The Time I Loved You
Sometimes a correct prediction can leave an unpleasant taste. That morning, looking down at the rose garden empty of Leila Lewellin, Matthias suddenly understood.
After what she had endured, she would not show herself for a while. He had already anticipated as much the previous night while listening to Hessen’s report in his study. Yet actually confirming Leila’s absence with his own two eyes stirred a faint bewilderment in him.
What a thorough little fool.
Matthias gave a short, derisive breath and drew the thin curtain before turning away.
The theft had been nothing more than bait. Linda Etman’s true aim was to tear Leila Lewellin’s heart and smash her pride. If she could not stop her own son, then she would force Leila to give him up. It was a rather fine strategy, and Matthias could have applauded it without reservation. She had read her opponent precisely and driven the blade home; the effect might well prove considerable.
The game Mrs. Etman had set in motion had given Matthias far more amusement than he had expected. Listening to Hessen’s report, he had laughed more than once.
A leisurely weekend morning felt especially long and languid.
After changing his clothes, Matthias drank his coffee and looked out the window once more. Bill Remmer and the laborers were working diligently, but Leila was still nowhere to be seen.
Did she dare covet someone so far above her without even this much resolve?
With the urge to mock that pitiful girl thoroughly, Matthias stepped out for a light morning walk. The servants, well aware of his habit of stopping by the boathouse for a swim whenever he had the leisure, discreetly withdrew.
He hoped Leila was crying. So that he could still take pleasure in the day.
While he repeated that wish to himself, he found he had already reached the gardener’s cabin. The house, with no Leila sitting on the porch reading a book or bustling about the yard at various chores, was far too quiet.
Just as a flicker of irritation touched him, a pure white pigeon fluttered down. The bird seemed to know its destination without the slightest hesitation and flew straight toward the window at the rear of the cabin.
On impulse Matthias walked after it. The pigeon perched quietly on the half-open window. The realization that a letter was tied to its leg and the knowledge that the room beyond belonged to Leila arrived almost at the same instant.
Even when Matthias drew near, the pigeon did not flee.
A carrier pigeon?
Frowning, Matthias calmly took the bird into his hands. Even in a human’s grasp the pigeon remained docile. He was still studying the letter it had brought when a sound of weeping from beyond the window made him lift his head sharply.
In the room he had thought empty, Leila was there—lying as if dead upon the bed, weeping bitterly.
Even after opening her eyes, Leila lay for a long while simply staring at the ceiling. Bright light filled the room. The song of the birds living in the tree beside the window was as clear as the summer morning sunlight itself.
As her hazy senses woke one by one, the reality she had forgotten while she was ill returned as well.
And yet it was strange.
The clearer reality became, the calmer Leila’s heart grew. All those emotions that had risen to her throat and made even breathing difficult seemed to have melted away with the cold sweat of her fever and the tears that had spilled without her knowing.
Two days… or was it three?
After reckoning the time she had spent lying there, Leila slowly sat up. A brief dizziness came, but soon settled.
The sheets would need washing. The windowsill, already dusty again, needed wiping; the dishes her uncle had washed only roughly, still marked with stains, needed polishing; and then…
Thinking of the many tasks waiting for her, Leila went blank for a moment and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she quietly accepted the one thing that had to take precedence over all the rest.
She had to see Kyle.
“You shouldn’t be wandering around like this already, Leila. You need to rest!”
Kyle’s steps quickened the moment he spotted Leila sitting by the stream. She had been gazing down at her reflection on the water; now she slowly lifted her head to face him. The traces of a hard fever still marked her face clearly.
“Why did you come all the way out here? You could have just looked for me at the house.”
Kyle hurried to her side. Leila sat on a broad, flat rock at the water’s edge, arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees. The fine strands of golden hair that had slipped over her slender shoulders looked like part of the afternoon sunlight itself.
“I have something I need to say to you.”
Instead of her usual bright smile, Leila only watched him quietly.
“What important thing are you trying to tell me?”
Kyle smiled in her place. The Leila who ought to have smiled back still looked at him with an expressionless face. As if shaking off a bad premonition, Kyle made his smile even brighter.
“It’s nice to meet like this just the two of us sometimes, but you’re still sick. That’s what worries me.”
“Kyle.”
“I had something I wanted to say to you too, actually. Perfect. We can talk here.”
“Kyle.”
“Don’t worry about the stolen tuition money anymore, Leila. Father’s going to Lutz tomorrow. Your tuition will go with—”
“Kyle, I’m not going to university.”
Leila’s voice, cutting across his words, was small but firm.
“…What?”
Kyle, who had been sitting beside her looking at the stream, turned his gaze. The eyes that held each other were deeper and quieter than they had ever been.
“I’m not going to university.”
“What are you talking about? After you passed that difficult exam! I told you not to worry about tuition, Leila. Please, that stubbornness—”
“I’m not going to marry you either.”
Leila released the knees she had been holding and adjusted the shawl that had slipped down.
“I’m going to stay here, by Uncle Bill’s side, and live the life I’ve thought of for myself. I’m sorry, Kyle. I should have been like this from the beginning… I… I was blinded by greed for a little while.”
“Greed?”
“Yes. Even though I pretended otherwise, I must have really wanted to go to university and study. So I was going to marry you thinking I might be able to. I was going to use you.”
“Do you think I’ll believe a lie like that?”
Kyle gave a cold, empty laugh, but Leila did not waver.
If only it could be a complete lie.
A bitter smile touched the corners of her trembling lips.
For a time she had wondered whether it might be pity or compassion, but she soon understood. To Kyle, Leila Lewellin was a lover.
He had proposed with a lover’s heart, and she had accepted with a friend’s.
To claim there had been no greed beneath it would be a lie. That truth only made Leila feel smaller still.
“Anyone else, maybe—but you, Leila? You couldn’t be that kind of person.”
Kyle sprang to his feet; his long shadow fell over her.
“You love me. Don’t tell me you think I’m such a fool I wouldn’t know that?”
“I do love you.”
Leila did not deny it.
Do I love Kyle?
To that question she could nod as many times as he asked—thousands of times, if he asked thousands of times.
“As my closest friend, as an older brother, sometimes as a younger brother. That’s how I love you, Kyle.”
Even facing Kyle’s gradually hardening expression, Leila did not falter. She could not afford to.
“But that isn’t the kind of love you want, is it? Kyle… I simply can’t… love you that way. I can’t marry you with this kind of heart.”
“…It doesn’t matter.”
Kyle’s Adam’s apple moved slowly as he swallowed dryly.
“Whatever kind of love it is—if it’s love, I don’t care. Even if it isn’t the love I want, it’s all right, Leila.”
“No. I don’t want that.”
Leila rose slowly as well. Between the two of them standing face to face, a forest breeze passed. Watching the water’s surface and the glittering scales of light trembling in that wind, Leila steadied her breath.
This stream deep in the woods, not far from the cabin, had been little Kyle and Leila’s playground. Even Leila, who feared water, could dip her feet in a stream that barely reached her knees, so she preferred this place to the Schulter River.
When Leila sat on a rock in the shade of the trees and read, Kyle would roam the stream catching crayfish or small fish. Sometimes he brought her pretty freshwater shells or pebbles she liked. They laughed often. It was always joyful. It was warm.
The time I loved you was like that. There are so many memories more brilliant than those water scales, and that love is still unchanged, and it will stay that way forever—and still, I have to lose you.
Leila lowered her head as if to hide her reddened eyes.
“I can’t. I want to stop. I’m sorry, Kyle. I should have answered this way from the start.”
“If that’s all it is, then all the more reason you shouldn’t say such things. There are plenty of people who marry without love in this world. Anyway, you love me. That’s enough.”
Kyle stepped close and took her shoulders.
“Use me? Fine. Use me. I don’t care about that either.”
“Don’t do this.”
“If it’s you, it’s all right. I still want it. If I can be of help, use me as much as you like.”
“Kyle!”
“As long as it’s not something terrible like you leaving me, anything is fine.”
Kyle’s eyes reddened. As if steadying a weakening heart, Leila clenched her fists tightly.
“I don’t want that. I don’t want to be that way.”
“You really do want to go to university, don’t you? If you want it badly enough to use me, then you should hold on all the more.”
“Kyle… I want to marry someone I love as a man, as a lover. When I think of marrying you and going to Lutz, that feeling only becomes clearer.”
The cruel words she had least wanted to speak, Leila finally had to utter. The eyes looking at her grew distant and deep.
“I want to marry someone like that and live without shame. That desire is bigger and more urgent than the wish to use you to go to university.”
“Leila.”
“I thought about pretending I didn’t know and using you to the end, but then I think I would be ashamed of this choice for the rest of my life. I would regret it. I don’t want to live that way.”
“Leila Lewellin!”
“If I make that choice, I feel it would even taint the time and the heart with which I loved you as a friend and as family. That’s what I hate and fear the most.”
Leila’s voice, full of sincerity, trembled faintly.
Knowing it was time to become an adult, she had tried to make the most childish choice. Because she did not want to lose Kyle, because she had been so full of the dream of going to university together, the marriage she had decided upon now felt truly shameful and guilty.
Mrs. Etman had been right. The moment that woman had gone so far, the relationship with Kyle had already crossed a line that could not be undone.
Leila had no confidence she could endure Mrs. Etman’s hatred of her, a hatred deep enough to drive such a scheme. She could not expose the truth and strip away the image of the mother Kyle loved. She could not wound Uncle Bill.
Now nothing could be turned back, and revealing the truth would only tear everyone’s hearts. After shedding so many tears that it felt as though every drop of water had left her body, the sincerity Leila faced was this:
So I must turn away. Quietly, here.
It was the only way to protect Leila’s last scrap of pride, Kyle’s family, and Uncle Bill’s heart.
“Let me keep that time, Kyle.”
Looking straight at him, Leila continued in a low voice.
“Let’s do that. You and I.”
So let us let go of those sparkling, precious years now, and become adults at last.
Instead of the words she wanted to convey, Leila only let out a quiet sigh. Breath still faintly warm with fever slipped between her dry lips. Don’t cry. The charm she had recited with every step on the way here seemed to work; mercifully, no tears fell.
“Don’t go.”
Kyle, who had stood dazed, suddenly seized the wrist of the Leila who was brushing past him. His large, hot hand was trembling.
Opening eyes she had closed tightly, Leila pushed the hand away instead of answering. For all the force that had made her wrist ache, Kyle’s hand fell away easily, as if it had no strength left.
Leaving Kyle standing blankly by the stream, Leila walked on with steps that seemed to carry no weight.
Her eyes burned red, but until the moment she reached the cabin, Leila did not cry.