Chapter Fourteen #2
“Julia, look at me.” Emmy waited until Julia had turned her head back to face her. “You know how much I love my brides dresses. You of all people know how important they are to me. I have a chance for them to become real. Some chances in life you only get once. Just the one time. I have to go.”
Julia stared at the brides box that lay between her and Emmy. Her expression was part loathing and part desire. At that moment Emmy could see that Julia hated the brides inside that box as much as she loved them.
“Take me with you,” Julia said.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can!”
“Julia, think for a moment. You are happy here. You have a lovely room. And Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Rose. You have the tea set to play with and Guinevere and Henrietta and all their beautiful clothes. Next week school starts, and you’ll get to play with all the little girls you have seen at church and in the village.
You have the chickens to take care of. And the pond and the turtles. You love it here. I know you do.”
A tear had formed in the corner of each of Julia’s eyes. “Don’t you love it here, too?”
Emmy moved closer and put an arm around her.
“This is a lovely place. And Charlotte and Rose are wonderful people. I am not leaving because I don’t like it here.
That’s not it at all. If I didn’t have this chance to make my dresses real, I would stay.
But I have to go. Someday when you’re my age, you will understand why. ”
“I want you here with me.”
“And I would stay if I could. But I can’t. And you will be fine here without me.” Emmy tightened her arm around her sister.
For a moment Emmy thought she had Julia convinced, but then she felt her stiffen in her half embrace.
“No.”
“Julia.”
“Take me with you or I’m telling Aunt Charlotte.”
Emmy’s breath caught in her throat. She put both hands on Julia’s shoulders to turn her sister toward her. “Julia, I can’t take you.”
Julia wriggled out of Emmy’s grasp, climbed off the bed, and stood in front of her. “Take me with you or I’m telling Aunt Charlotte right now.” Julia’s gaze on Emmy was like steel.
“Don’t do this, Julia. Please?”
“Don’t go, then. Stay here.”
“I have to go!”
“Then take me with you. Or I’m telling Aunt Charlotte.”
Emmy wanted to scream at her. Throw something. Pound the wall. She could do none of those things.
She could only agree to take Julia and then hope that when she got ready to leave in the middle of the night, Julia would not hear her and she could steal away unnoticed.
“All right,” Emmy said. “I’ll take you.”
Julia stared at her for a moment, wondering, it seemed, whether she had heard Emmy right. She had expected Emmy to tell her she would stay; that was clear.
“When?” Julia asked.
“Very early tomorrow morning, before the milkman comes. But you can’t pack anything, Julia.
You can’t bring your suitcase or your fairy tale book.
They’re too heavy. Do you understand? You have to leave those things here and you might not see them again.
I’m leaving all my things here. I’m only taking the brides box. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Julia nodded, a pensive look on her face.
“And you can’t be looking at me strangely tonight at supper or asking me questions or anything. You have to act like everything is normal. All right?”
Julia seemed deep in thought. She didn’t answer.
“All right?” Emmy said again.
“I know how to be normal,” Julia said, crinkling an eyebrow.
From downstairs the girls heard Charlotte calling Julia’s name. It was her turn to set the table.
Julia stepped to the door and opened it. “I’m coming!” she yelled.
“Not a word, Julia,” Emmy murmured.
“I know how to be normal,” Julia said again, and was gone.
For the rest of the afternoon and evening Julia kept her word.
She gave no indication at all that she expected to run away with Emmy that night, not even the slightest of nervous behaviors.
They listened to the BBC for a little while after dinner.
But there was nothing except news of air battles raging over the English Channel.
Charlotte switched it off and the four of them worked on a puzzle.
Finally, a little after nine, Julia was sent up to bed and Emmy joined her.
Thinking Emmy was still having menstrual cramps, Charlotte thought nothing of it.
She sent her to bed with another cup of herbal tea.
Up in their bedroom Emmy laid out on her bed what she could fit in the satchel.
The coin purse that held the only money she had—all of her paycheck from her two months’ work at Primrose and the little bit Mum had sent with them—a package of biscuits she had taken from the pantry, changes of underwear, toothbrush and paste, and the brides box, which she wrapped in a shawl so that the corners wouldn’t bite into her side as she walked the five miles to Moreton with the satchel over her shoulder.
The envelope inscribed with Charlotte’s name she had already removed from the brides box and it now lay on the bed.
“What did you write in Aunt Charlotte’s letter?” Julia asked.
“The same thing I wrote in yours.” Emmy picked up the letter and set it on the nightstand so that Charlotte would see it in the morning.
“But you have to tell her I went with you. She won’t know I went with you unless you tell her.”
Emmy had hoped Julia would not think of this.
But as she stood there staring at Emmy, she knew she would have to do exactly what her sister said.
Julia and she had been together every minute since she’d opened the brides box and found the envelopes.
She knew Emmy hadn’t written anything additional in the note to Charlotte.
Emmy decided it didn’t matter. In the morning when Julia awoke, Emmy would be long gone.
Charlotte would put two and two together.
She would understand why in the first part of the letter Emmy asked her to watch over Julia and in the postscript she told her Julia was coming along, especially since Julia would be there to fill in all the blanks.
“Get me the pen off the desk.”
Julia did as she was told. Emmy retrieved the letter, lifted the single sheet of paper out, and smoothed it onto the nightstand.
Underneath where Emmy had signed her name she added:
P.S. Julia has asked to come with me.
She put the note back inside its envelope and repositioned it on the nightstand. Then she told Julia to put on her pajamas.
“Why aren’t we sleeping in our clothes?” Julia said, frowning.
“Because they will wrinkle. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves, do we?”
Julia shook her head gravely. Then she changed out of her clothes, draped them on the bedpost, and hopped under the covers.
Emmy had gotten into her own pajamas and was about to crawl into bed also when Julia sat up. “I need a drink, Emmy. I’m too excited. I’m thirsty.”
“You’ll have to use the loo if you drink too much.”
“Just a tiny sip, please? I won’t be able to sleep if I don’t have one. I’m too excited.”
Sighing, Emmy got up out of bed, opened the door, and headed downstairs. Rose had already gone to bed and Charlotte was locking the back door and turning out the lights.
A wave of guilt rushed over Emmy as Charlotte smiled at her and asked if there was anything she needed.
“Just a sip of water for Julia,” Emmy said.
Charlotte laughed lightly, grabbed a juice glass from the cabinet, and filled it half-full from the tap. “That enough?”
“Perfect,” Emmy said, taking it from her.
“Good night, Emmeline.”
“Yes. Good night. And thank you.”
Emmy could feel Charlotte’s gaze on her as she left the kitchen. Emmy wanted badly to run from those compassionate eyes. But she walked calmly with Julia’s water in her hand, took the stairs slowly, and opened the bedroom door.
Julia was sitting up in bed, eager for her drink. She gulped it down in one swallow.
“Won’t Mum be surprised to see us?” Julia said as Emmy took the glass from her.
Emmy stroked her sister’s head. It was difficult to stay angry with her. “Yes,” Emmy said, unable to say anything to the contrary.
She tucked Julia in.
“Wake me up when it’s time to go,” Julia said, yawning.
“Sweet dreams,” was Emmy’s answer.
She turned out the light and got into bed, turning her back to Julia so that her sister would not see that Emmy kept her eyes open.
When Julia’s breathing was slow and even, Emmy turned over, parted the blackout curtains, and watched her sister sleep in a spill of moonlight. She gazed up at the sky outside the window, thankful for the cloudless blanket of stars and generous moon.
She did not mean to doze at all, but the next thing Emmy knew, the clock downstairs was chiming two.
She sat up in bed, grateful it was only two and not later.
Emmy could not risk falling asleep again.
She got out of bed quietly and listened for any sounds in the house that would indicate that Rose or Charlotte was awake.
Hearing nothing, Emmy slipped off her nightgown and stuffed it into the satchel.
She dressed in the same clothes she had worn the day before, grabbed her jacket from the back of the desk chair, and bent to retrieve the satchel.
When her knees straightened, an owl hooted outside their window and Julia’s eyes snapped open.
“Is it time to go?” she whispered.
Emmy’s mind raced for a way out of this predicament. She had time. She could wait a little longer.
“Not yet. Go back to sleep.”
Julia sat up. She saw Emmy’s made bed, and that her big sister was in her street clothes. “Why aren’t you still sleeping?”
“I—I just can’t sleep anymore.”
Julia tossed her legs over the side of her bed. “Me, neither.”
“Jewels, it’s not time to go yet.”
“But I’m not sleepy anymore.”
As Emmy pondered her response, the voice of reason seemed to murmur just at the edge of sound that this was a moment that demanded she weigh the consequences, consider the possible outcomes.
She stood at a crossroads, half-aware that her choice would send her down a path from which there could be no turning back.
But instead of two choices, she saw only one—because it was all she really wanted to see.
Emmy mentally shooed the whispering voice away.
She would look back on that moonlit night and wonder and wonder and wonder what she would have done had she considered that the owl that awakened Julia was divinely sent so that she wouldn’t leave Thistle House that night.
Had it been summoned to the tree outside the window and called her little sister out of sleep so that Emmy might stop and consider that there is always, always the other road to choose, even if it seems to be nothing more than an unpaved path in the middle of nowhere?
On that night, the night Julia could not fall back asleep, Emmy saw only what she wanted to.
“All right,” Emmy said, sighing as loud as she dared. “Let’s go, then. Don’t make a sound, Julia. Not a peep.”
As Julia dressed by moonlight and Emmy made her bed, Emmy decided she would take Julia straight to the flat.
If Thea wasn’t home, she’d tell her sister to wait for Mum to get home from work.
Emmy would still have plenty of time to make it to Knightsbridge by four.
She would deal with Mum’s anger later, if she had to.
And as for Julia . . . Well, Mum could easily get her sister back to Thistle House on Sunday. Easily.
Mum had the address.
She had the day off.
She owed Charlotte a visit anyway.
There was nothing to worry about.
Emmy grabbed her satchel, and together she and Julia tiptoed soundlessly down the stairs, out the front door, and into the sparkling night.