They stared at each other a full five seconds before one of them spoke. Kingsley took it upon himself to break the silence.
“I’m the last person you were expecting to see again, oui?” Kingsley asked.
He expected the shock and he expected the silence, but he didn’t expect what happened next.
He didn’t expect Grace Easton to step onto the porch in her soft gray robe and bare feet and wrap him in her arms.
“If I’d known this is how the Welsh say ‘hello,’ I would have visited sooner,” Kingsley said. Grace pulled back from the embrace and smiled at him, her bright turquoise eyes gleaming.
“You’re always welcome here.” Grace’s words were tender, her accent light and musical. She took his arm and ushered him into the house. “Always.”
Always...a lovely word. He never used to believe in words like always, like forever, like everything. Now at forty-eight he’d lived long enough he could see both ends of his life. Always. There might be something to it after all.
“Zachary’s asleep,” Grace said in a whisper as she took his coat, hung it up, and guided him into a cozy living room. “He gets up at five every morning, so he goes to bed at a reasonable hour. I prefer the unreasonable hours myself.”
“You’re the night owl?”
“It works for us,” she said with a smile. “I can get work done after Zachary and Fionn fall asleep. Would you like tea? I can put the kettle on. Or something stronger?”
“I brought my own something stronger,” he said.
He unzipped his weekender bag and offered her a bottle of wine. She examined the label.
“Rosanella Syrah,” she said. “Never had it before.”
“It’s from my son’s winery. Best Syrah I’ve ever tasted.”
“Not that you’re biased or anything,” she said with a wink. She went to fetch wineglasses and a corkscrew from the kitchen, and Kingsley looked around. Zachary and Grace Easton lived in a small two-story brick house that made up one of many in a row of neat but narrow accommodations. It was an older neighborhood, a bit shabby but safe and clean from what he could see. Inside the house was the picture of quiet domesticity. Intelligent educated people lived here. And one very special baby.
“Am I interrupting anything?” Kingsley asked when Grace returned with the wineglasses. He took the corkscrew from her and opened the bottle. Grace had a low fire glowing in the fireplace and a table lamp on. Gentle light. Kingsley felt instantly at ease here.
“Nothing that can’t wait,” she said, and Kingsley saw stacks of papers on the pale green sofa. He took a seat in the armchair opposite her and crossed one leg over his knee. She curled up into a ball, her knees to her chest, her bare feet sticking out from the bottom of the robe. Her long red hair was knotted at the nape of her neck in a loose and elegant bun. In the soft light of the room she radiated a delicate beauty. A vision, freckles and all. How had he not noticed before how lovely she was? Of course, the one and only occasion they’d been in each other’s company, he’d been preoccupied, to say the least.
“You’re grading papers?” Kingsley asked.
“No, I’m still on maternity leave,” she said. Next to her on the table sat a baby monitor. “These are proofs of my book. Nothing exciting. Only poetry.” She held up a printed title page that read Rooftop Novenas.
“You’re writing again?” Kingsley asked. He remembered from her file she’d had a few poems published in her early twenties.
“I am,” she said, smiling shyly. “I don’t know what it is...As soon as I was pregnant with Fionn I had so much creative energy. Couldn’t stop writing. Zachary’d thought I’d lost my mind. He’s an editor, though, not a writer. He thinks all writers are a bit mad.”
“I might have to agree with him,” Kingsley said. “You have my congratulations on the book.”
She shuffled her pages, capped her pen. “Thank you, Kingsley. But I don’t believe you crossed an ocean simply to talk about my poetry.”
“Even if it was inspired by a mutual friend of ours?” Kingsley said.
“Even so,” she admitted without shame. Good. Kingsley might have despised her if she’d had any regrets, any shame for what had happened. Instead, she’d come with an open heart to their world, an open mind, and had returned home carrying a blessing inside her. “It’s back to school in a few months, and I’m trying not to think about having to leave Fionn.”
“He taught at our high school after he graduated. Did you know that?”
She held her glass steady on the coffee table between them as Kingsley poured the wine.
“He told me he used to teach. Said he liked it. I didn’t expect that from him.”
Kingsley picked up a framed photograph that sat on the coffee table between them—a black-and-white picture of a newborn infant boy sleeping on a white pillow.
“That’s one thing you can say for him,” Kingsley said, turning the photograph toward Grace. “He’s full of surprises.”
She blushed beautifully and laughed quietly, and Kingsley couldn’t help but join in her laugh.
“Is he why you’re here? Are you checking on Fionn for him?”
“No,” Kingsley said. “Although he’ll never forgive me if I don’t look in on him while I’m here.” Kingsley ached to see the boy, but he had learned the hard way to never disturb a sleeping baby.
“I’m only asking why you’re here out of curiosity. You never need a reason to visit us. I assume everyone is well?” Grace asked. “Juliette? Your daughter? Nora?”
“Juliette and Céleste are perfect as usual,” he said. “But Nora, she lost her mother recently. A month ago, I believe.”
“I had no idea. Zachary never said a word about it.”
“She didn’t tell anyone until afterward. She disappeared on us for two weeks.”
“Nora.” Grace sighed and shook her head. “Well, if she behaved like a normal person, she wouldn’t be Nora, would she?”
“No. No, she wouldn’t be.” Kingsley laughed to himself. “But she and her mother...they had a difficult relationship.”
“Because of him?”
“Her mother hated him. I don’t use the word hate lightly,” Kingsley said. “I think it was a peace offering to her mother for Nora to go alone. And she couldn’t tell him. Nora ran away to her mother’s once before, and he hunted her down like the hound of hell.”
“I didn’t know that. But I can imagine he’s...persistent where she’s concerned?”
“That is one way to put it.” Kingsley took a sip of his wine. “She and her mother, they
