the pain inside my chest felt as if it would burst out.

“Oh, Edna,” I cried, ignoring the tears that ran in a torrent down my face. “Oh, Edna. I am so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she told me softly, trailing her hand over my cheek. I felt just as I did when she took me in all those years ago.

“You're coming home, Lucy.”

Was it a question or a statement?

“Oh, yes,” I told her. “And I want to soak up all the memories and store them away inside me so that they'll be there forever.”

“You'll be wanting to ride the horses again, won't you? They're desperate for some work and a bit of TLC.”

Mr. Brown's eager inquiry forced a smile through my tears.

“Harry has been longing for you to spend some time with them,” declared Edna, giving her husband an affectionate glance.

And I realized just how much I had missed the warmth and happiness that had always been a part of the atmosphere at Homewood Farm. Was it still there? I wondered. When I gazed at the faces of Edna and Harry Brown, I knew that it was—tinged with sadness, perhaps, but still very much there.

“I can't tell if I can remember how to ride,” I blurted.

Mr. Brown's whole face lit up. “Lucy McTavish, I will
help
you to remember.” He smiled. “I was beginning to think that this day would never arrive.”

“I just feel as though I've been on a very long journey,” I told them, fearing their questions.

But they both looked at me with understanding in their eyes and kind words on their lips.

“Well, your journey is over now,” declared Mrs. Brown. “That is all that matters.”

Oh, why had I taken so long to come home?

B
en saw the guard raise his whistle as he raced onto the platform. He doubled his speed, leaping in through the open doors only seconds before they slid shut behind him, and collapsed onto the nearest vacant seat. The whistle blew with one long, shrill blast, the train shuddered beneath him and he half rose, questioning his decision. Should he have stayed to finally meet the Browns? No. He sank down again, closing his eyes. It wasn't the right time. An image of Lucy's face flashed into his mind, bringing with it a heavy ache. But when would it be the right time?

Suddenly he felt more alone than he had in his entire life—and he was well used to loneliness. He had faced it through his teenage years, when ill health had held him back from doing the things the other boys did, and then later, when his father died. He had never known his mother, so his father's loss had left him totally alone, but with it had also come a sense of relief that the suffering was at last over. No one should have to go through what his father had.

Ben had learned to be independent after that, keeping to himself in his own fight back to fitness, and then there was no time to be lonely, for he had found a whole new fulfillment in a job he could finally do.

He tried to concentrate on the challenge ahead of him. The northern ridge, a huge mass of woodland that stretched way up the mountainside above Dumfries. Working up there with burly Jed Mallock would keep him well occupied this winter. Yet somehow the task had lost its attraction.

Perhaps he
should
have told Lucy the things he had been holding back for so long. When he had eventually plucked up the courage to write to Edna Brown, she had been so grateful, and then later, when they had talked on the phone, he'd realized just how much his revelation had helped her, and he, too, had found a sense of peace. She'd told him all about Lucy, but she wouldn't give him her surname or address, urging him to wait a while. He had desperately wanted to talk to her, or at least to write, but Edna had been adamant.
Lucy is lost
, she'd told him. He would never forget those words.
She has to find herself again before you can help her
. But what if she never found herself?

When he had all of a sudden realized, on the way back from Fletcher Park with dear, indomitable Aunt V, that the girl he'd saved was the same Lucy he had been waiting all this time to meet, he had been filled with a hollow emptiness, an emptiness that swelled and swelled into this awesome sense of loss that dragged him down.

She was the first woman to touch his heart in a lifetime, and he knew that she could never be his, for Lucy McTavish's heart was already taken by the love of her life—Daniel Brown.

The train clattered on toward the north, through woods and farmland, past towns and villages, but Ben stared out the window, seeing nothing, for the loneliness was tearing at his soul.

 

Dr. Abraham's teeth flashed white against his gleaming skin and I watched his long thin fingers with a kind of fascination as they flicked over the page on the clipboard he was studying. In one more moment I would know when I could go home.

“Well,” he announced, looking up at me with a smile. “I think that everything is healing well. You will have to come back to see Mr. Louis about your leg, of course, and we'll make you an appointment for that before you leave, but your head wound is fine and the district nurse will call on you at home to change the dressing.”

“So…” My heart began to race erratically. “So are you saying that I can go home?”

He grinned, savoring the moment. “Just as soon as you like,” he told me. “But take things very quietly. And I'll expect you back for a checkup in two weeks.”

“So that's it? That really is it?”

It all happened so quickly in the end. One minute I still felt like an invalid in an antiseptic environment, and the next Aunt V was waiting impatiently while I struggled into the jeans and sweater she had brought me.

When we walked out of the front doors of the hospital, the crisp fresh air hit me, filling my lungs with its intoxicating sharpness. I felt a moment's dizziness, and sensing my hesitation, Aunt V took hold of my arm.

“Okay?”

There was such concern in her voice that I had to smile.

“Of course. Just a bit…”

“Woozy?” she suggested.

“Woozy,” I agreed.

She had parked her small car near the entrance, and I clambered in and sat with relief as she flung my case into the back seat and started the engine. I was going home—I really was going home.

On our way through the city we passed the end of Fletcher Park Lane. I felt my eyes being drawn toward its rows of perfect houses. Was it really me who had lived there with Alex Lyall? Or had it been someone else, someone who had taken over my body for a while? Was I mad?

Aunt V noticed my reaction.

“That part of your life is over now, Lucy,” she stated in what I always thought of as her authoritative army voice. “Look ahead and move on.”

Look ahead and move on.

Sound advice, I decided, pulling in a deep breath. I was back on track and nothing was going to sway me from it again.

Not until we were leaving the city behind did I think about Ben and his strange behavior. He wouldn't know yet that I had left the hospital. Would I ever see him again? I wondered. Would I ever find out what had been bothering him? An image of his face slipped into my mind, warm and charismatic. I would miss him, I realized. But he belonged here in the city. He had no part in the life I was going back to. That life belonged to Daniel.

“Will you see Ben again?” asked Aunt V, echoing my thoughts.

“Probably not,” I told her. “Not unless I return to the city.”

“Perhaps you could write to him,” she suggested.

“Perhaps,” I said. “If I knew his address.”

“I could get it from Beryl Minton,” she offered.

I looked at her vaguely.

“The old lady who owns the hotel where I stayed,” she went on. “She's a very good friend of his.”

“We'll see,” I told her.

All thoughts of Ben went right out of my mind as we drew up outside the place where I had spent so much of my life. Box Tree Cottage. It had always seemed to have a face to me, just as Homewood did. Now I gazed into the evenly spaced windows of its eyes, expecting their expression to have changed. But they looked just the same. Despite everything, they looked just the same. Did life always go on like this? I wondered. In spite of all the trauma and tragedy, underneath everything stayed exactly the same? Yes, I realized, it did. Life just went on and on and on, through time immemorial. Around and around again.

It wasn't easy, being home. Everything was the same but different. My mom's chair still stood beside the fireplace, the sight of it made my heart hurt. If only I had been able to help her more. I even found myself thinking about my handsome, charming, selfish father. Where was he? I wanted to know. What was he doing? Was he even still alive? Would I ever find out? For that matter, I thought not.

On Saturday morning Aunt V announced that she would have to go to Homewood to see how the tearoom was getting on without her.

“I've been shirking my duties for long enough,” she declared. “Do you feel up to driving there with me?”

No one had mentioned me going to Homewood yet. Perhaps they were afraid of scaring me away again. I was mobile enough to travel, despite the plaster cast on my leg, and although my ribs were still sore and my head often ached, there was really no reason I should have to stay in the house all the time, as long as I took things slowly.

Homewood—a place of happiness gone, a place to face my memories. Did I want to go there? Was I ready yet? Perhaps I would never be ready

“Well, what do you think?” said Aunt V. “Fancy a ride out?”

I felt a flutter of panic. “Just another day or two,” I told her. “After the weekend…I promise.”

Her eyes clouded over with disappointment, then she smiled. “I'll hold you to that,” she said.

When she had gone, I sat in my mother's chair and tried to sort out my head. I wanted to go to Homewood so much. I wanted to remember Daniel so much. So why hadn't I gone? And then I knew. With a wave of shame I knew; I was just as cowardly now as I had been after Daniel's death. Run Away And Hide should be my motto.

“Oh, Mom,” I whispered, remembering her poor sad face. “How dared I ever judge you?”

 

Almost another week passed before I finally plucked up the courage to go and face my memories. I had read and reread Edna's letters again and again, and the more I realized just how much they had all missed me, the guiltier I felt for running away.

Her last letter still puzzled me. What was it she had intended to tell me that might help? I wondered. I would ask her again, I decided, when the time was right.

It suddenly occurred to me that that was what Ben had said. “When the time is right,” he had told me when I'd asked if he would keep in touch.

But when do you know if the time is right for anything? Was today the right time for me to go back to Homewood? Oh, I hoped so.

Aunt V was neatly dressed as usual in tweed, with a toning, heather-colored top and sensible brown shoes. My eyes were pulled to the delicate shade of her fine wool sweater and I noticed how much softer she appeared of late. When she had first come into our lives, her clothes had been so severe that she could have been in the army still. I said as much to her and she smiled gently at me.

“Before I returned to you and your mother, I didn't have anyone in my life to love. The army
was
my life then. But now I have you and the Browns and a whole new life to look forward to.”

A lump settled in my throat. Would I ever be able to say that
I
had a life to look forward to again? I wondered. For it seemed to me nowadays that I spent my life looking back.

She reached across and squeezed my hand. “Don't worry, Lucy. You have to go back to move on, you know.”

But did I really want to move on? Did I want to leave Daniel behind?

“Come on, then,” she insisted, handing me my jacket from the peg beside the door. I took a deep breath, fumbling for the sleeves.

“Coming…ready or not,” I declared with a forced smile.

 

It looked just the same, the lane down toward the farm. The hedges on either side sparkled with a light frost, and a vivid picture of Daniel popped into my mind. Daniel laughing out loud as he shook the whole hedgerow to make the ice droplets tinkle. His voice, full of delight, echoed in my ears:
Listen to the hedgerow sing, Luce. It's magic
.

A lot of things had seemed magical then, I remembered, when I viewed them through Daniel's eyes.

When we passed the place where dear old Fudge lay down in the road that day to die, I felt as though my heart was about to burst. I forced myself to glance away, and the sight of the fells, looming magnificently against the clear winter sky, made it quickly start to beat faster and faster again, until my whole being became one with its crazy thudding. I fought to breathe slowly, fighting off the panic attack. I had to do this. I
wanted
to do this.

There were the horses in the long meadow beside the lane, gray and bay, grazing together, at peace with their lives. How long was it since Daniel and I had raced them across the fell? It felt like a lifetime ago. Something twisted inside me, like a knife in my guts. It
was
a lifetime ago, Daniel's lifetime.

Seeing me struggle with my emotions, Aunt V reached over and patted my hand. It helped so much, having her there. Perhaps if she had been with me the last time I'd come to confront my memories, I wouldn't have run away as I did.

I could see the roofs of Homewood now, comfortingly familiar in some ways, yet unfamiliar, too. The verges and gardens looked neater somehow, more…tended, and above the entrance gate was an impressive new sign in shades of blue: Homewood Farm Shop and Tearoom.

Aunt V stopped the car for a moment and gripped my arm. “Oh, Lucy,” she cried. “I am so happy with my life, especially now that you are here. And you will be happy again one day, you'll see. When you find something—or someone—to make your life worthwhile once more.”

“There will never be anyone else now,” I told her firmly, meaning it.

For a moment her face fell. “But what about Ben?” she asked.

I shrugged. “What about Ben? He's a friend—that's all.”

“A friend who saved your life,” she reminded me.

“He's only a friend
because
he saved my life,” I said. “And don't get me wrong, Ben is a fantastic guy, but that is all he'll ever be, so don't you go getting your hopes up.”

Without saying another word on the subject, she pushed her foot down on the accelerator, and the car moved forward again, its tires crunching on the expanse of new gravel.