Lost and Found on Foxglove Street (The Foxglove Street #9)

Chapter 29

29

Ryan strummed on his guitar, playing the melody he’d composed for Lost And Found . The notes had sounded full of promise when he’d first written them. Now, they were filled with melancholy.

“Why are you mooching around with that look on your face?”

Ryan glanced up and saw his grandmother standing in the doorway to the kitchen-dining area, her keen eye watching him from across the room. He set the guitar down against the coffee table and got to his feet.

“I thought you were still on the phone with your friend,” he said. “Shall I put the kettle on? You must be overdue some Earl Grey.”

“Never mind that,” Miriam said, and her refusal of the tea he’d offered made Ryan turn in surprise. His grandmother never refused tea.

“Why are you looking so gloomy?” she asked with a frown.

“I didn’t realise I was.”

“Don’t play dumb with me, my boy. I know you better than you know yourself. Ever since Grace left after we enjoyed our coffee and pastries this morning, you’ve been huffing around and looking miserable.”

“No, I haven’t,” Ryan said, annoyed to discover he’d failed to hide his mood from his wily grandmother. He was determined not to dwell on this any longer. “Anyway, if you’re finished with the phone calls you’ve been making for the last half an hour, do you want to go out somewhere together?”

“No, I don’t, at least not right now anyway,” Miriam said, her tone becoming more brisk by the second. “If you aren’t going to be honest and tell me what’s the matter, then perhaps I’d better just say it for you.”

Ryan braced himself, part of him wishing his grandmother would leave the topic alone, another part of him curious about what she might actually come out with.

“You’re upset because Grace might end up leaving for this big job opportunity in York, and, as you’ve only been seeing each other for a few days, you don’t feel it’s right to tell her how you really feel about her and that you don’t want her to go, in case it sways her decision about applying for the job, which you don’t think would be fair.”

Ryan blinked and stared at his grandmother for a long moment. “How on earth do you know about Grace’s job opportunity?”

“This morning I was about to come into the kitchen to find out why our coffee was taking so long when I heard the two of you talking. I wasn’t eavesdropping. I’m not so coarse. But when I heard Grace mention a job that had come up in York, and then I heard your response, I didn’t want to just barge in while you were both in the middle of what sounded like an increasingly uncomfortable conversation. I waited until there was a lull, which was right after you encouraged Grace to apply for the job, a comment which I think rather left the girl speechless.”

Once more, Ryan absorbed this flood of information and insight from his grandmother. She was more up to speed on all of this than he was.

“Why would me encouraging Grace to apply for that job leave her speechless?” Ryan scowled. “It might be the perfect job for her. She was sad and disappointed that she wasn’t being promoted where she’s currently working, so it makes sense for her to think about whether she ought to go somewhere else.”

Miriam’s sharp expression softened into a smile. “Oh, Ryan. You must know that you two are already very much falling in love with one another. But when you casually told Grace to jump into that job opportunity with both feet, despite the fact it might take her hundreds of miles away from you, she must inevitably have wondered if you felt the same way about her as she does about you.”

“I’d never get in the way of her career by making grand declarations that could discourage her from doing something that’s important to her.”

Ryan thought of what Grace had told him about the reasons why it was so important to her to make her job and her career as secure as possible. He understood those reasons. She’d endured instability and financial upheaval when she was growing up, and now she wanted to do everything in her power to make sure she was on solid ground in her career in the future.

If that meant leaving her current job, where her promotion prospects had ground to a halt through no fault of her own, and taking another job elsewhere that would propel her in the direction she wanted to go, then that’s what she should do.

“And anyway,” Ryan continued, determined to defend himself. “There’s no guarantee she’ll get the job. But she certainly won’t get it if she doesn’t apply for it. That’s all I was saying. I was just encouraging her to take the leap.”

“Quite,” his grandmother said, and gave him a gentle smile. “You are a good boy, Ryan, and you are a man of integrity. And I don’t doubt for one minute what you’re saying. However, I stand by my belief that, when it comes to matters of the heart, you can’t help waiting for the bubble to burst, just as it did all those years ago on that stupid music competition programme. When the bubble burst on that occasion, you were terribly humiliated, having just bared your soul publicly to the young woman with whom you’d become involved.”

“Thanks for the reminder.”

“But,” Miriam continued, cutting him off, “you cannot continue to distance yourself from the chance for love just because you fear things going wrong again.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“In a roundabout sort of way, it is exactly what you’re doing. If there’s even the slightest chance of Grace departing for a job elsewhere, you’d rather distance yourself from your feelings for her now, rather than have those feelings deepen further and for the pain to be all the worse should a time come when you must part.”

“All I was doing was encouraging her to do what’s best for her, Grandma!” Ryan insisted.

“And that’s why you are a man of integrity, just as I said a moment ago. But while you were encouraging Grace to apply for that job in York, you should also have told her that you’d miss her if she left because you feel very strongly about her.”

“It’s far too early to say anything like that. We’ve only known each other for a week.”

“When it comes to love, Ryan, time is irrelevant.”

Ryan opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again, silenced by his grandmother’s words. Seeing his expression, she let out a soft laugh.

“You don’t get to be my age without developing a spot of wisdom about life along the way, my boy,” Miriam said. “It’s been a privilege to see you and Grace together these past few days and see something lovely blossoming between the two of you. I’d hate for those buds to perish before they had a chance to fully bloom.”

She cocked her head, a determined expression now on her face.

“Which is why I’ve decided I’m leaving this evening, instead of staying here for another week as we originally planned.”

“What?” Ryan was stunned. “No, you can’t leave early! We’ve been looking forward to spending this time together, Grandma.”

“Yes, we have, but we can rearrange our plans and I can return some other time for the second portion of my stay. What I want most right now is for you to be with Grace and to tell her how you feel about her before she comes to the conclusion that perhaps you don’t feel anything at all. No matter whether she applies for this job in York, and no matter whether she gets this job in York, you must take a risk and tell her how you feel.”

Ryan sighed. “I don’t want to ruin it.”

“You won’t.”

“The other night, I started to tell her about that song I wrote, a song I wrote for her, but I couldn’t even pluck up the courage to share the lyrics with her because…”

When he trailed off, his grandmother stepped in.

“Because you bare your soul in your lyrics, and if she heard those lyrics and understood how you feel about her, she might… throw it back in your face? Just like that silly girl on that silly show threw it back in your face all those years ago?”

“Pathetic though it sounds, yes. That’s exactly what I’m scared of.”

“Which is exactly why I am leaving, so you can figure this out in your own space and in your own time, without your crusty old grandmother getting in the way.”

Seeing the resolve on her face, Ryan sighed. “I suppose you’ve already made your travel arrangements?”

“Naturally. That’s why I’ve been on the phone for the past half an hour. I was speaking to my cousin, Felicity, who lives in Bournemouth, and we’ve decided I’m going to stay with her for a week. We haven’t seen each other since your grandfather’s funeral, and it’s high time we had a proper catch up. A week by the seaside sounds perfect. She’s busy with other things this afternoon, but says if I catch an early evening train to Bournemouth later today, she’ll have a lovely supper planned for my arrival. I’ve booked my train ticket and I’m all set.”

Ryan gave his grandmother a hug. “I’m sorry you’re leaving early.”

“Don’t be. Just make good use of the free time you now have and tell Grace how you feel before it’s too late.”

His grandmother made it sound so simple.

“So, what shall we do in the meantime before you leave later?” he asked.

“I’ve already got a plan in place,” Miriam said, giving him a wink. “As this will be my last afternoon here, for a little while at least, I’ve decided I want to spend it with you and also with Grace, and so I sent her a message inviting her to join us for one final jaunt together before I leave.”

Ryan sighed, but he was smiling, too. He couldn’t help it. “You’re a meddler, Grandma.”

“Indeed I am,” she cackled. “I told Grace I wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer, and that we’d drive round to her house in the next half hour or so to pick her up. Naturally, little Stanley is coming along, too. I thought we’d keep things simple and enjoy exactly the same sort of time together we’ve been enjoying so far—a nice walk followed by a relaxed pub lunch somewhere. My treat.”

Miriam turned for the hallway at a fair clip. “I shall go and get myself ready, and I suggest you do the same. I think you should change your shirt. That muddy green colour does you no favours.”

As his grandmother vanished upstairs, Ryan looked down at his shirt. Perhaps it wasn’t his best colour, now that he thought about it. If he was about to see Grace again unexpectedly—which, thanks to his grandmother, it turned out he was—then he wanted to look good.

Picking up his guitar, he carried it to his work room and hung it on the instrument rack. In his head, he rehearsed the melody he’d written for the song Lost And Found . Ten minutes ago, it had felt melancholy to play the music on his guitar. But was that simply because he’d already started mentally distancing himself from Grace, just as his grandmother claimed?

As he climbed the stairs, he hummed the song.

And couldn’t help hearing the lyrics inside his head, too.

Lost and found, your heart is my home.

Was this really how he felt about Grace? And if it was, should he do what his grandmother was urging him to do, and tell her?

Staring at his reflection in his bedroom mirror as he swapped the green shirt for a navy blue one, he pondered the question and wondered how to answer it.