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There was a man stood behind the last row of seats, the only one in the graveyard without an umbrella.
Belle hadn’t seen him before today, but something about his demeanour told her that he was here for the funeral.
That, and the fact that she’d noticed him earlier, lingering at the back of the church, but things had been too much too fast and she’d forgotten all about the stranger during the eulogies.
He was still here, though, like he was waiting for something.
People began to clear out, eventually, having said their hellos and goodbye, but not him.
Soon, it was just them, and Belle couldn’t help but stare at him from her position by the headstone.
Water fell in droplets off his face and hair, dripping down his neck and into the inner lining of his coat, yet he seemed to be unmoved by it, his head lifted and turned towards her, or, rather, turned towards him.
If anyone knew what it was like to be immobilised by grief, it was her. She’d thought she’d be one of those busy widows, the kind who couldn’t stop tending to the house and to the garden, pretending like he was just about to come home from work and give her a dimpled smile for keeping his roses pruned just so, but she wasn’t.
The grief had stopped all of that, for a while. It had been hard to move without it feeling like her heart would stop, and maybe she wanted it to, because then she’d see him again.
The man she was watching shivered. It was subtle, but that was the push she needed to finally approach him, to offer him an umbrella if nothing else.
She couldn’t watch someone else drown themselves in both their grief and rainwater.
“Hello,” she said softly, once she was in earshot, just loud enough to be heard over the sound of the rain hitting the graves around them.
The man nodded, but didn’t look at her.
From this distance, Belle could see that he was old. Not quite as old as Robert, but much older than she was. Still, she could tell that in his youth, he’d been beautiful.
Not full of refined and carefully calculated wit in the way that Robert had been, but messy, chaotic, yet somehow still gorgeous.
“Would you like an umbrella?” She asked, holding hers out to him, but he shook his head.
“No, I think he would’ve liked to see me suffering for him.”
Belle started to make a sound of disbelief, but it got caught in her throat. “Y-you knew him well, then?”
He snorted at that, the skin around his eyes crinkling, and Belle found herself laughing too, although she didn’t quite know why.
“That came out wrong,” she choked out through the laughing breaths.
“No harm done,” he said, and then followed it up with a sobering, “aye, I knew him well. Better than most.”
She could read the unsaid in the way he looked at her: better than you.
She wanted to bristle at that, but she was too curious. Robert had always been secretive about his life before her, and she figured it was because it hadn’t been particularly pleasant.
Over the years, she’d picked up pieces: a son he’d let down, an ex-wife he’d never really loved, a shady past he was never completely sure wouldn’t spring back up again.
No-one else from his past lives had shown up at the funeral, nor had she invited them. Robert wouldn’t have wanted them there.
Would he have wanted this man here, dressed in all black apart from the red around his eyes?
She had no idea.
This man’s presence was a complete surprise and, if she was being honest, a little bit of a commodity.
“Why are you here?” Belle winced as she heard the accusation in her phrasing. “Not that-I mean—”
“It’s all right, lass.” A pause. “I promised him.”
“You were friends?” She tried tentatively.
That amused him greatly, if his twitching lips were anything to go by. “Aye. I’m his oldest friend.”
He said it like he was quoting someone, the words not quite ringing true, but they seemed to be the closest thing that he could manage to the truth.
Robert had always been fond of bending the truth, living in the not-quites. (Was it something they’d learnt from each other?)
The man reached into his blazer pocket, producing a flask. He offered it to Belle first, and at her polite refusal, he took a long sip.
His sleeve pulled up as he did so, revealing the edges of a tattoo on his wrist.
Belle could just about make out the name ‘Milah’ inked on his skin. It prickled somewhere in the back of her mind, a familiarity that made her think she’d seen this tattoo before, but through the haze of grief, she couldn’t put the pieces together yet.
“How did you two meet?” He asked her, his voice rougher now, as he looked into the distance where Robert’s body was buried.
“Oh, um, he was looking for a specific book in the library where I work, and I helped him find it. He kept coming back, asking me for assistance. We started discussing the books, and then ourselves, and eventually, I gave him a book for free, and I wrote my number on the first page.” Belle smiled fondly, thinking back to how nervous Robert had been on that first date. How grateful she was that she’d taken that risk and asked him out. “How did you meet him?”
“He found me in bed with his wife.”
Despite herself, she startled at that. “W-what?”
The man chuckled. “Not quite as romantic, is it?”
A ghost of a memory came back to her then, of a name scrawled messily on buried paperwork she wasn’t meant to find, yellowing at the edges with age.
It wasn’t the tattoo she’d been familiar with, but the name it bore: Milah.
“Milah,” she tested it out, watched as the man carefully didn’t react. “That was her name, wasn’t it?”
“Aye.” He swallowed, taking another drink.
This was dizzying. It felt like she was finally opening bags she’d spent the last decade trying to pretend weren’t piled up in her basement, presuming that they were entirely off limits and sewn shut forever.
“Tell me something,” the man said suddenly, turning to Belle and searching her expression for something, though she wasn’t quite sure what. “Do you love him?”
There wasn’t judgement in his tone, like he knew Robert was a hard man to love, but Belle still scoffed at his audacity.
Yes, they’d had their ups and downs, but loving Robert Gold had been like breathing.
“Of course I do.”
Neither of them drew attention to their use of present tense.
“And he left you with-with enough?” He pressed. “You’re looked after?”
“Yes,” she replied slowly, taking the smallest of steps away from this stranger.
“Sorry, sorry. It’s just-I miss him,” the man muttered, so softly she almost didn’t catch it. “I know he’d call me a sentimental old bastard for saying that, but I can’t help it.”
And damn it, Belle understood.
Robert might have been quiet, reserved until he robbed you blind, but the silence he left was loud, loud enough to drive you mad if you weren’t careful.
“I know,” she said simply, and he made a noise halfway between a sigh and a laugh.
“I know you do.” The man lifted his left hand mechanically, rubbing at it with his right. “He did some horrible shit, you know, but he deserved to be loved. After everything we put each other through, he deserved you.”
He dug a hand into his breast pocket, the same one he’d stashed the flask in, and pulled out a small, black card. “If you ever need anything, and I mean that, anything, lass, call this number.”
He placed the card in her hand, and while she was examining the foreign logo emblazoned across the top (what did 815 mean?), he walked away, only stopping momentarily to brush a gloved hand against the headstone.
It was only when she looked up and found him gone that Belle realised she’d never asked for his name.