There was a parcel on Eilidh's drawing desk. Wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with twine.
Tucked into the twine, a note:
Although it has been a few years, I thought you might like this back. --J
It was a simple artist's portfolio. One edge was dented and scuffed, as if it had been dropped, and although several of the pages were loose, all were in their proper order.
The artwork itself was terrible, and not Eilidh's.
If Eilidh had thought about it over the years, and she wasn't sure she had, she would have assumed the portfolio had been discarded. Cabal was not a sentimental man, not in the traditional sense, and he certainly had no reason to keep something like this around--something with no practical value to him, a reminder of an unpleasant interaction that neither of them recalled with any fondness, regardless of what had come after. And of course they hadn't been friends then. He wouldn't have kept it for her, surely.
Eilidh sat in a soft armchair with the package, still wrapped, in her hands, not needing to open it to recognize what it was. She thought about the last time she had held it. How hard she had hit him, with her mistaken enthusiasm. The book fluttering to the ground. Her fear of the stranger she hadn't seen clearly until he turned on her in anger.
And then she thought about a very ordinary day just last week, over tea and chess, when she had noticed the fine grey hairs scattered through the blond at Johannes's temple as he frowned down at the board. After a terrible beginning, after hurting and hating one another, they had managed to become so settled in one another's lives that Eilidh could watch his unguarded face closely enough to count his grey hairs. Johannes could put his hand on her back to keep her safely away from the hot kettle he was carrying in the kitchen, and all the touch made her feel was comfort and warmth. Maybe he had brought it back because they no longer needed it, she mused. They had been bound together by guilt and regret, by the memory of that moment and what followed, both of them trying to overcome their worst instincts out of necessity, because they both loved Horst, because they couldn't avoid each other. And then, slowly, they had built something better. And after that, that moment no longer held power over them.
Finally Eilidh unwrapped the package, folding the paper and tucking it away with her sketchbooks and scrap paper. She held the portfolio for a moment in her hands. Maybe she was part of the reason for her friend's grey hairs, she thought with a grin as she slid the portfolio onto her bookshelf, just as it was, with Johannes's note tucked inside.