Chapter 309: Chapter 311: I’m glad you came
He looked at Aria.
"When Damien came to me," he said. "I looked at his face and I saw what I had at twenty three. Someone who had been decided about by a woman who knew what she wanted." He paused. "I put the ring on the desk because Eleanor would have wanted it there." A pause. "And because I could see that you were the same kind of certain she was. That you’d decided. That you weren’t waiting for permission."
She looked at the ring on her finger.
Single stone. Eleanor Blackwood’s choice. A twenty one year old woman who knew what she wanted before she had language for it.
"I wish I’d met her," she said.
"She’d have liked you enormously," Richard said. "She’d have found you completely insufferable in the specific way she found insufferable people she admired." He paused. "She’d have told Damien within twenty minutes that he didn’t deserve you. She told me that about every person she loved."
Aria laughed.
Surprised. Genuine. The kind that came before she could stop it.
Richard looked at her.
Not smiling exactly. But the thing adjacent to it that she’d come to understand was the closest he got in most circumstances.
"There it is," he said quietly.
"There what is."
"The laugh." He looked back at the garden. "Damien told me about it. He said — I’m quoting — that you had a laugh that arrived before you could stop it and that every time it happened he felt like he’d won something." A pause. "I told him that was extremely sentimental."
"It is extremely sentimental."
"Yes," Richard agreed. "He’s become extremely sentimental. I blame you entirely."
She pressed her lips together.
"You should take credit for it," Richard said. "It’s not a small thing. Making a Blackwood man sentimental." He paused. "I speak from experience."
She looked at him.
This man — seventy three years old, sharp as anything, sitting in his garden tending the things his wife had planted and putting rings on desks without ceremony and saying true things in the plainest possible voice.
She thought about what Damien had said.
He’s going to ask about the Vitalis Radix operation within the first ten minutes and he’s going to be impressed.
He hadn’t asked about it yet.
"You haven’t asked about how I got in," she said. "The estate. The operation. You told Damien you’d ask me within ten minutes."
"I told Damien I’d be impressed," Richard said. "Not that I’d ask." He paused. "I’ve already read the security report. Marcus gave me a detailed account three months ago."
"He gave you the security report."
"I asked for it." He looked at her. "I wanted to understand the woman my grandson was in love with. I read everything available." A pause. "The Vitalis Radix plan was exceptionally well constructed. The identity was clean, the references would have passed most checks, the timing of the greenhouse visits was well chosen." He paused. "You made one mistake."
"The bench," she said.
He looked at her.
"I sat on the same bench in the grounds three days in a row," she said. "Same time. I was thinking and I didn’t notice I’d made a pattern." She paused. "That’s what flagged me on the security rotation."
Richard looked at her for a long moment.
"Marcus said you identified your own error before he told you what it was," he said.
"It was obvious once I thought about it."
"Most people don’t think about it," he said. "Most people look outward for where they went wrong." He paused. "You looked inward first."
She shrugged.
"It’s more useful," she said.
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, very simply: "I’m glad you came."
She looked at him.
"To the estate," he said. "With your false name and your plan." He held her gaze. "I’m glad you came."
She held his gaze.
"So am I," she said.
She meant it completely.
Mrs Hartley came out at half twelve to say lunch was ready and they went inside and ate at the kitchen table. not the formal dining room, the kitchen, which she understood was a particular distinction from Richard, and they talked about the foundation and about Aria’s return to full schedule at the hospital and about a book Richard was reading that he had opinions about.
Strong opinions.
She disagreed with half of them.
He was delighted.
She understood somewhere over lunch that this was what he’d wanted. Not a particular conversation or a specific piece of information. Just this.....her at his kitchen table having opinions about things, the ordinary human texture of a person he was choosing to let into his life.
She understood it because it was what she’d wanted too.
After lunch she called Marcus to collect her.
Richard walked her to the front door.
She turned on the step.
He was looking at her with the expression she’d seen exactly once before — the study, the night he’d given her the earrings, the brief unguarded quality of a man feeling something he didn’t usually allow himself to show.
"Grandfather," she said.
"Mm."
"Thank you. For today."
"Mrs Hartley made lunch," he said. "Thank her."
"I’m thanking you."
He looked at her for a moment.
"Come back next Wednesday," he said. "I’m starting the east bed. I could use another opinion."
She looked at him.
The garden. His hands. The things Eleanor had planted that he’d been tending for twenty years.
"I’ll be here at eleven," she said.
He nodded.
He went back inside.
She stood on the step until Marcus pulled up.
She got in the car and looked at the house as it pulled away.....the old stone of it, the garden just visible around the side, the particular solidity of something that had been here a long time and intended to keep being here.
She thought about what Richard said about his late wife at twenty one knowing what she wanted and how she would be happy to know that she is wearing n her ring now.
She thought about coming back next Wednesday.
She was still smiling when they got back to the estate.
