I’d brought the children—even tiny Silas, still less than a year old—to see their mother’s grave. Partly because I knew they needed this moment, however hard and however sad, because I had needed it when my own mother and father had died. That moment of standing in the graveyard and hearing nothing except the wind and the rustle of moving grass and the sounds of distant birds and insects, and knowing, knowing deep in your heart, that no other noise would come. That the silence was eternal now that our loved ones had finally passed away, and that our pain was the price of their newfound peace.
And partly, because back at the villa, their father was enduring unbearable and exhausting agony, and though I wanted them to be able to say goodbye, I also wanted to shield them from the worst of his suffering. Luckily, their nanny—a sturdy Welsh widow who’d been with them for more than a year—was here to help, even though I think she cried louder than any of the children as she laid her own flowers on Charlotte’s grave.
Me, I cried silently, but I cried the whole time we were there. Hugging Albert, who at nine, was trying his best to be manly and stoic. Holding Jane and Henry’s hands—who as the next eldest understood that their momma was never coming back. And then cradling Aurora and Silas at turns, both of whom were too young to grasp the pain of the moment.
I cried for Charlotte. I cried for the children, and for the little baby who I’d never get to meet. And most of all, I cried for Thomas. For the one goodbye I had never been prepared to face.
That night, after Bertha and I had put the sober, stunned children to bed, I went to Thomas, who like last night when I’d arrived, was sleeping.
Sweat clung to his pale skin and dark circles shadowed his eyes. A local woman had been hired to nurse him, and I sat by his bed and watched as she carefully sponged his face and adjusted his blankets. I knew that he’d been vomiting constantly since he’d contracted the illness, and a detached part of me was impressed with how clean she’d kept the bed and Thomas’s person. No doubt it was her assiduous care and attention that had kept him hanging on for this many days when it had taken Charlotte so quickly.
“The physician said most likely tonight or tomorrow,” she told me quietly in French as she built up the fire. “We can call him at any time to administer more opium, if your brother seems to be in a lot of discomfort.”
“Merci,” I said woodenly. I was grateful, for all of the kindness these strangers had shown my brother’s family in my absence. But the feeling was so small compared to the vast emptiness that yawned over the next sunrise. In a matter of hours, my brother would be dead. The man I loved and looked up to, the man I wanted to become like as I grew older. And no other thought could outweigh that. There was no distraction. No hope.
Only the heavy, all-consuming fog of imminent death.
I stared at Thomas’s handsome and drawn face, at the labored and shallow movements of his chest as he struggled to breathe. And then darkness crept into the sides of my vision as sleep mercifully claimed me.
According to the clock on the mantel, it was almost dawn when
I jerked awake, my neck stiff and sore from sleeping in a chair. I rolled my head from side to side, thinking about calling the nurse in, when I noticed Thomas looking at me with half-closed lids. His eyes—a heterochromatic blend of amber and blue and green that had always made the girls around the manor swoon when we were boys—were tired and bloodshot and sunken. But they were alert, and his mouth pulled into a smile when he saw that I was awake.
“Silas,” he croaked, and I pulled my chair closer.
“Don’t try to speak,” I said gently. “The doctor said you should save your strength.”
“For what?” he said hoarsely. “It hardly takes strength to die.”
I thought I was prepared for this, or at the very least, beginning to be prepared, but the bleak candor of his words felt like a punch to the throat. How could anyone ever be ready for losing someone they loved? And how could God ask someone to be cognizant of their own imminent death, as Thomas was of his own?
“Don’t make that face at me,” Thomas said, trying to sound teasing, but sounding only weary instead. “It’s going to be fine.”
“It’s not going to be fine,” I said, swiping at my eyes in a vain effort to contain my tears. I’d cried far too much in the last few days, and only a selfish prick would force a dying person to endure the burden of someone else’s sorrow.
“It is,” Thomas said, a thready confidence woven in his words. “I will get to be with my Charlotte again. And you will be an excellent father to my kids.”
There was no hope of holding the tears back now. Instead, I laid my arms on the bed next to him and buried my face so that he couldn’t see me sob.
“You will…you will take them, right?” The uncertainty and worry in Thomas’s voice was possibly the most tragic thing I’d ever heard.
I raised my head, not bothering to wipe away the tears this time. “Of course, Thomas. I already love them as if they were my own! But you—you are their father. I want them to have you. I want to have you. Who’s going to tell me what to do if you go? Who’s going to give me advice and then forgive me when I ignore it?”
Thomas gave me the ghost of a smile. “I got a letter,” he said, his eyes a little unfocused, and my heart dropped as I wondered if the sudden change of subject had something to do with his declining health, a loss of mental acuity, perhaps. But then he tilted his head to me, and said, “From Julian. He told me about Molly.”
Molly.
“She’ll take care of you,” Thomas murmured. “Like Charlotte took care of me. She’ll give you advice just like I did, but you won’t ignore it when it comes from her.”
“No, I suppose I wouldn’t.” A bitter lump formed in my throat. In the last few days, the ceaseless chores that accompanied tragedy had kept me from dwelling on the strained way Molly and I had left each other, but now that Thomas had brought her up, I felt another layer of anxious grief settle on top of what I already felt. “We didn’t leave things well,” I said hesitantly, not wanting to derail Thomas’s hopes for me on his deathbed…but also unwilling to lie to him or myself about what the future might hold.
“What happened?” Thomas rasped.
“We can’t talk about this, not now,” I protested. “We can’t talk about my romantic life when we should be—”
“Should be what?” Thomas interrupted weakly. “Sharing our most profound truths and long-held secrets?”
I couldn’t help but laugh a little through my tears. “Yes. I thought that’s what you did. When, you know.”
