Kissed a Sad Goodbye

“She wasn’t supposed to go,” Lewis said numbly. His brain and his tongue felt as if they were frozen, and the words seemed to hang in the air, brittle as ice.

“She … she changed her mind at the last minute.” William sat slumped at the kitchen table, his face blotchy with weeping. “He was taking her to see my parents. He said … he said he was going to tell them. I didn’t think. I didn’t think she’d be …”

The import of William’s words dawned slowly on Lewis. He shook his head from side to side to stop the ringing inhis ears. “You mean you knew? You knew about the car … and you let Edwina go?”

“I’m not as stupid as you think. You jumped when you saw me standing in the barn, so when you ran away I looked.… I only thought it would delay them—”

“Delay them? You know how Freddie drives and you let Edwina go?” He lunged for William, yanking him from his chair by his collar. “You—you bastard!” Lewis shouted, shaking him. “I’ll kill you for this.” When his fist struck William’s face, the sight of the bright blood flowing from William’s nose only made him angrier.

William hit him back and they grappled, straining for a better hold, another blow.

Then Irene was between them, shouting, pulling them apart.

“Stop it! What’s the matter with you? Stop it! Lewis, how could you?”

Panting, he stared at her. “I … He …” In that moment Lewis realized he couldn’t tell Irene what he’d done that day—he could never tell her. And when he met William’s eyes, he saw that William knew it, too.

He had no memory of the days before Edwina’s funeral, only of Irene, afterwards, coming to him in the barn. His case was packed; he had meant to leave without telling her goodbye.

“You can’t tell me you don’t love me,” she said. “I won’t believe you.”

“No,” he had answered her. “I won’t tell you that. But it doesn’t matter now. Nothing does. I’m sorry.”

He had left Irene then, left the Hall, left them all behind. And he’d never told anyone the truth … until the night Annabelle had told him she loved his son and called him a cheat and a liar. She’d said she’d never hurt her father for him, that she couldn’t believe she had ever considered doing something that would cause William Hammond so much pain.

He hadn’t known until that moment how much Annabelle had come to mean to him—that she should turn against him was beyond bearing. His words poured out—he’d wanted to hurt her—and he told her that her precious father was a coward and a murderer, and he told her exactly what William had done.

Lewis opened the door of the car and stumbled out into the rain. He was soaked by the time he reached the warehouse, but he hardly felt it. The door was unlocked, and he stepped for the first time into the building he had tried for years to destroy.

As his eyes adjusted to the shadows, he saw that the large main floor was empty, but a light shone from a door on the catwalk that ran along the left-hand side of the building. Feeling his way carefully to the stairs, he began to climb. He heard a faint sound, and as he neared the top of the staircase, the sound sorted itself into a singsong voice, rising and falling beyond the open doorway.

William Hammond sat behind one of the scarred oak desks in the center of the room. He was talking to himself, his hands busy with the colorful tea tins on the desktop, but when he looked up and saw Lewis he didn’t seem at all surprised.