Page 109 of The Lost Heiress
Saoirse retrieved it for her. She leaned against the counter next to her and surveyed the room. She thought at first that Salvador must be in the bathroom, but she saw now that the door to the little bathroom that abutted the living area was open and the bathroom was unoccupied.
“Where’s Salvador?” Saoirse asked.
Florence didn’t seem to hear her. She spooned some soup from the pot on the stove and held the ladle out to Saoirse.
“Taste this, will you?” Florence said. “Chef never puts enough salt in for my liking.”
Saoirse acquiesced. The soup was warm and thick. She could taste the savory bacon and soft shells of the navy beans. In her opinion,Tabby had been a little too heavy handed with the salt, but she wasn’t about to say so.
“Mm,” Saoirse said. “It’s good.”
“Wonderful,” Florence said. She turned off the stove and spooned the soup into two bowls, one of which she handed to Saoirse.
“Tabby, where’s Salvador?” Saoirse asked again.
“Let’s sit, child,” Florence said.
“Why?” Saoirse asked, the panic starting to rise in her throat. “Just tell me where he is.”
“Now, none of that,” Florence chastised. “There’s no reason for nerves. Let’s just sit and eat, and I’ll tell you. There’s no use talking on an empty stomach.”
They sat around the little table in Florence’s kitchenette that was barely big enough for both of them. Saoirse felt almost sad thinking of Tabby sitting there by herself most nights, eating her meals alone.
Now, Florence ate several enthusiastic spoonfuls of soup, while Saoirse couldn’t even bring herself to lift her spoon to her mouth. She felt so jittery, as though if her skin were not there to contain her, she would fly everywhere at once.
“Tabby, please,” Saoirse begged. “Please, just tell me.”
“All right, child, if you must know,” Florence said. She set down her spoon. “Mr. Santos has gone.”
“Gone where?”
“He didn’t say,” Florence went on. “He just said that he was going, that he had a change of mind and that, well, he didn’t have the heart to tell you himself. Rather cowardly if you ask me, but there you have it.”
Saoirse went limp. Her shoulders slumped, and she braced herself against the table so she wouldn’t fall out of her chair.
“He’s gone?” she echoed.
Florence reached a hand across the table and patted Saoirse’s arm. “Yes, child, but I’d say you’re better off,” she said. “This is a blessing in disguise, really. That Mr. Santos was not a good man. Anyone whowould just run off like that, well, you’re better to let them run. There’ll be others. Better men. Or, maybe, you’re better off without a man at all.”
Saoirse nodded vaguely, though she wasn’t really listening.
Everybody leaves,she thought.
It made a certain sort of sense. Everyone else she’d ever loved had left her. Her father. Teddy. Why wouldn’t Salvador be the same?
She’d been too eager. She’d missed the signs. He had probably been pulling away for a while now, and she just hadn’t noticed. Maybe he had come here tonight to break it to her gently, because he was a good person, because on some level, he did care about her, just not enough. And then, of course, he’d gotten cold feet and couldn’t do it after all.
There was something wrong with her. Saoirse was sure of it now. There was a cold void inside her that people sensed when they got too close, something that they couldn’t bear to be around. Something that made her unlovable.
Before Saoirse registered what she was doing, she had stood up from the table. Then, she was halfway across the room.
“Child, where are you going?” Florence asked, but Saoirse didn’t answer her. Instead, she started running.
She was going to the one place she always went to when the world was crumbling around her, when the people she loved and trusted the most, the people who were supposed to care for and protect her, decided to abandon and betray her instead. She was going to that little stretch of beach that no one besides her ever visited, that lonely and abandoned patch of sand that matched her lonely and abandoned heart.
Florence knew this instinctively because she knew Saoirse better than anyone, and she followed her out into the storm.
A heavy gale was pushing up against the cliffside, so strong that it almost thrust Florence backward into the house when she tried to follow Saoirse out the back door. But Florence trudged onward, outinto the cold, wet night, calling Saoirse’s name, her voice swallowed up in the wind and the rain. She tried with all her might to run after her, to stop her, but she wasn’t fast enough. For the rest of her life, she would always wonder if Saoirse had meant to do it or if it was truly an accident, the way her feet slipped when she reached that wet and rickety staircase, the way she fell.
