Chapter 5
CHAPTER
THE DAY AT Marigold House passed in a blur of lessons and small emergencies.
Willie jumped from the stairs twice more, despite Eleanor’s warnings.
Each time he landed he had that same wild grin, as if gravity were a game he was winning.
I flinched at the thud of his feet against the floorboards, my heart seizing before my mind could catch up.
He stopped once Lucy told him he had to help her in the kitchen peeling onions.
Agnes was quieter than usual. I spotted her three times standing at the window, her breath fogging the glass, her eyes fixed on the elm tree in the garden. On the patch of earth where she’d buried her bird skull.
“It hasn’t sprouted yet,” she told me at lunch. “Maybe I need to water it?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said nothing.
Baby Jane was the only one who seemed at peace.
I found her in Rosie’s arms between lessons, her small fist wrapped around Rosie’s finger, her eyes half closed and dreaming whatever dreams infants dream.
She looked good, her cheeks round and pink.
No trace left of the cold. She squirmed and reached for me.
“I think she likes you,” Rosie said, bouncing her gently. She looked from Jane to me. Her eyes narrowed in that appraising look she got when an idea formed. “You know, she looks like you. Same hair color. Same eye color. Could pass as your own daughter.”
I laughed at that.
“Well, why not? Especially if you move in.”
“Eleanor told you.”
“Of course Eleanor told me.” She grinned. “We’re all just waiting for you to say yes. And I’m sure Jane here would love having you around all day.”
Jane gazed up at me with those dark brown eyes and stretched her hand toward my face.
I let her fingers brush my cheek.
“All I do know, Miss Jane,” I said, “is that I’ll read to you once I finish giving the children their lessons.”
Afternoon came quickly and the tram ride from Marigold House to the hospital felt shorter.
I made the journey without thinking, my feet carrying me through the familiar route, but my mind caught on Willie’s reckless leaps from the stairs and Agnes’s unwavering preoccupation with her bird skull.
Then of course, there was darling Jane, how she fell asleep in my arms shortly after I read the words “Once upon a time,” but still, I finished reading the story even as she slept.
The ward was quiet, many of the men slept and the nurses took their tea.
I pulled the chair closer to Edward’s bed. Dust motes floated in the pale light from the window.
“I brought something different today.”
I reached into my satchel and pulled out the thimble. I hadn’t planned to bring it. I hadn’t planned to show this to anyone, ever. But maybe I needed to talk to someone about this, anyone other than my brothers.
“When I was young,” I said, turning it over in my fingers, “I told a boy I would give him a kiss if he liked.”
Edward remained still, chest slowly rising with each breath. I knew he was listening.
“This boy, he didn’t understand what I meant.
He held his hand out, expecting an object.
This told me he didn’t know what a kiss was.
I was a little embarrassed. My sewing kit was out so I reached for this and placed it on his palm.
A thimble. He’d never seen one before. I could tell.
So he decided it was a kiss. That was Peter, thinking that everything was something one could hand over.
A thing someone could turn over in their hands. ”
Somewhere down the ward, someone coughed, and there was the soft percussion of footsteps.
“He gave me a button in return. An acorn button, from his shirt. He said it was his kiss to me.” I closed my fingers around the thimble. The metal was warm now, from my palm. “The day we planned to leave, we were in such a hurry. I must’ve left it behind in the treehouse.”
I sat there for a long moment, letting the silence settle.
“He didn’t care about anyone but himself.”
I slipped the thimble back into my satchel. My fingers brushed something else. Cool metal. A familiar weight.
I hesitated. Then I pulled it out.
I held the pocket watch in my palm. Its face clouded with age. Its hands still dutifully ticking. I had carried it for twelve years. Through every move of my day and every sleepless night. And those moments when I’d stand at the Thames thinking of him and the sea …
“This belonged to someone else,” I said quietly.
Edward didn’t move. Didn’t respond. But I kept talking anyway. For so long I’d told others’ stories, and this was the first time I’d ever told anyone this story.
“His name was Roger. A pirate’s son. I know how that sounds. Believe me. But it’s true. He lived on a ship. I was supposed to bring him back here to London …” I couldn’t finish.
The watch ticked in my palm. It shouldn’t tick. It hadn’t been wound in twelve years.
“He was so kind,” I said. “That was the thing about him. He was kind in a place where kindness got you killed. He brought me food when I was hungry. Showed me where to hide … when the other one was angry. He taught me which berries were safe to eat and which paths to avoid, and he showed me the way home.”
My throat tightened. I swallowed against it.
“He gave me this watch. It comes with me everywhere. And sometimes I hold on to it like I’m holding on to him.”
I turned it over. On the back, scratched into the metal were two letters: R.H.
Roger Hook.
“He died saving me.” I couldn’t finish.
The ward was silent around us.
I looked at Edward’s face. At the stillness of it. The peace.
“He was the most real thing that has ever happened to me, and sometimes I feel like I can’t move forward because parts of me are stuck back there on that island.”
A tear slipped down my cheek. I wiped it away with the back of my hand.
“I’ve never told anyone that,” I said. “Thank you for listening. No one ever wanted to listen to me … not really.”
I sat there for a long moment, the watch in my palm, the tears falling faster now. I didn’t try to stop them. There was no one here to see. No one to judge. Just Edward, silent and still, holding my secrets.
I slipped the watch back into my satchel. Pressed my palms to my eyes. Breathed until the shaking stopped.
When I looked at Edward again, he was the same. Unchanged. Unhearing. Or so I thought.
His right hand had moved. Just slightly. Just enough that his fingers now rested at the edge of the bed, reaching toward where my hand had been.
I stared at it.
“Edward?”
No response. No movement.
But his fingers stayed there, extended, as if waiting for me to take hold.
I reached out and held his hand.
And somewhere deep in the corridor, I thought I heard something faint. A child laugh.
Back at home at my desk, I twisted open the fountain pen. My hand shook as I thought about what to write.
The clock ticked. Slow. Steady.
Liza had gone hours ago. She’d left an extra bowl out on the kitchen table. “I fear you’ll be up late, and so in case you’re hungry there’ll be something for you in the kitchen.”
She was right. I didn’t know when sleep would come.
The light beneath the nursery door. Edward’s voice whispering into nothing. My journal in Willie’s hands. Birds and feathers and shadows that moved wrong.
I turned to the page and began to write the letter I dreaded to send.
Dear John,
I’m worried and I think we three need to talk, you, me and Michael. I know you don’t like to speak of it. You’d said long ago that dead things stay dead, but I don’t think that’s true. Not anymore.
I paused, the pen hovering.
The fire hissed, collapsing inward. I pressed on.
Strange things have happened all day. So much I don’t even know how to tell you, but I have to tell you this. At the hospital today, a soldier said his name, and before you think to yourself that yes, this is a name that others may have known, that I’m sure of it. I know who he was speaking of.
My hand faltered. If I wrote more, I would make it real. But it had always been real. We were all just encouraged to forget, and I was forced not to speak of it.
Beside my hand on the desk, Roger’s pocket watch lay open.
Beneath the scratch of my pen, I could hear it ticking. Each tick a pulse.
I brushed my thumb along the rim, tracing the faint groove worn by his fingers. The metal was cool, familiar.
We were so close, Roger.
I closed my eyes, willing the memory of him, and I was there again. Not in the horror of what came after, but just before it, when we had some moments of magic on the island.
Salt wind filled my lungs, brined and sharp. The sea licked my lips. Ropes creaked, gulls called, and the ship swayed gently on the open water. Above us, the black flag snapped in the wind, white skull grinning down at nothing. Beside me, Roger swung his legs over the edge, face tipped to the sun.
“Is that where you got your name?” I pointed up at the flag.
He smiled. “When Father brought me aboard, he gave me a new one. Named me after the flag.” He glanced up at it, squinting against the light. “Jolly Roger. I like it. Suits me better than whatever I was called before.”
“Father’s been good to me,” he went on. “Taught me how to read the stars. How to map storm lines on the horizon. How to hold a course when the sky grows dark and the sea turns against you.” He picked at a splinter on the rail. “Soon he’s going to show me how to navigate the black waters.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Father thinks I’m fourteen.”
Roger looked quickly and rubbed his eyes. He seemed on edge. As if trying to brush a memory away. And it was then that I knew. He had also belonged to Peter once.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …”
“He left me in the swamps,” Roger whispered. “Said I’d slowed the story. Father found me there. Half of me was in the mud. When Father reached in to pull me up, well, that’s when it happened. He sacrificed a part of him to save me.”
A shadow lengthened over us.