Ander - Epilogue: Subchapter 6
6
The light was growing soft. The shadows, fuzzy. James took a quiet moment to look out over the field again. The kids had retreated into the shade of an old elm tree and were talking about something in that special way unique to the young, with many explosive hand gestures and exaggerated facial expressions. Every so often they would burst out laughing, and James's heart would swell with love for his daughter.
"She's going to be so beautiful when she grows up, Emmy," he said. "Hell, she's beautiful already. Must have gotten it from her mom."
James rubbed his eyes and racked his brain, but he was quickly running out of things to say. Well, except for the real reason he came out here. He could feel it pressing against his chest. The cool, hard smoothness of it. The weight of it. The sharp corners.
It would have to be soon.
Just then, his eye caught movement near the bottom of the hill. It was Sorrin, little more than a speck from here. He was running down the road for all he was worth, and judging by the way he was lurching along, panting and heaving and clutching at his chest, he had been running for a good long while. He spotted James and began to wave his arms back and forth, yelling something about... something?
James perked both ears, but from such a distance, Sorrin's voice was little more than a low drone. Hezzi, however, jumped up like a jackrabbit and tore through the field so fast he kicked up a whole bunch of wildflowers in his wake (roots and all), showering his female companions in clods of dirt.
"Oh, you've done it now, sonny," James whispered, but to his immense surprise, instead of getting angry or yelling obscenities, the girls seized each other by the hands and started bouncing up and down, laughing and squealing.
Now what on earth could be going on down there?
Hezzi ran up to Sorrin and skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust (nearly going down on all fours just to keep himself from overshooting the target). Sorrin talked like a Wolf possessed, waving and pointing in random directions, and then went pealing down the road as fast as his legs could carry him, but now with a rather impatient-looking Hezzi running alongside. No, scratch that, the kid was literally running circles around him in an attempt to get him to go faster. After a few rotations, they passed close enough to the foot of the hill for James to make out some of what they were saying.
"- too soon! We have to go get him!"
"Twins... ah... already... on... erhg... the way... oorgh..."
"The twins!? Are you insane!? You know they can't make it past Othello's without -"
Their voices soon deteriorated into an incomprehensible series of panting and wheezing, interspersed with the occasional "Oh, Cora!", but even that quickly faded away to nothingness as they disappeared down the road.
"Well, that was odd," James said, scratching his head and wondering what could possibly have gotten Sorrin (who ordinarily considered surly grunts and nods to be the height of emotive expression), into such a tizzy. Emily probably would have known in a heartbeat. She had a knack for stuff like that.
He looked down at her tombstone, dappled in shifting spots of sunlight and shade, and knew that the time had come. It was wrong for him to try and drag this out any longer. Emily never cared much for gossip. She was a vixen who liked to get right to the point, and he knew that, if she could, she would have whapped him a good one long before now. It was the important things she wanted to hear.
The important things he needed to say.
"Emily... I love you very much. So much, in fact, that it actually began to hurt me. It was eating away at me, not being able to see you, talk to you, hold you, kiss you. It hurt so much that... that even the kids began to notice it, and then it began to hurt them, too. But the one I hurt the most, I think, was you. I know better than anyone how much you love your family, and for me to take that love and twist it into an instrument of torture for myself... That's the absolute worst thing I could have done to you. It was selfish and stupid and wrong. I'm so sorry, Emmy. I didn't mean to hurt you or the kids or anyone else. I just... I miss you so much. I miss you every day. And although I wish I could put your mind at ease by promising that I'll stop missing you, that I'll stop feeling sad whenever I think about the way you smiled, or the way you played with our children, or heated milk by the fire on cold nights, or dabbed my nose with your paintbrush whenever I looked over your shoulder one too many times, that is one promise I can't make because I know I'll break that promise the very same day I make it."
James sniffed and wiped his eyes, wishing he had remembered to bring a handkerchief with him. The words on Emily's tombstone were beginning to blur into meaningless shapes.
"I, um..." He sniffed again and took a moment to organise his thoughts. There were so many things he wanted to say, swarming inside his head, that every time he reached for one, a hundred others would get in the way. "Sorry I'm havering so much. But then again, you were the one who always got me havering, isn't that right, Emmy? Even after ten years of marriage, you could still make me feel like a stupid teenager trying to impress his crush."
James took a deep breath and tried again. "I can't promise I won't miss you, and I can't promise I won't feel sad sometimes. But the one thing I can promise you, Emmy, is that I will always love you, and that I will never allow the love I feel for you to turn into something that pains me or the kids ever again. That's not what love is supposed to be. Love is supposed to be everything good in your life..." James struggled, trying to find the proper words for what he was trying to say. It just sounded so plain. 'Good'. It was the same word you'd use to describe a piece of cheese, but he didn't think a word for what he really felt about her actually existed, so he just had to make do with what he had and hope that Emily would understand what he was rambling about. She usually did. "Love is something that takes ordinary 'good', the type of 'good' you knew before, and turns it into something that knocks you on your tail. It enhances everything. It suffuses every aspect of your life. It takes perfectly normal, boring, everyday things you barely notice and turns them into highlights. A sandwich. A cup of tea. A sunrise. The evening star. Dew on a rose petal. The pounding in your chest that comes from running too hard. Lines of paint and splashes of colour on a canvass. A sealed letter. A frown turning into a smile turning into a laugh turning into a hug turning into a kiss. I was empty, and you filled me up. I was alone, and you gave me a family. You took my boring every days and turned them into something good. More than good. You turned my life into a living miracle, and for that I love you, and for that I thank you, and for that I promise you, from now on, that is the only way I will remember you. As my friend, my lover, and the mother of my children."
James reached into his breast pocket and produced the sketch Emily had made of their family so long ago, with the kids in front and the parents standing in the back, everyone smiling so warmly. He had made a brand new frame for it out of thick strips of polished mahagony, and a brand new piece of glass for the front.
Emily still had a tear going across her chest, surrounded by a brown splash of his own dried blood. There wasn't anything he could have done about that, but he didn't really feel the need to. That wound was proof of her love for him, proof that she was still looking out for him and the children, proof that she still held him to the promise he had made all those years ago, proof that she would never allow him to give up.
You'll take good care of the kids, won't you?
James ran his fingers along the borders of the frame. "There were a few close calls," he said, "but I kept my promise, and I will continue to keep my promise until the day I get to see you again."
A single tear fell onto the glass and shattering into a dozen orbs, vaguely reflecting the swaying shadows of the tree above and his own tired, tear streaked face.
He got down on one knee and gently placed the picture on top of her grave, nestled between the yellow roses their children had left before him.
Emily
Painter. Wife. Mother.
Your greatest works of art were the lives you touched.
We will always love you.
"Goodbye, Emily."
James stood up, turned around, and made his way back to the gate, walking a winding path through the gravestones, marking generations of Foxes that had lived and died before he was even born.
He felt a bit sad. A bit drained. But he also felt good. He felt lighter, like every step didn't require quite as much effort as before. After years of running and crying and shutting himself away in the torturous comforts of his memories, shackling his wife just as surely as he was shackling himself, he finally let go. He felt like Emily could rest now, and wait for him in peace, and he could do the same for her. There was no rush.
He still had a promise to keep.
Luke was sitting on the wall, and Tim was down on his haunches, doodling something in the dirt with a stick. They looked up at his approach, looking both expectant and maybe a bit worried.
"And what's this?" James asked, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "You boys are going to get heatstroke, dawdling about in the sun like this."
The worry melted away from their faces, and suddenly they were just kids again. His kids. Two brothers born only eleven months and two weeks apart.
"Are we going home now?" Tim asked, getting up and brushing the dirt off his pants.
"Home? You wish, boy!" James laughed and ruffled the boy's hair, a good hard fluffing that made him squeal and pull his head back. "We got work to do! Seamus needs a new barn door! Old lady Liza's house is just about falling down around her head! We got roofs that need roofing and shutters that need shutting! Honestly, how this entire town hasn't crumbled to dust without yours truly is a gods given miracle! I can't do it alone, though. How about it? You think you can give this old Fox a helping hand?"
"Meh... I dunno." Tim shrugged and pretended not to be smiling. "Maybe if I can expect some kind of compensation for my efforts...?"
"How's about a big loaf of cornbread, fresh out of the oven?"
"Baked by you, or old lady Liza? Because those are two completely different things."
"Me, of course!"
"Oh." Tim gave it some thought. "Pass."
"Why you little bastard!" James made as if to hit him and Tim went tearing down the hill, laughing his head off. James cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled after him: "And if you see your sister, tell her I want her back home before sundown! Those roses won't water themselves!"
"Okay!" Tim yelled back over his shoulder, changing course for the field where Valery and Renna were still huddled together under the elm, whispering excitedly to each other and wringing their hands in the way of the womenfolk.
James had half a mind to go over there and ask what was so titillating, but thought better of it. If it was anything important he'd probably hear all about it at the supper table tonight.
"And what about you?" he asked, turning to his eldest son. "You going to shirk your duties, too?"
Luke smiled. "Nah. Just as long as you promise not to make me eat your cornbread."
James threw his hands in the air. "Since when has my cornbread been anything but delicious!? You ungrateful kids!"
"Valery's been making better bread than you since she was seven."
"That... I can't argue with."
Luke hopped down from the wall, and together they made their way down the winding path. They talked. They laughed. They kicked pebbles down the slope and into the weeds. There was no hurry. When they reached the spot where the path rejoined with the main road leading into town, Tim and Valery were already there waiting for them.
"Changed your mind about the cornbread, sonny?"
He shook his head. "Not really, but I figured maybe it'll taste better after a hard day's work."
"Grovenglen's been giving you a right smart mouth as of late, hasn't it?"
Tim shrugged and James gave him a playful punch on the shoulder. "Come on, lazybones! We got work to do!" he said, setting off down the road with his sons on either side, purposefully ignoring Valery and the way she was bouncing up and down on pins and needles, just about bursting with whatever secret she was so desperate to divulge. He wondered how long it would take before she exploded in a shower of wildflowers and fur.
"Daddy!" she said, unable to keep it in any longer. "Daddy! Something amazing is happening right now! Do you want to know what is? Do you?"
"Hmmm..." James scratched his chin and contorted his face into a look of deep contemplation. "Nah, not really."
"Dad!" Valery stomped her foot with such force it knocked her circlet of flowers right off her head and it ended up dangling from her muzzle.
James howled with laugher and finally relented. "Okay, okay, I won't torture you any longer. What is it, girl?"
Valery broke out into a huge smile, ringed on all sides by the swaying circlet, and said: "It's Ki -