Yes, it was. For all her doubts about her own competence, her desire to surrender the responsibility forever, she knew Papa was right. She couldn’t take the easy way and give up everything she and her father had worked to establish. To do so would betray what she and Quentin had found, in themselves and each other.
But she didn’t wish to go on alone as she’d done for so long, independent and free of personal ties. She knew what it was to love. Quentin was the lost half of herself. She needed him as he’d needed Fenris.
She had to tell him. Outright, with none of the usual protections against hurt and disappointment. She must find exactly the right moment, and pray she didn’t trip over her own tongue.
As for the Haven, she had also given that careful consideration on the trip back to the Valley. Though Quentin would eventually be cleared of guilt in the matter of Ketchum’s death, suspicion about the Haven’s residents would not so easily be dispelled. Now that May was leaving, Harper was cured, and Irene and Lewis had made such progress, it would be much less difficult to start again elsewhere, perhaps in another state. Begin another Haven, to help whoever needed sanctuary in a complex and sometimes frightening world.
A world Johanna would never view again with the same eyes. Or the same heart.
She spoke to her father of this and that, the trivialities that so often filled his once-brilliant mind. She took comfort in such things, as he did. She brought him his tray, helped him eat the dinner Mrs. Daugherty had prepared, and took him to his room to rest.
Then she went to face Quentin.
May was just leaving the parlor when Johanna found him there. She saw on his face that he’d been making his farewells to the girl; sadness and pride mingled in his cinnamon eyes.
He glanced toward the kitchen, where May had gone to join her mother. “May will be leaving us soon,” he said. “Her mother tells me that she has assembled certain damaging information about Mr. Ingram’s personal and business practices that will make him very unlikely to interfere with her decision to take May to Europe. It’s something of a miracle, how things have changed for both of them.”
“Indeed.” Johanna sat on the chair nearest the fireplace and folded her hands in her lap. “It is far more than I could have hoped.”
“But things have changed for all of us, haven’t they?” He sat down on the sofa opposite her. “I sometimes wonder if I’m dreaming. And then I look at you, and realize there is such a thing as heaven on earth.”
She shivered as if with fever. Now. Tell him now. But she was as tongue-tied as she’d feared, driven mute by his tender words. All that would come to her was a single stuttered question.
“What… what had the messenger to say of your sister? Is she well?”
“Better than well.” He leaned back, watching her with a secret smile. “The little vixen has married—an American, no less—and I didn’t even know it! Another long and complicated story, which she promises to tell me in detail when we meet again. But she’s never sounded happier. I confess that she almost doesn’t sound like herself at all. And she tells me that my brother’s family in England is well, his two young children growing like weeds. They’re all on excellent terms now…” His smile faded. “We’ve been too long apart. She said she’s had men searching for me for over two years, since I stopped writing. I owe my family a great many explanations.”
“There is… nothing to stop you from tendering them in person,” Johanna said, managing a smile of her own. “Your sister found you at the right time.”
“Yes. I’m myself again—more myself than I’ve ever been.”
“Then you should not delay going to her.”
He gazed at her with that long, unblinking, predator’s stare that Fenris had bestowed upon him. “Do you want me to go, Johanna?”
No! Not without me… She swallowed the cry. No need to become hysterical, Johanna. Calm, calm and prudence.