“We lost her,” he continued, “when she left us for a different life.”
Oh.
Dinah moved into the room, carefully stepping over some scattered blocks. Well, that certainly explained a lot. Why her likeness didn’t hang among the other family portraits, why no one spoke of her.
She reached Henry’s side and leaned a shoulder against the window frame where she might look up at his face. “How old were you?”
“Young enough that no one thought to explain matters to me. Old enough to understand them all the same.”
Dinah’s heart broke anew. How she wished she could go back to when he was a boy, wrap her arms around him, and hug him through the hurt. She hadn’t been friends with him then, but she was here now.
Stepping forward, she wrapped her arms around him and rested her head against his shoulder.
He grew stiff at her touch. She could feel the tension inside him from head to toe.
Honestly, he could be such an infant sometimes.
“It’s only a hug, Henry,” she said, not releasing him in the least. “You don’t have to be afraid of it.”
He grunted. But then one arm came around her. After a moment, he even wrapped a second arm around her as well. Dinah smiled. It wasn’t a moment of romance, but it was a moment of closeness. One that did her heart good. She hoped it was the same for him.
“I never told anyone,” he said at length, “but I did try to find her once.”
Dinah wasn’t willing to pull back, even enough to lift her head. “When was that?”
“My father had been steadily growing more and more feeble. The doctor told us we wouldn’t have him for long. When the fever grew worse, he took to crying out for her. So I decided to hire a Bow Street Runner. That’s how I first met Mr. Harding, actually.”
Truly? Who would have guessed? “Did he find her?”
Henry paused for a minute, and when he spoke, his words were drawn out. “Yes. Buried in a cemetery just past the Scotland border.”
How sad. She gave him a gentle squeeze.
Henry relaxed against her slightly. “Father was slipping away so quickly, I chose not to tell him, or anyone. She’d made her decision—another home, another life. I don’t know if she had been happy in that new life or not. But either way, she truly is gone now.”