Chapter 33

We stayed for hours.

No one said we should leave, and no one suggested we stay—it just happened, the way it does when time stops mattering and everyone feels it. The moment was too big for plans or clocks.

My mom made more tea, then soup—whatever she had simmering on the stove—and we sat crowded around her little kitchen table, talking the way people do when there’s too much history to cover and not even a starting point. So we just jumped back and forth, caught up in old stories and new ones, following threads wherever they went.

James talked about his childhood. About his parents, his home up north, the four years at an architecture firm. He spoke plainly, quietly, no show to it. My mother listened to every word like she was tucking them away for later, her eyes locked on his face. She was learning about him in real time, covering thirty-two years of silence one story at a time, and you could see how hard she was working at it.

I watched her watch him. Something twisted inside me—hard to name, not jealousy exactly. Just that weird ache of knowing grief can have a thousand different faces. She missed him longer. She let me go when I was three; she lost him before she ever had him. It’s not a contest—I knew that. I just felt it, the weight of all that missing, heavy and silent, almost like a fifth person in the room.

She started asking me questions too. At first, she was cautious, but as the day wore on, that barrier fell away and the strangeness faded, replaced by something that felt almost, against all odds, like normal life.

She asked about my job, the restaurant, about Ashes—who managed to make her really smile. The kind that lit her up, made her look younger all of a sudden, and I understood for a split second why my dad never let her go, even after everything. She asked what I liked, what I was reading, what the apartment was like.

She didn’t mention Frederick.

I noticed.

At some point that afternoon, she glanced past me at the doorway where he’d been silently standing, but he was gone. I turned—he’d slipped into the sitting room without me noticing, either to give us space or to find some for himself.

My mother’s eyes found mine.

“He found you,” she said. Not accusing, just stating a fact. Calm and careful.

“Yeah,” I said.

“And before that, he found me.” She stared at her cup. “Twice.”

I sat very still.

“The first time, he was working for your father. I knew—someone here told me a man was asking around the village. I left within the week.”

“He told me about that,” I said.

She nodded, slow. “The second time, he came as himself. Eighteen months ago. He drove out, knocked on my gate, stood right there and told me who he was, what happened, and why. He stayed for two hours. He told me everything—about the trial, about you. And then he asked, not told, just asked, if I wanted him to tell you I was alive.”

My heart went wobbly.

“What did you say?” I asked softly.

“I said I wasn’t ready yet.” She didn’t look away. “I told him I needed time, that I’d been hiding so long I didn’t know how to stop. He said he understood, and he left. He didn’t tell you.” She paused. “He kept his word.”

I let that sink in.

Frederick had found her. Sat right here with her, asked for permission, and when she said not yet, he kept her secret—even from me.

All those times I got angry at him for making decisions about my life without asking.

This time, he’d asked.

Just not me.

I didn’t know what to do with that, so I tucked it away. Someday I’d figure it out.

James had been quiet, listening. Now he glanced over at me, those bright, knowing eyes on mine. “You alright?” he said, low.

“Yeah,” I answered. And strangely, I meant it.

The light through the kitchen window had shifted—the afternoon turning gold, that thick, late sun you only get in places where the light actually matters. My mother noticed it, got up, flipped on the kitchen light, and the whole room softened.

“Would you stay tonight?” she asked, gentle, glancing between us. “There’s a little hotel in the next village—a simple place. But it’d give us more time.”

James looked at me.

I thought about the return flights waiting for tomorrow. About Ashes safe with Rosa. About home, and everything between me and Frederick waiting back on Calloway Street.

Then I looked at my mother standing in her own kitchen, wearing her too-big coat, hands clutched around her mug, old photos scattered on the table.

“Yes,” I said.

James nodded. “Yes.”

My mother let out a slow breath, like she’d been holding it since she asked.

I stood up, gathered the cups, and took them to the sink. I stared for a moment out the window at the garden, everything dipped in that gold light.

I heard the sitting room door creak open, Frederick’s careful footsteps in the hall.

My mother’s voice: “Mr. Lancaster.”

His answer, quiet and respectful. “Mrs. Darclen.”

“Thank you,” she said. Nothing added.

A pause.

“I should have come sooner,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “But you came.”

I looked out at the garden and the hills turning purple in the fading light, and it hit me: sometimes, sorry looks like a man driving down an old road, knocking on a strange gate, and asking instead of deciding.

It didn’t fix everything.

But maybe—it’s a start.