Hey, what's up, hello! I'm a bit behind on my writing for possibly the first time ever writing this (I'm only one chapter ahead - GASP) so I may be a few days longer after this update, but wanted to get this out for all of you to read! Thank you as always for the people who are still here, I will never deserve you :,)
Chapter 42
"Strange, isn't it? To love a book. When the words on the pages become so precious that they feel like part of your own history because they are. It's nice to finally have someone read stories I know so intimately."
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea
Florence had expected some kind of housewarming gift from her family for completing a year of schooling at Hogwarts. It was the sort of traditional, generous act that Eudora Allman lived for, her bread and butter to living as an outstanding member of elite Spectre society. Florence had predicted perhaps jewelry, or an old family heirloom, but what she had gotten had left her speechless until it reduced her to tears.
It was a house. Two stories, larger than anything any young woman living alone could ever need, with its own wrap around porch and white clapboard siding, an imitation of the family home in miniature. The building was situated on nearly the opposite side of the estate, miles and miles from her parents but seconds away via apparition, nestled between two fully realized fields of Dittany trees. Behind the house Florence could see the hill and copse of trees that were home to Illini, the river meandering steadily across the horizon like a silver snake. Her parents could not know the importance of this location, but it was obvious they had chosen it for its beauty, for the stunning ambiance of a southern home nestled among the rolling hills of Georgia.
"There's a small garden out back, but we figured you'd want to do most of the landscaping yourself," Clifford admits, jamming his hands into his jean pockets.
"And June and Cash will be residing with you," Eudora adds with clinical directness, of course more focused upon what was happening inside the house rather than out.
"Thank you," Florence whispers, unable to tear her eyes away from the home that was hers, a physical piece of land that her parents had signed away to her, for her. A bit of the Allman history she could now claim. The idea brought tears to her eyes, and Florence blinked furiously, trying to regain control of her breathing. "Thank you."
"Of course, dear," Eudora says, offering her daughter a rare, warm smile. "We'll leave you to explore the home on your own, but let us know if you need anything."
Florence feels her mouth fall open in surprise at this comment. Her mother was passing up a chance to show her around the home, to point out all of the décor and antiques and artwork and explain the specific significance? It was so out of character that Florence wondered if perhaps she was feeling well, and somehow touched that her mom thought her capable of determining the worth of her new things on her own. Mothers.
"Oh don't look so surprised," Eudora snaps, but her eyes crinkle slightly with a repressed smile. "You are a woman now. The responsibilities of maintaining a house will fall to you, and I can only hope that I have gotten something through that dense head of yours. Lord knows I got nothing through Albion's, and he's a daisy compared to you."
There are hugs and kisses to her forehead and profuse thanks on Florence's behalf, and then they are gone and she is sprinting up the stairs, using the key her father presented her to unlock the front door.
The home smells of fresh paint and recently carved wood, every corner empty of cobwebs, the windows spotless and pristine. Eudora's sensibilities are everywhere – thick oriental rugs in deep red and blue, hand carved antiques with brass finishes, painted ceramics the size of Florence with large leafy plants that sing of her father's touch, of Adsila's magic.
Cash and June are waiting in the first parlor with a glass of champagne, clapping their tiny hands and congratulating her on home owning.
"Missy Florence!" June squeaks. "We is so excited to be living here with you. Misses Eudora has told us to tells you that you are welcome to decorate the whole house hows you'd like."
"That's a shock," Florence mutters, her brain still reeling that she owns a home. The parlor has a pale blue ceiling and a delicate floral wallpaper that is moving – blooming and wilting with comforting repetition – upon closer inspection. There are framed black and white photographs of her family upon the dresser, the silver frame polished to perfection until it gleams in the mid-afternoon sunlight. Two year old Florence stands on her father's lap, pulling at Albion's hair while Eudora encourages a scrawny Owen to smile for the camera. It is chaotic and wonderful and Florence feels herself reach the verge of crying for what feels like the hundredth time in mere minutes.
Determined to see the entire home, she speeds through the first floor which reveals a study, several more sitting rooms, a kitchen she won't be spending any time in, and a pantry with a year's supply of potions each neatly labeled in Owen's careful script. Sprinting up the stairs, she takes turns at hairpin speed, throwing open door after door, her shock growing with each new sight. There are several bedrooms, each equipped with their own bathroom, enough space to house a militia. One thick wooden door hides a personal potions laboratory while another is a personal library.
The master suite is a dream – a full sitting room, demure whites, enough windows to drown Florence in light every morning and at night in the fabulous reds and oranges of sunset across the fields. From her bed she can see straight out to the river and Illini's hill, no longer a distant speck on the horizon from her old room. She is rounding the bed to approach the window when she spots the picture framed beside her bed, the sight of it gluing her to the floor.
It is Florence and Tom at her debut, the greyscale tone making the black of Tom's hair, the white of Florence's dress all the more extreme. She remembers the photo being taken by one of the wandering photographers, Tom's hand pressed to her back, Florence's own around his neck. She watches with grotesque fascination as the photo version of Tom and Florence spin, their eyes locked upon each other's like there is a silent conversation ongoing, their bodies pressed so close together it's a wonder one of the Spectre grandmothers hadn't ripped them apart and reprimanded them on the spot. With each spin her photographed self would turn to smile at the camera just in time for the flash, and it was in that moment when her gut would constrict because the Tom of the photo would not turn. His eyes remained focused on Florence's face, magnetic and heavy and desperate, like his life had ceased to continue without her attention – the moment she had looked away.
Florence stands watching this picture for an unknowable amount of time. It is the same one she placed on Tom's bedside the morning she left England, a note leaning against it that simply read Achilles and Helen. She'd angled it so that he could see it even when he lay down to sleep, jealous that any thought might pass through his mind that was unrelated to Florence before slipping into dreams.
Leaving him had been far harder than anything she'd done in her relatively unchallenged life. Tear stained and breathless, she'd kissed him goodbye, the image of him cut from glass, high-brow features framed with grief burning brightly in the forefront of her mind even now. He'd ordered her to write to him, even though as he'd already pointed out, she of course would, and then he'd kissed her, smothering her until even the air she breathed was his too.
"You are mine, Florence," he'd hissed into her ear. "Do not let distance make you forget."
"Visit soon," was all she'd pleaded in response because of course she was his and he was hers and she could be on Venus and she'd always remember the way his magic burned through hers.
Shaking herself slightly, drawing her mind away from the tunnel of thoughts that would pull her into sadness, Florence returns to the first floor of the home. Her home. Taking a seat at the desk in the study, she pulls out a fresh piece of parchment, quill, and ink, determined to begin marking the space as her own at once.
.
.
.
Florence's first week working in the greenhouse leaves her so exhausted that when Sunday morning rolls around, she cannot even get out of bed, calling for June from beneath her quilt to please bring her morning coffee to the master suite instead of out on the back porch as she typically has it. June complies cheerily, Florence laughing at the little elf's reminder that her mother discourages breakfast in bed, and thrilled with the rediscovery that this is her house and that the rule no longer applies.
Her body protests when she sits up, summoning her robe from the bathroom and swaddling herself in the silky fabric. She's been up before the sun every day this week, roused by either June or Cash and served a hasty breakfast before apparating to the greenhouses for a hard day's work. Even after years of following her father around, there are so many nuances to the workflows upon the estate that Florence had not seen, so many staff members she had not met.
Pauleen and Mike Mitchell had taken her under her wing, showing her where the seeds were stored in a temperature controlled room, where the fertilizer was kept, the shipping logbooks, how to send for more soil or glass to replace broken panes within the greenhouse. Every day they made their rounds, some planting by hand, others transitioning seedlings into larger pots, and yet others watering and fertilizing. Florence had to stop herself what felt like every few minutes, overwhelmed anew each time she saw the first sight of a new stalk pushing up from the earth, the innocence of fresh life quite literally blooming into the world. Each time it reduced her to tears.
"Beautiful, isn't it," Pauleen agreed, noticing on Florence's first day when the girl had fallen silent, brown eyes swimming with unshed tears.
"They're voices are so quiet."
"So you talk with them too. Your father does – hear him muttering under his breath all day out in the fields." Pauleen has a deep, honied voice that booms throughout the greenhouse, filling the space with laughter or singing. She and her husband had moved their family record player into the greenhouse, magically enhanced to turn the vinyl's without manual interaction, the music echoing throughout every crevasse of each building.
It made Florence weep for an entirely different reason when Glenn Miller played and there were no midnight eyes to meet hers, to tell her she was Helen of a thousand ships. No Tom to tell her that he wanted whatever it is she was. Divinity and magic incarnate. Her body had ached for him for the rest of the day, for the familiar thrill of his magic clawing its way up her spine, but the songs of the land and of her people had lulled her to sleep that night in the end.
"Of course," Pauleen had continued. "I don't need to be able to speak to them to feel their magic. That's the nice thing about plants, they just give and give and give, and all we do is try and give back."
Mike was quieter than his wife, a thin, sweaty man who smiled more than he frowned. He brought Florence water when she looked like she might drop, and sometimes he would stand and watch as she sang in Cherokee to the seedlings, coaxing them from their warm, earthen abode into the world of light and wind and rain. She could not grow them the way she had grown the tree at Samhain or Tom's tree far off upon Illini's hill – it was too taxing, and there were thousands and thousands of seedlings within the hundreds of greenhouses, but she could whisper for strong roots and wide leaves, for sap that moved like molten chocolate through their small, green veins. And the spirits would whisper back, their innate magic finding confluence with hers, a melding of enchantment that made the earth hum and the air crackle and the world just a bit more alive – even just for a moment.
June set Florence's breakfast on the table in her sitting room, and with a final bow, disappeared back to the kitchen. On the tray, alongside the pot of coffee and typical serving of freshly cut watermelon and scrambled eggs were several letters. Florence tore into them while she charmed the coffee pot to pour her a mug.
The first was from Tallulah, inviting herself over for dinner the next week to see the new home. Florence flipped the letter over and scribbled a hasty yes on the back before setting it aside to be delivered by messenger eagle. The next was from Forsythe, who Florence had written too asking to purchase some of his blue azaleas. She wanted them planted along the front of her house and possible along the drive between the two Dittany fields – a smaller, cozier entrance than the grand oak-lined drive of the main estate.
Forsythe had of course given her a discount, agreeing to have the plants over later in the week and install them upon the grounds himself. Rolling her eyes slightly at his overt attempt at playing the Southern Gentleman, Florence scribbled back her response, and set his letter aside too.
The last letter bore no markings except her name. Florence written in delicate, curling script that could be from no one but Tom. Gulping down hair, Florence reaches for it, peeling back the envelope somewhat reverentially. It has been two weeks since she'd left, and some part of her resents that he has not used his portkey to come see her, but at least she has this from him.
Florence,
Dippet denied me my rightful post at Hogwarts. He says that I am too young, that it would make the students uncomfortable to have a teacher who appears their own age.
I have tried to be rational about this situation, but I cannot reason it. He is wrong. There is no one more worthy, I will show him this.
I need you here. The apartment is a shell of memories that all pertain to you – you should be with me.
Tom
Florence's head buzzes, expanding to accept the words she has just read. Everything inside of her, within that space Tom has carved between her ribs, aches for him. You should be with me. She can feel the bitterness in these letters in the same way she can feel each breath that fills her lungs, that despite the gift she has given him to bridge the gap between American and Britain, he was on some level betrayed by her choice to return home.
Florence is still digesting the letter, rolling over each word in her mind when she feels it, the hooking beneath her navel, the spiraling sensation of levity in her gut, and then the unmistakable pull of a portkey. She screams, but there is no sound that exits, her body swirling through nothingness, her letter clamped within one hand and mug of lukewarm coffee in the other. Beneath her arm her wand tip jabs into her side, the instrument rammed haphazardly into her robe pocket where she prays it will not fall out. Can things fall out during portkey travel? Florence does not know, she does not want to find out.
She flies through time and space, closing her eyes to stop nausea that has begun to well within her gut. Florence has no idea how long she is in motion, only that she wants it to end, unprepared as she was to be transported, lifted from the comfort of her bedroom and into the void.
At last her feet hit solid ground, coffee spilling onto her hand, burning her skin, wand clattering to the floor with a loud echo that means only that she is standing upon stone. Blinking rapidly, Florence reaches out to grab onto something with the hand holding her letter, and finds not something but someone. The jolt of energy that races up her arm, which makes her magic sing can only mean one thing.
"Tom," she breathes, turning to see her hand clasped in his, his knuckles white with the strength of his hold on her. It might have been painful had she been able to feel anything but the dizziness in her brain, but it takes several more seconds before she feels she is breathing normally and she can register that she is standing in his foyer.
"What did you do?" She stutters, seeking his gaze, finding his eyes already locked upon hers, cold and unwavering.
"The letter was a portkey," he replies evenly. His hand trembles around hers.
"Christ, Tom. You can't just do that," she says, closing her eyes once more. The nausea within her is growing, and she feels unstable, like part of her mind had been left in Georgia.
"Actually," he counters, and his voice is slightly lower, as if he finds the situation amusing. "I think you will find that I can, and I did."
"I didn't mean you weren't capable," Florence snaps, and she thinks she might be sick now and the hand holding her coffee is burning and she wishes she had on more than just a flimsy silk robe because she is both too hot and too cold at once. "I mean you can't just move my person across the globe like that. It's wrong, and it scared me."
"That was not my intention." His voice is like stone across a cheese grater, and it pounds against Florence's temples.
"What exactly was your intention?"
"You should be here," he murmurs, and his hand trembles around hers again and all at once Florence's mind is clear because his voice is hollow and earnest and dare she say it sad. Everything within her seems to crumble, and without thinking her mug of coffee falls to shatter on the floor and she is in his arms, her lips seeking his, fingers desperate to tangle in his hair. Fuck how had she gone two weeks without him? How could they ever make up for those minutes lost, those hours they had spent out of each other's reach, together only in thought?
When his hands slide down to grip the back of her thighs, lifting Florence from the ground, she thinks he will take her to his bedroom – to discover her anew – but like always, he surprises her, carrying Florence with solemn gazes and whispered words to the library where he pulls her into a chair with him, summoning from some corner of his apartment the copy of the Iliad.
"Read," he commands, but his voice breaks when he says the one word and even to Florence it sounds more like a plea. She curls around him, never pulling her eyes away from his face which is blank and smooth and a perfect mask that she wants to shatter into a thousand pieces.
"Will you tell me what you're thinking first?" Florence asks, and his throat bobs as he swallows.
"My brain won't still when you're away," he croaks, lifting a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "And I don't want to think right now. I just want this."
Florence nods, because now that her brain has caught up with her, she too wants him and all of the madness that comes with it. She silences the niggling voice in the back of her mind that tells her it was wrong for him to take away her free will like that, much in the same way she'd silenced the same voice telling her that Tom had not admitted to the full story of the Chamber. If she knew, she could never go back to not knowing, and she loved him, and she didn't want to stop.
Tom's arms wrap around her, his cheek pressed to the top of her head as Florence cracks open the book. They have sat like this so many times that it feels like returning home – stepping into amber memory.
"This is a sad part of the poem," Florence whispers when she realizes where they are. It has been some time since she read to him, considering that they spent her last stint in Tom's apartment in more wicked ways, and the realization presses a heaviness upon her chest.
"Book sixteen? What happens?"
"I can't spoil it," Florence murmurs, and his boyish excitement that someone would sit and read to him lifts some of the seriousness of moments before. "Just listen."
Tom does listen, his chest a steady rhythm she falls into, the words rolling from her mouth like she had written them herself. When she hears his breathing change, his grip softening upon her waist, she knows he has fallen asleep. Florence folds the corner of the page down, thankful that she will not have to read of Patroclus' death today, content to chase Tom into dreams in this stolen moment that they shared instead of considering brilliant Achilles, descending into madness over the loss of his companion. Like Tom, descending into anger without her presence.
Life did not imitate art, but damn if the line did not sometimes come close.
Tom wakes her what feels like hours later, the sky outside the window black, marked only by the city skyline and the strongest of stars. His lips are soft against her temple, moving lower to claim her mouth when he feels her stirring against him, rising from slumber.
"I need to go home, Tom," Florence mumbles against his lips, moving her hand to cup his face, to run her knuckles along his jaw.
"Stay the night, the I will take you back in the morning. With the time change, it will not affect you."
"I have to be up before the sun tomorrow, Tom, and I want to sleep in my own bed."
She gets to her feet, pulling him up after her. His hands settle on her hips, pushing her back until she meets the wall and he can press himself against her.
"If you don't want to sleep here that is fine, but you don't have to go now," he suggests, and the sinful lilt of his voice is the only hint Florence needs. She wants to give in, to tug at the sash of her robe and let it fall to the floor, and yet she wants also to wake to watch the sun rise through the greenhouse and have breakfast on her back porch and be still and steady and prepared for her second week at work.
"Will you make me some tea?" She asks, peeling one of his hands away from her hip so that she can press her lips to the inside of his palm. "And then I do need to go home."
Watching the myriad expressions that pass across his typically still face makes her giggle and kiss his hand again. Anger in his jaw at being denied, the softness in his gaze that is only for her, and pink cheeks of excitement – because Tom loves tea. He takes her hand and tugs her through the now dark apartment and into the kitchen, lighting lanterns and the stovetop with one wandless wave of his hand.
"I'm sorry about the teaching position, Tom," Florence murmurs, pulling down two saucers and teacups of extremely fine demitasse. Eudora Allman would be impressed by such high end china. "It's foolish to penalize you for your age when you have so much skill. I am sure Dippet will regret his choice."
"He will," Tom agrees, his voice sharp and clinical as he summons the kettle from across the room and sends it on its way to the tap where the water is already running.
"Do you know what you will do now?"
"I am…uncertain," Tom admits, and Florence cannot tell if his hesitancy is because he despises not having a plan, or if there are things he is not ready to share with her. The idea that it may be the latter makes something inside her compress.
"Will you travel?"
"It is a consideration," Tom agrees, summoning the kettle and placing it over the burner before turning to face her. In the shadows, his skin seems to glow like mercury, his eyes like tiny pits of chaos. "But I admit, I had hoped you would travel with me."
"I can't now, but I would like that someday too."
Tom smiles at her, laying out one hand as an invitation for her to approach him. Florence of course complies, sinking into his grasp, resting her chin on his sternum so that she can still meet his gaze.
"I may," he says, his deep voice attempting casualty. "Approach Burke for his job at his father's store."
"Really?"
Tom nods.
"It would be a simple job, filling time until Dippet deems me old enough to teach, and I would be able to study on the side."
"My mother would love if you could appraise our family antiques," Florence teases, thinking about all of the new furniture in her own home. "And you could tell me all sorts of things I don't know about my new home too."
The tea is delicious, and Tom listens quietly as she tells him about the greenhouses, about how she cried when Miller played, about Pauleen's obsession with homemade biscuits and the spell she'd invented to knead the dough, about the reedy little spirits inside the Dittany saplings that she could feel humming across her skin like a constant breeze. Florence knows when she passes into rambling, but Tom doesn't stop her, his midnight gaze fixed upon her lips more often than not and Florence finds herself unable to halt the blush that fixes upon her cheeks. They have another serving of tea, and Tom tells her that he's mastered another spell that he found in a gruesome old textbook in his library that stops bleeding even from cursed wounds, that he found a very different spell that would make the constellations visible to the naked eye during the middle of the day. His eyes gleam like struck flint as he speaks of magic, and Florence finds herself slipping into the ease with him that she had missed. How could anyone deny him when he was like this?
"Have you learned to fly yet?" She asks when Tom pours her a third cup of tea.
"I will master it, Florence."
"Maybe I will get there first."
"If I did not think you were capable of beating me, I would not have challenged you."
Finally the tea is truly gone and there is no more reason to stall, and yet Florence finds what she is about to ask for as terrible as he seems too, his aristocratic features forming into a frown as if he has read her mind.
"Will you transfigure my robe into a dress? I can't do it and I can't show up in the middle of downtown Spectre dressed like this – especially with a man." She tries to smile to ease the pain of their parting, but it comes out as a grimace.
Tom remains silent, but moments later he moves forward, pulling at the sash at her waist, his long fingers peeling back the sides of her robe until she is bared before him, her skin pebbling against the cold. Her breath catches in her throat when he sinks to his knees before her, fingers dragging down her sides, and then his mouth is touching her there and Florence's mind is blank, his name the only thing she can recall.
It is some time later that Tom reties her robe, getting to his feet and smirking at her like something feline and wicked. Florence is boneless against the kitchen counter, a self-satisfied look smeared across his porcelain face as he transforms the fabric against her skin into something closer to a day dress. He pulls the portkey from his hip pocket where Florence is touched to see he has been carrying it all day, sets the dial, and then wraps her in his arms, pressing her face to his chest as they are lifted from the ground into nothingness.
.
.
.
"They look amazing, Forsythe," Florence says, handing him the glass of sweet tea and lemonade – a drink the NoMaj's had been particularly fond of that Clifford Allman had adopted as his own. The bear-like boy smiled at her, easy and gentle as he wiped his brow with his sleeve, copper hair sticking to his forehead slightly in the late afternoon heat. Florence herself was still dressed in her jeans and dirt stained t-shirt from work, hair pulled back in an elastic to keep it out of her face during the day.
"Not too bad, I'll admit," he agrees, taking a long sip of the proffered drink, turning to gaze down the drive where the freshly planted azaleas stand in neat rows. "I just hope they take root ok."
"Oh, I'm sure they'll be fine," Florence says, unable to keep some of the smugness from her voice. "In fact, watch," she orders, jumping from the top step down to the ground, waving him after her as she approaches the start of the row. Forsythe trudges after her, shaking his head with a knowing smile.
"If you're trying to make me look bad, you don't have to do whatever it is you're about to do," he cajoles, but he kneels beside the first azalea, checking beneath the lowest boughs to see the freshly upturned soil. Florence tugs off her boots, and with a smirk that Tom would be proud of, begins to beat her feet against the earth, eyes closing as her voice warbles out into the air.
She had been using her native magic so often over the past few weeks that it took almost no coaxing now to feel the rush of heat beneath her fingers, the tingle in the air and down her spine as those spirits around her joined in her song. Where before it may have taken ten words, it now only took five, her heart in tune with the wants and desires of the life forces around them. Florence closes her eyes, her chanting increasing as she feels the azaleas respond to her song, unsure and hesitant to join her while their roots attempted to find purpose once more in new soil. Florence smiled to herself, and let her voice rise higher, pressing for deep roots and kind soil and thin spindly fibrous roots and a connection between these new plants and her land that would last for many years.
When she opens her eyes again, she can see that much of the upturned soil has settled, as if the ground itself has drawn in the azaleas in a welcome embrace to the land.
"An absolute show-off," Forsythe whispers from the ground beside her, forearms resting on his thighs as he stares down the line of shrubs. Florence's pride flares.
"It feels good to have something that's mine," Florence admits, offering him a hand and pulling Forsythe back to his feet. "I mean, I know I'm part of the family and all, but this house is mine, in my name. Maybe that doesn't make sense?" Her voice tapers off as her eyes find once more the white clapboard structure, the ferns that hang from baskets between columns.
"Nah, I understand," Forsythe agrees, his voice like sugar it's so easy. "That's how I felt when dad gave me control of the farm operations. It felt nice to put my name on it since I'd felt like it was mine for so long."
"It just feels like I'm doing something right, working here where my family always has."
"When's Alb moving home to take over?" Forsythe asks as they take a seat on her front steps.
"After the wedding he and Margaret will move into the estate and Dad will start to transition. I think Owen wants to hold off a few years though before he takes on a shipping empire," Florence explains, closing her eyes and letting the wind tickle the stray hairs beside her face.
"You three will be good for this place."
"Yeah," Florence agrees with a smile. "I think we will."
.
.
.
Radella visits on Florence's eighteenth birthday, although Florence knows it's really to see Owen. They spend the weekend trying to teach her how to ride when she can escape Owen's library, and Florence and her nearly burn down her home attempting to make cookies. The raven haired girl oohs and ahs in all of the right places when Florence gives her a tour of her house, and she points knowingly to the pictures of Florence and Tom which have multiplied across the house from the one beside the bed to several others in various rooms.
Tom can't get to America for her birthday because Philip's father, Caractacus, and his new boss, Mr. Borgin, sent him to Scotland to pester an old Lord for access into his cellars. Tom sends her a letter bemoaning the failure of his multi-use portkey to function outside of either England or America, but he tells her too that he dreams of her every night, and although it is not enough to make up for the absence of him, it eases the edge of the aching maw in her chest.
He sends her a gift too – a massive, gold-framed oil painting of a chiton clad woman with wild hair and black eyes that stare intently at a golden apple. She shifts around in the frame at alarming speed, sometimes meeting Florence's gaze, and at others staring forlornly out through the trees. Tom includes a note with it that simply reads:
A woman as wild as the land that raised her – Atalanta – to watch over you when I am gone. I want to read this one next.
Florence hung it that day over the fireplace in her main salon, watching as the woman moved about the frame with restless grace for hours on end.
As July passes into August and into September, Tom visits on spare weekends when he can convince Borgin to release him from work. It is never enough time, but they make the most of the hours they have, Tom patiently listening as Florence shows him the work she has been performing in the greenhouses, or picnicking with her under their tree alongside Illini. The great white creature often finds them when they are on walks, and Florence notes that she has taken an interest in Tom that seems to affirm something with herself. If Illini likes him, then Adsila would have too, and that thought felt very important to Florence.
They christened Florence's house much in the same way they had christened Tom's apartment, and in the weeks between visits, it becomes harder and harder to find a place within her own home that does not remind her of him. She understands Tom's words now - The apartment is a shell of memories that all pertain to you – and some nights it is well into the small hours of the morning before she falls asleep, suddenly aware of how empty her bed is without him.
As October draws closer, Eudora begins to pop by unannounced, showing Florence scrapbooks she has been preparing with fabric samples and photos of flower arrangements and all sorts of other decisions for the wedding. Margaret comes often too, and they typically find themselves sitting in Florence's dining room, sampling cakes or laughing at suggestions that some of Margaret's ancient family members have given her for the wedding. Florence cannot ever recall sharing something like this with her Mom, but having it now breathes new life into their relationship, and she is thankful for it.
There are letters from friends in England and the odd dinner party to attend in town, and Florence finds herself sinking in a routine, the days melting away one after another. She misses Tom, but she finds that if she can keep busy, the memory of his eyes will not haunt her, the call of the land soothing the worry within her when she thinks about when she will see him next. Life was not perfect, but it was good, and for now that was enough.
I got two incredible song recs from two incredible readers on Ao3 that I wanted to share with everyone because I think they both capture so beautifully the mood of this story!
- Season by Cadmium, Harley Bird, and Riva (recommended by the lovely ooBedozoo)
and
- A french song which the incredible Tournesol15 has provided a link with English subtitles too here:
youtu .be/F 5Td0TJ5G N8 (remove the spaces when you copy and paste!)
Both are great songs which I've been bumping over the weekend! I'll publish the rest of my playlist at the end of the tale since it contains SPOILERS! Anyways, you all are fantastic and everyone please stay safe, and thanks again to MrsLolita for such a thoughtful, insightful comment - yes, Tom is becoming more reckless!
