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Ever since he met Audrey Hall, he had the sense that she was trapped. That, of course, did not mean she was not capable, confident, or organized. He just had the sense of something caught behind her burning eyes. It was especially clear in the bright whiteness of the morning. For years, he would amble into what had gradually or perhaps immediately become her space. He would look into her eyes for a simple good morning, and suddenly, he was captivated by her, his mind flooding with questions about what she kept inside of herself. He had a sneaking suspicion he would never really know. Could you ever really know every part of a person? He certainly hid more than enough from her. The questions he had for her that would never be answered, because he would never ask them, made themselves a home at the top of that list.
There were things in her past that had taken a while for her to reveal. Hidden in damp corners and not dusted off. They were important pieces in her experience that she had placed delicately for her own remembrance; they were handled carefully when exposed. It was important for him to understand where they were and why they were so that they could move through life together, but they did not bring him joy.
He had known loneliness, but not like she had known. He didn't hear the same frosty voices of self-doubt and anger that clawed at the walls of her heart on particularly bad days. He didn’t retreat into himself in the way that she did or for the reasons that she did. They both had an empathy for each other. There were parts and pieces that could be shared, but could never be owned by the other. That's what he thought knowing and loving someone was when he was young. He thought it was owning every part of their experience like it belonged to you. He felt he had sold his soul in exchange for Evelyn, and it had nearly killed him when she took it with her.
By the grace of something grander than even he understood and did not deserve, it was returned to him. Audrey Hall entered the house with a gift she didn’t know she was bringing. Her Sainthood, having been fully established in a short period, made it clear, he was not in charge of this second chance he had been given in life. Not only giving him purpose but teaching him that love was not a burden thrust upon others. Love had wings. They were not wings that would melt; they could carry you to a greater view of life. Many of his experiences taught him that his love wasn’t enough or too much. It wasn’t enough for his parents, not enough to keep his wife, or enough to raise his brother. So he felt it was a weight. His love weighed people down. Effectively, he drowned people in it. So overwhelming that it dragged them under with no hope of surfacing again. So he dried the well. He removed the bucket, and no one could access it for their own safety.
Audrey Hall brought a shovel. She was not afraid of hard work, and it helped her to move through the experiences of her past. She disappeared behind Siegfried Farnon, saving him and treating the deep wounds in her heart in private. Until he noticed. It didn't take long; he was a keen observer. She could feel his innate knowledge. Her care towards him told of a past that included others. People that she loved. Never mind her title and her ring, bold signs of dedication. He watched and allowed her to disappear into his house to hide from a past she wasn't ready to confront. She could see right through him, but when she disappeared into herself, it was obvious in her eyes, there was something he didn’t know.
Many nights ascended in slow, easy ways. His awe of her abilities deepened. He began to appreciate her in new ways as she healed him. The questions began to rise to the front of his mind, but he never asked them. Then she was leaving. She was going. She stood in front of him and told him with her eyes, and he knew. Maybe she always planned to go. Maybe that’s what her eyes had been trying to say all this time. This wasn’t really home. Somehow, he was too much or he wasn’t enough again. Still unable to find the right balance. He had failed again.
The sight of her in the kitchen, in her kitchen, burned itself into his mind. It confirmed to him that you never really know someone. Yet he had never shown her the deepest parts of himself. He had never asked about hers; he had waited, and now maybe waiting wasn’t right either.
Something interceded again to keep her with him. She stayed. She told him with her voice this time, but he couldn’t use his. Everything was so fragile, and he didn’t have the strength to tear down what they had built to start something new. Looking back, it was the right choice. She deserved to just be Audrey for a while. Not his housekeeper, even if she kept the job. Not Mrs. Hall. Not Gerald's fiancée. Just Audrey. She had enough to handle between rationing and worry to keep her occupied.
Not to mention the Christmas when Edward went missing. He could feel her saying with every automated action that the sun had gone out of her life. He knew enough now of her past to know that there were very few moments when she felt the sun shine fully and freely upon her. In many ways, he had felt their years together and the time they had spent building a home together was helping her to see that the sun did shine for her. Then she was gone again.
He lost her in herself again for a brief unsettling moment and then she came to him. Now it seemed there was just something that couldn’t be breached. She didn’t shed her layers in front of anyone else at Skeldale during the weeks that she lost herself in the grief and unanswerable questions. She came to him in anger and sadness and quiet moments in front of the fire, but there was just something in her eyes that he didn’t know. Something that she couldn’t express.
They found themselves in the shed as the night ascended in the comfortable, slow, and steady way they were used to, but everything felt just that slightest bit uneven. He so desperately wanted to solve things for her. To climb into the beautiful mind that she inhabited and sort through the paperwork of the day. The hollow, empty practical thoughts and the heavy burdens that pushed themselves to the forefront and demanded attention. He waited for her patiently again, still scared to drown her in his own thoughts and feelings for her and her son. He was afraid he could not properly articulate his care.
Then she unfolded. Unprompted, she tried her best to show him the corners of her mind. For the first time, she didn’t wait until she was ready. She didn’t wait years before she had processed what was happening, or there had been a resolution. For the first time, she allowed the messy parts of herself still in the process of breaking to be seen by someone else. To be seen by him.
That was the first time he realized he was in love with her. He loved her, of course, he knew that. For years now, he had known that he loved her. To be in love with her was different. To have the privilege to see the intricacies of her laid bare before him. To accept them as they were. To empathise with the parts he understood and leave space for her to explain the rest. There was nothing more that he wanted in life. To love someone takes commitment and time; these were proven tenets of their existing relationship. To be in love with her meant action. He was not ready to take it, and she was not ready to receive it. Yet he stayed in the shed watching over her until the sun rose on a new day.
He stood, hands clutching the railing, left in awe of the woman he adored. She had received the news that she had been waiting for the news that placed bandages over the broken parts of her heart. There would be scars, and it would make the rest of the war much more difficult for her, feeling the twinges of this experience in the stories of other boys with different fates. She would ache for their memory, and she would hold her boy close when he finally came home to her.
These scars were laid over ones from her past that matched the ones he wore on his heart. While they waited for all their boys to return, they spent time exploring these scars. There were times when it wasn’t easy, and they both hid things just behind their eyes. Even after years, they sometimes still needed time. The wounds were still fresher than they realized. Renewed by the events they were living through.
Many nights turned into days as they sat in the living room or at the kitchen table. They knew sleep wouldn’t come, and so they bared their souls for one another. Realizing there was nothing to be fixed. Realizing they each had their own burdens to bear that they couldn’t carry for the other. They had spent many years in each other's company, putting their lives back together. It was refreshing to find that they could enjoy the work that they had done without fear of causing more damage. There was no grand moment, no rising crescendo or burst of realization that they were supposed to bind themselves together as one. It just seemed to happen in the middle of everything. He was ready to act, and she was ready to answer.
What stuck with him as the years passed was her ability to take him by surprise. They had been married for seven years now, and the moments when she referred to her husband, he was still shocked to realize that it was him. She belonged to him. Every part of him belonged to her. He had never believed it to be possible. Yet they had weathered much of life together and continued to speak at length about their own experiences when they hadn’t known each other. When the young people in their lives asked what kept them together, her answer ranged from the silly and absurd to heartfelt and deep, depending on what the situation dictated. He, however, gave the same answer. He always wanted to read her mind, and he wasn't able to yet, so he must keep trying.
The others laughed this off or appreciated the sentiment, but none of them fully understood the truth of it. Audrey Hall wasn’t like a puzzle that you kept in the closet for rainy days. You didn't take her off the shelf when you were bored and put her together to understand and admire for a while until the table needed to be used again. You didn’t take her back apart when you were finished with her and put her back in a place to be revisited years later. She was a mosaic like the tiled courtyards of Spain or Italy. Bright and expansive, she was hard work meant to be appreciated as a daily ritual. One did not simply dissect her experiences and put them on a shelf for later. There were jagged edges, of course, to be expected in tile work and in life. She, being the artist of it all, was the only one who knew properly how it all fit together, so it was up to her to reveal the hidden intricacies of it all. He would worship in the courtyard of her life for the rest of his days. He would let her explain everything in such detail, and he would never tire of it. It was the least she deserved, and it was the thing that brought him the utmost joy in life.