Page 54 of Love At First Fright

R osemary awoke to a knocking at her bedroom door.

“Hey, sweetpea, can I come in?”

“Yeah,” she rasped.

Her dad came in, carrying a cup of coffee and a strawberry glazed donut with sprinkles that he must have gone into town for, just like he’d always done to cheer her up when she was a kid. He put them down on the bedside table and opened her blinds.

“I’m not going to ask you if you’re okay, because that would be a stupid thing to ask when I know you’re not.

So, all I’m going to say is I love you, and that Dina and Immy have been calling the house all morning trying to speak to you.

They said when you wake up you should ring them.

” He bent down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”

Rosemary groaned and pulled herself into a seated position in bed. She’d put her phone on Do Not Disturb and now she checked it there appeared to be over one hundred messages from Dina and Immy in their group. She pressed for a group call.

“I’m going to fucking MURDER him,” was the first thing Immy said as her face popped up on the screen.

“You murder him and I’ll hex him, I don’t care what the repercussions are,” Dina said. Rosemary caught sight of herself on the phone screen. Christ, she looked terrible, her face puffy and red from crying.

“Hey,” she croaked out. Bee had jumped back up onto the bed and was now kneading tiny biscuits between Rosemary’s legs. Thank god for this little cat.

“How are you doing, habiba?” Dina said, peering closer into the phone as if she could get a better view of Rosemary.

“I don’t know. I don’t really understand what happened.”

“Did you break up? I don’t get why he said those things.”

Rosemary let her tears fall freely as she told her friends everything.

“Fucking men,” Dina said. “You tell me if you want me to do any spells on him. When it comes to people hurting my best friends, I have no moral high ground.”

“I’ll let you know,” Rosemary said. She took a sip of coffee and had a bite of her donut, and slowly returned to life.

“The worst thing was, I was going to tell him I loved him, too.”

“Oh, Rosemary.”

“I know. Such a fool.”

“Not a fool,” Immy said vehemently.

“Not at all, habiba. But you know how hard coming out can be, maybe it’s true, that he did what he did because he thought it was the best way to protect you. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with it, and I’m with you one hundred percent,” Dina assured her. “You take the time you need.”

“I know. I know you’re right. I just need space from it all.” Rosemary hiccuped.

“What are you going to do now?” Dina asked.

“Stay home for a bit. There are kittens, and it’s nice to be around my dad. I want to finish the script for Julia, and I have to turn in my draft.”

“And after?” Immy said.

Dina frowned. “Don’t push her, Imms.”

“It’s okay. I don’t know yet,” Rosemary admitted.

Did she still want to move to London? That had been the plan before, but now, after Ellis?

She needed to figure out how much she wanted her future there, if he wasn’t in it, and how much of her desire to be there had been tied with him.

Already, a part of her knew that she did still want to go.

That being with her friends, in the country that felt most like home to her, was the future she wanted. But she needed time.

“I’ll figure it out.”

“You will.” Dina nodded. “And you call us every day.”

“If you don’t, we’ll be forced to get on a plane to come to you,” Immy threatened.

“I love you both.”

“Right back at you.”

—

Two days later, Rosemary was done wallowing. She needed fresh air and the sun on her skin. She’d woken up just after dawn, soon after her dad, and they stood silently in the kitchen watching the morning light flood the fields.

“Merry Christmas Eve, sweetpea.” He passed her a Christmas cookie to have alongside her coffee.

“Happy Christmas Eve, Dad. Thought I might join you out in the greenhouse today, if that’s alright.”

“Could always use the help.” He smiled.

They spent the morning checking the rows of plants for frost damage—it had been an especially cold winter, and they could harvest only a few flowers from the greenhouse, which her dad sold in the local town farmer’s market once a month.

If her mind drifted to memories of Ellis’s greenhouse, or the time they’d spent together in the vegetable patch, she quashed the thoughts.

After a few hours of manual labour, Rosemary felt more herself than she had in days.

“I’m going to heat up some casserole if you want some,” her dad said.

“Thanks, I’ll join you in a minute. Just want to go see Mama.”

He nodded, sadness flickering across his face.

Her mom was buried under the cherry tree, its dark branches curved protectively over the well-cared-for patch of grass. They had laid a small headstone on the ground and sowed her grave with wildflower seeds that sprouted into a riot of colour every spring. Rosemary sat down beside the grave.

When her mama had told her she wanted to be buried under the tree, Rosemary remembered asking why, and her mama had said that when she died, she wanted to become a part of the world around her, and to Rosemary that sounded like a lovely way to go on living.

“Hey, Mama,” she said, running her fingers through the delicate green stems of dormant flowers.

She sat in silence for a while, letting the damp cold seep through her limbs and clear her head.

After being cooped up in the stuffiness of her bed it was a nice change.

She looked back at her family home, winter sunlight reflecting off the windows, but her eye was caught by something small and orange trotting up the dirt path to her.

Little Bee, dwarfed by the long grass, had followed Rosemary all the way from the house.

And she wasn’t alone. In her wake, her edges glowing silver, was the ghost cat, Little Bee’s mama.

The small kitten scampered over to Rosemary, who held out her hands and picked up Bee, cradling her to her chest.

“What a brave girl you are coming over here.” She tickled Bee under her tiny chin. The ghost cat came around and sat down by Rosemary’s knees. “You making sure your baby is going to be safe with me, Mama?” She said to the cat, who looked up at her with too-wise eyes.

Rosemary sat under the cherry tree until her stomach began to grumble.

“Come on, let’s go home,” she said, placing Bee in her oversized coat pocket. The ghost cat ran ahead of them on the dirt track.

“She’s with you?” her dad said, nodding at Bee, as Rosemary walked into the kitchen through the back door. “Couldn’t see her anywhere and I was worried.”

“She followed me out to the grave. Her mama was with her, though, I think she’s keeping an eye on her baby.”

Her dad smiled, and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Ready to eat?”

“Please.”

They sat at the table and ate in companionable silence for a bit. Rosemary noticed her dad’s gaze kept flitting to a book on the countertop, titled A Rake for the Lady. She smiled to herself, thinking just how much Cecilia and Juliet would have enjoyed reading a book like that.

“Dad, are you reading Regency romance?”

“What? Oh, um, it’s for book club.”

“You’re in a book club?”

Her dad looked sheepish. “Just a small local one, they run it out of the church centre on Wednesday evenings. We read all kinds of stuff, not just romance. This was Maria’s pick.

” He went and pulled the book off the counter and showed it to Rosemary.

She noticed he’d dog-eared many pages, and when she flicked through she saw he’d underlined some of the more romantic passages in pencil.

“You seem to be enjoying it.”

“Well, it’s one of Maria’s favourites, and I thought she might want to talk about it so I figured I better read it and get familiar with the plot and all that.” His words tumbled out so fast and his cheeks turned so pink Rosemary had to stifle a laugh. Bless her sweet dad.

“Of course.” She took a slow sip of her drink. “So who is Maria then? Does she run the book club?”

“No, she just goes, same as me. She’s the principal of the local elementary school, she took over from Mr. Wright when he retired.” Her dad paused. “She’s a widow, too. Lost her husband ten years ago.”

Rosemary met her dad’s eyes, saw the hope and caution there. “She sounds lovely, Dad. I’d like to meet her at some point, if that’s something you’d want?”

Relief relaxed his features. “That would be nice, sweetpea. Maybe next weekend you could come with me to the market? She usually drops by the stand to say hi.”

“Sure, Dad.”

Rosemary did the dishes while her dad crouched by the kittens’ eating corner, cleaning up the mess they’d all made.

“You know, about Ellis,” he said, his back to her.

“What about him?”

“Well, you know I’ve always got your back.”

“I know, Dad.”

“And it seems to me like y’all had something pretty special for a while there.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, there are a million reasons why someone might have made a bad decision, why he might have made one, and I don’t want you to go around thinking that any of them are your fault.

Seems to me there was a lot more going on there than meets the eye. ”

Yeah, and his name is Brody, Rosemary thought, but didn’t say anything. It still felt too raw to talk about much.

“Thanks for saying that, Dad.”

“I’ve got you, sweetpea. Always. Even if you move out there.”

She gaped at him. “How did you know?”

He smiled and shrugged. “You’re my daughter. And you always seem happier when you’re near Dina and Immy, in London.”

“I do want to go back,” Rosemary admitted. “Not immediately. It will take some planning. And I’ll come back to visit more. But…these days, when I think about where I want to live my life, it’s always England.”

Her dad squeezed her with a signature Russell Shaw bear hug.

“I’m happy for you, sweetpea. Maybe I can come visit you and get some cuttings of English roses.

” He headed back out to the greenhouse, leaving Rosemary to finish up in the kitchen.

Bee was weaving around her ankles, the ghost cat sitting on the windowsill, licking one delicate translucent paw.

“That went better than I expected,” she said to the pair of them. The ghost cat offered her a silent meow in reply. She felt better at the idea of moving now that her dad had met someone new. She didn’t like to think of him being alone as he got older, especially if she was further away.

And she was glad that Maria was a widow, too, in a way, since she would understand that particular form of grief.

Her dad had survived losing her mama; she could survive whatever had happened with Ellis.

Grief had a way of teaching you just how strong you could be.

It hadn’t been as long, and even if it was love, she hoped that over time she could think about it all with less bitterness and pain.

So what if Ellis wouldn’t be David in any adaptation that might be made of Julia; that shouldn’t stop her finishing it and delivering it to her film agent as planned.

And she could finish her novel draft, the stress of getting it done was no longer all-encompassing.

Other ideas for other novels brewed in the back of her mind, ones that she would find time to finish.

It wasn’t time to move yet, she’d spend Christmas and New Year here. And after that? London was calling.