Page 102 of Oleander

“Do you have any questions, Mr. Alcott?” Moreland asked when he was finished.

“Um, so, you really can’t tell me who this person is?” I asked.

“I am afraid not; the confidentiality clause is wrapped up pretty tightly.”

“Can I say no?” I asked. “Refuse it?”

Beth was coiled tight as a spring beside me. She almost went off at that but held herself still.

Moreland looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “I mean, yes, of course you could. No condition of law would force you to take it. And I should have mentioned this earlier, but this is in no way a loan of any kind. There is no requirement for this to be repaid. Ever.”

I nodded. My mind was a quiet chaos as I tried to organise my thoughts. Who would do such a thing for me? Gideon was the obvious answer; we’d grown close these last few weeks since Cas’s departure. Since I’d told him about how I felt. Gideon alone understood what I wanted from my life and what I needed in order to get those things.

But why keep it a secret? Was it that he didn’t want Caspien to know? Did he think I’d refuse it if he offered, not wanting to be a charity case? I knew Gideon could be generous, and he had been to both Luke and me in the time I’d known him. But something about this made me uneasy, something I couldn’t quite see or understand yet.

“Can I think about it?” I said.

Moreland blinked behind his thick glasses.

“Yes, yes, of course. And it wouldn’t do any harm to have your own solicitor look it over.” He reached into his briefcase again. “I’ll give you my business card. I am flying back to London this evening, so there’s no rush. Please take your time.”

Beth shot me a look which I resolutely ignored. Luke stood, and we all followed. Moreland shook all of our hands before handing me a copy of the document, his business card slid under the paperclip on top.

“I think this is the most altruistic thing I’ve ever seen in all my years working as a solicitor,” he said, the layer ofprofessionalism rubbed away slightly now. “All the way over on the flight, I thought about what I would do were I offered this.”

“And what would you do?” I asked.

He smiled, small and kind, and I saw a glimpse of the man behind the suit and the glasses. “Sign it in a heartbeat.”

Thirty

If I counted all the little ways he broke my heart, totalled them up, and set them on a scale, I doubt they would even come close to that first, deep break. The one that felt like a crack tearing through stone and earth, through things that had existed since the beginning of a life, to alter it irrevocably.

That was the thing about heartbreak – mine anyway – it didn’t feel like a complete shattering, like something that could never heal. It felt more like a deep fracture over which, in time, things could grow over. The tear could never be completely mended, not so that it was as it had been, but with enough work and time it could fool the eye into thinking there’d never been a crack there at all.

After, I spent a lot of time thinking about words Caspien himself had said to me the day he drew me in his mother’s bedroom. (The painting that hangs now inside the cupboard where I keep other things I don’t want to look at; the treadmill I used for three weeks after I turned twenty-five, the overpriced protein shakes I’d bought from an Instagram ad, my parents’ ashes.) The day he’d asked if I’d ever had my heart broken.

When I’d surprised him by answering yes.

He’d said,I think it’s easier for hearts to heal when they are still young.

He’d said nothing of the same heart being broken over and over again, sometimes in exactly the same place, sometimes slightly to the left, sometimes slightly above. That surely would weaken the entire structure until one day, the thing would crumble to dust.

But at the time, that first, deep break had felt like more than just a fracture. It was a great chasm cleaved through the heart of everything I believed; riven so deep and so devastating that I wasn’t sure anything could grow there again.

I remember the day vividly: fragrant, bright, and milk-warm. Like the earth was heating up slowly from within and by August it would be unbearable and broiling. I remember how I’d felt, too: joy, euphoria, hope. I was a bird flying far above the clouds on a clear blue day.

I just didn’t see the rifle pointing up at me from the ground.

I hadn’t contacted Moreland yet, despite it being almost a week since his visit, despite Beth and Luke hovering around me incessantly. Luke had a client who was a solicitor, and he’d asked him to look over the paperwork.

According to him, it was all above board and legal. Highly unusual, he said, stunned, but legal. His advice was to sign it immediately before whoever this insane person was changed their mind. He had a fax machine I could use. I’d shaken my head and said I wanted to think about it some more.

On Monday after school, I’d cycled straight up to the big house and burst in on Gideon in the red sitting room. (“Blue for business, red for repose,” he often said.) He was as I usually found him: reading, a glass of dark wine on the side table and wearing his gold-rimmed reading glasses. He closed the book on his knee and slid his glasses off.

“Jude. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

I held out the sheaf of paper to him.