The Lost Apothecary(43)
He stared at me, dumbfounded. “Like I chased you here? I’m not a predator, Caroline.” He pulled his eyes from mine and picked up his fork, his face growing flushed. He shoved a forkful of food into his mouth, chewed quickly and speared another bite. “You’re my wife, and you’ve been in a foreign country, alone, for the first time in your life. Do you know how panicked I’ve been? Pickpockets, or some creep realizing you’re here alone—”
“Jesus, James, give me a little credit. I’ve got a bit of common sense.” My wineglass was empty, and I waved the waitress over for a refill. “It’s been just fine, actually. I’ve had no issues whatsoever.”
“Well, good,” he relented, his tone softening. He wiped the edges of his mouth with a napkin. “You’re right. I should have asked you whether it was okay for me to come out. I’m sorry I didn’t. But I’m here now, and the last-minute plane ticket cost me three grand. A second one to fly home wouldn’t be cheap, either.”
Three grand? “Okay,” I said through thinned lips, further pissed that he’d spent so much money on a plane ticket he shouldn’t have booked at all. “Can we agree, then, that at least for the next few days, I get time and space? I still have a lot to process.” Though I’ve processed enough to see how much of my old self has been buried, I thought miserably.
He opened his mouth and blew out air. “We should be talking through the hard questions together, though, right?”
I shook my head gently. “No. I want to be alone. You can sleep on the sofa in the hotel room, but that’s the extent of it. I came on this trip by myself for a reason.”
He closed his eyes, disappointment all over his face. “Okay,” he finally said, pushing aside his half-eaten meal. “I’ll head back to the room. I’m exhausted.” He pulled a couple of twenty-pound notes from his wallet, slid them across the table to me and stood up.
“Get some rest,” I said, my eyes not leaving his empty chair.
He kissed the top of my head before he left, and I stiffened in my seat. “I’ll try,” he said.
I didn’t turn around to watch him go. Instead, I finished my pasta and my second glass of Chianti. After a few minutes passed, I saw my phone screen light up on the table. Frowning, I read a new text message from an unknown number.
Hi Caroline! Did a bit more digging after you left & got some hits on our manuscript database. I’ve req a few, will take a couple of days. How long you in town for? Gaynor xx
I sat up straighter in my chair and texted her back immediately.
Hi! Thank you SO much. In town another week! What kind of doc? Does it look promising?
I leaned my elbows on the table, awaiting Gaynor’s reply. While researching together at the library, she’d explained that manuscripts could be handwritten or printed material. Could she have located another letter, another “deathbed confession,” about the apothecary? I opened her response the moment it came through.
Both search hits are bulletins—a type of periodical. Dated 1791. Not part of our digitized newspaper collection & pre-1800, which is why it didn’t come up earlier. Metadata says one of the bulletins includes an image. Who knows? Will keep you posted!
I closed my phone. Intriguing news, yes, but as I stared at James’s half-eaten plate and his dirty cloth napkin lying on the table, bigger issues tugged at my attention. The waitress offered a final glass of wine and I declined; two glasses with lunch were more than enough. I needed to sit and think for a few minutes with the steady din of conversation around me.
According to James, his infidelity came from a place of dissatisfaction with the safe, predictable nature of our lives. Was it possible we’d been equally discontent with the stagnant way of life back home and things had finally come to a shuddering halt? And if so, what did that mean for our desire to be parents in the immediate future? I wasn’t sure any child would want us for parents now.
A child would also need a stable home, a good school system and at least one income-earning parent. There was no doubt that our life epitomized this, but James and I had both just shared our dissatisfaction with the paths we’d chosen. Where on the list was our fulfillment, our joy? Was it selfish to put our own happiness before the needs of another human being, one who didn’t even yet exist?
Surrounded by London’s weathered brick buildings, mysterious artifacts and obsolete maps, I’d been reminded why, so long ago, I found myself enamored of British literature and history’s obscurities. The youthful, adventurous student in me had begun to resurface. Like the vial I’d dug out of the mud, I had begun to unbury something dormant inside of myself. And as much as I wanted to hold James accountable for keeping me in the States, at the farm, I couldn’t blame it entirely on him; after all, as he’d said, I was the one to rip up the application for Cambridge’s history graduate program. I was the one to accept the job offer with my parents.
If I was honest with myself, I wondered if looking forward to a baby had been a subconscious way of disguising the truth: that not everything in my life was how I imagined it would be, and that I hadn’t lived up to my own potential. And worst of all, I’d been too scared to even try.
As I’d yearned for motherhood, fixing my attention entirely on my someday, what other dreams had been buried and lost? And why had it taken a life crisis to finally ask myself the question?