The sun was striking the long rolling foothills of New York with the last of its dying strength for the day without concern for the girl who was lounging in a languid sleep. She’d been napping far longer than she intended, trying to push away the restlessness she still felt brewing in the pit of her stomach. Not even months of wandering had helped to settle that feeling. She knew why it was there, she just wasn’t ready to face it.
She’d sent many owls to Harry, reassuring that everything would work out and asking that he send her best wishes to his newlywed best friends. She’d sent countless letters to Minerva, trying to arrest her fears about wandering alone cross-country. She dropped notes two and three times a day to Corwin, aiming to keep the distance between them to miles and nothing else.
Leaving him had been the hardest part of her transition but he sat her down on the edge of her bed and said with a smile. “I saw this coming from a mile away.” She sat there, quiet for a moment. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to leave, but more that she needed to.
“How do you know me so well?” She asked.
“It’s like breathing. A little in, a lot of out.” He grinned. “I figured you needed some time to sort things out. You have a lot of emotional baggage to sort through and you’re not ready to share it just yet. I’m going to stay here, you’re going to take off and I’m giving you space.”
She rose softly, placing a hand on his thin cheek. “Thanks.” Then she did what neither of them had expected, she broke down crying.
“Hey, hey.” He said quietly. “Don’t cry. I know you’re coming back.”
As they embraced he took her hand gently in his. He slipped something cool and metallic over her ring finger. She pulled back only far enough to look and saw a thin band of silver, gleaming on her finger.
“It’s not much.” He said quietly, “but I wanted to give you something. This is to remind you that wherever you go you carry my heart with you.”
She beamed up at him and rested her head on his chest. She held him as if this was going to be the last time. It felt like it could be. Life was such an incredible toss up and she didn’t know what side of the coin she was on. Months later and she was laying on the side of a mountain in a different time zone, feeling as though she were on another planet.
She shielded her eyes from the sun with well tanned hands and opened them tentatively. The scene before her was so achingly beautiful, the curve of blue mountains holding the swollen bow of red sun as it hunkered down for the night. The clouds were wispy here and there, scattered across the canvas blue by an unpredictable wind. She sighed and raised herself off her elbows, standing for the first time in hours and finding her legs unsteady.
As the sun set she made up her mind. With enough concentration she was standing in her mother’s study in the house she now held the deed for, the house she had refused to return to since her mother’s death. The mountains were far enough away that a little of the courage they had given her was now waning. She had to find those papers before she lost courage all together.
She searched, feeling like Jacques Costeau under a sea of legal documents. Three days she picked through pile after pile, her head sinking from time to time trying to find a comfortable spot to bed down for the night, but she fought off the fatigue, gazing into ledger after ledger with glazed eyes and heavy lids.
It was not until she came to the bottom of the pile that something perked her interest. It was a brief note written by a Mr. Jeremiah Leandre. It was nothing more than a thank you note from a business engagement, but something about it caught her attention. She placed it to the side where she could look at it again later, when she was a little less hazy. She found nothing of legal documents pertaining to herself. Not a single scrap or certificate that might lead her any closer to the truth. She sighed heavily and decided that there was only one other person in the world who might be able to tell her things that she did not know.
But before she would approach that avenue she needed a break. While she had been “breaking” for several months the three intense days of detective work had truly exhausted her and she was more than willing to return to Corwin if only just to laze about in his arms for a few days before returning to France.