A Heartbeat Away (22 page)

“Ah,” she cried. “You've got it. Go down and read it out to Mrs. Hunter, would you? Tell her that I'll have two of each of those.”

I read the words to Mrs. Hunter in a slow, wooden voice, while my heart pounded in my ears. Why, why, why? I had to see Edna.

She was washing her hands at the sink when I rushed into the kitchen.

“Ah—Lucy!” she exclaimed with a smile. “I've finished at last. Is it still as busy in the shop?”

“I have to talk to you.” My voice sounded like that of a stranger, and a frown flitted across her face.

“Well, sit down and we'll talk over a nice cup of tea.”

“I have to know how you know Ben and why you kept it a secret.”

There. It was out. I slumped onto a pine chair at the end of the table, waiting for her reaction. To my surprise she just sighed, a deep, heartfelt sigh almost of relief.

“I told him he should tell you,” she said sadly, “but a promise is a promise. V felt just as bad as I did, but he insisted that he'd speak to you himself when the time was right. You'll understand why when you know.”

“What should I know? Tell me, Edna…please.” I felt as though my precarious world was finally collapsing around me. “Aunt V knew, too, and even she didn't tell me. How could you? How could you both keep secrets from me?”

“You
will
understand,” she persisted. “But you'll have to speak to Ben.”

“I can't believe that all this time you knew him—”

“Oh, no,” she cut in. “I've never even met him. I just know of him, and that he wrote to me.”

Aunt V came in then. She realized at a glance what the problem was.

“Go and see him, Lucy,” she persevered. “Then you'll understand. Phone him right now.”

 

I can't say how I drove to Appleton that afternoon. When I arrived in the market square and climbed out of the car, I couldn't even remember the road I had traveled. All I could think of was meeting Ben.

He had refused to say anything on the phone.

“I need to see you face-to-face,” he insisted. “I'll come around this evening.”

This evening was too long for me to wait.

“This afternoon,” I said. “Please…I'll meet you down by the river. Where the daffodils are.”

“If they're still there,” he said sadly.

“They will be,” I replied.

And they were. Not perhaps quite in their fullest bloom, but still spread out in front of me in a golden carpet, dancing gently in the breeze.

I saw him at once. He was standing with his back to me, beside a clump of trees, staring out across the river toward the hills beyond. Suddenly I was filled with apprehension. What was going on? What could he say to make the lies right? What could warrant everyone keeping such a secret from me?

When he turned toward me, his eyes were soft and welcoming. I hesitated. What if I didn't like what he had to say?

He held out his hand. I took it tentatively.

“Tell me,” I pleaded. “What is it? What are you all keeping from me?”

“I've wanted to tell you for ages,” he said quietly. “But I met you by accident, before I got the chance…and then it was too late. I just wanted you to get to know me for myself before I said anything.”

“But I do know you,” I cried. “Or at least, I thought I did.”

He lifted my face in his hands, looking down into my eyes.

I held his gaze, my heart pounding in my ears. “Tell me,” I whispered.

“There is something I have to do first,” he murmured, lowering his face slowly toward mine. All of a sudden I was melting against him, lost to everything but the warm solid feel of his body pressed against me and the tingling ecstasy of his lips on mine.

When he drew back, I was trembling, exhilarated, ashamed and afraid all at once.

“I had to find out how you really felt about
me
before I told you,” he said softly. “In case it changes everything. And now that I have…Well, however long it takes, I'm willing to wait.”

He led me by the hand to a wooden seat beneath the trees, and settled me down like a child, his arm cradled protectively around my shoulders as he stared into the distance again.

“I was there when Daniel died,” he said simply. “And it should have been me.”

I felt as if a hand were squeezing my heart.

“You were with him?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

My fingers dug fiercely into his arm.

“In the moment that Daniel died, I found a whole new life—and I've felt guilty ever since.”

Abruptly I was filled by an incredible sense of calmness and strength. “I think you'd better start at the beginning,” I said quietly.

His fingers twisted into mine as he began to speak.

“I was ill for a very long time—a heart condition. I couldn't run or do anything physical. Sometimes I felt I didn't have a life at all. Anyway, it suddenly got worse and I was rushed in for surgery. It was when I was in that weird woozy place, coming around from the anesthetic, that I heard the ambulance siren. I remember feeling really bad that someone nearby must be suffering…and then my heart just stopped beating.

“All I was aware of was a blinding pain and distant, panic-stricken voices. I felt as though I was floating away into numbness…a strange vacant numbness filled with dreams.”

He turned toward me then, his eyes dark with emotion.

“I thought they were just dreams,” he cried.

For a moment we sat in silence, side-by-side but not quite touching.

“Tell me about the dreams,” I said.

He clasped my hand again but didn't meet my eyes.

“I am the most practical man in the world,” he said. “I'm not superstitious and I don't believe in ghosts or the supernatural or anything like that. But something happened to me that day, Luce, something I can't deny—and God knows I've tried to. I can't say how or why, but I just knew things…felt things. It wasn't until much later that it all started to make sense.”

I waited then with baited breath, my heart pounding in my ears as his whole body shuddered with a sigh.

“Next day, when I was feeling more like me again, the nurses were all talking about yesterday's tragedy. The handsome young man who was killed on his motorbike.”

He stared into my face.

“The very second that Daniel was declared dead was the moment that my heart began beating again. It was written right there in our records. And then suddenly things kind of clicked into place and I knew. I just knew….”

“What? What did you know?” The question screamed silently from inside my head.

“That the thoughts and feelings from my dream were his. That somehow, no matter how crazy anyone might think it is, in that moment between life and death, we made some kind of connection.”

I closed my eyes tight shut, wrapping my arms around myself, drowning in a stifling sadness tinged with joy.

“He loved you all so much, Lucy, and he was sorry that he couldn't say goodbye. He had so much to live for. It was me who should have died. Sometimes I feel as if I took his life.”

“No.” I placed my hand on his arm. “Fate took his life. It was fate.”

“That's what Mrs. Brown said.”

“Edna? You told Edna this?”

He nodded. “Yes. I wrote to her and we talked on the phone.”

“But why not me, Ben? Why didn't you tell me?”

“She said to wait until you came home. When you didn't…Eventually I found you, anyway.”

“That day in the park,” I breathed.

He touched my cheek.

“I knew your name,” he whispered. “Before she told me, I already knew your name. And there's something else, something only for you.”

I waited in silence, certain somehow that the answers I had been longing for were finally here.

“His promise,” Ben said. “He'll never forget his promise.”

A sense of release washed over me, a fulfillment that flooded my soul. Daniel might be gone, but he hadn't forgotten.

It was Ben's voice, though, that broke the silence.

“I didn't know it was you that day in the park, and by the time I did, it was too late.”

“Too late for what?”

His fingers twisted into mine. “Too late for us.”

“Us,” I repeated, daring to meet his eyes. “Is there an
us?
”

He gently wrapped his arms around me, drawing me close against his chest.

“Daniel will always be your first love—I understand that,” he said softly, “but I hope so, Lucy…Oh, I hope so.”

For a fleeting moment I caught the scent of bluebells, sweet and nostalgic, and suddenly I knew. Daniel
had
kept his promise, for he was all around me. In the breeze that caressed my cheek, in the murmuring branches of the trees, in each and every precious memory stored deep inside me, safe forever. But Ben was here now, too, and there was room in my heart for them both.

My eyes caught a distant cloud scudding across an ocean of blue that seemed to stretch into eternity.

“Goodbye, Daniel,” I whispered.

And as a ripple ran across the fading daffodils, I heard a distant sigh.

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