Epilogue
The sleepy town of Hamilton was in the midst of thin white snow. The main highway that drove right into the heart of the town, where the light dusting of frost were already melted away by the heat of running vehicles. In this small town, snow occurs occasionally but soon goes away on the very next day as tiny little heads of dandelions spring out in the warmth of the sunshine.
Hamilton High stood tall and proud with its drawing early 19th century delicacy. If only you were on the inside, anyone could see the major changes that were made in the last hundred years. The school was not only well known by its noteworthy heritage, it was also known by its unusual way of accepting students via difficult entrance exams and direct pathway to their university division. The strange thing was there were only three classes of twenty-five students per class in each year level from year 7 to 12 with roughly four-hundred fifty of the entire population in the school are high school students.
Today, the front gates of the school were closed. There were only few cars in the staff car park where teachers probably dropped in to do some work. It was winter and therefore the students were already off for their winter break in the middle of June. So no wonder the road was quiet during this time of the day when students would burst out of the school gates and cross the road dangerously to the other side to catch the bus downtown. It brings me back to that very day, when I stood here at the bus stop where I waited in a beeline of people, desperate to go after a very long day.
How long have I been since I stood on this very spot? I remembered I used to be alone, the wallflower that doesn’t want to share the same air and light as the sunflowers. I would always hang back, roll my eyes at the cool cliques and shy away from the bad boys, until a life changing moment hit me hard in the face. For once I was able to come out of my diaspora from my separation with my close friends from my second primary school that I moved to in the middle of my fourth year. I was sent to a prestigious school for the rich and famous in an identity of a missing foreign princess that I was substituting in a condition of restoring my family’s business.
All of that might’ve sound so cliché with the good old happy ever after, marry a prince blah blah blah but frankly, it wasn’t all that simple. I was surrounded by threats that may expose me of my true identity and becoming posh and let alone royalty was never easy. At one time I was engaged to a prince of another foreign country by name and someone I used to know back in Hamilton came in bringing a storm with him then turned out to be the prince’s younger brother. At first I loathed him, worried that his sudden appearance would ruin my newly established friendships but in the end, I ended up falling for him and he was my first love at the age of 18.
Still, the storm wasn’t over yet. The real princess had returned for revenge and wrongly accused her father for the death of her lover. After a little misadventure, my identity was finally let loose and everyone who knew me at that elite school shunned me including my friends who were badly hurt by my betrayal, but my first love didn’t leave me behind he was always there for me. It was just the matter of time, when they started to accept me again. Then on my eighteenth birthday, the truth of the princess’ lover’s death was revealed which drove me closer to my fate but unexpectedly made turn of events and became the goddaughter of king and queen for my heroic efforts.
Well that were few years ago and who knew that I decided to play gone missing right after the celebration of the anointing? I had my own plans and being noble wasn’t one of them. All I just wanted was helping my parents to manage their antique trading and it was a great sacrifice, the tittle, my extremely rich friends and him…But it was all worth it and expanding from a small family business to a worldwide known exporting company and auction house, I think I could die without regrets and the source of all of this was always that guy who flew miles from the other side of the world just for me.
Every time, I think of him, I never spoke of his name and whenever I hear his name, a sensational tingle wash over my body, leaving me feel cold and empty. When I said I don’t need love, it feels like a lie slowly eating me up till I’m totally convinced that I don’t need it but when I see other lovers, couples all around me, I feel cheated by my own heart and quickly make it up by distracting myself or working myself extremely hard. There was no day that I will go through life and didn’t think of him. Sometimes I wonder if he ever thought of me and why he didn’t come after me when I silently slipped away from his gasp that night but it is okay, I think.
The last time I saw my friends from Corsica Private Secondary College was a month ago at Nanette and Wilson’s wedding in Africa. Everyone I knew was there, Andrew, Ivan, Yuuki, Leo, Yume, Tatiana and so on. Yume was never so happy to see me again and she and Leo was finally together which I don’t think age and background really matter since Leo was one of the young princes of Denmark, therefore his life shouldn’t be as strict and complicated as the heir to the throne. Andrew wasn’t single either; he had found himself a nice woman that he’d met back in his high school days and the only person I worried about was Yuuki who seemed to dedicate himself in meeting his dead lines of his new manga.
The only person that I wanted to see, yet again too afraid to see wasn’t there. I didn’t know whether to feel depressed or glad and like what Ivan said just two week ago during my stay at one his holiday houses in Colorado, I should move on. It’s always easy to be said than to be done and it’s not like I can move on especially when I have that person’s million dollar ring on a chain around my neck, it’s like an unspoken promise waiting to be fulfilled. What was I going to do with it? Sell it to the jewelers? But even if I did go to the jewelers and get a quote for it, it’s not like I could even part with it.
I couldn’t help admiring the beautiful craftwork and unique design. It’s something you can’t get in jewelry stores. I was told the diamond in the very centre of the twisted eighteen carat white gold band was two carats with ruby side stones along the sides of the band till half way. On the lower part of the ring, delicate carved vines wrapped around the band, embracing the jewels. Now can you see how I couldn’t bear to get rid of it? It’s not only the reason why I can’t part with it because it held so many memories especially that painful memory when I chose to leave him and he had slipped it into my bag without me knowing till I was already up in the air, hundred miles away.
♥ U till death do us apart. I ran my finger over the engraving of my ring. I sighed at the sweet words imagining them being said out of the mouth of the man of my life.
Suddenly, two teenage boys came scooting past on their skateboards, sending wet snow flying everywhere. One knocked into me. I jerked, my necklace snapped and the ring slipped out of my fingers.
“Sorry Ma’am,” the boy who knocked me paused for a few seconds then went after his friend.
Ignored the apology and looked for the ring. I felt like my heart was being torn out and body began to shake at the thought of completely losing it. When I finally spotted it, the ring was rolling down the nearly dried up path. The necklace as rolling off the ring, but the shiny little thing kept on going down the hill. Quickly I’d bent down to retrieve the necklace then ran for the ring. A black gloved hand beaten me to it and held it up.
“Thank you,” I was about to reach for it when suddenly the hand pulled back.
I looked up. The Australian golden sun shone in my eyes and as soon as I stood up, the figure fell to the ground.
“Red surely is the colour of fate don’t you agree?” A pleasant and familiar voice made my stomach do somersaults.
Yes, that’s right I have red hair and I managed to keep going to the hair salon to get it straightened to keep it from going wild and trimmed it short into a fashionable and asymmetrical bob.
“Nicholas?”
“Yes it’s me, Nicholas John Michael Windsor, Duke of Manchester and would like to ask if Miss Sophie Moreau Harrison to marry me. Would you marry me?” He proposed to me with the ring.
The word “yes” screamed in my head and a smile broke out of my face no matter how hard I tried to bite my lip to stop it from showing my happiness, but there was one thing I was to be sure of first before I could accept his proposal after all he have been gone in my life for over five years.
“Can you answer my question first that have been lodging in my mind for quite a while now?” I asked.
“Go on, as you wish,” he beckoned me.
“Do you only love me because I look like Sophie Kesuch?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Nicholas blurted. “I love you because of who you are and not because of resemblance. Now that I found you again I have no intention of letting you go, so what is your answer Miss Harrison?”
“Well Mr Windsor,” I said in a posh voice. "How can I possibly refuse you since you have putted it that way? Also I have no intention to part with you ever again either.”
“YESSSSS!”
Nicolas’ sudden outburst shocked me. I watched him leap into to the air, punching and shouting like a lunatic as if he had won the thirty million dollars jackpot this weekend. He then jumped at me, sweeping me off my feet and twirling me round and round. I swear I could tell the bus that just stopped at the bus stop and everyone passing by must think someone had escaped from the mental hospital.
“Alright, you can put me down now!” I told him
“Never!” he shouted, waking up the sleepy town of Hamilton. “Because I love you till death do us apart and when that happens my soul would still only belong to you,”
I laughed at his words. It seems like, I’m the only one who has grown in the past few years and he basically didn’t age at all except for his appearance. When we finally get a place to settle down, we have so many things to catch up afterwards and he going to have a lot of confessing and explaining to do.
*****
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And that would conclude the story of Sophie Harrison.
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