“Ursula,” he said, “was buried on Tuesday and my son, on Saturday. Side by side, forever. And neither have a name to be buried under because I never thought to marry her.”
His head dropped into his hand, and Cam slid onto the couch next to him, putting her arms around him.
“Oh, Peter. They didn’t need your name. They had you.”
She knew the churches then had very strict rules about burial. It was entirely possible an unmarried woman and her son would be granted nothing more than their Christian names on the headstones. They were probably lucky to have been buried in consecrated ground at al .
“Campbel ,” he said, his voice choked with tears, “I have robbed them of the one thing that even the poorest honorable man can give.”
“Listen to me. That didn’t matter to Ursula. Al that mattered to her was that you were there, holding her hand, helping her to the other side. Do you think something as trivial as a name can make a difference to a woman who knows she’s loved and protected?”
After a long moment he steadied himself. She let her arm slide down his shoulder and locked her hand into his.
He clutched it as if it were a life preserver.
“I lived eight more years, more dead than alive, and I thought dying would free me, but it didn’t. By the time death arrived, it was too late. Ursula had been reborn into her new life and so had my son.” He caught himself and looked at Cam. “Forgive me. You do not know of what I speak, do you?”
“I know. Mertons came to me. Oh, Peter, I’m so sorry.”
“And I, too. I have spent a decade sorry. I do not know what it has won me, though.”
She didn’t reply, and he just held her hand.
There was something wonderful about the warm ease with which their palms rested together. She gazed at the patternless swirl of bristle across his cheek and the way his earlobe seemed to glide off his jawline like a wing off Mercury’s foot, but nothing made her happier than the soft, dry pil ow of flesh on which her hand rested.
He lifted her hand and brought it to his mouth. The kiss was neither intrusive nor leading, but Cam felt the breath pressed out of her as if by a cinch around her waist.
“Thank you for listening,” he said. “I’ve never been able to tel it before. Never wanted to.”
“Sure.”
She could feel his breath on her skin, feel the pulse in his fingers.
“I did a terrible thing,” he said, “exposing you in those paintings.”
“I did the exposing, and I have a sense that the world was rebalancing things. You can’t decide you’l tear the covering off other people’s lives without expecting a little defrocking yourself. You know, if I’m so enamored of Jake Ryan, I might try modeling a little Samantha Baker behavior myself.”
“Jake Ryan? Samantha Baker?”
“Oh, it’s an old movie. Do you know movies?”
“‘This could be the start of a beautiful friendship,’ aye?”
When he saw the look of surprise on her face, he added,
“Mertons said it once. I made him explain. From what I could understand, movies are stories told in the form of pictures that move. It sounds interesting, especial y this Casablanca story, which he went into in some very great detail. Why did Ilsa leave Rick, by the way? Mertons prides himself on being a romantic, but it was very hard to get the nuance from him.”
“Hel if I know. Conventional wisdom is she loved Victor Laszlo, and Rick knew it.”
Peter nodded. “And Jake?”
“Oh.” She chuckled. “Jake. Jake Ryan is the boyfriend every girl dreams about. He’s beautiful and wise and popular and rich, and Samantha is turning sixteen and kind of a nerd—” In response to Peter’s raised brow, Cam added, “Smart but not standardly beautiful.”
His eyes flickered across Cam’s face. “I see.”
“Samantha is turning sixteen, but because her self-centered older sister is getting married, no one remembers
—no one, that is, except Jake, who recognizes her for the worthy woman she is, and the movie ends with them sitting on a table with a cake with sixteen flaming candles between them, and Samantha blows them out and they kiss. It’s total y romantic.”
“Jake, is it?”
“Yes, Jake. And the real y amazing part is the actor who played Jake pretty
