Farraway Mist ?A Wattpad featured story?

Chapter 21: A Disheartening Discovery

"Thank you, boys," George said. "I keep telling her, but she insisted she was coming outside with us this morning."

Scout shook her head at the adorably concerned faces in front of her.

"You three are just ridiculous, you know?" she said. "I'll have you know that my Great-Aunt Edna did the Boston open water swim when she was pregnant with my cousin Jack with no problems whatsoever."

"You're not thinking of doing something similar, are you?" George asked, looking concerned.

"No, I'm not," Scout reassured him. "My point is that I'm merely pregnant, not an invalid, that's all," she reiterated.

She sneezed, and all three men jumped.

"Oh my god, you guys, you need to relax or you're all going to have strokes before this baby is even close to being born," Scout said. "Now go, before it starts to rain. I'm going to cut myself some of this delicious looking bread, and take some of these delicious looking cookies, and a pot of tea, and get back in bed with a book and the dogs.

"Scoot!" she rolled her eyes at them, and they scooted.

She went upstairs with her stuff, but instead of going to the bedroom, she went up to the third floor. She'd never really been up there, as there was simply no need. As far as she knew, no one went up there, except to clean. She cautiously went to the door that led to the attic, where the dogs had been shut up the night she'd walked out to the cliff's edge in her pajamas. She'd been curious about this room ever since that night, but George had shut her down when she'd asked about it, merely saying that it was just an old attic room where no one ever went. George was a terrible liar, however, and Scout could tell there was more to it than that.

She set her tray of food down on the table and carefully felt around for the key. She unlocked the door and climbed the steep stairs, quietly opening the door at the top of the narrow landing.

She was surprised at the bright, almost blinding light that assaulted her eyes when she pulled the knob. It was a long, narrow room that covered the width of the house. She could look out the windows on one side and see the cliffs below, and the beautiful blue ocean. On the other side, she could see the front garden, and the three round specks, one brown, one red, and one blond, of the three men as they moved around the yard, trimming hedges, gathering leaves, and covering windows, preparing for the winter season.

What a lovely room. It was furnished in a very comfortable and charming manner, with cozy furniture, a chair, a sofa, even a daybed, and a desk and bookcase. A large table filled the middle of the room, with scissors, glue, tape, a workstation of some sort. Someone obviously used it for something, as it had a phone and even a sound system with an iPod dock and everything, with a place to plug in a computer.

Scout turned and was startled at the sight of herself in a huge mirror that took up an entire wall of the room. It had a heart drawn around it, so she was framed in it as she looked at herself.

How odd.

Scout wandered over to look at the bookcase, and noticed that it was filled with magazines and albums, scrapbooks of some sort. Curiously, she pulled one out and opened it. It had a number and what looked like a date on it.

She was looking at photographs of George and his first wife Tessa, drinking champagne on a boat somewhere. No, she corrected herself, something this sumptuous could only be called a yacht. Tessa's head was thrown back as she laughed at something George said, her hand placed in casual possession on his arm. They certainly made a stunning couple.

Scout turned the page. The scrapbook was filled with pictures of Tessa and George, some from as far back as ten years or more, it seemed. George couldn't have been more than eighteen in some of them, it looked to Scout. They looked like high school students, like the prom king and queen, only they were at the Grammys together, getting out of a limousine, Tessa dripping in Harry Winston jewels.

"My Angel" read one of the captions. Scout recognized George's looping script. Scout could tell from the worn feel of the corners how often the pages had been turned, how frequently they'd been looked at.

Scout slammed the book shut, and the noise was loud in the silent, sunny attic room. So George, who professed to love Scout, who had supposedly moved on from his first wife, had this entire room in his house dedicated as a shrine to her, where he could come and worship her when he missed her too much, his beautiful, dead wife.

Scout pulled out some of the magazines from the shelf above where the scrapbooks were kept. They were old issues of fashion magazines and Victoria's Secret, most with Tessa on the cover, all with photos of her inside. She looked amazing. Her breasts were round and perfect, her waist small and defined, her skin tone golden, eyes smoldering, beckoning from the sand in her tiny bustiers, camisoles and bras, kneeling on various beds, not a stray pubic hair to be seen. She was perfect sex personified, everything Scout could never be. Her glossy lips were slightly parted in perpetual, silent invitation, and Scout wondered what George felt when he looked at them.

Scout carefully put the magazines back. She took a deep breath. She heard a shout from outside, and she recognized George's happy laugh. She blinked and swallowed, standing to go downstairs. She was in such a depressed and worried state that she didn't even notice the tiny sound of the bells ringing over the door as she retreated down the stairs. They rang, over and over in the stillness of the attic room.

She locked the door and placed the key back above her head, picking up the tray and heading to bed as originally planned. She climbed in, exhausted, even though it wasn't even lunch yet, and closed her eyes. Both dogs crawled in next to her, somehow knowing she needed comfort, and she curled up with them, taking what they had to offer.

The world had suddenly become a bleaker place.