Page 50 of The Missing Page
“And what did you tell her?” Leo asked.
“That I didn’t know,” said Carrow. “And that a lot depends on your definition of dangerous.”
And that, Leo realized, might partly explain why Gladys had run, but he’d think more about that later.
“If I can just ask you one more question.” Leo looked at Carrow. “Why did you come back to Blackthorn?”
“My father wasn’t well,” Carrow said. “We had been close, back when I was young. I wanted to look after him. Even though I didn’t know if he was capable of knowing me as his child, I hoped that he could know me as someone who cared for him. Miriam was good enough to go along with it.”
“It’s a good house,” Mrs. Carrow said, gesturing around her. “Not bad for no rent and only a little cooking. I do a fair trade with my landscapes in the summer. And we’ve almost got enough saved to buy the garage in town, now, if we want to stay.”
And maybe it was as simple as that—you made compromises for the people you loved. Sometimes they were gifts bestowed on the undeserving—looking after a father who might have cast you out if he knew the truth of who you were. Sometimes they were small—cooking an extra meal and washing some dishes in order to smooth things over for the man you loved.
Maybe that was what it took to build a life—the recognition that there was always going to be someone giving and someone taking. It didn’t have to be equal and it didn’t have to even make sense. It could be completely irrational and even misguided, and really that was the best hope Leo had, enough to make him feel downright optimistic as he and James stepped back outside into the chilly February day.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Let’s walk to the sea,” James said when they left the lodge. “We still have a little time before Mr. Trevelyan is due to arrive.” He glanced at Leo, whose hands were deep in his pockets and whose shoulders were hunched.
It was an ugly day, gray and damp and dreary. It was the sort of day best spent near a fire, and James couldn’t say what possessed him to want to see the ocean except that it felt like a waste to be a stone’s throw from the sea and not bother to take so much as a look at it.
They had walked for a few minutes when their silence began to strike James as strained. He nudged Leo with his elbow. “Out with it.”
Leo sighed, and it sounded like capitulation. “I keep expecting you to come to your senses.”
This wasn’t the first time Leo had said this sort of thing, and previously James had—well, not exactly dismissed it, but told Leo he had nothing to worry about. But now that seemed wrong. It seemed like something that the Bellamys would do: find something unpleasant or difficult and refuse to look at it.
So he swallowed hard. “I feel pretty much the same way, actually.”
“Really?”
“I suppose it’ll wear off after a while. And we have a while. We have all the time we want.”
They walked the rest of the short distance to the sea, and it was just as dark and unpleasant as James could have predicted, but he felt better seeing it anyway, and even better because Leo was at his side, plainly humoring him, valiantly attempting to light a cigarette in the wind.
“Yesterday you said something about how I had invited my worst nightmare into my life,” James said.
“I was being maudlin and all I did was embarrass myself,” Leo griped. “Don’t remind me.”
“No, listen. I’m not inviting you into my life,” James said. “I’m trying to live my life with you.” That wasn’t quite right either. “I want us to live our lives together. Oralife.”
“Still think you’re mad.”
“Could be. But if you were—if I were—Christ almighty, if it were possible, I’d have had you at the registrar’s office weeks ago.”
James could almosthearLeo’s blush. “Nobody would marry you in a registrar’s office,” Leo finally said, sounding strangled. “It’d be a church or nothing.”
And that—that was Leo not arguing with the premise. That was Leoacceptingthe premise. “You’re probably right,” James agreed.
“People would say we were being hasty,” Leo said.
“Pfft. Half the married couples I know got hitched within weeks of meeting. War, you know. We’d be boring.” James’s heart felt like it was in danger of beating out of his chest.
“That’s me, boring.”
They were alone on the beach, the tide halfway out, and the wind fiercer than it had been back at Blackthorn. Leo deliberately turned up James’s collar and adjusted his muffler.
They returned to the house in a silence that felt settled and satisfied, their shoulders bumping and the backs of their hands brushing together.
