He slammed a fist up onto the ceiling. “Take the left turn.”
In a minute, the carriage swayed with the turn, bringing him closer to the very thing he vowed he’d never do.
Learn his past.
{ Chapter 19 }
Talen watched the back of Ness’s dark blue skirt swing in front of him, the bottom hem dusting along the overgrown grasses half-dormant along the hillside.
“Not too much farther.” She looked over her shoulder at him, a half-smile on her face meant to encourage or placate him, he couldn’t read.
Fifteen more steps and she crested the top of the hill, pulling to a stop at a wrought iron fence that he hadn’t been able to see from the angle they walked up the hill. The fence encircled a plot of land dotted with headstones.
The heavy rocks already rolling about in his gut multiplied. He didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to do this with every fiber of his being.
He needed to leave. Leave now. And at the exact moment he started to turn on his heel to do just that, he caught sight of Ness’s gaze on him.
Intent, worried, needing this.
Needing it more than he needed to escape. She needed this to move forward with him, so he would give it to her. He would look at a couple headstones and then they could be on their way.
Easy enough.
Hunks of granite with names emblazoned on them couldn’t conjure memories that were long since forgotten.
Her look darted away from him. “Over there is the gate.” She pointed to the far side of the iron fence. “We must have come up the back way, but it was the only way I knew of. That sheep field below is where we would escape to, your cousin, Harriet, and I liked the lambs and you liked chasing the sheep. Harriet always used to yell at you for making the ewes nervous. And you liked to tell us ghost stories of who was buried up here on the hill. So when it was near to dark, we used to dare each other to come up here.”
His gaze went back to the long pasture they’d trekked across, several sheep moving slowly in the distance along the stone fence they’d crawled over. Grey skies above threatened rain. None of it looked familiar. His bottom lip jutted upward. Just another memory he didn’t have.
“My mother said we couldn’t come to the burial—that was men’s work. But Harriet and I snuck out of the manor house and watched them lower you into the ground from over there.” She pointed to her left at a long bank of trees, oaks with crispy, russet-hued leaves still stubbornly holding onto the limbs.
“This isn’t right, Ness.”
She stepped toward him and took the shovel that they’d borrowed from a farmer along the way from his hand. “I don’t want to disturb the dead any more than you do. But I don’t know that there’s another way. You need to know. I need to know.” Before he could snatch the shovel away from her, she moved away from him, her gaze determined on the iron gate opposite them.
Talen followed her, a new fear burning down his chest. Fear of what this would do to Ness if she was wrong about this grave. His grave.
Half of him wanted her to be wrong for his sake. Half of him wanted her to be right for her sake.
Pulling a hard breath into his lungs, he followed her around the fence to the front of the cemetery. It was private at least. The site nestled between three hills. No one around for miles. It’d taken a full half hour to walk here from the road where they’d left their driver and carriage and if they didn’t hurry, twilight would be upon them before they finished the business of this.
By the time he caught up to her, Ness had already wedged the point of the shovel into the ground by a headstone on the far left of the graveyard. Her movements were awkward with her left hand and arm still wrapped along the splint gently trying to help balance the handle as she dug her heel onto the back of the metal spade.
He stopped directly behind her, his hands slowly going around her waist as he slipped the shovel out of her hands. “I’ll do it, Ness. This isn’t work for you. I shouldn’t have even let you come up here.”
“You know I need to be here, just the same as you.” She turned around in between his arms, her hand on his chest, her look lifting to him. “I need you to look at the headstone. Your headstone. Your name. This is where I lost you. Where we all lost you.”
His gaze left her face, going over her shoulder to the weathered grey stone with a rounded top sticking out of the ground, leaning slightly to the left.
Beloved son, Conner J. B. F. Burton.
Nothing. No recognition. No sudden memory.
He looked down at Ness, his head shaking.
“Nothing?” she asked, worrying her lip.
“No.” His right hand dropped from around her waist and he shifted to her side, driving the spade into the ground with his boot. “So we dig.”