Page 11 of Lover
Dr. Hannigan called every evening to check on her progress and assure me we were taking the right course of action. Time was not our foe, though it felt like one. Although Millie, even after a full week, had shown no signs of remembrance, the tension between us had abated somewhat, and the hard, nervous lines around her mouth softened. She sat now in her typical place at the desk, leaned casually over notes, her chin resting on her hand. Relaxed. Anyone who saw her would be sure she belonged to this house.
I returned my attention to the book I’d been studying, having found myself drawn back into research easily, some appetite for the life of an academic returning to me, comfortable and familiar.
She broke the silence with a question about Clíodhna—queen of the banshees, a patron to either lover’s pain or lover’s rage depending on the story. To me, she was a powerful lesson that love was the most excruciating and catastrophic thing anyone,mortal or not, could dabble in, yet its delights remained irresistible.
I revealed these musingsto her.
“That’s awful,” she replied, putting words to my own feelings.
“Some would say everything about the Sidhe is awful, but equally beautiful with their individual purposes. Like poisonous flowers.”
“Maybe that’s why people are so drawn to them,” she murmured, her voice taking on the soft, faraway tone of a whimsical idea, but it was more than whimsy, there were deeper things going on in her thoughts. She had something to say, but was too shy to speak her mind. She’d never much valued her own brilliant opinion.
I motioned for her to continue. “Explain.”
She looked like a student called to present at the head of the class, wide-eyed and flustered, her words suddenly feathered things she struggled to capture. I hadn’t meant to catch her off guard, but I was enjoying her reaction with some wickedness. She’d had the same look when I’d first asked how she’d like to have her legs wrapped around my shoulders.
I’d stumbled across a treacherous memory, but thankfully Millie found her voice, distracting me from forbidden carnal images.
With a hesitant elegance, she offered me her theories, and my earlier depravity melted into potent tenderness. Millie had endured so much in her life, had faced unfathomable trials, and in her most frightening moments, she had been alone, navigating her hardships with no one to lean on. I had wanted so badly to be her shining knight, but had failed.
“Do you feel inconsequential?” I asked, aching.
“We all do at some point or another,” she replied, sighing. “Anyone who says otherwise is a liar or an idiot.”
Her flippancy encouraged a genuine smile.
“Well put,” I replied, daring to imagine the warmth between us growing, even ever so slightly.
The good-natured thread continued, and by our eighth day together, she was more at ease. I, however, was not. Each passing hour strung me tighter, every nerve a piston of brutal energy demanding I close the distance between us. I was inhibited by only the—newly weakening—logic that my restraint was better for her.
I was flipping peevishly through notes one afternoon, frustrated with the charade and the lack of progress, trying to soothe myself by acknowledging she no longer looked as though she would dart from the room or throw something at me in alarm if I moved too suddenly. It wasn’t working. I discarded the book and reached for another, opening it to find it wasn’t research at all, but a notebook from my boarding school days when I was just a boy. The discovery stirred some nostalgia in me, distracting from my irritability, and I examined the hastily jotted math equations, many of them wrong, and questionably reasoned philosophical essays that could come only from the mind of a twelve-year-old. Then I found something unexpected and chuckled. A cartoonish monster of a woman glared up at me from the bottom of a Latin grammar page. I laughed again, and when Millie looked up, I waved her over, pleased with the discovery.
She enjoyed the humorous vulgarity of it, though she scolded me for my long-ago mischief.
I’d been in the school only a few months when I’d drawn this caricature, not even a full year gone since losing the woman who had been my entire world for so long. Even now, nearly twenty years later, I felt the pang of sorrow and it soured my mood. To run from it, I closed the book and stood under the guise of retrieving my coffee cup, its contents cold and tarry now.
As I raised it to my mouth, something occurred to me. Surely it wouldn’t do any harm to ask her about herself, about her life before, perhaps lead her to the threshold of what she’d lost and coax her across.
“Where did you go to school?” I asked, sipping coffee so bitter it was nearly undrinkable.
“Mount St. Mary, in New York. I didn’t mind it, but it was dull. No one got into any trouble, really, and the matrons were all decent. The only classes I ever enjoyed were the ancient languages, but those were only twice a week.”
In for a penny.
“Was it your interest in old things that brought you to work in Mr. Helm’s shop?”
“I…no,” she answered, stumbling.
Tell me, Millie, I begged her silently.Tell me.
“My parents died, and I was suddenly on my own, so I left New York and traveled to Boston with no plans. Mr. Helm just happened to be hiring.”
Strategically omitted was her hospital stay, her amnesia, and the gruesome fact that her parents were dead because her father had murdered her mother, then shot himself, and she’d been the one to find them. I barely contained my shudder.
“How lucky for me that your unextraordinary circumstances led you here to help me in my hour of need.”
I know, I willed my tone to relay to her.I know everything.
