Covent Garden, London
David wandered aimlessly through the deserted streets, his heart breaking with every step he took. His eyes burned with unshed tears, and the pavement blurred before him. He didn't care; his mind was on the other side of the ocean as he walked, trying in vain to escape the demons that tormented his soul.
For a long time he stared into the Thames, and a part of him longed to enter its black embrace. He knew that he could do it if he wanted to; it was five in the morning, and no one would be around to witness his fall into the cold, dark river. By the time he was missed at the hotel, it would be too late. He doubted that he'd be missed at all in the personal sense; with the exception of Liam and perhaps his family, David believed that no one would truly mourn him if he was to leave the world of the living.
He cried out, his hands grasping the iron railing hard enough to draw blood.
I've lost her. What's the point of continuing this farce of a life when I no longer have Grace by my side? She was my other half; my friend, my lover, the mother of my child. And now my life with her has crumbled into dust, blown away by the winds of change. The pain is tearing me apart, and I can't bear it. Why is this happening to me again? Why do I always sabotage myself whenever I have something wonderful in my life?
David closed his eyes, remembering the phone call that he'd received from his wife an hour before. His chest hurt as he recalled every nuance of Grace's voice, every breath she took, and every sigh she made as she said the words that he'd dreaded to hear, the words that tore out his heart. Opening his eyes, he leaned against the railing and watched the flow of the river as he calmly began to remove his clothes.
* * *
New York - One Hour Earlier
Grace stirred awake from the heavy fog of sleep which had enveloped her since earlier that morning, after she had received the package from Gabriel. She opened her eyes and was surprised to find her room completely dark; she rarely slept for so many hours. The glowing red numbers from the digital clock beside her bed told her that she'd been asleep for twelve hours straight; it was 11pm.
She raised a hand, placing it on the pillow beside her head. With her fingertips she felt a curious wetness, and Grace knew that she must have cried while she slept. She sighed as she thought of her dreams and the ache that the memories caused in her head and heart. She sat up in bed and stared into the darkness, allowing herself to remember her trip down memory lane.
She had dreamt of Gabriel and the circumstances in which she had left him in France. She recalled everything in vivid detail; the feeling of uneasiness that she had felt the last day of the Night Stalker case, not just from Gabriel's indifference towards her after they'd made love but also because she was deeply afraid of his life being in danger in the underground caverns. She had felt helpless and afraid when she'd been forced to stay at the hotel and communicate with him through a headset, her heart in her throat as he had passed through deadly traps and cryptic puzzles to move forward through the maze and save Prince James's baby son.
When Gabriel faced the demon in combat, Grace's heart had stopped beating the entire time, frozen with fear over the possibility of losing him. After it was over, she had shouted into the headset, desperate to know that he was alive and safe. There was no answer, and despite Baza's assurance that all was well, she felt a chill grow inside her that would remain for years afterwards.
Is this all that I am to expect from him? The path that I've chosen to follow him, having sacrificed the greater part of myself to join his cause, is slowly destroying me. I don't deserve this, the endless torment of unrequited love, of caring so much for someone who doesn't even think enough of me to let me know that he's unhurt.
After Baza left the hotel to join the others in the caverns, Grace had these thoughts in mind as she calmly packed her suitcase and wrote the goodbye note to Gabriel. As hard as she tried, she couldn't remember all that she'd written in the brief paragraph. Her mind had been divorced from her body, her thoughts already on the long journey ahead of her.
The only line that she had committed to memory was the one that haunted her for months after she left; three months, to be exact. She remembered those words because she had written them deliberately to tell Gabriel where she would be in case he changed his mind about his feelings, in case he wanted to find her and bring her back home.
"Perhaps I'll find what I'm looking for with Chadrel."
She had hitchhiked to Toulouse, where she had taken a plane back to Paris and from there she flew to New Delhi, crying all the way because she hated being away from Gabriel. She was so tired and lonely, a lost soul in need of guidance and compassion. She had found them in Chadrel, who had been everything that she'd hoped for in a spiritual counselor, but in the end he hadn't been enough to prevent her from waiting in vain each day for Gabriel to call or show any sign that he gave a damn.
She'd waited for him like a lovesick fool, and he never came.
Then David came along; they'd met when Grace was at the end of her rope, her heart shattered and bleeding. Almost two months after her arrival at the monastery, she was walking in the mountains one day and had been overcome by a powerful wave of homesickness for the castle and a longing for its owner as well as for Gerde, who had been her best friend and the one person to whom she could tell anything.
Grace remembered when she finally took a breath after a long crying spell, looked up and first caught sight of David Anami. He had literally taken her breath away; he was such a beautiful man, even though he was much older than she. She had fallen to her knees on the ground when the crying started, and when it was over he offered her his hand to help her up. She had gasped in shock at the first touch of his hand against hers. It was so warm, and so large that it had made her own look like a child's in comparison.
These are the kind of hands that care for others,
she thought then.
These are the hands that offer help to a stranger, comfort to the sick, and love to a child.
After that day, they quickly became inseparable. Grace had been glad to learn that David was staying in the immediate area of the temple, and every day for the following month they had spent time together either seeing the sights or just talking for hours about the many interests that they had in common.
But David was always reluctant to talk about his past
, she thought, her mind returning to the present.
Whatever bits and pieces that he did share with me never added up, like a jigsaw puzzle without the end result; there was never a complete picture.
All that Grace knew about David's childhood was that he was born in Japan but raised in Ireland after his family moved there a few years after WWII ended. Jobs had been scarce in the coastal town where the Anami family had settled, and for that reason David's father was forced to go to London to work in a factory, sending most of his meager earnings to his wife and young son across the sea. But then something happened to his father, and David never continued the story. When she'd managed to get even those few details from him, it was obvious that his memories were greatly painful for him and for that reason Grace hadn't pried further into his past.
Grace shivered and rose from the bed, leaving the room. Now, remembering their whirlwind courtship, she wished that she had insisted on knowing everything that made him who he was, because perhaps she would have had a clue as to why he was now changing into a person that she no longer wanted anything to do with.
But she hadn't thought of such things at the time; when she first met him, she'd looked at him and saw a kind soul. He was a man that she'd liked very much, someone that she could have deeply loved under different circumstances. After three months in India, when she suddenly fell ill, David had been the one to tenderly nurse her back to health. After she had fully recovered, he asked her to marry him and she accepted, hoping that in each other they could find the happiness which had eluded them everywhere else.
Grace scoffed bitterly as she remembered that Chadrel himself had warned her about rushing into such a commitment with David. He told her that he had sensed that there was something not quite right about David's aura, and he asked her to be careful.
