“Where to?” Attie echoed. “It’s about to rain, Tobias.”
“This car has outlasted more storms and flat tires than I can count.” He met Iris’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “What do you say, Iris?”
Iris smiled. “To home.”
Tobias turned the motorcar around, shifting into second gear. They sped along the road, leaving thunder and swells of rain behind. Iris was tempted to glance back at the hill she had given to Forest, but a break in the clouds stopped her. A ray of sunlight pierced the gloam up ahead, promising a blue-skied afternoon.
Roman reached for her hand, weaving their fingers together.
Iris closed her eyes, savoring the warmth of his palm against hers. The way the wind blew through her hair. The sunlight on her face. And for a moment, it almost felt like she had wings.
{55}
The Last Word
ONE YEAR LATER
Iris knelt in the garden.
Her flower beds were coming to life as the days grew warmer and longer, and the first green unfurling of vegetables was breaking the soil. She smiled as she plucked weeds from the aster and daisy patches, and then she shifted to the rows of dirt, feeling how dry the soil was.
She was just about to rise and fetch her water pail when a triangular folded piece of paper crashed into the loam, right at her knees.
Iris glanced up, not at all surprised to see Roman regarding her from the second story window. His elbow was propped on the open sill, his chin on his palm, and he only smiled as he waited for her to read his message.
“Are they ready for me?” she called up.
“You’ll have to read the note to find out.”
She scowled up at him, but it was playful, and she enjoyed their games as much as he did. She took the paper in her dirt-stained hands and unfolded it, reading:
Dear Iris,
I’m sure they’re an absolute waste, but here are waiting for you on the kitchen table. If you hurry, the perfectly* brewed pot of tea will still be warm.
Love,
Your Favorite
Kitt
*always up for debate
P.S. If I hand over too many pages at one time, I have an inkling my dense prose will put you to sleep, Winnow.
Iris smiled, but when she looked back to the window, Roman was gone. If she listened, though, she could hear the metallic clink of his typewriter as he returned to his manuscript. She could hear the birds flit through the shrubs and sing from the willow tree in the neighbors’ yard. She could hear the distant rapids of the river, which was a short walk from their tiny town house, a stone, ivy-laden structure that had withstood the bombings, located on the edge of the park.
Iris tucked the page into her pocket and rose.
She knocked the dirt from her coveralls and left her boots at the back stoop, stepping inside the very cramped but cozy kitchen.
On the table, she found here tucked beneath the corner of her typewriter, just as Roman had promised, and a pot of tea that still steamed. Iris poured herself a cup, stirred in far too much milk and honey, and then sat in her favorite chair and read Roman’s pages.
They were beautiful, transportive. Every time Iris read a new chapter of his, she felt as if she belonged within the story. It was about a boy who sailed a ship in the clouds, and the adventures and challenges and friends he met along the way. It was not always a happy story, although it was an honest one, and hope never faded for the boy and his friends, even in their moments of loss and grief.
She also found two typos and had three questions about a side character’s motivations, and so she took up the fountain pen Roman had left beside the teapot, and she wrote them down on the page margins. Sometimes she thought he intentionally left typos behind, just to see if she would catch them.
She always did.
Tea drained to the dregs, Iris gathered up the pages and climbed the stairs to Roman’s favorite place to write, which was a small nook of a bedroom at the back of the house, with a view of the river and Iris’s garden. The door was cracked and she nudged it open farther; he was sitting at his desk, his fingers flying over the keys of the First Alouette.
“They’re rubbish, aren’t they?” He turned in the chair to gaze at her, a tendril of black hair cutting across his brow. “I need to start over entirely.”
“On the contrary,” Iris said, walking to him. She set the pages down on the table, next to his medicine. Bottles of pills, tins of salves, and the oil that he mixed in the steam kettle to inhale when his throat constricted or his cough worsened. Treatments that helped calm and soothe his lungs and airways but couldn’t heal the damage that had been done to them.
Iris leaned down to brush her lips against his cheekbone, following it up to his ear. She whispered, “They might be my favorite yet.”
“Don’t tease me,” he replied, but there was yearning in his voice. He lifted his hand and wove his fingers in her hair, to keep her close.
“I’m not. You’ll find my notes in the margins.”
She kissed his palm as he reluctantly let her go. But she knew he preferred to read her feedback in private, so she moved toward the door, picking up two empty teacups on her way out.
“And don’t forget, we’re having dinner with your mum and nan at six tonight, and then Attie’s concert is at eight. Tobias is picking us up.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Roman said, but he often lost track of time when he wrote.
“Oh, and one last thing, Kitt?”
“What’s that, Winnow?”
Just before she shut the door, Iris said, “Check your left pocket.”
* * *
Roman shouldn’t have been surprised. Iris was always one step ahead of him. But he laughed as she shut the door, and then he faced the dilemma of reading her feedback first or checking his left pocket for whatever she had craftily slipped in there that morning.
He decided to read her feedback first, thankful she caught his typos and then mulling over her other notes. He scrawled down a few other questions to ask her later, and then he reached into his pocket.
His fingers met a crinkle of paper, folded so tiny he would have never found it until laundry day.
Roman drew it out to the light. A note with typed words that said:
This is not the true message but a prequel. You’ll find the other in our wardrobe, hidden in the pocket of your red coat jacket.
—I.W.K.
P.S. This only applies if you gave me new chapters today. If not, expect me to beg for them tonight … in bed.
Roman smiled. He decided he was done for the day and rose, following Iris’s intriguing message down the stairs and into their bedroom. They only had one wardrobe in this house, and they shared it, their clothes packed tightly together. But Roman found his dark red jacket, and the letter Iris had just typed, tucked within the pocket.