Page 92 of Tears of Gold

The last thing I hear is Eli saying, “I won’t be pressured into a wedding that neither of us want.”

“You will do what is right for the family and accept your role as heir. Do you think I don’t know about all the invites and events you have been missing? Invites your brother would never have dared to turn down.”

“I am not my brother! And I won’t live a lie.”

Well fuck.

I don’t want to go to the kitchen. Elaine’s comforting embrace will only make me feel overwhelmed. Instead, I walk out to the outhouses where we held the summer art project. It seems a lifetime ago now. It seems like a lifetime since Eli and I stayed in here the night Peter died, the day we got engaged.

Are we fooling ourselves? Can someone like Eli be with someone like me?

I sit on the ivory bed in the pink room. A princess room for a girl with ink and shadows.

The gold on my finger glitters and I spin it around. Fragile and delicate, it looks like it would bend under the slightest weight.

When the door clicks open, I’m expecting to see the furious face of Eli and for him to tell me we are leaving and never going to return. Instead it’s Jennifer.

“Can I come in?”

“If I say no will you listen?”

She walks in which is answer enough. With rigid movements she perches on the mattress next to me. “I’m sorry for the way my mother talks about you.”

I sigh and shake my head. “How have you lived like this for so long? Your own children are alienated from you; is that what you want from the next generation too?”

“How many weeks are you?”

“Eleven.” I concentrate on spinning the ring.

“That’s the horrible bit.”

“Yeah.” I don’t add that it’s not as bad as coming to this house. I guess she can work that out for herself.

“Faith, thank you for helping Tabitha with her problems over the summer.”

I meet her gaze. “Problems?”

“When she ran away and came to you.”

“She should have come to you; don’t you see that? But she didn’t because you let your own mother run the show.”

Jennifer is silent for a moment. “From my earliest memories I just have a vision of my mother. My father, he died years ago now, but he is just a faded recollection, hazy around the edges. I know I never really knew him at all. He was the Baron. My mother married into his family and she was determined to turn its fortunes around. And she did. She mingled with the best in society, pulled the Fairclough name back out from obscurity and to the forefront of English society.”

“Why are you telling me this? You know I don’t care about names or society. You know I think it’s a bunch of old-fashioned nonsense.”

“Sometimes I think the same.”

Wow.

I don’t say anything.

“I don’t want my own children to only remember me as a hazy memory. Or their father.”

My gaze meets her blue one. “You miss him?”

“I loved him.”

“So why did you let him go?”