Page 48 of Love Walked In

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Leo

Spring had finally come at the beginning of May, gray skies and chill giving way to warmth and light. But winter still had me in its grip.

The day Mari left for California, I went to my father and Judith and agreed to sell to the developer Vinay’s firm had found.

The first floor of the building would still be a retail space, and Mortons, the big chain bookseller, had already earmarked it for their next location.

They’d asked if they could still call the shop Ross & Co.

, but the thought had felt like shackles on my wrists.

I wanted my name to be my own for once, not chained to anything else.

“Thank you,” Vinay had whispered when I’d bent over the contracts in the lawyers’ offices. “And I’m so sorry, again.”

I hadn’t had any words for him, just nodded without making eye contact as I signed. The way he’d gone to Judith behind my back was a cut that was only halfway to healing, and I wouldn’t pretend. I’d done far too much of that for too long, and I’d lost the only woman I’d ever wanted because of it.

Remembering was like getting punched in the stomach every day. Every time I thought of that moment in my office, when Mari’s eyes had clouded over with doubt, when her body had pulled away from mine, regret almost doubled me over.

After we’d confirmed the arrangements for the building and the money changing hands, Dad took me for an afternoon pint at an old, high-ceilinged pub near Chancery Lane.

“Here’s to a new beginning,” he said once he’d brought over our drinks, sitting down next to me and tapping his pint of stout against my bottle of cherry beer.

“L’chaim,” I said half-heartedly, settling back into the leather-covered bench, feeling as far from cheerful as I’d ever been.

Out of nowhere, I was wealthier than I’d ever thought possible.

I’d tell the bank manager to wire substantial payments to Catriona and Graham, smaller ones to the junior booksellers.

Graham had already been hired on as a nonfiction buyer at Mortons, and Catriona had decided to try to get onto an MFA course for creative writing.

I hoped she’d have the sense to talk to Graham first before deciding where she’d go.

“Any thoughts about what you’ll do next?” Dad asked.

I shrugged, tried to smile. I couldn’t deny that Dad had been much more present over the last few weeks, quicker to tell me about books he was reading, to ask me to play gin rummy with him the way we had when I was ten.

He’d even taken Sophie and me to watch Arsenal Women last week.

It had been like dropping bags full of boulders to lose myself in the rhythm of a football match, to join in the chants at the top of my lungs, and to jump and shout and grab Sophie in a massive hug when we scored two goals.

For two hours, I almost forgot how much I missed Mari.

Dad asked, “Have you heard anything from her? Mari, I mean.”

I coughed beer as I momentarily forgot how to swallow, and he smacked me between my shoulder blades. “No,” I said hoarsely. “She wouldn’t want to talk to me.”

She hadn’t contacted me, and I hadn’t tried to reach her either.

Even though I thought about texting or calling every single day.

One night I’d even tried to write her a letter, but the first attempt had been so polite it was asinine, while the other had been such a desperate outpouring of contrition and longing and grief that I’d torn it up and burned it in the kitchen sink.

I’d hidden from her, been dishonest with her—of course she’d left me behind and gone back to where she felt safe.

If she’d been afraid, I’d done nothing to soothe her fears.

“Shame,” Dad said now. “When you were with her at Friday-night dinner, you looked…” He trailed off.

“Besotted?” I interrupted, as if being facetious would keep my regret at bay.

“Happy,” he said simply, the word like white spirit on the raw wound in my chest. “You looked happy.”

I pressed hard on my eyes and gulped back the sudden sob that tried to climb out of my throat. No, I couldn’t burst into tears in the middle of the pub.

A big gentle hand rested on my shoulder. “I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t talk to me about what was happening.”

“I thought I needed to handle everything myself,” I said, sounding just about as childish as I felt at that moment.

Dad sighed into his pint, and for a moment the only sound was the barman stacking glasses.

“Alexander and Natalie weren’t around much when I was small,” Dad said quietly.

I’d lifted my beer for a sip but carefully put it down.

Natalie, Dad’s mum, had always been nothing more than a hastily scribbled card on my birthday with a Melbourne postmark.

Even saying her name aloud had felt like uttering a dark spell, one that made Alexander’s and Dad’s faces go blank and Mum titter nervously.

“I got the occasional kiss good night before they went off to another party, sometimes they’d ask if I was still being a good boy, but I was mostly raised by our housekeeper.

And then they sent me away to boarding school when I was eight.

” He shook his head. “Bloody barbaric. All of those places should be burnt to the ground. And then Natalie ran off to Australia with her lover when I was fourteen.” He pulled his hand over his face, like he was trying to rub away the hurt.

“When I met your mum, I swore to myself that when we had children, I wouldn’t be selfish like my parents, utterly focused on their own whims. That I would never send any of you away.

But I hadn’t a clue what I was meant to do instead . I never learned any way to be with you.

“And suddenly after decades of carousing and philandering, Alexander was behaving like Grandfather of the Year. You were always in his lap, holding his hand, looking up at him like he stood astride the world.”

My mind fell backward twenty-five years, into those early, tender memories. Alexander’s tobacco scent, his rich bass voice reading aloud to me, his cashmere wool jumper against my cheek. “He wasn’t Grandfather of the Year once I was older. Or he was, as long as I did what he wanted.”

Dad’s mouth twisted. “I understand that better now. But at the time… I resented it. And that was horribly unfair to you. I’m sorry I wasn’t better, that I didn’t try harder.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That means a lot.” Dad’s words wouldn’t make the tear in our fabric disappear. But we’d acknowledged the rip, how long it had been left frayed and gaping. And maybe, just maybe, we could begin to mend it.

Spring was for new beginnings, after all. Time to step out into the light, not hide in the same old dark room.

“I want to start over,” I said, looking him in the eye. “Get to know each other properly. Adult to adult.”

“I’d like that, too.” He gave me a weak smile. “We both need to start being braver, don’t we?”

I exhaled hard. “Don’t I know it.”

He checked his watch. “I think I’ll go home to your mum. She’ll want to know how it all went. Coming?”

It had been such a day. My stomach was twisted up in a million knots and my muscles were just as bad. “I think I need a little time on my own. I might go for a walk, just to digest it all.”

“Of course. We’ll see you when we see you.” He shrugged on his suit jacket, picked up his work bag. “And Leo?”

I looked up from my beer.

“I know you could be the man for Mari, if you wanted.”

My dearest wish, which felt as impossible as the sky turning neon pink. “I don’t know if she wants to hear from me,” I confessed, my voice small, almost boyish.

“Oh, don’t be stupid,” he said, a little more London coming into his voice on the last scornful word. “The way she looked at you at Shabbos, you weren’t the only smitten one. Take it from me, you have a better chance than you think. Just try, all right?”

After Dad left, I found myself walking north and east along the city’s packed rush-hour pavements, his firm, encouraging words echoing in my head. I’d tried to fix things on my own before and made a mess of it, but I knew that doing nothing now would be like burying myself under concrete.

As I walked and thought, gleaming stone and glass gave way to scruffy, graffitied Shoreditch and then Hackney Road.

The evening stretched out in front of me, winter’s bite all gone, new green leaves springing on the plane trees leading toward London Fields.

Pale purple fireworks of wisteria decorated the terraces, and the scent of lilac drifted through the air, sweet and delicate.

I joined Broadway Market and saw the antique shop empty and dark, remembered how Mari had seen the potential in it. Her smile, her laughter, her confident stride, they were everywhere here.

I sat on a bench in London Fields, watched families and couples walking and cycling by.

Heavy black coats and bulky boots had been replaced by short sleeves and soft dresses in ice-cream shades, pistachio and strawberry and vanilla.

A woman jogged past, a tattoo of lush red roses twining around her bare upper arm, and the memory of Mari pricked like thorns.

I rolled my head back and stared up at the plane trees, tender green leaves shifting a little in the warm breeze.

I had told her all the ways I needed her, everything she did for me.

But what had I offered her in return? I’d begged her not to care about lies and promises and visas, and I’d acted like as long as I loved her, what she felt didn’t matter.

I’d asked her to give up everything she knew, just so I could hold on to my life, a life that had driven me to lying and subterfuge to escape it.

I hadn’t listened when she told me how important the truth was to her.

I hadn’t understood that she studied and worked and focused single-mindedly on the bookshop, whether Orchard House or Ross & Co.

, because she loved the business and the people she met through it, and it had been the only thing truly to love her back.

I took my phone out and opened Instagram.

I had my own account now, with a single picture of Mog curled up like a prawn.

I was only using it to look at Mari’s pictures, anyway.

Fifteen minutes ago she’d posted a selfie sitting on a cloudy beach bundled in her iridescent jacket, with the caption Can’t keep a California girl away from the beach!

I love my wild Pacific . She’d studded it with multiple emojis of a blue, frozen smiley face.

Was she there alone? Not that I was jealous of some anonymous man or woman. It was more… I didn’t want her to be lonely. She’d been so lonely, for so long.

Why wasn’t I there beside her?

I sat up so quickly the world spun.

What if I asked her to keep me ? What if I asked to be hers?

I frantically googled until I found the phone number I wanted and called Orchard House Books.

“Hello, British person who is not my dear friend Judith,” a husky, nasal American voice said down the line.

I shook my head to get the cobwebs out. Judith had said Suzanne was one of a kind, but I hadn’t taken that to mean mildly terrifying. “How’d you know that I was British?”

“I can see it’s a UK number, kiddo. May I ask who’s calling?”

I coughed. “Er, hello, Suzanne. It’s Leo Ross. Judith’s grandson.”

“Mari’s not here,” she immediately said, her tone gone colder than Scotland in January. “And if you’re the reason she’s been looking like someone fed her teddy bear to a wood chipper, please kindly go fuck yourself.”

The image punched me in the stomach. “I deserve that, I deserve all of it.” I had been trying not to sound frantic, but Mari’s hurt wrecked me. “Please don’t hang up on me. I badly need your help.”

A long pause. Had the line dropped? Then a slightly warmer “I’m listening.”

Gratitude and purpose surged through me like electricity as I apologized profusely and asked her advice, and after we said our goodbyes, I hopped off the bench, heading for the train station. I had a long journey ahead of me, and I wanted to get going as soon as possible.