Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack by Heidi von Palleske

Author:Heidi von Palleske [von Palleske, Heidi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Literary
ISBN: 9781459746800
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2021-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

HE HAD NOT HEARD from her for weeks. Three weeks and three days to be precise. Usually her letters came at a rate of two a week. Glimpses into her day, her thoughts, and her heart. Some were pages of descriptions, others no more than a few words. Words that encouraged him to believe that she might return soon, even though she no longer had the excuse of having to go to refit her son’s artificial eye.

Siegfried poured himself a beer, tilting the glass at the perfect angle so that there was no head at all, till the last second, when he uprighted the glass, allowing for a two-millimetre layer of foam. He sipped and a bit of the foam tickled his upper lip before the amber liquid slid past his mouth and down his throat. Why hadn’t she written?

He went to the fridge, found some leftover potato salad and some cold cuts, and he set out to make a simple meal. Shaved ham on rye, mustard, and the leftover salad. He placed it neatly on a plate, with nothing touching. Why hadn’t she written?

He bit into the sandwich and thought the bread was a bit on the stale side. Should have toasted it. A bit of extra butter, though, would make it edible. Or more mustard, perhaps. But after his attempt to fix it, he gave up and threw the sandwich away. He wasn’t hungry, anyhow. Why hadn’t she written?

It kept coming back to the same question no matter how many times he busied himself with normal activities. No matter how many times he got on with things, it all came back to the question of her, Hilda. He didn’t even realize how much he had depended on the letters, how much he looked forward to them, how they had, over the years, become the thing he most looked forward to. And now she was withholding his greatest joy with the same ease in which she had once given it.

He hated the question that kept coming back into his mind because it made him consider all the reasons. She may have had a rapprochement with her ex-husband. And why not? He could easily have seen the great mistake he had made. She may have met someone else. Someone younger, perhaps, with more hair and a little taller. She may have decided it was foolish, there were too many miles and too many differences. She may have had a change of heart and simply stopped wanting him. That was the hardest possibility for him to accept, and yet it was also the one he thought most plausible.

If he could only reach her by thinking of her. If every time he imagined her, she would also think of him, wherever she was, and remember their times together, then, maybe then, he might stand a chance.

He did write to her. Two letters, in fact, after she had stopped writing. One was quite romantic, recounting their intimacy and telling her how he missed kissing her mouth and that his arms ached for her.

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