He jumped to his feet, a moment of hope surging through him. “You found him? Where was he?”
“No, Your Grace,” Miss Spencer said as she reached him. “I –”
“What then?” he exclaimed.
She winced. “It is Miss Finch, Your Grace. She is here.”
Evander stepped back as if he was struck across the face. He had assumed that last night would be the last time he might ever see Miss Finch… he had hoped it would be.
“Wh… what does she want?” he asked.
“You best see for yourself.”
Evander followed Miss Spencer outside, brimming with nerves. It would be ironic if she was here to speak to him about her true feelings, possibly demanding that he admit his own. And with how weak he was, how broken, he might just be in the right place to finally speak them out loud.
However, the moment he found Miss Finch standing on the front driveway, when he saw the look on her face, he knew that his thoughts were misguided. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her cheeks were stained with tears. And the look on her face, it was one he knew well, because he had been wearing it all day.
“Henry!” Miss Finch cried when Evander stepped outside. “Have you seen Henry?” She rushed for him and did not hesitate to take his hands. “He is missing. I... I have looked everywhere. I thought… tell me that he is here.”
Evander looked sadly at Miss Finch. “He is not here, Miss Finch.”
“No…”
“Nor is Aaron, for that matter.” His brow furrowed with a thought. “I am thinking now that this is not a coincidence. My son, your brother…” He groaned and rubbed his eyes. “They have run away together.”
There was a small sense of relief felt in that moment. At least it meant that his son was not hurt and had not been taken. As Evander had suspected initially, this was done as a protestagainst what had happened. They were trying to teach Evander and Miss Finch a lesson.
“They… but why?” She looked pleadingly at Evander. “I do not understand.”
“It is my fault,” he sighed. “Last evening, Aaron and I had a conversation that did not go well.”
“What was it about?”
He winced and looked away. How could he tell her what he had said? That he had basically told his son that he would not be seeing Miss Finch or Henry again. It was spoken from a place of stubbornness and could not have been further from how Evander truly felt.
“It does not matter.”
“Of course –”
“That they ran away this morning suggests that they have been planning this for some time,” he spoke over her. “Now, we can hypothesize the why of it. Or we can try and find them.”
Miss Finch looked angrily at Evander, as if she knew that this was his fault. In fact, he wanted her to blame him. He wanted her to be angry! Since she had told him that she was leaving, and since he had treated her so coldly, she had been nothing but understanding and even forgiving.
That was not the woman, who he knew, and it was certainly not the woman whom he had… Whom he had fallen for. He deserved her rancor, and he braced for it.
“You are right,” she said with a sigh. “We can talk about such things later. First, we must find them.”
“Do you have any idea where we might look?”
They started by going to those same markets that they had visited what now felt like a lifetime ago. The markets were busy, hundreds of people streaming in every which way, and it was an effort to push through the crowds as they searched.
“Aaron!” Evander cried out.
“Henry!” Miss Finch joined in.
As they walked, Evander considered taking Miss Finch by the hand and holding her close. He wanted to pull her into his body and tell her that everything would be fine. He saw how scared she was, how she needed his comfort, but he was simply too afraid to give it. What if she rejected him? What if he only made things worse?
They searched the market for hours and came up with nothing.