Witness

That Saturday was unseasonably sunny, the December morning warm enough for a thick sweater and a pair of jeans. I watched Harry as he dressed himself across the room, pulling his head through that cranberry sweater he wore the night I told him I wasn’t really Lilia George. I couldn’t help but marvel at how long ago that all felt, laying in the grass behind the Red Lion and drunkenly slipping into blackness. Even two weeks ago felt like ages had passed between them.

“Come on,” he beckoned, gesturing for me to get out of bed. “It’s too nice to stay inside today. We need to get out of here. Let me buy you breakfast. Restock our activities. Do a little people watching.”

I started blankly at him, contemplating what he was suggesting. From the window, I could see the sidewalks of 'downtown' bustling with people, shopping bags in tow flitting in and out of restaurants for brunch. It seemed like if there was going to be a day to go out and greet the world, that was it. The weather was gorgeous. There were people around. Harry looked amazing in that sweater.

“Yeah,” I hummed, standing up and giving him a winning grin. “I think that would be lovely.”

I thought I’d never seen him smile like that before.

I took extra care in getting ready that day, for Harry’s sake. He’d been looking at a tear soaked, half dead girlfriend for so long. The least I could do was brush the rats nest out of my hair. I pulled out my single nice sweater I’d brought with me, a navy cashmere one that Thomas bought for me almost a year ago.

Thomas. I wondered what he was doing then. Again, it all seemed so long ago. The Yankees game, the fight, the breakup. I wondered if he was seeing Nichelle, or if he’d gone to Amelia’s funeral. I wondered if he had any inkling of what was going on in my world. But then I glimpsed at Harry and all those thoughts melted away, replaced with a coat of lipstick and a smile at the man I loved now.

I loved him. Holy shit.

When you tell someone you love them, there’s almost an unbearable lightness about it all. You go to bed that night with a smile in your heart, an unshakeable glow in your chest that grows and grows until you can hardly stand it anymore, until you just have to crawl into the arms of that person and let them hold you to bring you back down. Harry’s love had a certain buoyancy about it and I found myself adrift in it, floating hopelessly through our disastrous situation.

In the end, if Harry and I were okay, everything else had to fall into place. I kept telling myself that.

The inn’s lobby was already busy with people coming and going at half-ten, already up for the day. The town seemed to know that this was the last gasp of life the weather and was anxious to squeeze it for every ounce it was worth. And the moment I inhaled the crisp, fresh air, I remembered what I’d been missing out on.

There was a world outside those four walls I’d come to know. A world I used to be fascinated by, determined to explore, dedicated to inspire. I used to write about this outside world, I used to be a story teller, I used to have a direction. Hell, I used to run the streets of that very town until my heels were raw and my muscles were screaming, until Harry had collapsed by my side while lamenting on how long my legs could go.

“Mara and Harry take Church Stretton,” I joked, gesturing to the streets around us. It was the first time we’d stepped out together on anything other than a mid-week run, avoiding the crowds of tourists that came to see the hillside. Harry extended a looped arm to me with a wink and I couldn’t resist linking my arm through it in response.

“Let me take you to breakfast darling,” he replied in his best Sean Connery impression. “Let me show you the world.”

I fell into laughter as he guided me down the street to the bakery, a place he’d become familiar with in town, a place he could connect with. It reminded me a bit of the bakery back in Holmes Chapel but without any of the fluency of the place I’d come to know.

“I swear,” Harry promised while we were in line, “I’ll get you one of my Danishes someday. You’d think I were a member of the Danish royal family. Just call me Prince Harry.”

“I think you’re all talk and no game,” I challenged as we advanced closer to the register. “The real Prince Harry would certainly be irritated with the competition, I would think.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “We’re always in competition, me and Harry. He’s used to it by now,” he scoffed, as if he and the Prince of Wales had anything in common beside their name.

“I’ll believe it all when I see it,” I insisted lightly, finally approaching the case to choose what I wanted. “The baking, the friendship, the royalty. You’ve yet to impress me on this front.”

“As soon as we get back to the bakery in Holmes Chapel, I’ll make you baked goods that will knock your panties off,” he announced proudly, then leaning in to whisper more sneakily, “not that I need the help.”

I slapped his arm in mock disgust, moving up to place my order as he chortled behind me. We walked down the streets hand in hand, munching at our kolashes and kringles, respectively. I caught a bit of strawberry jam that had clung to Harry’s upper lip in a kiss, blissful in the simplicity of it all.

We stopped to page through an outdoor rack of books placed carefully outside the bookstore to promote that they were on sale. I considered each one between bites, flipping through the titles for anything that looked of interest. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d read a good book – probably since I paged through my copy of Interpreter of Maladies on the flight from JFK.

I found some sort of solace in gazing across the spines with Harry as people bustled past us on their adventures, the warm, fluffy texture of the kringle melting in my mouth. It was peaceful in the busyness, something I’d nearly forgotten from staying inside. And there was something about it all that felt distinctly safe. We’d been put in Church Stretton for a reason, and it was becoming abundantly clear to me that there wasn’t a place I’d rather hide out. I was so far removed from August that I’d nearly forgotten what busy street were really like. I’d nearly forgotten New York.

And I wasn’t terribly sad about it.

“Harry, look at this,” I called, pulling a book out from the rack entitled Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. But when I looked around for Harry, I couldn’t spot him. He was nowhere to be found.

“Harry!” I exclaimed, every cell in my body panicking. “Harry!”

Then a tapping came from the window in front of me and I jolted my eyes to the source, only to find Harry grinning at me from behind the glass. His bright emerald eyes sparkled as the morning sun hit them, and he squinted into the light as he motioned for me to come inside. I chided him for scaring me for the rest of the morning everywhere we went, never letting him leave my side. I wasn’t about to lose Harry. I wasn’t even going to come close.

“I haven’t shopped like that in ages,” I sighed, collapsing onto the bed with four bags at my side. We’d picked up a few things at the bookstore including a deck of cards, a puzzle, and a board game, a few movies at the pawn shop, a new coat for us both to prepare for the oncoming winter and as a treat from Harry, a new dress and a pair of boots for me. I felt guilty with it all around me, but in the moment I couldn’t help but moan out a happy sigh. It was so nice to get out.

“Now I have to take you out so you can wear that dress,” Harry grumbled teasingly. “I guess I should make dinner reservations somewhere for tomorrow.”

I grinned. “At the one nice restaurant in town? It might be short notice.”

Harry grinned back. “Luckily, I think I can be a bit persuasive.”

At that moment, the phone started to ring on the table, catching both our gazes. Harry was closest so he snatched it up in his hands, gravely greeting the person on the other end. He gave a few ‘mhms,’ nodding as though they could see. I could see in his face that he wasn’t being given any immediate news, that for the moment, nothing had changed.

He then crossed the room and retrieved his laptop from his suitcase, an item that hadn’t made an appearance in quite some time. “Just a moment,” he spoke into the receiver just before hanging up.

“It’s Hudson. Wants us to get on Skype.”

I quirked my eyebrow at him to disguise the nerves running rampant inside me. “Did he say why he needs to Skype us?” I asked, still pulling a chair up to his side so we could both be in frame.

Harry shook his head. “Just that there has been some progress and not to worry.”

In moments, Hudson’s face materialized on screen, situated in that O.E.O. office I’d once sat in all those months ago. It was nearly like sitting across that desk from him that day, a wide expanse of books shelved behind him, his face looking greyer than before. My case had aged him.

“Lilia, Harry,” he greeted flatly, rifling through some pages of paper set on the desk in front of him. “Good to see you.”

“Agent Hudson,” we greeted back in unison before glancing between each other in surprise at the sound of the others voice.

“What’s going on?” I questioned before he could respond again, glimpsing the sight of my own concerned face in the corner box. “Have you found anything? Have you made any progress with the others?”

Hudson raised a finger while he continued to page through the papers, finally finding one that he wanted. “We had contact from Trask today.”

I could feel the energy shift between Harry and me immediately, my blood running cold at the words. “What happened?” I asked, my words no more than a breath.

“A package arrived at our office yesterday at about eleven,” Hudson explained. “We had to have a bomb squad inspect it before we could even take a look at it, which took way too long,” I could sense the impatience in his voice, “because it didn’t have a return address on the label.”

Both Harry and I nodded for him to continue.

“It was an enormous box for what it actually housed,” Hudson muttered, plucking the page from the table below. “It’s been taken in for forensic examination now, but I have a photo. It’s a music box. I’m going to describe it to you more carefully because Skype can only show so much.”

He raised the picture to the screen and from the pixelated screen I could make out a few details as he rattled them off. “The box is bright blue in color, similar to the shade of your front door in Holmes Chapel – we’ve been able to figure out that much. Painted on the front is an intricate design of poppies, again, something we’re aware of the meaning. But underneath, these words…”

He pointed to a script that flanked the bottom edge of the box in a font too tiny for my eyes to make out. “It says unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno, which means one for all, all for one in Latin,” Hudson explained. “It’s the national motto of Switzerland. Does that mean anything to you?”

I scoured my brain, trying to reach every nook and cranny for anything that could possibly relate to Switzerland. “No,” I sighed finally. “I’m not Swiss or anything. And I’ve never been to Switzerland. I don’t know what he could have possibly meant by that.”

Hudson shook his head, disappointed that we’d come to a dead end. “Alright, now look at this photo. This was inside.” He switched to one I’d seen before – the one of Arthur and my mother at Blenheim Palace nearly twenty-one years ago. The obvious then occurred to me: Damien had taken the original copy from Arthur’s study.

He must have known, then.

“That’s my mom and Arthur Trask,” I replied slowly. “At Blenheim Palace in Woodstock.”

Hudson nodded, as he then pulled a recording device from an unseen space next to him and raised it to the microphone of his computer. “Finally, this is the song that played. It seems to have been recorded on a home based software.”

When he pressed play, strains of toy piano came into the air between us. It was Ben Howard’s ‘Only Love.’

Harry and I glanced at each other quickly, the answer to that one obvious. It was one of my favorite songs. But how did he know? Who did he have on the inside?

“The package was received with little to no damage on it, which leads us to believe that he is still in New York City or somewhere in the area. But we don’t know how long it will last.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, my tone more begging than I wanted it to be. “What does any of this mean?”

Hudson sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he arranged the papers in a pile on the desk.

“It means Damien Trask is on the move. And he has a plan.”