“I'm so sorry…” the girl gasped. Suddenly, she seemed all the fifteen summers that she was. Her hand smashed against her mouth, tears dripping down her flushed face, she looked as if it was she who had lost someone beloved. Not Marianna.
“I—I…” She shut her eyes against the pain and a muffled sob escaped her fingers. Her other hand was clasping the elbow of the other like it was an anchor in the deluge of emotions rushing through her. “I'm so sorry. Oh, he…”
A small flash of anger shot through Marianna. Not at the girl, but at her deceased husband lying on a bed between them. Why couldn't he have spared her the loss? Why did he have to endear himself to everyone?
It wasn’t a guess that he'd wedged himself into the young nurse’s sensibilities. Marianna knew it like she knew the sky was blue that his persona had wiggled its way into her and everybody else’s heart in this grey patient room. That was her husband. Always looking to cajole a smile, a laugh. Like he hadn’t been on his death bed.
“It's alright,” Marianna found herself saying. Her voice sounded unnaturally cold, even to her. “I had been expecting it for weeks now. I have made peace with it.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “How can you be so calm?”
“Everyone dies eventually.” Marianna didn't know why she was replying, but the words tumbled out of her before she could even think. “He was simply received by his Maker earlier than we had expected. Thank you and everyone else involved for taking care of my husband. I will be taking my leave now.” Marianna took one last look at the covered body on the sterile patient bed, didn't bother looking at the nurse's expression before she left.
She knew what expression would be carved into her face. She'd seen it countless times. One that said, ‘You cold, unfeeling woman’.
Marianna eventually made it back to the town house. She stood in the middle of the drawing room just past the entrance hallway. There sat the chairs and sofas, immaculately neat as ever. The paintings still hung on the wall, dusted to gleaming perfection. There stood the vases with the never-withering flora. Everything was just as it was when she left.
Except no, it wasn’t.
That man wasn't here. At this time of day, he would be there on that chair just beside the fireplace, his long legs stretched out before him. A cup of tea in one hand and a newspaper in the other, smiling at something ridiculous in the gossip column.
He would look up at the sound of her footsteps. Then he would beam at her. Not a mere smile—you know, the kind of polite, genial smile one reserves for one’s peers. It was a grin that sparkled and glittered in his eyes. And she would take a moment to appreciate it before he stirred her ire by sharing whatever he'd been reading.
He knew she cared nothing for gossip. Still, he always insisted. Sometimes, he’d achieve his goal and she’d find herself smiling. That grin then stretched wider.
The cold mask melted. “Oh, that fool…” The whisper floated out of her lips unbidden.
It hadn't been acceptance that’d stopped her tears at the hospital. At least, not acceptance alone. No, there was the pride there, too. That stupid, stubborn pride. She’d been too scared to show that… That, well, she had loved him. That she loved him still.
What a silly thought.
She remembered all too well his boyish, shiny smiles, his tight hugs, his palm on her palm, the furrow in his brow, the gentle murmur of his reassurances.
And she'd basked in it without even knowing. She was the fool here.
What had she told herself at the beginning of this marriage?
“I could never love this man. This man who has cut my wings and taken my freedom from me.”
It was an arranged marriage. Everybody knew those ended badly. And now look at her, melting at the memory of him. Foolish, foolish woman. She'd known getting attached would only hurt her when he left. Like her mother, her father, and her sister before him. Everyone always left at some point. He just took longer. It was cold comfort to know that he hadn't left of his own free will.
Foolish, foolish, foolish heart.
‘Stupid, stupid, stupid head,’ her heart shot back. ‘You should have treasured him when he was still here. You should have embraced him. Should have returned his smiles. Should have said those three words—I love you. Now he is lost. And what have you gained by being cold?’
Nothing, as it turned out. Unless you counted regrets. A whole heart-load of them.
Marianna Diana Brockwell, who would never have been caught dead shedding even a single tear anywhere that wasn't her bedroom, sobbed herself almost to hysterics in the middle of her drawing room that day. Her servants saw, half looking on in mortification and shock, the other half shaking their heads sadly. Poor madam. Poor sir.