Atonement || SBFY
Near the end of the month, Jane was walking along the path that led to Belle’s house. She walked with her back very straight and her head held high and she walked with a purpose. If you looked at her now, just from a distance, you’d see a small woman in a dusty-grey pea coat and long red skirt, scarf wrapped round her neck, eyes faced forward and you wouldn’t even realize that she was prepared to die tonight.
In the pocket of her pea coat was the last quarter of the candle.
There hadn’t been any breakthroughs. Jane had suspected as much and with each night as she and Milo lit the candle, and their living room (their living room, their living room) was washed in that blue glow, her heart clenched in guilt and when she closed her eyes she saw Belle and Hades and—
Jane had said goodbye to her father. He didn’t know that, but she did. She’d gone to London last weekend to do so—spending a day with him, one last good day that she wanted to give him to remember. She’d done the same with Simba. And with Amelia.
With Milo it was different—
Because he knew. He was trying. They were both trying, but as the month slipped on, each day had grown more desperate, and with each little thing, Jane thought to herself: is this the last time?
The last time they’d wake up to the rain, for instance. The last time they’d go to reach for the sugar at breakfast and knock their hands and laugh. The last time they would have lunch in that little spot under that one tree they liked in the quad. The last time they’d kiss madly in the late of night and forget that there was a world around them.
This would be the last time she walked up to the path of Belle’s and she did it with a quiet resolve and then knocked on the door, before she could stop herself, steal away another two weeks, one week, or however long was left.
“Hello, Belle,” she said, when the door opened. “May I come in? I have something I need to give you.”
@bellebeauton
