Chapter 46: XLVI:

Weeks passed into a month. A letter from Jacob arrived but there was no mention of Oliver. After she left it seemed he gave up on her. Good, she told herself and promised to put him out of her thoughts.

Her studies helped. Research into specific topics was a well-practiced skill for her. Estella might have been a home body, but Matthieu and Theodora took her education seriously and you don’t live in the same building as one of the deepest libraries and archives in Europe without having to do a project or two (or three) a semester.

The rest of the books arrived and she in full swing, reading and taking notes. Some nascent ideas were forging but she hadn’t yet the threads to pull them together. Much of it was theory and she hated theory. Never been good at it. Never had the patience for it either.

Her magic was improving too. She was still too stiff to have the finesse she was used to but Esther stopped cradling her morning coffee in a protective embrace over breakfast.

Small wins and all that.

About a month and a half into her stay and summer was just showing signs of giving way to cooler weather. She was with Eloise in the back garden collecting the waning harvest. Besides them basked buoyed with vegetables. Esther was around the corner of the house, muttering over laundry. “I hate laundry,” Estella heard her grumble every week for the past six weeks, but she hated smelling like tomato plants more.

It was a calming, repetitive routine. Her life in Oregon kept her busy, kept her moving enough to quiet the raging anxiety over her situation. Her time in Chicago almost felt like a fever dream between the gunshot wound and a dislocated Oliver.

She almost felt normal, as if she was small again playing in the garden with her nonno. Maybe he was right around the looming sunflowers.

One day they were repeating this exact same scenario when the air shifted like a thread pulled taut. The windchimes strung up outside began to sing. Esther joined them in the garden, the laundry intentionally laid aside on the ground. They also set down the garden supplies and baskets and together the three of them gathered inside with Estella shoved into the kitchen out of sight.

Around the corner, down the hall, Esther and Eloise greeted their visitor, Esther gruff and bossy as always. “What do you want, boy? Don’t get a lot of your kind around here. Not that you’re welcome.”

Your kind? Her breathe caught. No. It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t. But so much time… Not after she --- hope, treacherous hope, spring joyful in her chest.

A male voice floated down the hallway. “Your brother Jacob sent me. Said I might find my friend, Estella de Luca, here.”

Oliver! Tipping sideways, she had to grip the counter to steady herself.

Why had he come? Why had he bothered? Hadn’t she been terrible enough?

“Don’t know her.”

“Esther!”

“She doesn’t want to see you.”

“Now, we don’t know that. We haven’t asked.” Cheerfully, Eloise told Oliver, “She doesn’t like to talk about it, you know. She’s had a very difficult time of it.”

Eloise, please.

“Could you tell her that Oliver Morris is here to see her?”

“I imagine she knows that what with the superb hearing of you lot.”

Estella wanted to disappear into the floorboards, be devoured by the faithful ants as a sacrifice to their queen. Anything except see Oliver. Or to listen to Eloise hint to obviously that she may have missed him.

But Esther was right about their superior senses. Not only did vampires hear exceptionally well, but their sense of smell was terrifying when honed in. And if Oliver was looking for her, he would know she was here by scent alone. He was only being polite in asking for her.

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He had questions, she was certain. The least she could do was answer them and hope he agreed with her reasoning.

Nervously wiping her hands on her waist apron, Estella turned the corner. The hall wasn’t long, and she could easily see Oliver’s black mop of hair over the older women’s heads. She had only a second to take in the sight, the reality of the situation before Oliver’s face snapped up and his dark forest eyes met hers.

His eyes widened, mouth fell open slightly as if to speak or perhaps simply stunned to see her look so tame.

But the window into his thoughts lasted only a moment. He shuddered them quickly, narrowing his eyes and mouth, which he pressed into a firm, thin line.

So, he was angry. Of course. Estella didn’t know why that knowledge deflated her, but it did. Maybe she’d hoped he would have understood, but then again, how can you understand someone you barely know?

She invited him on a walk through the orchard, just a short distance from the yard. He accepted willingly but that was as far as he intended to the conversation. They fell into silence. Estella thought of many things to say that weren’t looking what she’d done in the face but they each came back around to the same point: Oliver had been a part of all her opening conceived plans.

Every detail she could share with him he had wanted to be a part of.

It was in this state of mind when Oliver pulled up short, forcing Estella to turn and face him.

But he wasn’t looking at her. Oliver stared to her right, off the path. It felt like a very fragile moment, like her very breath might shatter whatever was left between them.

In a controlled voice, he finally spoke, “I brought you’re your trunk.”

An obvious statement. She saw it with him on the porch. “The case and everything in it are yours Oliver. You purchased all of it.”

He shut his eyes, breathing in. “I bought all of it for you. You’ve nothing here.”

“I---” She lost to a large lump that choked her voice. Clearing her throat, she wanted to try again. She just couldn’t stand this. Couldn’t stand his even voice, the way he wouldn’t look at her, and even the way he was breathing, all short and measured.

“Oliver.” He wouldn’t face her. “Oliver.” Wouldn’t look. “Oliver.” The last, more like a whine, thickened by her accent, finally made him look at.

And he was angry.

“What, Estella? What do you want?”

The questioned rattled in her head. She wanted so many things. To apologize, to beg him to stay, to make him understand that he has to go, to tell him that she’s thought of him every day.

Words twisted and tied around her tongue. She felt like a child again, testing vocabulary on her tongue.

He threw his hands in the air. “Right. Of course. How sill of me to ask. Obviously, you want me gone. I’ll go.”

She should let him go, but her traitorous hands reached out, gripping his sleeve. He stopped but didn’t turn towards her, didn’t look, didn’t ask.

“That’s not---that’s not why.”

“Then what is it, Estella? I thought…I felt…” Words escaped him, or perhaps he shoved them down. He still didn’t turn around, but his chin dipped lower, bringing their heads closer together, while his free hand rubbed at his chest, where his heart was located.

She didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to give voice to the feeling, to the ache she felt with him that was so different to the pain of missing her family.

“Estella,” He breathed, his breath hot on her cheek. He faced her now, only inches away from her own. And she knew. It was already too late for him. Knew it with a certainty that was rooted in her bones. Teared pooled in her eyes, threating to spill over.

She didn’t want to do this to him. She didn’t to do this to him.

Estella ripped her hand away form him like she’d been burned. She didn’t want to be the melancholy in him she saw at Saint-Tourre. She didn’t.

Hands fisted in her eyes, she paced away from Oliver. “I don’t want to do this you!” She all but yelled. “I don’t want to! It’s not fair!”

They say Theodora went mad when her husband died. That Matthieu was even worse. In some stories, the broken heart literally killed the one left behind.

“I don’t think that’s your choice, Estella.”

“I will leave you, Oliver. That won’t change.”

“You will come back to me too.”

“It’s not too late.” It couldn’t be. Lives bled together behind her eyes, them together at Saint-Tourre, their intimate breakfasts in Chicago, them bent over books and paper. Past, present, future. Future, past, present. “Leave. Leave and don’t come back.” She pleaded.

“It is for me.”

She ground loud and long. When she ended, Oliver asked, “When I asked if we were friends, you said “Of a sort.” What did you mean?”

“I don’t know!” She burst out. “We got along so well. And when we weren’t working, we were together and we talked and--- and--- don’t make me do this, Oliver.” The man himself was much closer to her now, reaching for her, holding her.

She fisted his shirt sleeves in her hands, resting her head on his shoulder.

“I only want to stay. Let me stay with you, Estella. We can figure the rest out later.” He whispered into her hair. “Please, I only want to stay.”

How did this happen? How and why did they get so attached? Why did it have to be now? Or then? When did it have to be this way?

Letting go, she walked away from him, back towards the house. “You have to talk to Esther and Eloise. It is their home.”