18. Chapter Eighteen
William
Matilda tended to the garden, where she enjoyed plucking weeds and speaking to the flowers.
She believed they would grow more beautifully when given love through words.
William once tended regularly to those flowers alongside her where they spun tales, like bedtime stories made specifically for the garden.
If he had such an imagination, he lost it years ago.
But at least there, she would be the most comfortable, so William took the opportunity.
“Mother,” he called hesitantly.
“Oh, you’re out early this morning.” She gestured for him to join her.
He knelt. With his gloves on, he was always prepared to pull weeds.
He added a handful to the bucket behind them, wishing that was all he was there to do.
He always suffered sleeping, but last night was worse than usual.
Nothing eased him into comfort, so instead, he laid in the dark, considering how to break the news to his mother. No scenario ended well.
“Is there something you want to discuss? You’re never out this early with me.” Matilda had joy in her eyes, a hopeful gleam he hated to snuff out.
“There is.” But he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
He hadn’t wanted to leave home since his return, even if he worried his presence caused more harm than good. Matilda worried about him traveling to town after his return. She followed him around the house, trying to make up for the years lost. He had no complaints.
But now he had to leave, and she would not take that news well.
He thought of every reason he could give, the kindest way to tell her the truth.
Nothing fit. The moment he mentioned leaving, even if he conjured a lie less frightening than the truth, Matilda would panic and there was no telling what could comfort her.
“Well, what is it?” she asked.
“There is potential news concerning my missing patients that requires my attention. However, it will take me to the countryside,” he replied hesitantly.
Matilda’s hands halted in their work.
“The king has kindly brought in another doctor to oversee the clinic while I take a short time to travel.” He hated lying to her, but telling her he’s going to Faerie wasn’t an option. She may tie herself to him and force him to take her.
“A short time?” Her breathing turned ragged. “How short?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
Her ripping of the weeds became frantic. “Then it may not be short. How long will you be gone?”
“It’s for work. I’ll be perfectly safe.”
“You don’t know that.” She grabbed the weed bucket and lunged to her feet. Her heels clicked against the stone path. “What if you’re gone for a year or more? What if there’s trouble, if it’s dangerous? You just got home!”
“I have been home for two years.”
“And they took you for five!” Matilda’s back went rigid, then she spun on him. Tears brimmed in her eyes. “Ask someone else to go. You have plenty of work here.”
“Mama,” he whispered.
“You can’t go. I won’t allow it. Absolutely not.” She stormed toward the house, past Robert, standing in the doorway. He overheard and looked after his wife, but wouldn’t look his son in the eye. His body swayed between following Matilda or approaching William. Then he sighed.
“Must you go?” Robert asked.
William thought of Nicholas, how he so easily noticed Robert refusing to look at him. An itch formed beneath his skin. He scratched, gloves creaking from the frantic movements of his fingers.
“Yes, it’s important,” he replied through clenched teeth.
Robert wanted to argue. William always noticed that now, the slight tension in his father’s shoulders when someone said something he didn’t agree with. He wished Robert would say something, if only to encourage himself to look at William and truly see him.
“Then I shall speak to her,” he said, leaving William disappointed. “When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning,” he answered.
“Have you told your brothers and Alice? She will be distraught if you leave without saying goodbye.”
“I think it’s best that I don’t.” He worried they would talk him out of it, or see through his lies. At least this way, Alice would learn through her parents and he wouldn’t break under the pressure of her tears.
Robert frowned. “Well, we should spend today together, then. It will ease your mother.”
“Will it ease you?” He hadn’t meant to ask that, nor do so with such bite.
“Nothing will make your leaving any easier, especially when we aren’t sure how long you will be gone.”
His hands clenched, irritated by the admission that he couldn’t tell if it was a lie or not.
How could he believe his father wouldn’t be relieved by his absence when, for two years, Robert wouldn’t look at him?
He felt like a plague in his own home, gliding through the halls to erode whatever he touched.
“Are you certain my departure won’t relieve you a little?” he asked, jaw tight enough to make his teeth ache.
“Why would you ask something like that?” Robert frowned, but that was it. William’s blood boiled. He wasn’t angry, only hurt.
“How could I not?” He approached, so Robert no doubt saw him from the corner of his eye. The man remained perfectly still, facing away from a son who craved his attention enough that he felt mad. “Look at me!” he screamed, voice breaking.
Robert finally did, but his expression broke instantly. His eyes darkened, swelling with tears that didn’t shed. His hand shook atop his cane and William’s heart broke and screamed and cried, wondering why his father couldn’t stand the sight of him.
“Have I done wrong? Ever since I returned, you cannot bear to look at me. Have I disappointed you?” he whimpered.
A tear fell to drip off Robert’s chin. “No, William, no.”
“I am not the son you remember. I returned broken and you cannot stand the sight of me.”
Robert reached out a hand. “That isn’t it at all.”
He retreated. “Isn’t it? You needn’t lie to me. I cannot stand the sight of me, either. I hate who I have become and so desperately wish I could return to the boy you and Mother and my brothers so loved. I am trying, Father, as hard as I can.”
Robert grasped his shoulders, then his shaking hands fell upon his cheeks. He clutched his father’s wrists, feeling every shake and unsure of who they belonged to.
“You misunderstand,” Robert said, tears shaping his cheeks. “And it is my fault. I have done wrong by you, more than I could ever make up for.”
“You have never done wrong by me.”
“I have,” he insisted.
William had never seen him look so lost. Robert had been their family’s greatest foundation for most of their lives.
When his grandparents died, Robert made sure his grieving wife and family had everything they could ever need.
When Robert lost his parents, he didn’t hide his sorrow because he wanted his family to know it was okay to mourn.
If the king made a call he didn’t agree with, Robert stood his ground, and if the boys ever bickered, their father was there to set things right.
“I am the reason you were taken and forced to live through all that you did, and it is my greatest shame,” Robert whispered.
“That was the king,” he argued.
Robert’s tone carried regret. “I stood up to the king knowing he could hurt us, but I should have expected he would have gone after you. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
He knew Robert carried guilt, but not to such an extent, and he wished he wouldn’t. “If you hadn’t, no one would. I do not want you to regret speaking sense to him. You have done well by all of us, by people who will never know you because you care, and that makes me proud.”
“I am glad for that, but it doesn’t absolve me of this,” he slammed a hand against his chest, hard enough to bruise. “This guilt I feel every time I see you flinch or wake in the night screaming or how you hesitate to walk into every room until you know all your exits.”
William sucked in a breath.
“I have picked up the little things you do day by day,” Robert explained.
“And I dare not ask why you do it. I doubt I would understand even if you explained because I will never fathom what you went through, and that pains me all the more. As your father, I am meant to protect you, to give you the best life. Instead, I have given you pain like no other.”
“I wish you wouldn’t blame yourself for that,” he said.
“And I wish you would know how grateful we all are to have you home, that we love you.”
He couldn’t breathe for a moment, then his words came out a whimper, “If you knew all I had done, you would think differently.”
“I wouldn’t,” Robert interjected, stern and true.
“You survived and survival is often cruel. I don’t care what you did, so long as it led you back to us.
” Robert pulled him in before his first tear fell.
He held with a fierce grip that William returned.
“I am sorry. I never thought you would think like that.”
His jaw trembled as he buried his head in the crook of his father’s neck. He felt like that boy again, running to his dad after a nightmare, safe and secure in a pair of arms he believed could take on the world.
“I will get your mother.” Robert followed his wife, leaving William in the garden.
He knelt by the flowerbed to continue Matilda’s work.
The staff would have done so, but he needed to keep his mind off the conversation Robert would have with Matilda.
He need not be there to know her tears, her desperate pleas to keep him home, and the shakes.
They were awful and were no longer only for him.
It’s as if his appearance opened the floodgates.
Matilda had this need for all her children to be home.
Perhaps to have her family together as it once was.
When the boys left, even if it was to reside in their own homes, Matilda’s hands shook terribly.
She’d wake in the middle of the night, worried that she wouldn’t see her sons soon or ever again.
The war hurt many in ways none could fathom.