Learning To Bloom In The Darkness (✔️)

Chapter Thirteen: Sub Rosa

(Amaryllis's POV)

I sat cross legged on the couch facing Lincoln who sat beside me.

I really wasn't sure where to start, so I started with a question.

"What do you know about his last year?" I asked.

He sighed. "At the beginning of that year, my mother sent me to a boarding school. I wasn't even aware that he was sick until.....until it was to late. I tried to come back so many time, but my mother always found a way to stop me. My family always goes to one hospital and we see one doctor. She....she had him sent to a hospital that I'd never heard of with doctors I'd never heard of. There was nothing I could do. I was worried and scared for him. I didn't know who was with him or if anyone visited him. I don't even know if he.....if he was alone when he passed. Or if some doctors face was the last face he saw."

A tear rolled down his cheek and it broke my heart. I reached over and grabbed his hands in mine.

"He wasn't alone."

"He wasn't?"

I smiled. "I was with him the whole time. I was by his side. My face was the last face he saw. I held his hand that whole night."

"Really?"

I got off the couch, walked over to my little desk, and picked up a picture frame. I took it over and handed it to him.

It was a picture of Lachlan and I when he was in the hospital.

"It had been one of his good days and he wanted to go for a walk in the little garden. The nurse took the picture for us." I explained.

He smiled as he looked at it and started to cry more.

"How.....how did you two meet?"

"The hospital he was sent to just happened to be the one that my mom stayed in when she first got sick. Her cancer hit her hard with no warning. She had to be hospitalized for most of that year. His room was across the hall from hers. Your mother had him checked in under a false name and it was such a small hospital that no one recognized him."

"They have good doctors there?"

"They do. Very good ones. They're the reason why my mom is still alive. I watched them with your father. I was as much of a....hawk with him and his treatments as I was with my mom."

"Did anyone visit him?"

I shook my head. "No, but I don't think he cared. Honestly, now that I know you, you're the one he wanted to visit him the most. He always talked about you. He called you his 'Golden Boy'. Said you couldn't visit because you were at school and your mother wouldn't like it. He understood why you couldn't come and he didn't blame you. He loved you so so much."

"Did you see him everyday?"

"I did. He's the reason I have the job at the coffee shop. I probably should've pieced it together at that moment, but I didn't. He said he knew a place that was hiring and could guarantee me a job. He also gave me some business advice regarding the shop. He helped me with some paperwork and all kinds of stuff. In return, all he asked was that I play scrabble with him and fill him with my flower and plant facts."  

"Like what colors mean?"

I laughed. "Yeah."

I got up once again and grabbed two things out of my desk.

"He gave this to me the night....the night he died." I said, handing him a leather bound journal.

"What is it?"