Chapter 34 Kate 
ALNWICK, ENGLAND | DECEMBER 2010
Kate is taking Audrey to an office just off the high street, on the second floor above a small charity shop. The brass plaque on the brick wall next to the door reads JOHN MACGREGOR, ESTATE SOLICITOR. Audrey has her cane, but Kate still helps her up the narrow stairs and down a stuffy carpeted hallway that seems to absorb all sound.
Audrey’s moving particularly slowly today. It took a toll on her to recount the moment the Gestapo finally arrived on the Kaplans’ doorstep, and her fatigue has lingered. That was, Kate sadly assumed, also the last time she ever saw Ilse. The interrogation that destroyed her fingers had clearly left its mark on her soul as well as her hands.
“Did it prevent you from playing again?” Kate had asked gently.
Audrey looked down at her fingers, eyes glinting with anger. “Oh yes. It certainly did.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. But others fared far worse. This was a small price to pay.”
“Are you sure this isn’t too much to talk about, so soon after your… episode?” Kate had asked.
“There’s no such thing as too soon at this point, dear. We don’t know how much more time we have for me to get it all out.” Audrey had been quiet for a moment then. “It’s funny,” she said, with an expression that suggested it was anything but. “I’ve been living on borrowed time for so long, yet right now, I feel a surprising need to borrow just a little bit more.”
Kate did her best not to flinch at the mention of Audrey’s impending death, tried to follow her lead and focus on the time still remaining, how best to spend it. She hasn’t wanted to ask what happens next, after Audrey dies. She assumes the Oakwood will be sold off, which may well be the topic of Audrey’s appointment with her solicitor today.
As they enter the office, memories of the aftermath of Kate’s parents’ deaths come flooding back: meeting with their lawyer, signing piles of documents she didn’t even read or understand whilst Adam sat in the chair beside her, asking questions she can’t recall now. She tries to ignore the palpitations.
After she gets Audrey settled in the tiny waiting area, Audrey pats her arm affectionately. “Good luck, dear. If you can’t knock some sense into that boy, then I shall.”
Kate’s plan is to try to find Ian whilst she waits for Audrey to finish her appointment. If this were Adam, her previous life, she would have gotten herself all dolled up for such a gesture, to look as appealing and polished as possible. But this is Ian, and she’s hardly worn makeup since she arrived here. She’s not hiding anything anymore, so she goes fresh-faced.
She thought of calling to set up a time, but she wasn’t sure he would pick up. She tries his flat first. No one answers. She chews her cheek, then goes to the bookshop.
The fireplaces are all lit, as usual, and Kate shivers with comfort at the blast of warm air as she enters, the heavy door swinging shut behind her. Ian’s not at the cash desk, so she looks through the aisles of books, but doesn’t find him lurking anywhere or helping a patron either. She heads to the café, orders a hazelnut latte, and settles herself at the table she and Ian usually share, when it’s available, in a corner by the fireplace. As she sips her drink, her mind wanders back to happier days.
She finishes her coffee and is rising to leave when she hears Ian’s voice, laughing with Charlene, today’s barista. A sense of kismet settles on her, and she wonders for a moment whether they were meant to meet here today, to work things out. But the thought is instantly interrupted by Audrey’s voice, telling her that everything in life is nothing more or less than random chance. He works here. He happened to be working today.
It’s just good luck for a change.
She wrestles the butterflies as she waits for him to come around the corner, which he does a moment later, heading for their usual table, just like Kate did. He stops in his tracks, jacket in one hand, coffee in the other, and they stare at one another. She steps toward him.
“Ian,” she begins.
He shakes his head, but he doesn’t walk away.
“Have you been waiting for me to get off work?”
“No. I couldn’t find you, actually. And I wanted a coffee.”
“At our table?”
“Yes.” She pauses, licks her lips. “I’m sorry, Ian. I’m so sorry. There’s a lot I need to tell you.”
He takes a seat, and she sits as well, feeling a measure of hope.
He meets her eyes square-on. “Why now? You seemed fine lying about it for long enough.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then why did you do it, Kate?” He glances over his shoulder, but the nearest patrons are several tables away. “You know, I thought we had something special. Unless you want to explain why you lied, there’s no chance for this. For us. I told you about my ex, what she did—”
“I know. But you could have waited for me to explain yesterday. I called after you.”
He shifts in his seat, heaves a sigh.
“Give me something real, Kate. Something that isn’t a lie.”
Looking into his dark eyes, it hits her that there’s more on the line than she thought. People always talk about falling in love like it’s a standardized state of being, that the experience is the same for everyone, every time. But it isn’t. She didn’t recognize it because it was so different than it was with Adam. She works to find the right words, but she knows that all he really wants is the plain, unedited truth. Bare and open, just like him.
“I know I was wrong to lie. But I did it because I’m falling in love with you,” she says, heart hammering. He doesn’t move, just continues to stare. “My marriage really is over; I just wasn’t divorced on paper yet, and I wanted to start fresh with you, without all the goddamn baggage.” She’d tried to avoid it, but she knows now that you can’t. You just have to learn to carry it. The muscles of your trauma strengthen, and eventually it weighs less than it did at the start. “And because I lost a pregnancy in the accident along with my parents, and I’ve felt nothing but fucking lonely and broken ever since, and I think you might actually be able to make me feel like a whole person again, and it all kind of terrifies me.” She gallops to the end of the emotional sprint and exhales shakily.
Ian’s eyes are on her, one hand still holding his forgotten coffee. The colour is rising in his neck. He’s still invested. And he wouldn’t have sat down to talk in the first place if he didn’t want to try to fix this.
He blinks fast. “I’m so sorry, Kate. I was being a prat. Come here.”
They push their chairs back with a choral scrape and embrace each other. She presses her eyes shut, relief flooding her body as she sinks into the comfort of his chest, a bed of cable cotton and peace, the scent of coffee and warm wood.
Kate spends a good portion of the afternoon upstairs in her room. After her conversation with Ian, she’d picked up Audrey, and the pair of them stopped at the supermarket before making their way back to the Oakwood. Both were quiet, each absorbed in her own thoughts of the past.
She takes a hot bath, closes her eyes and inhales the steam. Lets the soapy rose-scented water rinse the soot from the memories as her thoughts flow over one another, of Adam and the pregnancy. Her parents. Audrey. The future she’s glimpsed with Ian.
It’s dusk by the time she dries off and changes into pyjamas. She turns on the lamps, then pulls out the box of photos from the floor of the wardrobe where she stashed them the day she moved in. She finds the ones that prompted her to google the Oakwood in the first place, and shuffles through them again. They look different to her now that she knows the place so well. Outside, the steely grey sky grows darker by the minute. She looks forward to the spring, when the lawns will be lush and green, casting shadow over the winding, narrow road, the gardens full of wildflowers and thistle, just like in the photo.
Kate sets aside the picture of her parents beside the sign, makes a mental note to ask Audrey if it would be all right to hang it in the lobby or the library. But then she realizes the Oakwood might not be home for her much longer and she’ll want to take the picture with her wherever she ends up next. She thinks of Ian, wonders what sort of life they might have together, and where.
She goes to her dresser, removes the little jewellery box with the locket inside. She holds the small oval in her hands and runs a thumb over the surface, thinking of her parents staying in this room. She had to come all the way up here just to find them—and herself—again. She can bring them with her into the new life she’s forging, but only if she has the courage to listen to Audrey. To forgive herself. After a pause, Kate heads back into the bathroom, where she dampens a Q-tip and cleans the dried blood off the clasp. Condensation still encircles the edges of the mirror, but she sees her reflection clearly. Her red hair is damp and a little frizzy, slung over one shoulder. She puts the necklace on and caresses the silver, cool against her hot skin as she reunites with a lost piece of herself.