She found the strength to leave him once before, she finds it again the morning after The Courier posts their article. It's too much for her and she's coming to the realization that love isn't enough sometimes–no matter how much she wishes it were.
His eyes are bloodshot with lack of sleep and she watches as he chokes down a sob at the sight of her packed bags and traveling coat. Her voice is shaky and she tells him she's going to Adelaide, to stay with Christopher Jr. for a bit, she just needs to clear her head and think about what she wants.
Lucien nods but catches her hand on the doorknob, raising it to his lips and pressing a lingering kiss to the back of her hand. A tear falls from his eye and splashes on the back of her hand.
"You're coming back, right, Jean?" He's desperate, searching.
She wants to tell him Yes but she doesn't want to lie, doesn't want to give false hope. She cups his cheek, strokes down the prickling hairs of his beard. "I don't know. Goodbye, Lucien."
He lets her go without a fight and she's in Adelaide only a few short hours later, unpacking her bags and sitting down on the bed to bury her face in her hands. The tears finally fall and she cries for a lost faith and a loss of privacy and the possible loss of her future.
The weeks in Adelaide pass quickly, but they feel hollow. She misses Ballarat desperately–misses her home, misses her church, misses him. She picks the phone up, debates calling him and asking him how he is, asks him to read the phone book to her, she just needs to hear his voice.
But she can't bring herself to do it.
So she takes little Amelia to the park and watches the joy of a carefree child and struggles to not imagine Lucien beside her, chasing a squealing Amelia through the swings.
She tries to ignore the whispers of Christopher Jr. and his wife, tries to ignore the empty hollow in her heart. The distance was meant to help clear her head, meant to allow her to prioritize her feelings. All she feels is the ache of missing him.
In the end, the decision to go home is an easy one. Christoher Jr. expects it and already has her bags packed and a bus ticket for her. She cries and hugs him and he whispers in her ear Be happy.
She's trying.
When she arrives home, she expects to find her boys in the kitchen enjoying dinner together and talking over their latest case.
What she doesn't expect is to find the house doused in darkness–no lights, no candles, nothing. She flips the hallway light on and tiptoes through the house. Everything looks exactly as it did when she left a few weeks ago.
A walk through the house tells her there's a thin layer of dust on everything and she's saddened to see no one has attended to her plants in the sunroom. The plants are browning and wilting, desperate for water and a bit of a cut back.
She heads for his study, angry he has let their home fall apart like this. She pushes the study door open and what she finds there shatters her heart.
Lucien is curled up on the study couch, the comforter from her bed pulled tight around him. There's a mostly-empty whiskey bottle on the floor beside him and his hair is mused–sticking up and out of place, nothing like his normally slicked back preference.
But sitting in the sill of his window, the only place in the entire room sunlight could filter through, is her prized begonia. It sits proudly on the sill, blooms plump and craning towards the window.
He had taken care of it. For her.
She wasn't the only one suffering while they were apart, it seems. Tiptoeing through the room, she perches on the edge of the sofa, leaning down to press her lips to his cheek.
He jerks awake, eyes wild and bloodshot. She threads her hands through his hair. He stares at her, unblinking, and croaks out, "Are you real?"
Tears sting her eyes and she nods, not wanting to know why such a question is needed, wondering how often he'd hallucinated her presence. "I'm real, Lucien."
The fight goes out of him then and he deflates before her eyes, sinking into her touch. He looks up at her with wonder. "You came back." It sounds like he can't believe it and from the state of the house, maybe he believed she would never come home.
She pushes at him to roll back against the back of the couch and he does so, opening the comforter and letting her slide in next to him. He wraps himself around her, burying his face in her neck.
There's an immediate comfort in being back in his arms and she knows they'll need to talk in the morning. There's so much left unspoken, but she knows now she has the strength to be with him, to accept him as he is–consequences be damned.
But for now, she sleeps in his arms, grateful to be together again.