When the daylight has faded

The chain (#unexpected)

The lady with the apron must have seen my reflection in the greenhouse glass because she started to speak without turning around.

"The tomatoes are nearly ripe. I've been pinching out all the side shoots so they'll taste delicious again."

I ignored her comment.

"I presumed I would find you here when you didn't answer the door. Hope I didn't make you jump."

The woman finally turned. I swallowed when I saw the lines of grief around her eyes and my mother's chain around her neck.

"What an unexpected pleasure!" The acid in her voice almost dissolved my already shaky determination to see this through.

"I... I..." I forced myself to take another step into the muggy interior of the greenhouse, my eyes transfixed by the way my mother's chain sparkled in the sunlight. "I came as soon as I heard, Elisabeth."

"He died six weeks ago, Aidan!" my stepmother spat, her fiery red-rimmed eyes burning their way straight into my soul.

"I'm sorry."

"If there's nothing wrong with your letterbox, I'll have to assume that you waited for the novelty of the situation to wear off and you're here now for your inheritance."

Elisabeth's contempt was nothing new. After all, I had been the competition for her access to my father's money right from the start. At least, that was what I had believed since Elisabeth stepped into my life. I looked at her drooping shoulders and her baggy clothes.

"He loved your tomatoes." I stroked a leaf of the aromatic plant.

"He loved your visits. But, of course, they were few and far between. Even now it took you six weeks to cover the 40 miles to get here." The acid left her voice. "And he loved you to his last breath, despite everything."

"I loved him, too, Elisabeth." My eyes started to water and I blinked back the tears. I hadn't cried in years, not even during the lonely nights in the hospital bed that had prevented me from accompanying my estranged father on his last journey.

There was an uncomfortable pause. The sunlight glinting off my mother's chain nearly blinded me.

"Did he suffer?"

Elisabeth shook her head. "It was quite unexpected. One moment he was here, the next he was gone."

Elisabeth's hand curled around the chain that my father had passed on to her so many years ago. I had always thought that she was only wearing it to taunt me, to remind me that my mother was gone forever. I blinked, her hand on the chain shielding me from the bright sunlight, clearing my vision.

Elisabeth was right. My visit was unexpected. There had been no time for her to stage a grief show.

Guilt swamped me.

I reached out and disentangled her hand from the chain around her neck. The pendant snapped open. My father's face stared back at me from the right, my own eyes from the left.

Elisabeth looked down at her chain and gasped.

"That's me!" I said, and she nodded.

Finally, I started to cry.