Lady Griffith's Second Chance

Chapter Twenty-Two

"I love him, you know. No matter that I did not believe it possible."

Regan sat on her knees, on a blanket she had brought with her to prevent the damp from soaking into her gown. It was late in the afternoon, nearly evening judging from the angle of the sunlight slanting through the trees that arced over the churchyard. She had already plucked out a few weeds that had fought their way through the earth to spring up around the base of her deceased husband's headstone. She chided herself for not visiting as much of late, but then she had been busy, and the children, and Miss Kennett, and Thomas...

Well.

"We never had an opportunity to discuss what would happen should one of us leave the other before our time. But then," she huffed a small sigh. "I guess if you are already gone from me, then it was your time after all." She twirled a short blade of grass between her fingers, then broke it in half and let the pieces fall to the ground. "Where you are," she pressed on, not looking at the stone itself but at the leaves on the ground, on a small mound of earth piled up around a hole into which a steady line of ants was streaming. "I do not know how much you can see, but... I am going to marry him. I love him," she repeated, not to force the point, but because it pleased her to say it. "And he loves the children, and I think he will be a wonderful father to them. He will not replace you. No one could ever do that, but they need someone else, especially now with Katharine soon leaving. I need someone. I did not believe I would, or at least I told myself that I would not, but..."

She heard a sound, the distinctive crunch of footsteps, though they were still some distance away. Regan stood up, picked up the blanket and shook it out, and folded it again while Katharine - because now she was close enough for Regan to see that it was her daughter - approached from the lane that cut the shortest path from the churchyard to their home on the other side of the small rise.

"Mama," was all she said to begin with, and came up beside her, twining her arm in with her mother's. They stood in silence together for several minutes, long enough to listen to the skylarks above them, to the hum and chatter of life all around them, as they paid their respects to those who had lived and died before them.

"I will never cease to miss him," Regan said. Her voice was not as thick as she had expected. It was not a fact that continued to cause her grief, it simply... was.

"I know." Katharine laid her head on her mother's shoulder. "He would like your Mr. Cranmer."

Ah, back to the possessives. Regan gave the blanket another nervous fold and tucked it beneath her arm. "We are to be married." Again, she spoke easily, despite the fact that she was a tangle of nerves inside. And guilt. And sadness. And utter, utter happiness. How strange it was that so many of life's milestones carried such an array of emotions with them, rather than simply one or another in stark relief.

"Oh, mama." Katharine slipped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her. "I will not say that I knew it, but I will admit I hoped. There was something there between you, all the way back when you first met. I saw it then, though I am sure you would have denied it."

Regan smiled. "I would have, yes. I don't think I was quite ready to admit to myself that I was capable of moving forward again."

And so they stood there, swathed in the quiet stillness of the oncoming evening. Regan opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again. How many more moments like these would there be? Just her and Katharine, together?

But that was not how life should be. One could not pluck a moment or a feeling or a memory from their days and continue to live it over and over again without alteration. She would have to watch her children grow. The memories she had of her husband would slowly corrode, some of them disappearing entirely. But if she did not allow those things to pass away, there would not be room enough for the new.