He’d felt the power of it right from the start.
“Each time? How many were there?”
“I’ve been there for almost two weeks.”
There was no way she was giving up the complete details, even to Aila. Honestly, Brontë didn’t think she possessed the words to adequately describe the earth-shattering ecstasy of making love with Tris. Of connecting with him. Becoming a part of him.
She’d given him everything. What kind of fool was she?
She’d walked into it with eyes wide open, seen it coming and hadn’t seized the opportunity to run from it any of the dozens of times she’d had the chance. Despite the fact that the whole thing was doomed from the start. She’d known that. Known it wasn’t going to last. The end would’ve come soon enough for them even if the hundred years between them hadn’t been a deal breaker.
She’d known that and set herself up for heartbreak any way.
It never occurred to her that she’d take Tris down with her.
Strong, confident Tris who had his whole life waiting for him. Plans to mold it into a perfect future. To save the world, or at least help it along the way. Tris, who chafed at the fact that his family tried again and again to steer him into a marriage he didn’t want. An obligation he wasn’t ready for.
That was what she knew of him. Her take away from every conversation they’d had on the subject. He wasn’t looking for longevity yet. For commitment.
How could she have known what was in his mind and heart?
How could she have known to spare him?
The pitch of the tires on the road changed, louder in volume and higher pitched, drawing Brontë from her reverie. Spotlights illuminated the slashing white diagonal cables of the Queensferry Bridge. Beyond them in the distance she could make out the distinctive red suspension of the Forth Road Bridge. The one that didn’t exist in Tris’s time.
She didn’t exist in Tris’s time.
Maybe that was for the best.
She only wished she’d realized it sooner.
Chapter 29
Present Day
She’d never realized that fireplaces were proportionately sized to the room they were meant to heat. Then again, she’d never lived in a house where they were the primary heat source. Not even a radiator. It made sense, Brontë supposed. A fireplace the size of the one in Glen Cairn’s drawing room would set the heat in her bedroom to surface of the sun, while hers wouldn’t put a dent in the gallery.
Gad, the things one’s mind turned to in order to avoid dwelling in misery. Distraction and misdirection. Anything to keep her mind from turning where it shouldn’t.
And what was she doing anyway? Swiping through the pictures she’d taken in the past under the pretense of work-related research since she’d left her drawings behind in her rush to leave. Pretending to indifferently peruse the long-range photos when in fact every nerve in her body was strung like a live wire in anticipation of seeing Tris pop up on the screen. Staring at him wasn’t going to change anything. Neither would thinking about him.
The past two weeks had proven that to her. More time was all she needed before she could face the situation she’d left behind more objectively, without an excess of sentiment clouding the picture. Dropping her pencil on to her sketchbook, she pushed them away with a disgusted grunt. It wasn’t as if she were making any progress with them anyway and a bottle of wine was calling her name.
The bottom half of the bottle at least. The top already consumed in the name of nostalgia and penitence. Leaving the drawings behind on the couch where she’d lazed away the better part of her night off, she picked up her empty glass and made her way to the kitchen. On the counter, a moody pinot noir beckoned her. She pulled the stopper off it — how optimistic to think she’d need to reseal it — and poured the remainder into her glass. When it was filled to the brim and a splash left in the bottle, she drank the rest straight out of the bottle. No point in pretending she wasn’t going to drown her sorrows in the whole thing at this point, was there?
Obviously, this heartrending grief would fade eventually. If she hadn’t left when she did, the shine would have rubbed off their affair soon enough, as it always did. He’d grow bored with her — hadn’t she already assumed he had? — or she’d lose interest in him once the rush of lust faded.
Ye think that’s all this is, lass? Lust?
Who was she kidding? Brontë wandered back into the living room and stared out one of the rain-splashed windows at the dark garden behind the house. It hadn’t been lust that kept her second guessing herself the whole time she was there. That had been fear that she was falling too fast and in too far over her head. And it wasn’t lust that kept her thinking about Tris. Lust didn’t touch the soul and tear at the heart. It didn’t make a person know they’d found something in another person that they’d never known they’d lost. Themselves.
Amid all the arguments, poking and prodding, Tris had given her something she’d never known before.
Peace.
Tris fought with her and riled her, true. He also debated with seasoned genius, made her laugh out loud, sparked her competitive spirit, and her imagination. Until that last day when her doubts and second-guessing had come crashing down around her, he’d given her validation, and a renewed sense of purpose and managed to reshape her doom and gloom perspective of the future into one of optimism. Even eagerness.
She’d never known that a relationship could make her feel good about herself.
Maybe that was Tris’s gift to her.
And what had she given him? What had she left him?
Brontë gulped down half of her wine to douse the spark of guilt. She had no idea.
She hadn’t read from Hazel’s diary since she returned. Henry’s future was in no way secure. Banishing Wyndom from Glen Cairn had been nothing more than a temporary fix. If he were determined to see to Henry’s demise — and if she’d been correct in her assessment, he was — he’d find another time/way/place to do the deed. With time on her side, she’d been hoping to achieve a level of detachment before she checked.
And if need be, consider her options.
No, the true reason she hadn’t read the diary yet was that she’d didn’t want to read on and discover how quickly and thoroughly Tris had gotten over her. She didn’t want to learn that he’d fallen in love with another woman and married. That he’d lived a happy life without once thinking of her.
She needed to stop lying to herself. Retrieving her phone, she opened one of the candid photos she’d taken of him. A smile formed on her lips despite the sorrow settling deeper in her heart. As much as it would break her heart more and dreaded seeing the words on paper, she truly hoped he’d done exactly that. That he’d found true happiness and live a long fulfilling life. She wanted to be able to imagine that gorgeous smile of his gracing his face every day of his life and know laughter and joy each step of the way.
What she truly didn’t want to read about was the aftermath of her disappearance, for that was how it would appear to them. Gone without a trace. Hazel and Henry would worry. Tris would believe it had all been his fault. There would be a search for her, perhaps letters written to relatives in New York asking for information about her.
Then the truth would out. They’d discover the fraud she was and know the anger born of betrayal. She should have left a note.
Wait, she could still go back and do that. A parting farewell requesting that they don’t look for her. It would be kinder than leaving them all to wonder. Brontë nodded. Yes, when she went back to finish off her mission to save Henry, she’d do it without their knowledge and without involving them. They could move on — disappointed in her, but content. Maybe they’d remember her fondly.
To Tris, she would write a more personal letter. Apologize to him for not seeing sooner how she would eventually and inevitably hurt him. Try to make him understand that she hadn’t seen it coming any more than he had.
A text chimed on her phone and Brontë swiped on i
t, eyes widening with surprise. A message from Jake? Of all people? Now? Her throat tightened in astonishment, then choked on a disbelieving laugh when she read it. An apology. After all this time. Not only that but a confession that he realized he’d made a mistake in cheating on her and giving up on them.
He wanted another chance.
A month ago, a message like that would have thrilled her. There was a fair chance she would’ve jumped simply to wallow in disillusionment again within weeks, maybe months. A month ago, she would have said Jake was the love of her life.
Now she knew better.
What had kept her bulldozing her way through their relationship hadn’t been any deep-seated love for the man himself. She’d loved the idea of him…of them. Beating the odds and creating something that would last. What she’d missed most following their breakup hadn’t been Jake himself — she couldn’t even recall the color of his eyes or his smile at the moment — rather the potential for something more.
Jake was a dream. A prospect she’d tried to mold into something more. All her past boyfriends had been the same. Her attempts to create the perfect man. The perfect relationship.
There was no such thing. Aila had been right about that.
It had been a mistake on her part to expect him to transform into something he could never be. Perfect for her. He’d made the same error in the end. They all made mistakes. Mistakes that couldn’t be undone.
She’d made a fair share of her own, most without the luxury of being able to undo them.
Not to say she hadn’t tried.
The single rash impulse that compelled her to stay in the past a single day longer than necessary had snowballed into an avalanche she couldn’t dig her way out of. Following her return from the past, when the reality of the suffering she’d engendered along the way had truly sunk in, Brontë had tried to fix the mess she’d made without forsaking Henry in the process. There’d been no way for her to travel back, disrupt her interaction with Henry, Hazel and most especially Tris without failing to accomplish the initial motivation of her journey. If she waylaid her former self, she lost Henry. If she made herself known to them as she already had, nothing changed. Going back and trying to tell herself not to do this or that in the first place hadn’t worked either.
The paradox of time travel. It wasn’t possible to go back and kill your own ancestor, nor could one go back and convince themselves not to do something utterly stupid when it was that exact idiocy that made them ask in the first place. She’d weeded through the tangled web again and again and it continued to confuse her.
Without the option to undo, concentrating on what she could do was what mattered now. With resignation weighing heavy, Brontë set her phone aside and pulled Hazel’s diary out of her purse where it had silently judged and condemned her since her return. Settling back into the corner of the sofa, she set her wine glass aside and cradled it in her hands.
The brown leather cover remained as aged and cracked as ever. There’d been one day she’d seen Hazel carrying it with her. The leather had been supple then, lighter in color with gold embossing that had long since faded away. The crisp pages crackled when she opened it. Noting that the pages were full all the way to the end thrilled her. As she browsed through the pages, one entry dated seven months after she left caught her eye. An outpouring of praise and gushing affirmations of Hazel’s newborn son and Henry’s heir, Phineas. The smartest baby ever conceived. How proud Henry would have been of him.
Would have been.
Will be, she silently promised and leafed farther back. Little had changed for all her efforts. Though she’d discovered it took some time for personal memories to trickle down to her — perhaps because she was outside the time loop — she had few new memories of the distant cousins she had in the MacKintosh family. Whatever else she’d accomplished, Hazel remained disconnected from the clan. With a touch of remorse, she turned another page and Tris’s name leapt at her. Dated a week before she left, it read:
‘I find myself enjoying the time I spend with Tris not merely as Henry’s friend but my own. Brontë’s influence, I think. As the days pass, I’ve discerned an aspect of his character I failed to take notice of in the past. Sincerely, I find myself most contrite, as well the entire family should, for my deficiency in acknowledging his desire to be something more than son, brother and friend.’
He wanted greater purpose. As she’d teased, to change the world. Like Hazel, Brontë failed to understand how such a close, caring family couldn’t comprehend what Tris strived for when she’d seen it in less than a week. That her time there helped others see him for the person he truly was buoyed her spirits and she turned the pages forward with a trace of positivity.
She’d only found the date she was looking for when she heard the front door open. A moment later her grandmother breezed into the room, all smiles.
“How was your night out with the girls, Granny?” Brontë asked though the answer was obvious.
“Wonderful. Long overdue.” Violet dropped her purse and shed her raincoat. She was down to a single walking cast. Though she couldn’t drive yet, relying on friends for transportation, she was far more mobile. And happy. “If ever there was a motivation to avoid breaking a leg or two, missing a few months of book club is it.”
“What are you ‘reading’ this month?” Brontë asked her. “A nice cabernet and the last season of Grace & Frankie?”
Her grandmother clucked her tongue, though her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Never mind that. I want to hear about your date.”
Angst and displeasure escaped with an audible groan. She’d had two reasons for going out on another date with Del, aka Mr. Verbosity. The first to distract herself from the steadfast misery that encompassed her life these days, with an added dash of punishment and penance in the process. And secondly, to prove to herself that she could potentially move on someday. She’d floundered in both regards.
No, there was a third reason. Making her granny happy.
In that, there had been a measure of success. Violet had fussed over her since her return, trying to banish the dark cloud hanging over Brontë without pressuring her to explain her sudden depression. Accepting the date — again, for lunch only — delighted her grandmother.
Being honest about the results wouldn’t. Lying wouldn’t help matters by giving her hope that something more would come of it.
“Oh dear.” Violet read the truth on her face before she could respond. “That bad again? I thought in his eagerness the young man might step up his game.”
“I think he’s given all the game he’s got,” Brontë told her. “I don’t know if he thinks he sounds smart or sophisticated when he drones on and on about the mating habits of the Orkney vole, but I sincerely doubt they migrate to breeding grounds on the shores of Loch Eriboll each year. The little buggers may be good swimmers, but would they paddle a hundred miles across the North Atlantic just to get some? I doubt it.”
“They could take the ferry.”
“Sure, if there’s a bus waiting on the other side to drive them the last fifty miles, why not?” Brontë sighed into her wine glass. “He was just so, so stupid.”
More to the point, he wasn’t tall and broad. He didn’t have mossy green eyes that glinted with suspicion, humor and hinted at the depths of his intelligence. He wasn’t handsome, or charming, or as aggravating in a far more attractive way as…
Another sigh deflated her. He wasn’t Tris and unfortunately, for the moment, no one else would do.
“A lot of stupid people go on to live full productive lives, you know.”
Granny’s wicked sense of humor brought a hint of smile to Brontë’s lips and lifted a bit of the weight off her heart. “As long as he lives it far from me, more power to him.”
“The next one will be better,” Violet said as she strolled into the kitchen.
How many times had she heard that? The old girl was ever optimistic.
“Did you drink all that wine?”
Brontë squashed her guilt and took a more moderate sip of her wine before calling out, “There’s a bottle of white in the fridge.”
A few seconds later there was a distinctive pop. She turned back to the diary to the melodious sound of the clink of a glass, slosh of liquid and closing of the refrigerator. Her grandmother shuffled back into the room and sat in her worn armchair with a contented sigh.
“What are you reading, dear?” She held up the journal and Violet frowned. “Again? Sometimes I regret having ever given that bloody thing to you.”
“Language, Granny. And I don’t know how you can say that. I love these stories.” Or she had.
“Aye, and I do as well. Nevertheless, I’ve begun to see a truth in them I never realized before. Something I wish I’d read between the lines long ago.” Her grandmother sipped her own wine. “If I’d figured it out sooner, my life might be very different now.”
“What is that?”
“Remember how I told you about my mother and how she dwelled upon what might have been after my father died?” Brontë nodded and she continued, “It was all my grandmother’s fault.”
“Hazel’s fault? How?” she asked, confused.
“She refused to move on after my grandfather died. Her failure became my mother’s and my own. We were conditioned to imagine what might have been and to wish for more.” Her granny’s expression grew wistful. “I know what you see in those pages when you look at them, dear, but true love or fate or whatever you think it was didn’t fail my grandmother. She failed herself. She failed my mother by refusing to see the truth.”
“And what is that?”
“Love isn’t everything.”
Staring agape at her grandmother, Brontë didn’t know what to make of her conclusion. Hazel would say love was the only thing. The only thing that mattered. The only thing worth fighting for.
The only thing worth living for.
A Scot to Remember (Something About a Highlander Book 1) Page 26