Now, looking out the kitchen window in the growing dusk, Kincaid wondered what he had expected Relief? Anger? Disappointment? Anything at all, he thought, would have been better than the silence in which Kit had collected his things, then gone out into the garden with Tess.
He could barely make out the outline of boy and dog huddled together on the flagstone steps. “What’s he thinking?” he said as Hazel came to stand beside him. “Why do I feel as though I’ve failed him?”
“You’ve done the best you could under the circumstances,” said Hazel softly. “Sometimes there just aren’t any right answers. And he may not really be thinking at all. Emotional overload—too much to take in at once. Give him a while to find his balance.”
“Did I make a mistake in not telling him the truth now?” Kincaid asked. “Is it better for him to think that the man he’s seen as his father doesn’t love him, or for him to learn that he’s not who he always thought he was?”
Hazel didn’t answer, and in the moment’s silence they heard a thump and faint laughter from upstairs, where Gemma was giving Holly and Toby their baths before tea. “Professionally, I’d say you’re doing the right thing,” Hazel said slowly. “Personally, I know how difficult it must be. For the time being, give him all the reassurance you can that you mean to stay in his life. Let him get used to the idea.” She touched his arm and looked up into his face. “But Duncan, you must be absolutely sure of your commitment to him, or it’s better not to do anything at all.”
“I realize that.” He looked out into the garden. For the first time, he understood the magnitude of Gemma’s responsibility to Toby. Was he capable of making the same commitment, capable of giving Kit the stability he needed? And how would he know until he tried?
The doorbell chimed. “I’ll go,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you have Kit run up and tell Gemma and the little ones good-bye? I’ll show Ian into the sitting room.” She gave his elbow a squeeze and smiled. “Trust your instincts. That’s a good bit of what parenting is about.”
Gemma chewed on a pencil as she stared at the papers she’d spread out on Hazel’s kitchen table. As literary executor, Nathan had asked to keep the original poems found in the Marsh memoirs, but he’d made them copies before they left Grantchester, and Gemma had begun going over them as soon as they’d returned to London.
She looked up as the corridor door swung open and Kincaid came in. “Are they gone?” she asked as he sat down across from her. His tie hung loosely, and his hair stood on end where he’d absently run his hand through it.
He nodded. “Yes. I’ve just rung Laura Miller to say they’re on their way.”
“I thought it better not to add to the audience, so I had another go at this stuff,” she said, gesturing at the nest of books and papers she’d accumulated. “How was Kit with Ian?”
“He barely spoke. Ian tried, I’ll give him that.”
The children had thrown their soft, damp arms round Kit’s neck when he’d come up to say good-bye, and as she watched him cling to them, she’d sensed the precariousness of his emotional control. “It was hard for Kit to leave. And you didn’t want to let him go,” she added softly as she saw the weariness in Kincaid’s face. He’d been through so much in the past week … but how could he begin to sort out his feelings for Kit until he found some resolution over Vic’s death? And how could she help him?
Looking back at the poems spread before her, Gemma said hesitantly, “You know I’m not a poet, and I haven’t been to university. But I’ve been reading Vic’s manuscript, and as many of Lydia’s poems as I could find, and I think Vic was right. These poems are different. There’s a feeling of urgency, and a directness to them that the earlier poems don’t have.” She frowned as she touched the sheets on the table, then separated one poem from the rest. “They seem to begin with a more general feeling, a theme. Listen to this one.” Settling back in her chair, she began to read with careful diction.
Gemma looked up at him as she finished. Searching his face, she shook her head. “It doesn’t mean anything to you, does it? But I feel it—here.” She pressed her fist to the center of her chest. “It’s about women not speaking up, not having voices, and yet we teach our daughters the same behavior. Do you see?”
“I think so. But what has that to do—”
“Wait. As the poems go on the theme seems to become more specific, until you get to this one, the last. Listen. It’s called ‘Awaiting Electra.’
