~2~
Jane's blond hair gleamed in the sunshine as she knelt beside Katherine, her small fingers longingly stroking the velvet petals of the roses they attended to.
Her daughter smiled at something Katherine said to her, and Theresa waved back at them when Jane's small hand flapped at her excitedly.
"She reminds me so much of Ethan at that age."
Theresa's dark eyes slid over to Ivy as she joined her in the gazebo, and she watched the woman she once fantasized her future mother-in-law gaze out into the distance. Theresa didn't answer her, only waited for her to speak again.
Little Ethan appeared, and Ivy's words seemed to desert her as she stared into the young boy's face.
As easily as words on a page, Theresa read the older woman's blue-green eyes. She saw it too, the ghost of a resemblance, the line of the jaw, the look out of Little Ethan's inquisitive dark eyes. Her heart quickened with the knowledge that this, this want that Ethan be father to both of her children, not just Jane, wasn't hers alone. Ivy shared her foolish dreams, and the chasm that Theresa's youthful schemes had forged between them suddenly didn't seem so insurmountable. Focusing all of her attention on Little Ethan, she lifted a hand to his smooth cheek, rubbed her thumb against a smudge of dirt she found there. "What is it, Sweetie? I thought you were having fun with your sister and Nana Katherine."
"I was," Little Ethan shrugged. "I just wanted to see you. And give you this."
For the first time, Theresa noticed the flower twisting between her son's restless fingers, a rose, pale and with just the barest hints of blush splashed across its petals. She took the flower from Little Ethan's small hands. "For me? It's beautiful."
"What a thoughtful boy you are," Ivy murmured with a small smile on her lips.
Little Ethan's arms wound around Theresa's neck, tight and loving, and Theresa wrapped her own arms around the little boy in return, the rose dangling from her fingertips. She kissed the child's cheek and sent him off to play with his sister and his grandmother, a knot of emotion in her throat as she raised the flower to her nose, Ivy looking on.
The two women locked eyes, and a thousand secret words whispered across the breeze between them before Ethan's frantic voice shattered the quiet moment of understanding.
"Mother! Theresa!"
Katherine climbed to her feet, Jane at her side, and Little Ethan froze, staring, wide-eyed, at Ethan, pale and breathless before them.
"Ethan," Ivy demanded, Theresa slowly rising to her feet behind her, "Darling, tell us what's wrong."
Katherine raised a thin hand to her heart, fearing the worst. "Something happened to Sheridan and the baby."
Theresa felt her heart seize with worry then, stutter and stop within its protective cage, only to resume beating when Ethan shook his head, his blue eyes seeking out her own. "Ethan," she said slowly. "If it's not Sheridan, then who?" Her heart started beating wildly in her chest before he even uttered the words.
"It's Alistair." Ethan looked around at the children, innocent and worried, and his mother, the woman he'd long thought his grandmother, and the woman he couldn't wipe clean from his heart no matter how hard he tried.
Theresa felt the thorn of the rose digging into her tender flesh, but she welcomed the pain, welcomed the proof that this moment was real, wasn't the beginning of her descent into madness after years of hoping and praying and plotting to escape her gilded prison.
"Alistair," Ivy harrumphed in dismissal. "I'm sick of him and his evil deeds."
Katherine even turned from them, shepherding the children back toward the garden and the abundance of fragrant blooms that awaited them, but Little Ethan hung back stubbornly and Jane went to her brother, slipping her hand into his, sensing as only a child can the gravity of the moment that stretched out before them while they waited for Ethan to speak again.
His voice grave, Ethan delivered the words that were both Theresa's blessing and her curse, and she felt her legs give out beneath her as she fell to the bench below.
"The old man's dead."
So...interested in reading more?
;)
Feedback is adored.
Thanks so much for reading!