A Solemn Promise

VII

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw

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VII.

She had run from him. Adam was certain of it. She had scurried up the stairs as quickly as her legs would carry her in an effort to get away from him. Somewhere inside, Adam knew that this behaviour meant that she really did want nothing to do with him. She must have had nothing to say to him.

Her letter had been quite enough.

But Adam's heart was ruling his head in that moment, and he needed to speak to her. Surely, she could not be so callous as to not even want to greet her old friend. They had been friends once.

Adam saw her back first. She was facing a closed door, trying to turn the handle, and appearing frustrated that it would not open. He first noticed that she had not grown very tall. Like her sisters, she was quite small in stature. She wore a plain, dark navy dress with a white apron tied around her waist. He could not see her hair for it was tucked underneath a white cap. Was it as long and wavy as Kate's? Adam immediately wanted to see it down.

She turned, not seeing him standing there, sucking in heavy breaths, and reached for the first door on her right, and found it, too, was locked. Once again, Adam was hit with the realisation that she was truly trying to hide from him.

But his thoughts were quite quickly eclipsed by the very fact that he was truly seeing her for the first time in twelve years. Lord, he had always thought her a pretty girl. Impossibly pretty. He would frequently get into trouble at school for staring at her and missing the answers when the vicar would call upon him.

He would be grateful in years to come that he had this opportunity to look on her again. Grace had grown into a truly beautiful, young woman. Her face was soft, and heart-shaped, with a lovely flush to her cheeks from the three flights of stairs she had just climbed. Her large, cornflower blue eyes found him the hallway, widening with shock. Adam wished he were closer. Her eyes used to look violet in low light and he wanted to know if that was still true.

Cornflower blue was still his favourite colour, even after all this time.

Her pink lips parted, and he heard her gasp. A few tendrils of her charcoal coloured hair had fallen out from under her cap, and they were framing her face perfectly.

"Grace," he said, his voice hoarse from panting. Adam suddenly realised that it was the first time in many years that he had said her name aloud.

And yet she said nothing. Not words escaped her parted lips, not even his name. She stared at him, half in shock, half in ... well, he honestly couldn't tell. Adam dared to take a few steps towards her.

Grace seemed to instinctively press herself up against the door, trying to move as far away from him as she possibly could. Adam could not pretend that he had not seen that, and he ceased his approach. Why was she so anxious to be away from him? Ought not he be the one to want to keep his distance?

His anger, his hurt, and his questions kept being pushed aside by his pure elation to be seeing her again. Adam was so glad to know her, to have a chance to know her. No matter what he had been through, what she had put him through, here he stood, ready to throw himself into the deep.

"How ... how are you?" he asked, nerves shaking his voice a little.

Grace shifted nervously on her feet; her hands pressed against the door behind her. "Well," was all she could muster in reply. Her eyes dropped, and Adam felt the urge to demand she looked at him, just so that he could see her eyes.