He took a breath. The timing felt fateful. “I love you. I always have. I was an idiot to leave.”
“Go to hell,” she whispered, and started to walk away, Blueskin following.
He clambered after her, leading the Ragman. “I’m already in hell. You think this is easy for me?” He wanted to stop her, to talk face-to-face, but she wouldn’t look at him.
“Love is an action, you know?” she said. “It’s not something preserved in glass.”
“Seems to me you took some actions yourself.” He reached out, trying to get them both to stop.
“Would you let go of her?” May swatted at his arm.
He wasn’t about to let go without saying what needed to be said. He put an arm around May, but she balked, shrugging him off and walking toward the view.
“Look, I don’t understand why you did what you did,” he said, following her. She turned at that and he faltered. “I mean, I do and I don’t. I made mistakes, one huge mistake, but so did you, and I don’t know how to make it right. But I know what matters now. I swear, you’re the only thing that ever has.”
There were tears in her eyes. “God, you’re an ass.”
Anger rose. “I’m serious. Don’t pretend that you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about. You married my brother out of some sense of duty.”
There, he’d said it. He watched her face, but she neither flinched nor denied it. He suspected that whatever alchemy lay between her and Ethan, it had never transformed into all-out passion. “You can’t live your life based on some misplaced notion of duty, May. Don’t you see that?”
“You were always trying to get me to see that.”
She’d always be the girl she’d been on that afternoon at his brother’s house. Even if lately her eyes were more shadowed. Even if a bright diamond and a thin band shone on her left hand, likely even when her hair shone with gray. He’d still see her as she was at the party.
“The trouble is, you thought we had time. You still think we do,” she said.
“You’re right. We don’t have endless time. Let’s fix it right now. Let’s not waste another minute.”
“Let’s just ride off into the horizon?”
Ambrose looked forward, contemplating Lake Erie. It wasn’t that far off from what he’d been thinking.
He took her hand, turned it up, and pressed a kiss in her rough palm—the smell of leather, the taste of salt, and the feel of one rough callous, as she refused to wear gloves.
She snatched her hand back, turning to lead her horse back down the hill.
“May, come on,” he said, but didn’t follow her.
“You’re impossible,” she called. “That was always the problem.”
THE FOX HEADS
Nell has only just flown back into town and drives straight to the hunt club in a stuffy rental car. Though the air outside is still chilly, it holds a warm trace of earliest spring. She fumbles with the temperature controls. She’s agreed to meet Pansy for dinner, and she’s curious as to what her cousin’s going to say.
She’d flown home to Portland after the wake, after her meeting at the museum with Reema Patel, after Pansy had cornered her, after Louis had taken her for drinks, taken her home, and taken her apart. She’d wanted to leave the necklace in a safe-deposit box, but thought better of it. It was irrational, but she felt it might somehow be misinterpreted as Pansy’s if she did that, might cause confusion that strengthened Pansy’s claim. In the end, Nell decided that the only way to keep it safe was to wear it, especially when she traveled.
In Portland work had descended on her like a tsunami, drowning her holidays. She managed to forget the farm, the will, Louis, the whole thing, for hours at a time, parts of whole days, until the heavy necklace brought those thoughts back.
She’d been in her office with the door closed, head down in the new year, when the letter arrived—heavy bond paper with lengthy letterhead at the top, sent from the local office of one of the largest and most expensive law firms in the country. They wrote on behalf of Pansy with a lot of stern language about the fiduciary duties of executors and veiled queries about the legitimacy of certain provisions in the will. The letter requested Nell’s presence at a meeting to begin discussing dividing the contents of the farm.
Directness is in Nell’s training, and so after the letter had hit her desk, she’d called Pansy.
“Hey,” Nell had said, with no preamble. “Got your letter.”
“Oh God, that letter,” Pansy had said, clearly flustered by Nell’s directness. “I saw it when you did. I had no idea they’d actually send it.”
This, Nell knew, was bullshit. “You forget I’m a lawyer.”
“Believe me, none of us forget that,” Pansy had said, and then she’d rambled on quickly to cover. “I’m not like you. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Pansy in the part of the baby bunny would have been amusing if it hadn’t been such a familiar tactic in her arsenal.
“I need someone to look out for my interests,” she’d said. “Well, not just mine, everyone’s.” Nell didn’t mention that this is effectively her job as executor. She let Pansy talk. “To make sure it’s really fair, but now they’re firing off letters. I wanted a second set of eyes, you know? I mean, how much do we really know about Louis? I had no idea they’d be so aggressive. I’m sorry. I don’t know how to stop this.”
But Nell didn’t buy the airhead routine. “So you didn’t tell them to write it?”
“I don’t tell them what to do.”
“You didn’t tell them to send it?”
“This isn’t a deposition.”
If only, thought Nell. Then I could compel you to give me a straight answer.
“I had one meeting with them,” Pansy continued. “And now they’re firing off letters. Maybe it’s better if you deal with them directly.”
So she wants to hide behind a lawyer. So fine, thought Nell.
“But I think a meeting would be a good idea. Before this all spirals out of control. You need to be back here. Things need to be dealt with that can’t be done remotely. You can’t just walk away from this, Nell. Much as I know you’d like to.”
Pansy’s spin on Nell’s attempt at treading lightly rankled again, as if Nell wanted to shirk her duty, the outsider always.