~*~
Three hours later, when the sun peeked through the metallic gray clouds and beamed dandelion rays down on the moist earth, I walked over the edge of a small hill in the copse that surrounded my family’s farm. The hardly beaten path I ventured was a game’s trail, and one I’d frequent while I would run. I began running, from what my mother told me, before I learned how to crawl. More than twenty years of running for no apparent reason other than to run, I’d learned the trails better than the best hunters.
But today I walked, even though my heart beat in my chest louder and faster than ever before.
I saw him exactly where I’d told him to meet me, by a walnut tree that had forked in the trunk when lightning had struck it, then tried to grow back together years later. The result was a tree with a heart for a trunk. Disastrous, but I was meeting him to inform him I couldn’t meet with him ever again.
He turned as he heard me approach. His glossy black hair absorbed all the light and bounced it back in a dark shade of blue.
“I wasn’t sure if you would come,” he said.
That was the moment I should have said it, should have told him no and run away. I had all my life mapped out for me, and it was going to be a good life with Mathew and my sister and mother, and I couldn’t, shouldn’t meet him.
Instead, I nodded. “I came.”
He finally smiled. “I brought Socrates and wine.”
I floated closer to Monsieur Beaumont, not at all aware of my feet or legs. I offered a basket holding fresh and dried fruit. “Blueberries and peach rings.” Then I opened my overcoat and extracted the beloved essay. “And Locke.”
His eyes scanned the small booklet I held, then glanced at my men’s linen shirt where the Letter of Toleration had resided. He swallowed and looked into my eyes, then whispered, “Parfait.”