Time Trials
The Sunday afternoon was quiet. She'd done her cleaning, her straightening. Arthur was snoozing in his bed and the quarters were calm.
At least...they were to the eye. She sat silently and still at her desk with a pen and paper. And a few things that she had been looking over for a while.
There was a glass container full of faded, withered petals. A few photos that had been printed from a trip to a tropical paradise. A slender box that had a string of silvery seed pearls spilling out of it. There was a box on the floor with a folded pair of high, pale fawn-coloured leather boots. A corset that matched lay atop it, along with a flat wrapped parcel that had never been opened. A thick shearling robe was bundled next to the box.
She sat back without touching pen to paper and let the silent tears roll as she chewed at a thumbnail. The angry letter she wanted to write just felt wrong. Even if she felt justified, felt that she'd been abandoned.
It had been a solid two months since she last saw or heard from him, as he left for the train station with her brother. Not a text, not a picture, not a call or a letter. She'd thrown herself into work, into helping others as it soothed her. The things that reminded her, they were easy to put away. To hide at the back of the wardrobe. To leave locked in the jewelry box. To put at the back of the crowd of pictures on the piano.
But every time she bared her shoulder, there was the permanent proof that something huge was missing. Was missed. The bite mark was now a white ring of toothy flat scars that crossed her collarbone, marked her as his from the moment she'd promised herself to him, from the moment he'd asked. She'd been so fucking proud to be his woman, to be his mate. To be marked as his. To have those special smiles and caresses and embraces and...it was all gone without him, but the promise she'd made remained. She was still his, entirely.
She'd been quiet and tried to let him have his time without bothering him. He was fighting things she couldn't imagine...mostly because he wouldn't worry her with them, she was sure. He'd gone to see friends. She bitterly hoped that he was getting what he needed from them, since she sure couldn't seem to give it to him.
His quarters here were undisturbed as far as she knew...since she'd given the key back, she had no way of going in and checking. Her weak and angry thought had been to pack all of these gifts in a box, write a letter and leave all in his quarters for whenever he came back, but...that thought made her panic and despair more than anything. She wasn't done with him yet. Not until he told her...to her face...that he was done with her. She'd made a promise, taken a personal vow, made a commitment that she planned to keep since no one else in his life had been able to. And more than that, she still loved him. She couldn't abandon that hope that he still loved her.
She picked her cell up from the desk and found a contact who might know something, and hesitantly tapped out a short message. She sent it and threw the phone back on the desktop in frustration, curling up and covering her face with her forearms.
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[SMS] Ms. Kinney? I hate to bother but have you heard anything at all from Mr. Howlett?
