“Yeah, I sense a hesitation,” Kate says. “Like she’s scared to talk about it, but needs to.”
“We need to do the shit that scares us though,” Ian says. “Especially, well…” He shrugs. “I guess she won’t be around forever, right?”
Kate acknowledges the hard truth. “At least I feel like I’m really getting to know her now, and the people from her past too.” She thinks of Ilse, of the massive sacrifices and risks Audrey took to keep her safe. “She had a great love before she came back to England. Before your granddad.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And she was brave. My God, she was so brave.” Kate stuffs her cold hands deep into her coat pockets. “I’ll be honest, it’s made me consider the narrow parameters of my own life.”
“How so?”
“She was audacious, daring. Especially for her time. She defied so many conventions placed on women back then. And I’ve just…”
University. Unstimulating office jobs. Marriage. A plan for children that never materialized. Kate was never one for the spotlight—she hated it even at her own wedding—whilst Audrey leapt enthusiastically into the glare, ready to put on a show when duty called for it. Audrey led such a big life. When you live a small life, then lose some of the people at the centre of that limited circle, it has a way of isolating you in short order. Bigger lives with greater reach have more tethers binding them to the ground. If one of them gets cut, you don’t need to feel quite so vulnerable. There’s still plenty to hold on to. Kate lost so many people, so quickly. Her parents, her husband, her few friends and coworkers. Everyone disappeared, in some way, in the aftermath of the accident, consumed by the dark vacuum that follows tragedy. Her friends were good people who just didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to handle something so broken.
“Audrey’s remarkable, that’s all,” she says.
“She is,” Ian agrees, watching her.
Kate remembers his own losses, wonders if he’s ever felt this unnerving sort of weightlessness too. “She’s like family to you, eh?”
He nods.
“I’m sorry about your brother. The Huntington’s gene. Audrey told me.”
Ian stares down at the snow. “She’s a closed book with a big mouth, that one. Full of contradictions,” he adds. “Doug’s not sick yet. But he will be. It’s a time bomb. No one knows when it’ll hit. He decided he didn’t want to have kids. Didn’t want to risk passing on the disease. But his wife wanted children. She left him last year. He acts like he’s dead already, really. It’s like he’s just waiting for the beginning of the end.”
Kate feels a stab of guilt. She didn’t intend for them to veer into such dark topics, but Ian has proved he isn’t one for small talk.
“My mum didn’t want us taking the test, but we both felt we had to know,” he continues. “I just wish we’d both had the same result, regardless of what it was.”
“I’m so sorry, Ian. That must feel terrible.”
His Adam’s apple slides up and down as he swallows the pain. A strong wind blows from the north. The snow has started up again.
“It feels like…” He faces her. “Like I’ve cheated death somehow.” He gives an uncomfortable half chuckle. “Dodged some bullet that missed me by a hair, but hit my brother instead. Not many people can understand what I mean, but—”
“I can,” Kate says, shifting her cold feet.
“I know.”
Ozzie tugs on the leash and they resume their walk. They’re nearly at the front door of the inn now.
“How do you cope with the guilt?” Kate asks, watching Ian out of the corner of her eye.
He stands a little straighter. “I reckon it’s a bit different for me. I’ve had years more experience with it. But the way I see it, there’s just no point dwelling on it. There’s no trying to understand it. It isn’t my fault I didn’t get the gene. It isn’t your fault you survived the crash when your parents didn’t.”
She blinks back tears as they mount the stairs to the covered porch.
“Life deals out shit to some people and roses to others,” Ian says. “There’s no cheating it, no making sense of it. Maybe it’s easy for me to say, not being in my brother’s shoes, but I decided to live like the whole rest of my life was a gift. All of this,” he says, pulling his hands from his pockets and opening his arms wide, as though embracing everything around him, “is a bonus I could have easily been denied. So, I squeeze everything I can out of it. I try not to live with regrets. I try to just live.”
Ozzie tugs Kate toward the front door, eager to get inside.
“At any rate,” Ian says, clearing his throat, “I hope I haven’t scared you off.”
Kate shakes her head. “No. You haven’t. I don’t know anyone else who can relate. It’s been…” She tries to identify the feeling.
“Lonely?”
“Yes.”
Their eyes linger on one another, understanding passing between them.
“Well,” Ian says finally, “I told Audrey she doesn’t need to sabotage the house anymore to get me to come out here. I like spending time with her. And you,” he adds.
“What?” Kate asks.
“She ripped the chain off the toilet for an excuse to see me.” He rolls his eyes. “I told her she needn’t bother. I’ll come round more now.”
Her stomach flutters, and she recognizes why. It thrills and unnerves her. “Why’s that?”
“A couple of reasons,” he says. “Would you like to have dinner with me sometime, Kate?”
Her memory reaches deep into the past, recalling how she’d met Adam all those years ago. Her girlfriends from uni had dragged her out to celebrate a mutual friend’s engagement, and the guest of honour had chosen an overpriced basement cocktail bar in Soho with deafening house music and lighting dim enough to disguise the fact that both the establishment and its patrons were aging faster than they would care to admit.
Adam found her on the street outside the bar around midnight. He’d been eyeing her all night. He was a friend of a friend, one of those tertiary people in her circle whom she knew by name and face. They’d started walking, flirting as they enjoyed the evening breeze, and lost track of time. Adam ended up escorting her sixteen blocks across the West End to her flat’s door, inside, up the stairs, and into her bedroom. Things moved quickly after that. She’d said “I do” a couple of years later and figured she’d had her last first date, her last first kiss.
Best-laid plans and all that.
