OWEN LEWIS ARRIVED AT DAVID’S COTTAGE the next morning with the sun. He brought fresh milk for tea and pastries his mother had made for Fiona the night before. He was surprised to see Meaghan asleep in her father’s customary chair. Fiona was just coming out of the bathroom and was already dressed.
“How’s David?” he whispered.
“Still asleep. Worn out, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“No need to whisper, you two,” Meaghan mumbled from the other side of the room. “I’m awake.”
“And stiff, too, I should think,” Fiona said. “Why didn’t you sleep at home?”
“I’m fine, Mother” was all Meaghan said, standing and stretching. She wore one of her father’s flannel shirts as a nightgown. It wasn’t quite long enough to serve as a dress, and it hid little. Owen looked at her slender legs and sleepy face and turned away.
“Perhaps it would be a good idea to put on something decent, darling,” Fiona chided.
“Oh, Mother! It’s just Owen, for goodness’ sake!”
Owen looked at Fiona with a wry smile. Fiona patted him on the back. “Now then,” she said, “what delights have you brought us?”
There was a shuffling sound in the bedroom and in a moment David appeared, in undershorts and a T-shirt. “Morning, everyone!” he said brightly, heading for the front door.
“Where are you going?” Fiona asked.
“To the bathroom, if you must know.”
“It’s back there, dear, next to your bedroom. See the sign?”
David looked around, slightly confused but smiling. He saw the sign. “Ah! So it is, so it is.”
Fiona followed him toward the bathroom. “I’ll just put out some clothes for you, shall I?”
“Thank you, dearest. Very kind of you,” he said as he closed the bathroom door.
She looked at the others and shrugged.
Fiona intercepted her husband as he came out of the bathroom and began drifting back to his sitting room.
“Clothes?” she said.
“Right, right; forgot there for a moment.”
When he was dressed, he and Fiona sat at the small table while Meaghan poured tea and Owen set out scones and tea cakes.
“So, Owen, my boy,” David said between bites, “how’s the lambing coming along?”
“Pretty much done, sir, and the mortality rate’s low this season, too.”
“Good, good. Orphans?”
“Just a few. I’ve got them penned in the barn and Meaghan and I have been bottle-feeding them. As for the ewes and the rest of the lambs, I’ve let them out to the spring pasture. What with the warm weather, the grass is growing thick and fast.”
Fiona and her daughter looked at each other and smiled. This was going well.
David stood suddenly. “Well, let’s get to it, lad; the day’s a wasting!” He walked to the door, stepped outside, and started across the gravel drive.
“Ouch! Damn!” He started to turn back and found Fiona standing in the open doorway with his work boots.
“Shoes, David?”
“Good idea.”
A few minutes later Owen and David went out across the fields to check the ewes. Fiona began cleaning the cottage but Meaghan intervened.
“I’ll take care of that, Mum. It’ll make me feel useful at least.”
Fiona put her arms around her daughter. “Thank you for staying here last night, darling. I know you did it for me, and I’m grateful.”
“Well, I didn’t know what he might ...”
“I know. Neither did I. It was wonderful to have you here. The good news is we’ll have professional help starting tomorrow.”
“What needs doing in the meantime, Mum? Have we guests arriving? Do you need me to do the marketing?”
“No, I’ve told the Tourist Board not to send anyone and I called those who’d made reservations. As for marketing, I have some chicken in the freezer. I’ll think of something for dinner.”
“You mean our resident chef will think of something.”
“Alec. Yes. Well, I suppose I’d better look in on him. Shall I take the car?”
“Yes, Mum. I can walk back down when I’m done here.”
Fiona picked up the empty soup pot and carried it out to the car. She could see Owen opening a gate for David in a distant pasture. She wondered how much strength David had in him.
Back at the house, she parked the car in the barn and carried the soup pot to the kitchen, expecting to find Alec there. But the kitchen was empty. She checked the clock and smiled. Nearly half eight and still in bed! She crossed the main floor and tiptoed up the stairs to Alec’s room, very carefully opening his door, hoping to surprise him.
But the bed was empty, carefully made.
“Alec?” She checked his bathroom. Empty.
Fiona whirled around to the corner of the room where Alec kept his backpack. It was gone.
“Alec?! Oh Jesus, God ... No!” she breathed, racing back down the stairs.
“Alec!”
Hoping against hope, hoping for a miracle, she burst into her rooms, wanting to find him asleep in her bed. Sooty looked up from his accustomed place, but ignored her. On her bed, instead of Alec, was an envelope with her name on it, written in his hand.
“No!” she screamed. “No, no, no!!”
She grabbed the envelope and ran out again. In the front hall she noticed her personal phone book was open. She looked at the page and saw the phone number for the taxi service in Dolgellau, the one she always used for her guests.
She dialed the number frantically and got the dispatcher.
“Did you collect a guest at Tan y Gadair Farm this morning?” she demanded, her voice quavering uncontrollably.
“One moment please, madam,” the bored voice said.
She looked at the letter in her hand and watched it shake. It was as if someone else’s hand held it, for all the control she had over it.
The voice came back on the line. “We did indeed, madam. A gentleman. At about seven o’clock this morning. Took him to Barmouth for the early train.”
Fiona felt dizzy. She looked at the phone and slowly replaced the receiver.
She stumbled back to the kitchen, fell into a chair, and stared at the envelope in her hand. She tore open the flap and unfolded the letter.
My Dearest Fiona,
I used to think that watching Gwynne die was the hardest thing I’d ever done. To see life ebb from someone you love and be utterly powerless to reverse the decline—indeed, to pray that death will come quickly!—is desperately hard. It is unimaginable. And yet, I was wrong. The hardest thing I have ever done and will ever do is to tell you this: we cannot continue.
I have spent most of the night here by the window, staring up at the sky. I suppose I have been looking for an answer there, in the patterns of the constellations—a different answer from the one I know in my heart is right.
In this valley, on this farm beneath the mountain, there is no place for me—except, I hope, in your heart. I know you know that; I’ve seen it in your eyes in the past two days. You have a family to which I do not belong. There is no room for me here, darling. You and your family are part of a close-knit community. We could not carry on as we have and not cause harm—to you, to David, to Meaghan, to the entire fabric of your life here. I love and need you with an intensity and a passion so powerful they amaze me. When I leave you, I know the power of that love will break me. But I have no choice; staying here would dishonor you and those you love, and eventually cause you even greater conflict and pain. I cannot do that to you, no matter how much I need you.
This is not a renunciation of our love—far from it. We are, and always will be, two souls united, two beings joined by our hearts, a man and a woman who would travel through eternity together if the constellations of our lives could be altered.
They say the flutter of a butterfly’s wings can alter the course of humankind and I believe that. I believe we met for a reason, Fiona, and I believe we will find each other again. Until then, think of me when you look at the North Star—the one true, fixed certainty in a swirling universe—and I will think of you. Know, with all of your heart, that my love for you will be just as reliable, just as bright. Remember what you said in town the other day: I’m easy to find; you just have to look up.
I love you—now and forever.
Alec
Fiona found herself at the kitchen window, as if by standing there long enough she could make the flash of royal blue appear again as it had only a week before. But it did not. She imagined a jagged fissure moving up the lane, splitting the farmyard, and then the house, and then her heart, in two. She clutched her chest as if to keep it in one piece, drifted through the house to her rooms, slipped the letter into a drawer, climbed onto her bed, curled into a ball, and wept.
Meaghan found her there, asleep, an hour later. There was no sign of Alec Hudson. She thought perhaps she understood.
But of course she did not.