“Eleanor, it wasn’t that.”
“I know. Let’s sit down.” Her voice was soft like a fine mother’s can be. “I’m saying that maybe what happened, happened because it was time for it to happen. Time for something else to happen. At the root of things. Maybe?”
He started to object, but she saw him decide against it.
She knew she was being a coward, not saying what she was afraid to admit. “And anyway, I’ve not even told you the half of it here.”
He stiffened.
“I mean what it’s been like to find out so much about myself in such a short time. And without you.” She looked at him with great earnestness now. “Right? I mean, I’ve never done anything without you. And it’s strange that it happened the way it did, because if the call had come any other night, or if I hadn’t run up there and used the key, you’d have come with me.”
“Eleanor.”
“That’s wrong. I don’t mean that. I’m not sure I believe that. I don’t know. I like what I’ve found over here, on my own.”
“Let’s get a drink,” he said. It was all he said. “Let’s get a drink.”
They got a cab and pulled up to a pub, but Eleanor suggested they go back to the bar at the Stafford. The American Bar.
Miles crossed his legs and knocked back the last of his mojito, caught some ice cubes in his mouth, and chewed them. They hadn’t said words to each other in ten minutes or so but had been chewing on the salted mixed nuts from a bowl.
Finally he said, “I understand it’s the end now, I do, but I’m glad I’m here. I’m glad you didn’t fly home alone. I’m glad I didn’t come with you, and I’m glad I stuck around. You’re the best of everything there is.” He gestured for another round of drinks. Eleanor’s heart heaved in her chest.
With the courage it took to become her full self, she was free to do anything at all.
After their second mojito, Miles kissed her. She felt the kiss of the man he had become. The man who had learned how appealing he was.
“You deserve everything, everything good in the world,” she said to him.
Outside the Stafford, the cab pulled up and it would take Miles to Heathrow.
“I’m going,” he said.
Eleanor put the back of her hand against her mouth, and the fact that her eyes welled with tears, she knew, gave him a treacherous moment of hope.
He said, “I shouldn’t have come. I should have waited for you at home.” He looked at her the way he always had, with frankness and kindness. He waited and her clear eyes held him for an eternity.
“You’re the most wonderful girl.” He pressed one long kiss on her cheek and walked toward the big London cab. He never walked awkwardly, but he walked awkwardly now. She watched him throw his suitcase in, then he glanced back and held his hand up for a wave, climbed in, and the cab drove away.
She changed at Trent Hall before heading to Fiddleheads. Stepped out of the black wool skirt and put on jeans and the sweater she’d forgotten to give to Mead.
Mead was talking with Danny when she came in. Danny saw her and, without saying anything, stepped away to pour a glass of whisky with a drop of water to wake up the flavor. Eleanor slipped onto the seat next to Mead at the bar.
Before he’d seen her, she started speaking. “I figured out that with my Self in place, I have everything I could want.”
Danny set her whisky in front of her. “Welcome home,” he said.
“You surprise me,” said Mead.
“I surprise myself, I guess.”
They were alone in the Fiddleheads pub.
Mead reached around for the back of her head and pressed his forehead against hers. “May I?” he asked her, all gentlemanly. He slipped his arm under her knees and felt the gorgeous heft of her lovely body.
He lifted her up off the stool. “I’m glad you’re not a scarperer,” he said.
He spun her around and kissed her face madly, then set her down.
“I guess, so am I.” She was breathless.
He took her hand and led her past the pictures to the small bedroom.
“I wasn’t sure when I’d see you again.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said as she slipped the sweater over her head. “I can’t make a promise of anything. I want you to feel free.”
“Right, I will bear that in mind. But in the meantime . . .”
She flipped on her stomach and kicked off her shoes, slid up to the top of the bed, and lay back on the pillows. He smelled fresh and clean and she couldn’t believe she’d almost walked away from this feeling.
“You’re my heaven,” she whispered, and he lifted her up while he wrapped his arms around her, beneath her, his body on her and his weight not a burden but a relief. He didn’t kiss her for the longest time. His lips brushed her lips and his wild hair smelled of smoke and chocolate. The bedroom window was open and the breeze blew the curtains so the sheer silk brushed her face and she flinched for a moment, but he brushed it away. His eyes smiled, when he saw that for a second she’d been afraid. She felt the horse beneath them and the wind carrying them.
EPILOGUE
If Emily had wanted Eleanor to make public her great love and the daughter she’d left with the Enswell family at Trent Hall, she would have said as much. The world didn’t need to know what Eleanor had come to know about her family. It was a secret to keep and to hold. The ghosts had come to heal her soul.
Mead made room for a dishwasher in the perfect old kitchen, and they transformed Trent Hall from a shadowy place to a brightly lit home with guest rooms, a great master bedroom, a grand dining room, and an easy one for their quiet dinners. There was plenty of room for friends and they had lots of parties.
The good sheep on the land had provided wool forever, but now Eleanor engaged the finest weavers and the sheep were shorn of their fine thick coats early in the spring. Fleece, rich with lanolin and oil, was washed then picked and carded, divided into pencil rovings and spun into a twist on winders and skeins, and cleaned and dyed and ready to be blocked into all kinds of clothing.
In cities like Paris, New York, and Milan—each one so much like another—Eleanor and Mead drank champagne in hotels where they’d stay, but most of the year they lived at Trent Hall with books and buildings, swings on trees, and roving dreams.
Parts of summer and all of August they visited the island of Rory, in the Outer Hebrides, and Mead’s father grew fatter and happier every year.
In the beginning, Eleanor had resisted changing anything at Trent Hall, thinking Emily would get lost trying to find her. But after a while, she realized Emily had gone. She might have walked all the way to Scotland on her own, or maybe Robert had met her halfway, in the shadow of a tree on the moors.
Occasionally, Eleanor glimpsed the children at the pond, heard their giggles over the sound of the waterfall, but only vaguely. And she imagined that forever climbing on that craggy scarp were young Catherine and Heathcliff.
By the swing, Mead sat against the trunk of the orange-barked tree with Eleanor’s head on his lap. They’d walked clear across the moors and back again and were resting before a dinner of roast lamb, onion mash, and gooseberry pie. It was the height of another summer and the sun was still up at nine in the evening. The world was shaded lavender and while they lay there a rare brown hare skipped by, then suddenly stopped and seemed to look at them. He looked Eleanor in the eyes. Then his head twitched first to the left and then to the right. Mead placed his palm on Eleanor’s belly and felt the foot of their baby kick. As if pleased, the hare dropped onto his forepaws and scurried down a hole into the quiet earth.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deep gratitude to Sarah McGrath for her guidance and skillful editing. To Pete Harris, for persuading me. To Elaine Markson, a rare and wonderful agent, and to her assistant, Gary Johnson. My thanks to Candace Cotlove, Dia
ne Golden, and Marion Rosenberg for starting me on this adventure. To Nancy Wyler, for my love of the written word. Crazy deep thanks to the great crew and fellow writers at Peet’s Coffee and Tea in Westwood.
To Glenn Holland, for reading everything, and because I couldn’t have done this part without you. To the many good friends who’ve read countless manuscripts, especially Aline Smithson, Danni Greenwalt, Jennifer and Howard Bulka, Ninaya Laub, Jennifer Miller. To Anne and Tony Campodonico, for their laughter and their love. To Kim Baxter, for abiding support and grounding. To Suzie and Mike Scott, for being on the road with me, particularly the virtual ones in Yorkshire.
Thank you to Jack Grapes for teaching me; to Lori Grapes for layers of insight.
Deepest thanks to Deb Marlin for the care she took in reading endless drafts of Eleanor’s story, for her sage advice and friendship.
To Dimitri Logothetis, for collecting my poetry, when we were young, and for our son.
Heartfelt thanks to Nancy Furlotti, for being Beatrice and Virgil as I walked through the rings of hell, for giving me back the life I was born to live, through some combination of truth and courage.
Above all, to my son, Timothy Logothetis, because you stepped into my office one Halloween night and suggested I write a new novel, one I hadn’t yet started. You turned the light on in my world, from the day you were born, revealed love to me and taught me its magic.
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