Page 83 of Memories of the Lost

He was silent. Then: “This is getting really fucking weird.”

“Yeah.” She blinked, and tears rolled down her cheeks. Her emotion was pure terror, the kind of terrified that seemed unreal, like discovering that a haunted house was actually haunted.

“Don’t leave,” he said. “I’ll be there in a few hours. Where are you staying?”

“The Green King.”

“I’ll be there soon.”

“Okay.”

He hung up, and she held the phone loosely in her palm, heart racing, then thudding, unable to make up its mind. What the actual hell was going on here?

The phone buzzed and showed her Liam’s name. “Hello?”

“I forgot to say I really can’t wait to kiss you.”

A small laugh broke through the fear in her body. “Me, too.”

“Tillie, this is—”

She waited.

“It’s important.”

“Yeah.” She nodded, even though he couldn’t see her.

“I’ll see you soon.”

It was impossible to sit there after that conversation. She walked aimlessly through the streets of the village, maybe half looking for the little house in the painting or maybe the yellow building that had looked familiar, or anything, really, that might jog her memory.

The light was still bright at 5:00 p.m., and she wandered up one lane and down another, admiring spring bulbs exploding from the beds, tulips and narcissi and a big patch of lily of the valley. She knew their names because her mother had taught her, and it made her feel close to Arlette to recite them.

She suddenly missed her so very, very much. Her funny croaky laugh, the way she’d put a hand to her upper chest when something was hilarious. She could be very funny, a master of puns and sly asides, and she had a friend in a crow who brought her presents of bits of glass or squashed bottle caps. She called him Reaper, for a Blue Oyster Cult song.

As if Arlette had sent him, a giant crow landed in the garden in front of Tillie and squawked. “Is your name Reaper, too?” she asked. It gave her a beady eye, squawked again, then flapped its wings and lifted off.

“Oh, Mom,” she said aloud. “What is this all about? Couldn’t you have left a letter or something?”

She thought of Jon’s question.Are you sure you want to keep going down this road?

She was suddenly not at all sure.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Liam rode to Devon in a Town Car. He texted Clare on the way out of London to let her know he was coming. She sent back a smiley-face emoji.Can’t wait to see you!

He sat in the back with headphones tuned to the most calming music he could find, easy synthesizer and piano and flutes, mostly. He used them as background for the meditations in his workshops, and they worked now to ease his sense of agitation. He listened to the music, watching the landscape pass by the windows, and counted breaths. Whenever his thoughts urgently intruded—What have you done? How will you move forward without Krish? How the hell is Tillie in Wulfecombe?—he started his breath count over.

Halfway to Devon, he took out his phone and texted his mentor:Bhante, I have come to a crossroad. Can we speak soon?

Just the act of typing it out gave him a sense of calm. He could hear Bhante’s voice, calm and full of humor, giving him back a piece of wisdom Liam most likely already had within. And in a moment, a text came back:Yes. Remember, too, that everything has a beginning and an ending. Make your peace with that, and all will be well.

He texted back a grateful-hands emoji and leaned back. The surprise was not that he’d parted ways with his old friend, but that it had taken so long. Krish had no connection to any spiritual practice, whichwas fine in the world (or not fine, but not his business), but it was impossible to run this business without that deep grounding. Going forward, Liam would correct his mistake. His team should be as serious about the goal of the work as he was: not money, although there was no problem with wealth, but love. Love as a practice, as a method of living in the world. Approaching everything with a spirit of friendliness.

A conundrum, really, if he thought of Krish. He still felt anger over the betrayal. It would take time to work through his feelings of injury.

The car delivered him first to Clare’s farmhouse, where he would be staying. When Tillie said she was at the Green King, he’d almost changed his plans, but Clare would be wounded, and in truth, he wanted to be in the house with his family, to soak in the nurturing he would find in those walls, amid the wounded animals and the smell of baking bread and his auntie’s warm arms. He wondered how he’d let so long a time lapse without coming back here.