Reborn, I Married the Man He Feared novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Full Knowledge
Anne Althaus was buried on a hill outside the city, under a plain grey stone, with a cold wind coming across it.
Clara carried yellow tulips.
Alexander walked beside her with the cane, slowly, up the gravel path.
He stopped at the foot of the grave and took off his hat.
"This is where I wanted to say it," Clara said.
She knelt and laid the flowers on the grass.
"Hello, Mama. I brought him."
She stayed there a moment, with her hand on the stone.
Then she stood and faced him.
"I'm not here to go through it again," she said. "You've paid for every piece of it, and I watched you do it."
"Clara."
"I still remember that alley. I always will, and so will you. I'm not asking you to make it small."
His face did not move, but the color left it.
"I'm telling you it doesn't decide today," she said. "I do."
She took a step closer.
"I know you sat on the floor outside my door the night we married, and stayed there. You thought I was asleep."
His mouth opened.
"I wasn't," Clara said. "I heard you breathing till morning."
He made a rough sound in his throat.
"Say the thing," she said. "The one I'm waiting for."
"I'm not good enough to say it."
"That isn't what I asked."
He looked at the stone, and at her, and at the tulips.
"I love you," Alexander said. "I loved you in a church, at the back, looking at a box. I loved you the night you took the pen in your left hand and asked me to marry you at your father's table in front of forty people, and I thought I had never been so afraid." His voice broke. "I'll love you in a chair, if it comes to that. I'll love you when you're sixty and furious with me."
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