27 July 2013
"I'm cold all the bloody time," Cate confessed.
Ruth hummed noncommittally, taking a sip of lukewarm beer from a sweaty bottle. Given the fact that it was getting on towards 10:00 p.m. and the temperature was hovering around 32 degrees Celsius she wasn't entirely sure how her companion could possibly even remember what it felt like to be cold. Then again, she mused, taking another swallow, in a way she supposed she could understand what Cate was trying to say. It wasn't the sort of cold that came with winter, a cold that could be banished with blankets and cups of tea. It was a cold that stayed, that lingered, a cold born of loneliness and wasted opportunities. Ruth knew a thing or two about that.
"I was never cold, before. Fabian was like my own personal electric blanket. I've bought one, of course, but it just isn't the same."
Ruth hummed again. This is getting to be a habit, she thought glumly.
With school out for the summer holidays she and Cate both had far too much free time on their hands, and they were spending far too many of their evenings lamenting over the grief they shared in common. They'd met a few months before, when Cate moved in next door. Ruth had done the neighborly thing and introduced herself, and had been delighted to discover that her new neighbor also worked at the university, though in a different department, which explained how they'd never crossed paths before. A few other professors lived in their little subdivision as it was close enough to campus to make for a bearable commute, but far enough away that they never ran into their students in the grocery store. It was a quiet place, full of families, lush green gardens and gnarled oak trees, and after three years it was finally beginning to feel like home to Ruth. Having a friend so close at hand, one who, like Ruth, was raising children on her own and missing her dead husband fiercely, only served to settle her more permanently. She'd made a good life for herself here, a quiet, comfortable life, and she was glad for the companionship.
They were rather a lot alike, Cate and Ruth - or Rachel, as she was called now. Cate was perhaps a decade or so younger than Ruth, but the elder of her two boys was only a few weeks younger than Emma, and the children got on grandly. They were both rather quiet, and rather withdrawn, though whether that was as a result of their natures or their losses she could not say. And, of course, they were both from England. Cate had grown up in London, and Ruth had loved that city so dearly, and they enjoyed reminiscing about the old days. They were not the only expats working for the university - and in fact, Ruth had found, academia was rife with transplants from other cities, other countries, other times - but they gravitated towards one another nonetheless.
Ruth turned her head and caught Cate looking at her strangely, and realized she hadn't spoken for quite some time. She hastened to rejoin the conversation.
"My Harry was the same," she said softly, smiling a sad little smile.
It was all part of the legend, of course. She knew it off by rote; her husband had been killed in a car crash while she was still pregnant. She'd taken time off to look after Emma, and then accepted a position with the classics department at Duke University. It was a prestigious school, but a small one, in a fairly small city, in a place she would never have been able to pick out on a map prior to moving there. If pressed, of course, Ruth would not mention how easy it was to hide in such a place, would not mention that no one would think to look for her in America, but would instead explain that she had needed a fresh start, that she wanted Emma to grow up somewhere safe, somewhere with a little garden where she could play, somewhere warm.
It was easy enough to remember, just enough truth to make it feel real. Of course, Harry wasn't dead, and had never been hers, not truly, but she had loved him, loved him enough to die for him, to spend a few precious nights in his bed, to carry his child and raise her up on the other side of the world. And if she did not have quite so many fond memories of Harry as Cate had of her Fabian, she had enough. The warmth of him beside her as she slept, the strength of his arms as he held her; these things she recalled as clearly as if they'd only just occurred, when in truth seven long years had passed, and so much had changed.
"Do you ever think," Cate asked, closing her eyes and turning her face up to the stars as if she were sunbathing, "about finding someone new? Getting back out there?"
Ruth laughed. "No," she said honestly. "I mean, I have been out, a few times." Since coming to this place she had allowed exactly two men to take her out to dinner, and had even allowed one to come back to her bed a time or two, but it had never been serious, had never really stuck, and she wasn't particularly glum about it. She had enough on her plate, looking after Emma, planning her courses, churning out just enough articles and book reviews to keep her job. Just the thought of pursuing a relationship with a man, a relationship that would of necessity be built on lies, was enough to exhaust her.
"Was he it for you, your Harry?"
There was something very warm and very kind about Cate Durand. She was, like Ruth, not particularly tall and slightly built, though her hair was blonde and her features sharper, more aquiline. Her soft brown eyes were constantly full of understanding, of empathy, of compassion, and she had rather quickly become the single best friend that Ruth had ever had. The question she asked was gentle, not motivated by a desire to poke and prod and ferret out information but rather out of a desire to offer comfort, to convey that Cate understood precisely what Ruth's life was like, what it meant to raise a child without a partner. And Ruth rather got the sense that there was a quiet desperation beneath it, as well, that it was a question Cate had asked herself in regard to her late husband, but had yet to find the answer to.
"I don't know," Ruth said sadly, truthfully. "I don't know if there's just one person for each of us. It seems rather...absolute. I've never met anyone quite like him, though. And I don't know how I could ever possibly feel about someone else the way I felt about him."
It was Cate's turn to hum. Ruth spared a glance for the baby monitor sitting next to her; they were at present firmly entrenched in two heavy wooden armchairs on Cate's back porch, and next door Ruth's house was all in darkness. Emma had been sleeping all through the night for years now, but Ruth kept the monitor in her daughter's room and the receiver by her side, just in case. There was no activity, however, a clear indication that Emma was still sleeping deeply, for which Ruth was duly grateful. Likewise Cate had brought out her own so that she could keep an ear out for her boys, but Louis and Gabriel were mercifully quiet.
"I never felt I had to explain myself to Fabian," Cate said thoughtfully. "He always understood. Even when I was in Lebanon, when everyone told me I was mad for going, he just came with me. When Louis was born, I couldn't have asked for a more supportive partner."
They had spoken at length about their children, their pregnancies, their deliveries, and Ruth couldn't help but shudder, just a little, recalling what Cate had told her of her eldest son's birth. Louis had come nearly two months early, had nearly killed Cate in the process. Why on earth would you put yourself through that a second time? Ruth had asked her one night, and Cate had just smiled. Because I love my boys, she'd said.
"I don't think anyone else would ever hold a candle to him."
That was a sentiment Ruth could sympathize with whole heartedly. There was no one earth like Harry Pearce, she knew. Brave and gruff and kind and cultured, he had bulled his way into her heart, had become the one person she could lean on, when the world turned to madness around her. He had treated her softly, gently, had wooed her with his voice rich and warm as honey, with his eyes that seemed so knowing, had waited for her when she let her nerves draw her back from him, had damn near gone to prison to protect her name. She had never felt so safe as when he held her, nor had she ever felt so bereft as when she was forced to leave him standing alone and forlorn on the banks of the Thames.
The moment had grown heavy with the weight of remembered grief, and Ruth could hardly bear it. She drank down the last of her beer and reached out to pat Cate's knee affectionately.
"Right, love," Ruth said with a forced sort of joviality. "That's quite enough of that. Didn't you say your father's coming soon?"
Cate laughed. "He says he will, though God knows it wouldn't be the first time he broke a promise. Gabe's birthday is on Wednesday, and dad said he'd be flying in tomorrow. I keep waiting for him to text me and say he can't make it."
They had spoken of him, too, Cate's father, of the way he'd left his family, the damage it had done to her mother and her brother. His job was always more important than us, Cate had told her. Bastard. This last she had added somewhat fondly, as in recent years her father had been trying his best to mend their relationship, and Cate was slowly letting him. Ruth envied her that, that chance to reconnect with her father. Ruth's own father had died when she was small, and she missed him still, more so now that she had Emma. It would have been nice, she thought, for Emma to get to know her grandparents.
"If by some miracle he does come, will you watch the boys while I go pick him up at the airport?"
"Of course," Ruth agreed at once. The drive to the airport would take a good thirty minutes, and then he would have to fight his way through customs and locate his baggage, and then of course there was always the chance that his flight would be delayed. Ruth didn't blame her friend for wanting to leave her two small children behind while she ran that particular errand. She liked Cate's boys, and she liked to see Emma playing with other children, happy and without a care. It would be no great imposition.
"Right, then," Cate said, but before she could finish that thought there came the soft sound of a child in distress from the baby monitor beside her. "That'll be Gabe," she sighed, rising out of her chair at once.
"Have a good night," Ruth said, kissing her cheek once. "Maybe he'll go right back down."
"We can hope," Cate said ruefully. Though he would be four in just a few days' time Gabe still found his way to his mother's bed more often than not; though he could hardly articulate it, Cate thought he must be missing his father, who had died in a helicopter crash in Syria the year before. What Fabian had been doing there remained a mystery, and Ruth wasn't about to ask.
She picked her way over the lawns in the darkness, sliding into her house silent as a shadow. For a moment she paused with her ear against Emma's door, but still her daughter slept, and so she smiled, and made her way to bed. It was a pleasant way to spend an evening, sharing a drink and quiet conversation with a friend, and if that friend never learned Ruth's real name, that was a small price to pay for her safety and that of her child.
Ten years ago Ruth never would have imagined herself in this position; hell, the night before the Cotterdam scandal blew wide open, when Ruth had cradled Harry in the shelter of her thighs and run her fingers through his soft blonde hair, she could never have dreamed that any of this would come to pass. And yet it had, and though it grieved her, though she had never endured such fear, such calamity, such depth of loss, she found that she was on the mend. She had a nice house, and a job she enjoyed, and a beautiful daughter she loved more than life. Ruth would be content. She could see no other option.
