Definitely Not Mr. Darcy

The cabbie opened the door for her and the light went on inside the cab. The first electric light she’d seen in weeks. Electricity. It was like a miracle. No more drippy candles. The cabbie waited to close the door for her.

“I can close the door myself. Thank you.”

She looked up, beaming, at Bridesbridge Place, awash in floodlights, fluted columns under the portico. As she was about to close the door, a familiar hand stopped it from closing. It was Henry, dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt. He had a trench coat draped over his shoulders, and was wearing hip glasses. He looked amazing.

Chloe raised an eyebrow.

“I have a delivery for you, Miss Parker,” he said. “Excuse my reach.”

He set some sort of blanketed box on the other side of her.

“Thank you, Henry, but whatever it is, I real y can’t accept it.”

“It’s yours, Miss Parker. It’s not mine. And please do me the honor of reading this.”

He handed her an envelope sealed with a red wax W. He looked at her as if he were about to say something important. “Safe journey.” He tapped the door shut and bowed. He bowed!

Chloe leaned forward so the driver could hear her over the radio he just turned on. “Please, hurry.”

The cabbie peeled out of the drive, leaving Henry, Bridesbridge, and Chloe’s English life in the dust. The radio newscaster rattled on in his British accent, a blur of bombings in the Middle East, a murder trial in London, a hurricane off the coast of Florida, the horrific state of the economy. It was like she never left. The pace of it dizzied her.

Stil , she didn’t look back. She only looked forward, into the darkness.

“Heathrow, right?” the cabbie asked.

“Yes.” Chloe peeked under the blanket draped over the box. It wasn’t a box but a green plastic crate with holes on the side. She turned the thing around, but just as she was about to look under the blanket again, something exploded and flashed behind them. Henry’s letter slid out of her lap and onto the floor of the cab.

The cabbie braked. Chloe put her hand out in front of the crate, keeping it from rol ing to the floor. The cabbie shifted the car into park and hopped out. There was another explosion. A bolt of fear seared through Chloe. She popped out of the cab. Bam! Stil another explosion rumbled through her. She couldn’t see anything. With a shaking hand, she fumbled for her bag and pul ed out the glasses Henry made for her and put them on askew. Just then, the biggest, reddest fireworks she’d ever seen lit up the sky and cast a silhouette of Dartworth Hal with its classic, symmetrical facade. Two more fireworks, blue and white, exploded in the darkness. She heard more fireworks launch, and the anticipation of their size and their colors made her giddy.

The cabbie turned to her. “Just fireworks. They had me going there for a minute, they did.” He got back into the cab and shut his door.

Chloe was transfixed. Henry did this for her. She bit her lip. Another round of fireworks melted in the sky. Then another and another. They were al red, white, and blue.

The cabbie rol ed down the window. “Best be going now. The meter’s running.”

“You’re right. Let’s go.” Chloe took off the glasses, slid back into her seat, and shut the door. Flashes of colored light appeared in the cabbie’s rearview mirror, but she looked at the floor of the cab, where Henry’s letter had fal en.

“Meow.” The crate started meowing. Chloe sighed. “Meow.” She lifted the blanket and saw, now, that it was the tabby Sebastian had sent her.

Wait a minute. It was Sebastian who sent the cat, right? Or was it real y Henry? Anyway, how the hel was she going to take a cat on an overseas flight? “Meow.” She let the blanket drop. A cat?

She’d always liked cats, but there was something about a thirty-nine-year-old single woman with a cat. She’d be a cat lady. She’d end up eighty years old, in a dilapidated house with a thousand cats. She had to get this cat back to its home. Wait. That was exactly what Henry wanted. He wanted her to turn the cab around and bring the cat back. He wanted her to come back. To miss her flight.

The cat meowed again. Ha! Wel that wasn’t going to happen. She’d just pay the cabbie to take the damn cat back. Chloe bent down to pick up Henry’s letter. For a long time she just held it and rubbed her thumb over the sealed wax W. Nobody had ever put on a fireworks show for her before.

Was Mr. Wrightman so wrong after al ?

She broke the seal with her fingernails, freshly painted orange, a color she borrowed from Fiona. Outside the window, one quaint English vil age after another blurred by in the night.

“Can you turn on the light back here, please? I need to read something.”

The cabbie turned on the light and raised the volume on the radio. The rap music that was blaring out of it gave Chloe a headache. Certain words floated to the surface: ho and butt and bitch, and nasty. She sank down into the seat and held the cream-colored letter in front of her.