Tim by Colleen McCullough

she had been too busy to see.
    Too upset to question the wisdom of her own conduct, she put her hand on his arm and stroked it softly, trying to soothe him as best she could. He turned toward her at once, and before she could jerk away he put his head down against her chest, drawing himself in against her like a small animal in need of a place to hide, his hands clutching at her sides. Her arms seemed to find a natural resting place across his back, and she dropped her head until her cheek rested on his hair.
    "Don't cry, Tim," she whispered, smoothing his hair back and kissing his brow.
    She sat back on her heels cradling him, all else forgotten save the reality of being able to give him comfort. He needed her, he had turned to her and hidden his face as if he thought her empowered to shield him from the world. Nothing could ever have prepared her for this; she had not dreamed life could give her a moment so infinitely sweet, so bounded with pain. His back under her hand was cool and slippery, like satin; the unshaven cheek resting just above her breasts scratched her skin like fine sandpaper.
    Awkwardly and hesitantly at first, she gathered him closer, hugging one arm gently but strongly around his back, her other arm protectively about his head, its fingers buried in his thick, faintly salty hair. The forty-three empty, loveless years of her life were canceled out of existence, payment extracted in this one small flake of time. With this at their end they did not matter, and if there were forty-three more just as empty still to be endured, they could never matter either. Not now.
    After a while he ceased weeping and lay absolutely motionless within her arms, only the slight rise and fall of his breathing under her hand telling her that he lived. Nor did she move; the thought of moving terrified her, for instinct told her that once either of them shifted even the smallest bit, he would withdraw or she would have to draw away herself. She pressed her mouth further into his hair and closed her eyes, profoundly happy.
    He gave a deep, sobbing sigh and moved a little to get more comfortable, but to Mary it was the signal that her moment was over; gently she eased herself slightly away from him, so that he still lay within her arms but could lift his head to look at her. Her hand in his hair tugged at it until he was forced to raise his face, and the breath caught in her throat. In the faint light his beauty had a fey quality about it, he was an Oberon or a Morpheus, unreal, other-worldly. The moon had got into his eyes and sheeted them with a glaze of blued silver; they stared at her blindly, as though he saw her from the other side of a filmy curtain. Perhaps indeed he did, for what he saw in her no one else ever had, she reflected.
    "Tim, won't you tell me what's making you so unhappy?"
    "It's my Dawnie, Mary. She's going away soon and we won't see her very often. I don't want my Dawnie to go away, I want her to keep on living with us!"
    "I see." She looked down into the unblinking, moonstone eyes. "Is she getting married, Tim? Is that why she's going away?"
    "Yes, but I don't want her to get married and go away!" he cried defiantly.
    "Tim, as you go on through the years you'll find that life is made up of meetings, knowings, and partings. Sometimes we love the people we meet, sometimes we don't like the people we meet, but knowing them is the most important thing about living, it's what keeps us human beings. You see, for many years I refused to admit this, and I wasn't a very good human being. Then I met you, and knowing you has sort of changed my life, I've become a better human being.
    "Ah, but the partings, Tim! They're the hardest, the most bitter to accept, especially if we loved. Parting means it can never be the same afterward; something has gone out of our lives, a bit of us is missing and can never be found or put back again. But there are many partings, Tim, because they're as much a component of living as meeting