The rain fell around him in a soft sheet and he thought how sadly fitting that was.

His hand shook as he raised it to knock on the scarred wooden door, and he paused for the barest of seconds. His courage had been waning with every water-heavy step he had taken. The thought that it might fail him, after the mile long trek from the train station, now was almost too much to bear.

Thunder rumbled as his knuckles rapped briskly, as he gathered himself together and forced himself to wait.

It was a moment before light flooded his personal patch of darkness, as the door was flung open. Her red-rimmed eyes were the first thing he noticed, and he had to stop himself from reaching out to her. Even after all this time it was still his instinct.

Silence stretched, vast and black, between them.

"How did you find me?"

Hoarse, vulnerable. Angry, too.

"Oh, it wasn't hard."

A verbal dodge, a shrugging of his shoulders that wasn't quite casual.

Water slid down his back beneath his jacket and he could not help but blurt, "May I come in?"

She was taken by surprise by this abruptness, her inner battle was actually waged on the delicate planes of her face and he watched the encounter with bated breath. His feet were numb and water was gathering in his beard. He was shaking and rather thought he might have pneumonia. Besides his own personal comfort, a lot was riding on her answer.

Finally, with a distrustful narrowing of her striking green eyes, she stepped back and allowed him into her sanctuary.

As he stepped forward and slipped off his shoes, allowed himself to drip for a moment, he watched her. She had not changed much. There were lines where there had been none before, there was a heaviness about her that he did not remember, but her lips were still pink and plump, her breasts still firm and high, her movements still purposeful and intent. The feel of her body and the taste of her lips were surrounding him like a heady cloud, suffocating him in a longing that had been inside for so long he'd almost forgotten it. But her proximity, this tantalizing, awful closeness brought it roaring to life and it froze him for an instant, so that he could not answer any of her unspoken questions, could not even take off his jacket.

She appeared unruffled, but he could sense her distress. Only he knew her with such intimacy, only he knew the signs.

When he had not moved for a long while, she turned to him and raised a condescending eyebrow, as if to say, See, I knew that you could not do this, I knew you were not man enough. And that look was enough of a challenge. She knew he always had to meet a challenge.

They walked slowly through the small house as he paused to run his fingers over objects, to look into corners and see the possessions that she had acquired in his absence. She pursed her lips but did not stop him as he attempted to acquaint himself with the person she had become.

Eventually they made it to the kitchen, where a fire danced merrily on the hearth. It seemed incongruent with the hostility that was prickling between them.

A large wooden table with many knife wounds in it stood off to the side, a bottle of glittering liquor standing upon it. She flushed as her eyes fell upon it but she did not move it, merely went to the counter and turned on the kettle. Her voice was quiet, commanding, when it came. "Do not judge me, Daniel. Do not presume that you know me anymore. You forfeited the right to that belief a long time ago."

He lowered himself into the chair closest to the fire and spread his hands upon the table. "Indeed I did." A second as real contriteness crept into his tone. "I'm sorry, Marilyn." This, in only a whisper.

She busied herself making tea, though neither of them really wanted any. The familiar routine was a retreat, a refuge, a chance to regroup, much like this little cottage in the moors.

Abruptly, she stopped and stood very still. Her head drooped and then he realized with a start that she was weeping. Of all the things that he had expected, tears were not among them. Her long brown hair hid her face, but he could read her body and there was no question.

Pushing back his chair, he approached her slowly. They were on very shaky ground here, and there was much in the reckoning. He did not want to trip up now or all could be lost for good.

But, breath hitching, she stuck a hand out rigidly behind her and recoiled. "Don't touch me, Daniel. Don't you dare touch me."

His hands fell to his sides and she shuffled sideways, gripping the edge of the counter. "I think that I should really fall to pieces if you were to touch me now." Indeed, she watched his hands with trepidation, her eyes wide and her pupils dilated with fear. The thought that he was the object of her fear, that he was the cause of that expression, was like a bullet to the throat. He felt as though he must be gushing blood all over the floor now, the pain was so intense.

Gesturing surrender, he returned to his seat by the warmth of the flames and sat with his head in his hands. Minutes passed before she moved, before he heard the rustle of her skirt and the sound of her sitting across from him. He could not look at her, he stared at a knot in the wood for ages as the tension rose to agonizing levels and then...

"Why?"

This was a knife blow, a hot blade sliding beneath his tender human flesh. It was the question he had been wanting to avoid, the question he had come all the way out here to answer. It was the question he had to answer, the question that he had no sufficient answer for. His fingers twisted uncomfortably in his lap and all he could manage was a mumbled, "Marilyn, I don't know."

Fury vibrated in her voice now, an old anger that she had been nursing for six years, that had had the opportunity to flourish in the loneliness of rain-tinged nights, no company except for the pounding of raindrops. She had gone over things in her mind so many times, over it and over it and over it, wondering what she did wrong, how things could have gotten so out of hand, how her life could have turned out this way without her having planned it. The anger and the agony came pouring out of her now, and she slammed her hand on the table, tears already streaming down her face, anxious to escape the torrent of emotions that resided in her. "NO!" she screamed and the butter knife clattered off the dish to the floor with the power of her next blows. "No, Daniel! You don't get to weasel out of this! I have been alone in the English countryside for six years. I have been missing you and hating you and wanting you and wishing you dead for six years! You owe me an explanation!" The tears in her eyes sparkled like emeralds. He was captivated. "Why?"

He was blinded by the emeralds, stunned by the precious gems that rested in her face, the diamond hard pain that lived there. Whoever this woman was, he did not know her. Whoever this woman was, he had made her. It was time to finally be a man.

"I was scared, Marilyn. The day that you told me you had cancer..." His voice cracked and he blinked hard to stop the tears. "The day you told me you had cancer I thought our lives were over. And I was kind of right. Suddenly, everything was about the cancer. How you were feeling, when your next appointment was, how the chemo was affecting you, how far along the cancer was. It consumed us, Marilyn, until I could not see us anymore, we were buried in medical jargon and radioactive drugs. I was so scared of losing you. I could see the cancer was fighting a hard battle with you. You're strong, Mare, you are stronger than any woman I have ever known, and still I was afraid that you would lose. I saw signs of it every day and with every day, I drew further into myself in preparation for when you would leave me."

He could not tear his gaze away from her. All the color had gone from her cheeks.

"So you had an affair with my sister?" Her voice wasn't the glacial wave he had expected, it was shaky and weak and searching. Her eyes were delving into his, excavating, looking for the answers that she needed.

"No. I had an affair with your sister because I had forgotten what it felt like to feel alive and she helped me to remember."

The words hung in the air like Halloween decorations on Christmas, macabre and out of place. There had been so little honesty between them that this tidbit was jarring, leaving their teeth chattering in their skulls.

But there was more.

"She helped me forget what was happening at home. She helped me forget that you could be dying. She helped me forget my fear."

"Your fear? You dare talk to me about your fear? I HAD CANCER, DANIEL! How scared do you think I was? Or did you think it was a walk in the park for me, all the chemo and the vomiting and the constant hovering presence of death? Oh yes, I'm terribly sorry that I didn't pay more attention to your fear!" Bottom lip quivering, she almost reached out to him, but stopped herself. "You were my comfort, Daniel. You were the reason I fought so hard. I knew that if you were with me, if you believed in me, I could beat anything. I knew we could beat the monster inside of me together. But then...I found you with her."

There was nothing more to say, they were spent, after all the time that she had been waiting, her tirade had lasted less than two minutes, but she could not go on. She had made her point.

"I'm sorry."

Apologies are often the hardest words to speak, and these two words were torn from Daniel's lips mercilessly, he expected to taste copper on his tongue as they passed.

"I am so so sorry. But you left me. You ran away and didn't tell me where you had gone, didn't tell me that you had beaten the cancer."

She shook her head, stared into the fire. "I was on my way to tell you that day. That's why I came looking for you. To tell you what the doctor had told me: that the cancer was gone."

He closed his eyes at this new shard of pain. "I was so worried that you wouldn't get the care that you needed, I was so worried that you would die without me there and I couldn't have handled that, I needed to know that you were okay." His voice was breaking horribly as the agony of the last years crashed down on him all at once. "I couldn't find you anywhere and I was so lost, I don't know how to live without you, I need you to come home. Haven't you punished me enough?"

Gentleness had settled in her voice now. "Oh, Daniel, I'm not sure that there is sufficient punishment for what you did to me." Their gazes finally settled on one another, a single direct line of communication. "How can we ever rebuild what we had?"

The yearning was there. He could feel it in the vibrations of her voice, he could feel it in the heat radiating from her skin. She was yearning for him too, reaching out to him with the deepest, most secret desires of her soul, the two of them begging to be allowed to be together again, to be through with the confessions and the anger and the forgiveness, and back to the loving part.

This knowledge that she needed him too allowed him to make up his mind.

He slid off his chair to his knees, though the floor was rough and hard through his wet pants, and he crawled the two feet that separated them. He took her hands and she did not pull away.

"I don't think we can ever rebuild what we had. But I do believe that we can build something new. I don't want to go back to how it was, to our past. We cannot deny that this happened. But I want to build a new future. With you. I have no future without you."

Overcome completely, he laid his head in her lap and wept without restraint. Her slender fingers stroked his hair and she hummed soothingly under her breath as her own tears mingled with his upon her skirt.

When his storm of remorse had passed, she brought his hands to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. "I have been waiting for you to find me, Daniel. I told myself that if you could find me, then you were worthy of a second chance. I'm ready to come home. I want to try to forgive you."

The lightness that flooded him was so intense he thought he might faint. He could not say anything and she smiled down at him. "We are both exhausted, love. Why don't we sleep?"

He floated through the house, seeing it in a whole new light now, and her kiss on his forehead was an elixir. She pulled him under the covers of her small bed and for the first time in what felt like an eternity in hell, he fell asleep to the sound of her steady breathing.




A huge crack of thunder awoke Daniel, and he hit his head on the headboard as he flopped back down. What a lovely dream he'd been having. He held the details in his mind like a handful of rare jewels. He wondered if he would ever hear her say those words he'd imagined.

Climbing out of bed, he gazed out the window at the violence of the storm. Marilyn had been gone for almost a year. He hoped it would not take him five more to find her, but he was willing to look that long if that's what it took.

He'd look forever to find her.

He turned and began packing his things. It was very early in the morning but he could not sleep now. The sound of her voice was fresh in his mind and he needed to follow it.

Perhaps today he would be allowed to finally atone for his sin.