Where she belonged.
It had been weeks since Athan had been and gone. Weeks and weeks. How many, precisely, she hadn’t counted. Hadn’t wanted to. The days drifted by, one after another, marked only by the burgeoning spring. That followed a calendar that had its own schedule. One day it was a clump of primroses, unfurling their pale blossoms, another day the catkins showering her with golden pollen. Another the first flush of green on the once bare branches of the trees.
It was all she wanted right now.
She kept herself almost entirely to herself. She had set up a grocery delivery service with a supermarket in a large market town, and it suited her not to have to go there in person. The weekly delivery was good enough. Sometimes the local farmer’s tractor rumbled past the cottage, but when she heard it coming she made sure she was not visible. She wasn’t being deliberately stand-offish. She just didn’t want to see anyone. Anyone at all. Whether local or stranger.
It was as if she was hibernating. Tucking herself away. Shutting down. Trying not to think. Trying not to feel. Trying to keep busy in the garden. While she worked she could feel her mother’s presence, approving of her for what she was doing. Glad her daughter was back here again, safe in the haven she had found for herself—her refuge from a world that had rejected her, a man who had not wanted her.
Marisa’s face twisted. Athan had wanted her.
That was the bitter, poisoned irony of it. After what he’d done to her, he wanted her.
Did he really think I would just totally ignore what he’d done? Why he’d done it? Just act like it had never happened?
But he had—obviously. That was what he’d assumed—that he could just pick her up again, carry on with her again. Take her back to his bed again …
No! She mustn’t think like that—they were dangerous thoughts. Bringing in their wake memories that were even more dangerous. Lethal.
She dug deeper with the trowel, wrestling with a long, tenacious dandelion tap root to extract the last fragment. It wasn’t the kind of root you could leave in the soil—a new weed would sprout even from the tiniest portion, seeking the air and the sun, thrusting up to grow and flourish.
Thoughts about Athan were like that. So were memories. She must get every last fragment of them out lest they seek to flourish once again.
She paused in her work, lifting her eyes to the hedge that bordered the garden, to the slope behind that led up onto open moorland. She would go for a walk later—blow away the cobwebs. Blow away the dangerous thoughts and memories that tried to get out.
Questions went through her mind and she wished she could have an answer to them, but knew she could not. Questions she had never asked but wished now she had. Questions of her mother.
How long did it take you to get over my father? To get him out of your head, your mind, your heart? To be free of him—free of what he’d done to you?
And the question that was most fearful of all: Did you ever get over him?
That was what she feared the most. That the wound was too deep, the scarring too brutal.
Because the problem was that despite all she was doing not to think about him, absorbing herself in this world, so familiar and so utterly different from the places she had been with Athan, it wasn’t working. That was what she was scared of.
How long will it take to get over him?
That was the question that fretted at her, tormented her. She wanted not to think about not thinking about him. She wanted not to have to make this continual effort to turn her mind to other things. To immerse herself in this place she knew so well, surrounded by nature, by the wild landscape of the moors, the quiet fields and hedgerows.
But it didn’t seem to be working—that was the problem. Surely by now she should at the very least be starting to forget him, to get over him. Not wanting to think about him, remember him. Surely she ought to be able to use her head to control her heart?
She froze. With one part of her brain she watched the robin hop closer to her. Bri
ght-eyed. Red-breasted.
Predatory.
But the rest of her brain didn’t see him. Didn’t see the garden or the sunshine on the bushes, or the hedge behind the flowerbed.
The words that had sounded unconsciously in her mind came again.
Surely she ought to be able to use her head to control her heart?
No! She hadn’t meant that—she hadn’t. Panic filled her, choking in her throat.
It’s not my heart—it’s nothing to do with my heart.
Because if it was …