by Mia Sheridan
It just so happened that three college kids on their way home from playing hoops in the neighborhood had been walking by on the other side of the street at that exact moment. They’d stopped when they saw Wyatt, and the one girl in the group stayed with him and called the police, while the other two ran into the house to help me. Wyatt had found his voice once the three of them rushed to meet him, and he told them where to find me. “The good guy has his feet tied together,” he kept repeating over and over like a mantra.
There had been a car pulling into the driveway at the same moment Wyatt came running out—most likely the man Neil Hardigan had called—and when the college kids came running toward him, the car backed out quickly and raced away. The police, with information retrieved from Neil Hardigan’s computer, had later arrested that man as he was packing up his car to make a getaway.
The police also hinted to me that the information they were currently confiscating from the hard drive of Neil Hardigan’s house would not only put him away for a very, very long time, but had revealed a ring of pedophiles in the area, including information on Gary Lee Dewey. Gary hadn’t kept such information at his home, but Neil had, and with his arrest, authorities had hit the jackpot. Men linked to them both were being rounded up all over the East Coast right this very moment.
The police had questioned me extensively the day before, and I was told the news media had been camped out at the hospital’s entrance through the night. It was surreal. It was familiar.
The door opened and George came in, holding a package in his hands. He set it down on the table next to my bed and put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it very gently. I’d only seen him and Dominic briefly the night before. They’d been stunned, quiet, George had tears in his eyes as he said, “This is the second time you’ve escaped from a basement and landed yourself in the hospital. Let’s not do this again, what do you say?” I’d laughed and heartily agreed.
“How are you feeling this morning?”
I grimaced a little as I stretched my neck. “Like I want to get out of here.”
George smiled. “The nurse outside said the doctor would be in with your release papers in a few minutes.”
I nodded, looking over to where George had placed the package. “What’s that?”
“I’m not sure. The woman at the nurse’s station said it was dropped off for you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Huh.” Picking it up, I noticed that only my name was written on the front. It felt so light, I wondered if anything was even in it.
Setting it on my lap, I untied the string and took off the brown wrapping. There was a plain white box inside, and I removed the lid carefully. Sitting on top of the white tissue paper inside was a folded piece of paper. I opened it, reading the line once and then again.
To Gabriel, finder of beauty, rescuer of souls.
My heart started beating faster as I put the note aside and pulled out the extra tissue paper to finally reveal what had been placed carefully inside a nest of cotton.
I let out a strangled gasp as I lifted out Lady Eloise of the Daffodil Fields, marveling as I turned her in my hands, studying every side. She had been painstakingly put back together, piece by piece, sliver by sliver, so that she was now whole again, though not perfect. Tiny cracks and small missing pieces appeared everywhere from her toes to her hair, but somehow, ah, somehow, she was even more beautiful.
Ellie. God, Ellie.
I set the doll back down in the soft nest and picked the note back up, my eyes moving over every loop and curve of the handwriting. Ellie’s handwriting. I’d never seen it before, but now I knew what it looked like, and I studied it greedily, desperate for another small piece of her I hadn’t had until now.
“Ellie?” George asked quietly.
I only nodded. After a minute I looked up at him. “What if she doesn’t come back, George?”
George’s eyes were filled with a pained sympathy. He paused for so long, I wasn’t sure if he would answer my question. But finally he said, “Then I guess you have to find meaning in the ones who stayed.”
A gut-wrenching sadness overwhelmed me, the overpowering love I still had for Ellie rushing forward to mix with the myriad of emotions from the last twenty-four hours. I wanted more than just the doll. I wanted her. I missed her smiles, her kindness, her inner beauty, her intelligent mind, her soft skin, her body molded to my body each night. Having gone without it for so long, and then to have had it back so briefly, I missed being touched. Her touch. And in that moment, not having her right there with me felt too painful to endure.
I put my head in my hands as George gripped my shoulder and his comforting presence steadied my heart. And I cried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It’s now or never. Aim for the heart.
Shadow, the Baron of Wishbone
Plunge it deep.
Gambit, the Duke of Thieves
With all your strength, my love.
Lemon Fair, the Queen of Meringue
I believe in you. Be brave. For me. For us.
Lady Eloise of the Daffodil Fields
GABRIEL
April was a whirlwind of interviews and ceremonies. I only did one major TV network interview, and that was with Wyatt and his parents. The fear in Wyatt’s eyes had disappeared, and he looked like a different kid than the one I’d first seen in that basement what now seemed like a million years ago. He had a strong will. He’d be okay. And if he needed someone to talk to, I’d always be available.
There were a few dinners held in town for me, and I looked at them as opportunities to make a new start with the people of Morlea. I was embarrassed to be regaled as a hero, but I went anyway and after they were over, I was glad I had.
Still, it was nice when things quieted down and I was able to get back to the simple life I enjoyed.
Dominic surprised me one day with a small black puppy he said he’d found wandering around the quarry, obviously abandoned by someone. I didn’t believe his story—he thought I was lonely and was trying to provide me some companionship. “You don’t have to take him,” he said. “I just thought I’d offer. It’s your choice.”
I smiled at his need to be overly cautious when it came to trying to guide me or my life in any capacity. I appreciated that he recognized how overbearing he’d been in the past and the problems it’d caused in our relationship, but I also knew he had brought the puppy over because he cared about me. “Hey Dom, you don’t have to walk on eggshells around me. I’ll let you know if you need to back off, okay?”
He nodded, huffing out a thin laugh. “Yeah, okay.”
I gave my attention back to the puppy, who was looking between Dom and me, waiting to find out if he had a new home. I supposed I could use a friend. So I took the small, sad-eyed dog and named him Dusty.
I was out back repairing a break in my fence one blue-skied spring day when Dusty started barking his high-pitched puppy bark. I stood up slowly, taking my baseball cap off and smoothing my sweaty hair back before replacing my cap.
Dusty was chasing a butterfly nearby, romping and jumping through the daffodils that grew in the field behind my yard. For a minute, I let the moment soak into my skin—the strange mixture of loss I carried inside and the peacefulness of a puppy scampering in a field of yellow. How extraordinary life could be: so filled with glorious beauty and heartrending despair. And so often swirled together so that you couldn’t separate the two.
Dusty suddenly lost interest in the butterfly and started running in the other direction.
I turned to see Eloise walking toward me from the front of the house.
My heart skipped a beat and my breath stuttered as I froze, unblinking, as if she might be a vision, a dream that would disappear into a wisp of smoke and drift away if I closed my eyes for even a moment.
But no, she was real, and she was smiling as she came closer, holding a bag of some sort on one arm, and a small box tied with string in the other, wearing a flowered sundress that swayed around h
er calves as she walked. Her hair—all that beautiful, chameleon hair—was down and curling in front of her breasts and down her back. The sun was shining on it, and I had a brief flash of the very first time I’d seen her under the stage lights. The color of her hair had reminded me of a bottle of honey sitting on a windowsill, and I thought the same thing now. Only this time there was something in her eyes that I’d never seen there before—a sort of calm steadiness in her gaze.
“Hi,” I breathed when she stopped in front of me. I took off my cap and, without looking, tossed it in the general direction of where my toolbox sat on the ground. My eyes roamed Ellie’s face, drinking her in, my heart racing at the unexpectedness of this, of her.
“Hi,” she said. She smiled nervously, sweetly as she held up what I now saw was a vinyl cooler and a pie box. “I made you dinner. Pesto pasta with chicken. And I baked you a pie—lemon meringue.” Her smile grew. “It only took me two tries before I got it perfect. You were right, I can do lots of things if I try hard enough.” She bit at her lip. “Sometimes it’s the second try that really sticks.”
Hopeful joy rose up in my chest, and I let out a small laugh, nodding. “Yeah.”
Dusty came charging up to her, wagging his tail and barking happily at her feet. She set the cooler on a patch of grass, putting the pie box on top of it. She laughed and bent down, taking Dusty’s face in her hands and scratching his chin. “Well, hi there. Who are you?”
I cleared my throat. “His name’s Dusty. Dominic got him for me.”
“Dusty,” she murmured, running her hand over his black coat. “It’s a good name.” He rolled onto the ground and presented his belly, and she laughed and rubbed him there for a moment before standing again. I swallowed.
“I’ve read every article about you. I …” She paused and shook her head, looking off in the distance for a moment as tears filled her eyes, “I saved every one of them. I watched the show with you and Wyatt’s family and I … God, I was so scared when I learned what you’d done. Scared but mostly proud. So proud …” Her words dropped away as she licked her lips, stepping closer.
“Thank you.” I felt frozen with nerves, as if I were standing on a precipice, waiting for Ellie to tell me if I was going to fly or if I was going to fall. I didn’t know if she was here to say she was going to stay, and the fear of her leaving again bubbled inside of me. My chest felt tight with desperation and longing. Tell me I’m going to soar, Ellie. Please.
She nodded. “I have so much to tell you. I want to tell you about my mother.” She smiled so slightly, a sad sort of tilting of her lips. “I want to tell you about how much I was loved, and how it caused me to crumble into a thousand tiny pieces to lose that love the way I did.”
She paused, tilting her head, her hair sliding over one shoulder. “I want to tell you all of it, but mostly, I want to tell you how I’ve realized that I spent so much time trying to hold myself together when what I really needed was to break apart. You made it so I was brave enough to do that. And I’m so sorry I had to do it alone, I’m so sorry I caused you pain.”
She took a shaky breath, glancing down for just a moment. “I wanted to come to you in the hospital, so much. But I wasn’t ready then, and I couldn’t see you and then go away again. I couldn’t do that to you, or to me.”
“Eloise,” I said, my voice sounding strangled, filled with all the emotions coursing through my body. “Are you back?”
She blinked, seeming startled. “If you still want me.”
I let out a sound that was part breath but mostly groan and pulled her into my arms, relief and gratitude spilling through every part of my body like warm sunlight. I felt weak with it. “Want you? God, I’ve been waiting for you. I would have waited forever.”
She let out a small sob as she pulled me even closer, burying her face in my neck. “I never stopped loving you, not for one minute, not even for a second. Not ever. I want to love you if you’ll let me, Gabriel. I want to love you with the kind of love you deserve.”
“Let you? Oh God, Eloise. I love you, too. I loved you then, I love you now. I’ll love you forever.”
She gave me a soggy smile, a slight awe-filled laugh before she shook her head slightly. “I’m still a work in progress. I suppose I always will be.”
“We all are, sweetheart. All of us.”
She tilted her head back, and I brought my lips to hers and kissed her as if it were the very first time, taking my time to reacquaint myself with the taste of her—that same sweetness I’d never know how to name even if I tried.
“You’ve been with me all this time,” she whispered between kisses. “Your love, your words, the way you make me feel.” I smiled, kissing her cheeks, her eyelids, her smooth forehead. “I had to …” She whimpered softly as I brought my lips back to hers, her tongue meeting mine for long minutes before she pulled back slightly. “I want you to understand so you’ll forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive.” I kissed her neck as she let out a shuddery breath.
“It’s just … I had to … oh …” She laughed breathlessly. “Oh God, Gabriel, take me inside.”
I laughed, too, swinging her up into my arms. Dusty started yapping at my heels, running ahead as if to show us the way to the house.
“Wait, the food.” She laughed again.
I bent to it and picked up the string on the pie box and the strap of the cooler with the hand under her knees. Then I stepped carefully through the daffodils, trying not to crush them.
I placed the two items in my hand on the kitchen counter and carried Ellie into the bedroom and set her down, closing the door against Dusty, saying, “Sorry, bud, you’re not allowed to see what’s going to happen in here.” He moaned and I heard the click of his nails on my floors, moving away from my room. Off to destroy one of my shoes most likely, and I couldn’t have cared any less.
Afterward, when Eloise and I finally pulled apart, our limbs languid, our heartbeats calming and our breath returning to normal, I smoothed her hair back and whispered all the words of love I had saved in my heart. I told her how much I’d missed her, and she told me the same.
She spoke of the hurts of her past, the shattering of her heart, but mostly she spoke of healing and how she’d learned that damage is a slow piecing back together.
“Once,” she said, using a finger to trace my cheekbone, “you told me that solid stone is nothing more than sand and pressure and time.” Her hand dropped from my face to lie flat against my chest. “I was the sand, so easy to crumble. You provided the pressure, Gabriel, the holding together, the love. All the confidence you had in me was what I needed in order to take a chance on myself. And then you gave me the most selfless gift of all: time, so I could finally break apart and put myself back together.”
Lying there in the quiet of my room, our naked bodies pressed tightly, I looked into her unguarded eyes and saw the steady strength that had only flickered there before. And, impossibly, I fell even more deeply in love with her. I heard the same whisper in my soul that I’d heard the first time we’d met: She’s mine.
Mine to care for. Mine to love.
Later, when we emerged from the bedroom, we walked into the kitchen to find the lemon meringue pie splattered on the floor, a torn-open pie box, and one unremorseful-looking puppy. I froze, turning to Ellie, who gripped the sheet to her chest and bent forward in laughter. “I can make another one,” she said.
I pulled her into my arms and we danced for a moment, me in my boxers and her wrapped in a sheet, the floor smeared with pie, and I loved her to the depths of my soul. “Be my wife,” I murmured in her ear.
She pulled back to look at me, her eyes soft, the glimmer of a smile on her lips. “Because I can make lemon meringue pie?”
I laughed. “Well, no, but it doesn’t hurt.”
She laughed, too, wrapping her arms around my neck and pulling me close. “I’m in nursing school.”
I tilted my head, surprised but happy. “Then be a nurse and my wi
fe.”
She smiled. “Shouldn’t we wait just a little while? Shouldn’t we give it more time?”
“I don’t need more time. Do you?”
She tilted her head, her eyes filled with love and honesty, and she shook her head, the expression on her face happy and perhaps a little bit amazed.
“No,” she said. “No.” She brought her hand to my face, her smile tender. “You’ve always been so sure about me. Thank you for that gift. Thank you for waiting for me to be sure about myself.”
I kissed her, my heart feeling so full. Outside the window, the daffodils were a carpet of yellow, and this time, Eloise was in my arms, and it was as if my arms had been made for her and her alone. I no longer regretted the years I’d felt too terrified to be close to someone. In my solitude, in my fear, I’d somehow saved myself for Eloise. She was my one and only. Together we would carve our future. And for the first time in so very long, I was truly home.
EPILOGUE
ELLIE
“Hey,” Gabriel whispered, bending to kiss me, “is she giving you trouble sleeping?” He smoothed the back of his finger over our daughter Mila’s silken cheek. Though she was asleep, the contact caused her to begin instinctively nursing again where she lay at my breast. After a couple of small sucks, her tiny rosebud mouth went lax.
“No.” I smiled down at her, loving her with every beat of my heart. “I just wasn’t ready to put her back in her cradle yet. And the sun was rising.” I would go back to work part-time in a couple of days, and I wanted to enjoy every waking second of the time I had at home with my family. Though I loved being a nurse and it fulfilled me in a way nothing had before, the last couple of months at home with my newborn daughter had been the sweetest days in all my life.
Gabriel had brought his work home and did his sculpting in the garage just like he had when I first came to stay with him. Then, I’d sat with him, small pieces of my body and my heart healing as I watched his beautiful, loving hands move over the seemingly unchangeable stone. But now, I held our daughter in my arms as I watched him work, and we spoke of our plans and dreams for the future.