Written for the 2022 Conzine

 

This “Though Lovers be Lost” canon-divergent tale is a continuation of my other story, “Weighed Down.” However, you don’t have to read that to read this.

 

Rated R/Adult/Explicit for sexual and adult situations.

 

“We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.”

– Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.

 

 

 

~Sweet Remembrance~

 

 

“Catherine,” Father begins. “I need you to tell me, truly, how do you believe he’s doing?”

 

Catherine and Father sit huddled together, the table of his study their meeting place.

 

There is only one he they could be speaking of.

 

For the last few weeks, the time she hasn’t spent at her work Above, she’s spent with them—Vincent specifically—and it’s beginning to show in her careworn features.

 

The gentleman raised by Neva Wells would never comment on how tired his son’s beloved appears, but Jacob Wells, the doctor, should. Ever since Vincent ran and was brought home mute, without memory, but blessedly alive, Catherine, with a devoted spouse’s care, has watched over him.

 

If anyone knows how Vincent is really faring…

 

“Better today … I guess,” she responds.

 

And in that, he has his answer.

 

Peter must be consulted. This has gone on too long.

 

A ‘Hmmmmm,’ escapes, and she stiffens.

 

“You think he’s getting worse?” She blurts the question, the echo of his own worries. The girl isn’t without perception.

 

“No, no, not worse, only…”

 

What should he tell her? Is he overreacting? Uncertainty plagues him more than ever, but for all her time and care, she deserves his honest assessment.

 

“Vincent has come far from… from when he lost control. I am grateful to have him here.”

 

She nods.

 

“He’s thankful to be here as well, yet there is a sadness in him, almost … an unmooring, a loss of confidence. He hasn’t taken on the responsibilities he once had—which I confess, is hard on us. The repairs and security duties are difficult to fill, but not impossible.  However, he hasn’t started teaching his classes again. That’s what worries me most.”

 

Father doesn’t have to add, but does anyway, “It was one of his great joys.”

 

“He loves teaching the children,” she says, head bowed.

 

He acknowledges the truth of it with his own nod and goes on.

 

“Vincent’s semantic memory remains almost fully intact. He can read and reason, remembers paths, the names of stones and stars… but much of his episodic memory—the story of his life—remains suppressed, the bad and the good. It’s not one-to-one, of course. Often, our explicit recall, names and facts for instance, is tied to our history. That’s why, I believe, he didn’t remember your name at first. You were too entwined to what his mind has fought to forget.”

 

She flinches at this assessment, and he hurries to add. “Though, he implicitly understood who you were and what you meant to him. We have spoken about that, and …  and you will forgive me for the intrusion into your privacy, but he and I have talked about…”

 

Father clears his throat before pushing past the words.

 

“…about the loss of your bond. He’s only recently recalled its existence, and it frightens him, the prospect of you in danger without the ability to…”

 

She saves him from having to elaborate further.

 

“He hasn’t told me that, but it makes sense. ” She sighs and says nothing more.

 

“He’s … I don’t know.” Father fills the silence while rotating his chipped teacup on its saucer. “It’s as if he needs… something … something more. That’s why I was reading through my journals of his initial illness earlier.”

 

“Do you have any ideas?” The shadows beneath her wide eyes press him.

 

“No,” he confesses, and there’s an end.

 

Long moments pass and they remain separate in their thoughts. A subway train rumbles above them before she speaks again, the monotone of her voice heavy, catching him off guard.

 

“Everyone wants me to say he’s fine. They ask, but they need … They want me to say he’s all better … Mary, William, Cullen, the children, even Michael’s called me.” She looks away. “Most of the time, I assure them, because most of the time he seems … fine. But it’s like you said, he’s missing pieces. Like he’s fragmented himself. He still reaches for words and ideas that are just out of reach, and I see that hurts him.”

 

She turns back, confronting his gaze.

 

“He deserves to be whole. You may think it’s silly or selfish, for the sake of a few memories … And I promise, I will do everything to make sure he doesn’t get sick—”

 

“I know that. And not selfish,” Father argues, placing a hand over hers. “You want him whole, whole and healed, as do I.”

 

“Yes.” She says and sags in her chair as if she is dropping a heavy load.

 

She seems so tired, yet still so driven. A perfect foil for the boy.

 

Father snuffs a small laugh. “You and Vincent are so alike.”

 

That catches her interest.

 

“How so?”

 

“When he first brought you here, you were grievously hurt. Several of us, me included, didn’t believe you would ever heal fully. But Vincent knew. He was certain. He listened to my advice on how to treat you … and did the exact opposite.” He smiles at memory of his son’s quiet revolt. “Because he understood, in order for you to mend in both body and spirit, you would have to trust him.”

 

“He was right,” she acknowledges with a half-smile. “I learned to trust him, and because of him, to trust the world still had good in it.”

 

That she can smile at all about that dark time said everything he needed to know about her resilience and love for his son, even if the last months didn’t offer ample proof.

 

“Learning to believe hour-by-hour, day-by-day…” he says rather redundantly, but he’s curious. “So, when did you first put your faith in him?”

 

She reflects for a moment.

 

“When he told me where we were.”

 

“Of course.” Father chuckles. “Completely against the rules. ‘Don’t tell her anything,’ I believe I told him.

 

“Well, he told me almost everything,” she declares with a small smirk .

 

He grins and squeezes her hand to go on.

 

“He read to me for hours, spoke with me, and told me I would be all right, and … finally, I believed him.”

 

“You fell in love with his words. You healed, and your love grew­—with each day, each memory created, each season shared. I, too, was privileged to experience that … the intimacy of love’s many seasons. When Margaret was so ill…”

 

He loses his voice to the ache of her passing.

 

“I’m so sorry, Father,” Catherine interjects into his silence.

 

She shouldn’t be. He’s explaining this wrong.

 

“Don’t be,” he sooths, trying to clear his throat of emotion. “You helped bring her back to me.”

 

What if Margaret had died alone? What if they never had those happy few days until the end?

 

“Even with the cancer, she said she lived more in those last weeks than her last thirty years. The fragments of us, of our love, mended. I thanked God for every moment together, while I cursed fate that they would be our last. Every breath she took was … beautiful…” He offers a broken smile to the past, “…and bittersweet. I sat at her deathbed filled with … such longing and comfort. We didn’t get a lifetime together. But the times we did share—our courtship, our conversations, dashing through the rain in Central Park, dancing all hours through the Harlem Jazz clubs, searching for our flat in Lenox Hill—all those memories are a joy to me. Perhaps I couldn’t bring them to mind at that moment, and she couldn’t talk to tell me, but they were there with us, surrounding us. The counterpoint to the pain, like … a song whose melody you recognize even if you can’t remember the words … yes, …  a song without words filling my heart.”

 

He turns to her.

 

“Be here with Vincent, just as you have. You remind him of all the good you’ve shared, all that you have triumphed over, even if he can’t find the words yet. Together, you will find a way to mend.”

 

“I will,” she replies with the solemness of a vow. “Thank you, Father.”

 

“Thank you, my dear.”

 

The smile she returns is genuine, if weary. She has pushed herself too hard.

 

“You’re tired,” he states, then commands, the doctor taking over. “Stay with us here, tonight.”

 

She looks down, forehead creased, weighing responsibilities with long breaths.

 

“I can’t,” she says with an apologetic shrug. “I have to get back … take a shower, get ready for work tomorrow—”

 

She stands … and reaches out, bracing herself against the tabletop as her knees begin to crumple.

 

Syncope, the diagnosis flashes, as she sways and he scrambles behind her before her legs give out.

 

“There, there, I’ve got you,” he assures both her and himself as he walks the fainting woman backward, easing her to the floor. He kneels, with some aching difficulty, observing his patient’s grey pallor. She’s gone for a moment, but back just as quickly. Sweaty, shaky, but otherwise … fine.

 

“There’s a girl. Just breathe.”

 

“Father?” Asking for an explanation with only his name.

 

“You were about to faint on me.” He checks her pulse—rapid, but not thready.

 

“I can’t believe that,” she begins with an exhaled breath, then works to sit with his help.

 

“Well, believe it. Unless you were faking just to get my heart racing. If so, you’ve done a superb job.” He braces his stick under him to stand and spies his half-finished tea. “Drink this.” He pushes the cup into her trembling hands. “It’s well sugared.”

 

She does, dutifully.

 

“I’m sure it’s just a minor spell of dizziness. But you have been working too hard,” he admonishes, taking the empty teacup. “So, you will stay on with us tonight. I must insist.”

 

She opens her mouth to protest.

 

“No buts, Catherine. As soon as I help you into that chair, I’m directing William to bring you some food and Sarah to make up the guest chamber. You may bathe here tonight only if I judge you up for it. Perhaps work tomorrow after I check you. I’m serious about this.” He raps his cane on the floor. “I cannot have you to worry about as well as Vincent!”

 

She huffs and looks away.

 

Is he being unfair? Undoubtedly. But he isn’t above throwing his weight around for a patient’s health… Clearly, no one Above is looking after her. No family but those Below, which makes her his responsibility.

 

The stubborn woman takes a moment, devising further arguments, no doubt, but it’ll do her no good.  And maybe she recognizes that, because she looks up at him rather pitifully from the floor, defeated.

 

“Ok, Father. You win.”

 

 

 

~Belief~

 

 

She’s never fainted before.

 

Embarrassing—the black swimming in from the sides, the ringing in her ears, the sudden, sour nausea. If Father hadn’t been there to catch her…

 

Embarrassing and crazy.

 

William’s meal of pasta, bread and more tea helped enough that now she stands alone in a humid bathing room.

 

After dinner, Father checked her pulse again and declared her fit for a shower, then regaled her with an extensive tour of his private bath—the switchback stone entrance, the pump and covered cistern sitting high on an outcrop for the hand-held shower, the lavender milled soap and the soaking pool—more details about the engineering and utility than was really necessary, but she can’t fault him for being proud. Efficient and beautiful as the Japanese baths she’d spent quiet, healing hours during her father’s financed break-up with Stephen, also known as her extended tour of Asia.

 

She had once tried to describe the baths to Vincent, little realizing he didn’t need it. He lived a version of their of cleansing serenity on a daily basis.

 

This chamber wasn’t as vast as the communal baths she used after the adventure into the Hudson with Elliot, but not small either. And the soaking pool … Wonderful for my joints, Father said. He didn’t okay a bath, but there is no way she is going to pass up the opportunity.

 

Shoes and stockings stripped, she steps to the edge where man-made carved stairs meld in natural stone, leading in. The water softly rolls and churns, as if being fed from a spring underneath. She kneels and dips her fingers—hot, but not scalding.

 

She doesn’t want to think about the magic that created this pool of clear, heated water under New York.

 

No thinking at all, please.

 

She returns to the shower, stoppering the tank as Father showed her, and attempts a few experimental pumps. A twist of the lever and the water arrives pleasantly warm with a decent amount of pressure. More magic.

 

After filling the reservoir fully, and after another quick check of the door, she finishes disrobing, leaving her clothes on a bench next to a stack of towels. The sweat from the frenzied day up top and evening scramble Below succumbs to the fragrant soap and spray. The tank holds more than enough to get clean, especially if she doesn’t wash her hair this time.

 

This time? The thought surprises her.

 

Could this become common, perhaps daily, for her too?

 

Be nice, is all her tired brain can come up with.

 

Rinsed off, she cautiously navigates the path and stairs into the pool, picking a smooth ledge to relax on. Curling a loose bun, she rests her head against a stone outcrop.

 

Warm, soothing, heaven.

 

It was a good call on Father’s part. Good to stay Below tonight, even if the stacks of files on her desk threaten sanity and life. The McKenzie deposition was at 10 tomorrow, the meeting with Greg on the Hubal investigation before that. Greg knows her well enough he probably won’t show until at least 8:30 or 9. Prep for the Felton trial after lunch … lunch at her desk. Stay a little later. Could work if she wakes early. A quick check on Vincent in the morning, then another before crashing at the apartment—

 

Who is she kidding?

 

That timetable is shaky, at best.

 

Just like you.

 

Giving half yourself to work and half to Vincent is shortchanging both.

 

What are the priorities?

 

Priority.

 

My work is important.

 

So was Father’s at the Institute. But it broke him and Margaret apart.

 

If I have to choose…

 

There was no question. Vincent has dealt with danger from Below and from her job too many times—unfair even when unavoidable. But if the bond doesn’t return, would he urge her to give up her career? For the sake of their secret, would he ask her to stay?

 

Who would she be then?

 

A Tunnel wife? Would he want that? What would that even mean? If he wanted someone to meekly follow him around, she suspected he’d have married years ago, despite Father’s concerns and objections. But if it was a choice between Above or Below for her, what would Vincent choose?

 

You know.

 

He did choose.

 

“We must face what we both feared might come to pass from the beginning.”

 

At every instance … he sent her back.

 

The last time to wait for Spirko’s pictures to hit the papers, to endure the nightmares of reporters… the dreams of Joe shaking her…

 

“What does that make you, huh?”

 

What does that make you?

 

What does that make you?

 

It makes me… 

 

Afraid.

 

Afraid for Vincent, but afraid to lose myself.

 

“Without you, I would be lost to myself.”

 

That’s what Vincent said, but he left her… possibly forever… and she let him.

 

He didn’t understand then.

 

I didn’t either. I didn’t know what it would do to us.

 

If he died…

 

“Without him, there is nothing.”

 

Life is passing.

 

What do you want?

 

Balance.

 

Is that too much to ask?

 

The wavering reflections of light on the stone ceiling above her offer no answer. Floating in the water, the temperate current soothing tired limbs, easy to find balance here in the ebb and sway.

 

Vincent lost his balance. They lost it when they were separated.

 

He nearly died.

 

But together … despite the dark, (because of the dark, embracing the dark,) they found splendor, and passion, and healing…

 

Dancing to a song without words.

 

It wasn’t all he needed, but … a beginning?

 

If she stayed … what then?

 

She pushes a hand against the hot current bubbling from below, letting it sift through her fingers.

 

“I’ll stay as long as he needs me.”

 

Are you sure? Are you ready?

 

She stops pressing and her arm floats to the surface, dragged by the flow.

 

If I did stay, what happens to my identity?

 

Identity is a story. Without the story of his life, who was Vincent?

 

You said you wouldn’t let him forget.

 

Push. Pull. Like the water—perhaps that’s how it will always be.

 

Without an anchor point, you can be tossed, bashed on rocks or just float away.

 

What’s your anchor?

 

A rustling behind her startles her from her considerations.

 

She wheels to peer over the edge of the pool.

 

Vincent.

 

He’s here.

 

What’s he doing? Checking on me?

 

Not from the looks of him.

 

He stands immobile near the shower, shirtless, sculpted copper and amber in the lamplight. Holding a towel, half-dressed, barefoot, and staring, he seems as surprised as she.

 

Guess Father didn’t get him the message this bathing room was occupied.

 

This is … unexpected.

 

Vincent didn’t say he was showering tonight.

 

Has he ever shared his bathing schedule with you?

 

She’d left him reading with a peck on the cheek and a promise to see him tomorrow.

 

He isn’t reading now. 

 

He’s not moving either, seeming as ensnared by her gaze as she is by his. Moments that could be seconds or hours with no guidance. Only the sound of their breathing and the lapping waves on the rocks measures the time between them.

 

Stalemate.

 

Is that what you want with him, forever, trying to find an impossible balance?

 

No.

 

Not anymore.

 

“One either moves towards love or away from it. There is no other direction.”

 

Here goes everything.

 

She rises.

 

Each hike of the stairs reveals more of her to his eyes, to his examination. She carefully, consciously strides the rocks between them until she is standing within his reach, naked and wet.

 

He hands her the towel in his hand.

 

Always the gentleman…

 

Except, he isn’t looking away.

 

Instead, he’s completely absorbed by this moment of chance … absorbed by her. His face, his whole being, seems open, an unbolting of the locks, letting her in. He doesn’t fluster, doesn’t run, doesn’t try to escape this silent intensity between them.

 

It was lifesaving luck that brought her Below the first time. Maybe destiny led him here now.

 

No words, but perhaps they aren’t necessary. They didn’t need them when she brought him back from the brink in the cave.

 

May we love? We have. You don’t remember, but it saved us.

 

We anchored each other and grabbed hold of our happiness.

 

I promise … no matter what, you over everything.
Maybe he perceives what she’s thinking, or perhaps he just comes to the same decision, because he tugs the towel from her fingers and assumes the job of drying her himself. Hesitant at first—her shoulder and arm, along her neck, down her back, past the curve of her back side, each leg, then more confidently, tracing hip and breast. He drops the cloth and retraces his path with his hands. Her body tightens and relaxes under his exploring touch. Each stroke, sure, but graceful, astute. She can’t help but lean in desperation for more.

 

Judging by his breathing, he’s getting a little desperate, too.

 

She reaches  and pulls him close, kissing his chest, taut and velvet with muscle and fur under her lips. When she peers up, a spark glows in his eyes. He grasps her face in strong fingers, gazes, like he’s marveling at an unexpected treasure, and then kisses her.

 

She isn’t the only one moving towards love.

 

To heal together, we must heal, together.

 

As soon as they break, gasping in the steam-filled air, he takes her hand and pulls, insistent. They cross the chamber, past the entrance she knows, to a hidden recess.

 

Where he came in?

 

Through a doorway and up dark stairs, they come to an unfamiliar hall. He guides her on, and they turn into his room, only stopping when they are next to his bed.

 

Realization of what they are doing, what they are about to do…

 

This is right.

 

Everything they are, all they’ve endured, binds them. Binds them even without the bond, surrounded by a song without words.

 

He pushes pillows aside and drags down covers—amazing—then she is undoing his jeans as best she can, and he is kissing her neck, mouthing her pulse point. Quick gasps, before he finishes throwing his pants off. In a graceful sweep, he pulls her close, clinging, stroking, kissing her mouth, and nudging her backwards onto the bed.

 

He’s so confident, sure … as if he remembers. Does he? Explicit memory, implicit, or instinct?

 

She doesn’t have the breath to ask because he’s over her now and kissing her breasts. He lingers like he could live there. Later. She needs him inside her. She reaches, aligning him to her. Yes. He understands and press forward. Her body opens. Another thrust, more of him sliding within, perfect friction. Another, closer, not enough. A further push and he is fully seated, and it is … bliss.

 

Full of him, her fingers trace the steel of muscle, while his careful hands engulf her thighs, eager in the best way, greedy for her. He thrusts again, and again, incandescent and heady. They are working each other with a twist or tilt or tightening, stroking with fingers and … other parts. Instinct leads quickly to a blinding, powerful rhythm, deep, so deep. She cries into his mouth as their bodies fight to meld at every point possible. Harder, driving, short, uncoordinated strokes, he sobs and shudders as he spills into her. Both are left heaving in the aftermath.

 

Still inside her, surrounding her as she cradles him, she runs her nails through the soft, thick fur of his back.

 

“I love you,” she says aloud.

 

He eases out, and off, and next to her on the narrow mattress, kissing the side of her face, her neck, careful hands caressing her flanks as he pulls the blankets up half-way. He rests his head a moment on her shoulder, then finds the nipple closest, laves…

 

oh…

 

Straight sensation at her core, like he knows…

 

His fingers follow the feeling, spreading her, tracing, finding, working her.

 

Oh, dear God…

 

Arching into his touch, his lips. Close, so close … cresting…

 

She doesn’t recognize her voice when she cries his name in release.

 

Her heart still thudding, he kisses her gasping mouth, then pulls the quilt over them, before the oblivion of needed sleep takes her.

 

 

 

~The Sighing Wind~

 

 

She’s sound asleep.

 

She doesn’t stir when he inches out of bed, or when he tucks the covers snug around her, pulls on clothes and slips back to the bathing chamber to gather hers.

 

He’s awake. More awake than he’s been in weeks.

 

Not since Paracelsus… No. Since before that. Since the murder of that poor girl by the teens in the Park, has he felt as alert, aware.

 

He wants to pace, but that will surely wake her.

 

Although he can’t leave her, he’s not ready for her yet, not ready for … any of it. So, he sits waiting, staring at a lone candle in the corner as it dwindles into the early morning hours.

 

Flicker.

 

He could read. He only needs a little light to read his book, Great Expectations, the one he’s revisited nearly every year of his adult life, yet started again for what he believed was his first time yesterday.

 

Flicker.

 

He might write in his journal or reexamine entries from when he could barely punctuate a sentence, accounts so lacking in things to say, he’d scarcely eked out a paragraph before tossing his pen away.

 

The candle flame continues to dance in a scarcely felt draft.

 

This morning, he could write a novel. He sees, senses, remembers, considers with clarity he hasn’t had in months, back past the rich but empty killer boys, before Elliot’s loss of his father and attempted claim of Catherine.

 

He glances at her shadowed form, covered modestly to the chin in blankets and quilts. She is full, warm, sated, and happy.

 

Does she realize?

 

Elliot tried to win her, woo her, but she didn’t want that powerful man from the world Above. And now he’s too late.

 

A monster has claimed her in the most primitive way possible, without question or endearments. And…

 

Flicker.

 

Their bond is back, and with it, an awareness of change. A brush, a flicker of…

 

“Vincent, my boy?”

 

Called from the hallway he and Catherine used hours before, the query is from a tired man. Father must have fallen asleep in his chair again. When did his parent become old?

 

Father limps into the room. “Have you seen Catherine this morning? I checked the guest chamber and our bathing chamber, but her bed wasn’t…”

 

Vincent jumps from his seat, hushing the elder with a raised hand and gesture to the bed, but she barely rouses, only huddling further under the covers against the chill air.

 

Father’s eyebrows raise. He wants an explanation, but Vincent only nods and steers him out with a whispered, “We’ll talk later.”

 

It’s too early for conversations. Too early to tell Father the bond returned last night, along with many of his memories. Too early to tell the doctor he remembers the cave he ran to howl and hide in… and what happened when Catherine came to retrieve him. Too early to tell Father how she now nurtures the flicker of life they set in motion there.

 

Too early … and too late. The commotion has wakened her.

 

“Vincent? Is it morning?” She yawns.

 

She sits up, the blankets hiding her naked form as her body hides what is growing inside.

 

He crosses the room.

 

“I have to get to work,” she begins, looking around for her clothes, no doubt.

 

He perches on the side of the mattress, essentially confining her.

 

“I know, Catherine.”

 

“Good, I—”

 

He interrupts her.

 

“First, we must talk…”

 

 

 

 

~Consolation~

 

 

Vincent waits in their spot beneath the bandstand.

 

Catherine insisted they meet here tonight to share a performance tacked onto the end of the season—one she learned of last minute, a piano virtuoso sharing his favorite pieces from Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words.

 

She finds him as applause rings out above. With care and quiet, she situates herself to rest between his legs during the opening bars of “Duetto”. It’s cooler now. The summer is giving in to autumn. The year is waning, and his love burrows into his embrace. This will be the last of the outdoor concerts they share for the foreseeable future. He’ll miss them. By the next season, things will be very different. Yet, he will keep this place a secret, in the same way he hordes these moments away from the others. He is learning to take what he wants, as is she, and to be grateful instead of guilty. He is learning to be selfish, but not in all things.

 

Like a match set to wick, the little ball inside her becomes more insistent and stronger with each passing day. Not quite a light of its own, not yet, but the potential grows, as does their capacity to make room in their lives for the possibility.

 

It doesn’t escape Vincent that John Pater once stood in this same position—father-to-be, planning a future that went horribly wrong for him and Anna. The man is on Vincent’s mind too much these days. Since his memories’ return, Catherine and he have spent hours revisiting Paracelsus’ crimes and motivations. What is the difference between the two generations? Very little and absolutely everything.

 

They share painful pasts, the wants, fears, and desires. But speaking of them aloud, sharing them with a loved one, that’s what separates them. John Pater treated people as things to manipulate, possess, and discard at his whim. Catherine is anything but an object to own; she is a life you enter at her invitation, a cathedral of the senses, a mystery, with a mind and ideas not always in line with his own.

 

The morning after she woke in his bed, Vincent revealed what he suspected was happening … and asked her to stop it.

 

The plea—for her health, for fear of what it could do to her and dread over what kind of child might come from him—erupted, followed by unexpected tears, because how could they ever recover from this? How could she ever look at him with tenderness again?

 

Confronted by his outburst, she reacted with only shock. Neither distraught nor overjoyed by his revelation, she embraced him—miraculously, incredibly given what he’d done and what he’d asked of her. She murmured something about missed pills and irregular cycles, then dressed and asked for time to confirm the news and think.

 

When she returned with a positive pregnancy test and a restless day’s worth of reflection, she promised she had considered his request. If the bond he couldn’t help but consult during the longest night of his life was anything to go by, she did consider it … and came to the opposite conclusion.

 

She wanted his child, despite the risks. She wanted him, every day, for the rest of their lives. She forgave and understood his doubts, as long as he would forgive her own.

 

But she did compromise.

 

Peter examined her at his earliest opportunity, assured them both that all seemed well and that he would check every few weeks, or sooner, to make sure they stayed so.

 

Tonight, after the concert, they will tell Father and start to plan to meld their lives. After sharing this magnificent music, they will find the words, together.

 

More applause as the first piece ends. Vincent takes the opportunity to settle more fully into the pillows as “Consolation” begins.

 

Halfway through, she whispers from below his chin, “How do you feel?”

 

Her simple question asks many. How is his health? What does he think of them being here tonight and for however long fate will allow them? Is that what he wishes?

 

“There are no words,” he answers, overwhelmed.

 

“Try one,” she insists.

 

How?

 

How to describe in one word having all he’s ever wanted in the protection of his arms, the desperate fear that losing any aspect will destroy him, and the realization that he must, they must, accept the question without easy or proximate answer.

 

How do you live with the terrifying uncertainty?

 

The only way, minute-by-minute, by hour, and day, and lifetime.

 

They are still fording a raging river between past and future, but she is his anchor in the present, and somehow, he is hers.

 

She wants a word for all that. Along with putting her trust in the goodness of his heart, she believes in the triumph of his mind. It is a heavy, but sacred burden. Yes, sacred to be loved in such a way.

 

Happily, that reminds him of a word for all this.

 

“Blessed,” he says and kisses her forehead.