When Dr. Hunt didn't return for a week, they asked him, their worried glances wandering over his face looking for clues. He didn't want to share, wanted to hold on to what had held him up these past years, always knowing he was deluding himself, but unable to stop.
He had not been able to talk to Owen, because Owen didn't talk. The invitation had come from Mrs. Hunt, and so he had gone and set foot in a house he had not been to in years, calling himself a fool for his nervousness. He could not tell his colleagues that it had taken him hours to find a proper suit, or that he had taken her sunflowers out of spite.
He could not tell them that his friend had been standing alone, his arm around his mother, his thoughts a lifetime away. He did not want to dwell on the thought that Amelia's absence had given him an ugly moment's satisfaction that his friend who had betrayed him suffered the same way he was. He did not share that the look on his friend's gaunt face haunted him ever since.
What he wanted to tell them was what did not happen. They didn't have a drink together, afterwards, they didn't share a smile and joke, remembering, and the absence of her, and him, grew and filled his head, and left him wondering what he was doing here of all places, after all.