Chapter 15
“How is your mother?” Ellen asked with caution as they walked toward the docks the following week.
“Worse,” Anne managed to say. But Holy God above—Mam was more than worse. “She hasn’t broken a fever since the night of the ball.” Mam hadn’t even been well enough to hear the details that Da and Anne had carefully gathered for her.
Not that Anne would have told Mam about the worst part of the night. Her skin prickled with the memory of Nathaniel’s hand on her waist, his hunter’s stare.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Ellen said with uncharacteristic softness. No lectures. No admonitions to pretend better.
“Thanks,” Anne said, shuffling her feet along the wharf.
Maybe she and Ellen had moved beyond needing things from each other.
Maybe their friendship was settling into something sturdier.
The crisp sea air rested on her heavy eyelids after another long night.
“Dr. Ashby has been coming daily.” The doctor was troubled by the blotchy rash on Mam’s abdomen and her refusal to eat.
Mam wobbled whenever she tried to stand and complained of a headache.
She needed the chamber pot every hour and moaned in her sleep, waking the whole house with her fits and coughs.
Most troubling were the hallucinations.
When Anne had entered her parents’ bedroom the night before, she’d stared at Anne like she’d seen a ghost. She raised a white finger and pointed at Anne with something like an accusation. The room itself seemed to spin. Mam’s pale lips trembled, but no words came out.
“It’s only Anne, mo chroí,” Dad soothed. “Only Anne.”
Yes. Only me. Then, Mam’s old words rose in Anne’s mind like a curse.
Our child will be the death of me.
Da turned his head, bloodshot eyes narrowed with clear instructions: Leave. She needs peace. She needs me.
Mam continued to point and mumble. When Da laid her down, she threw her fists against him and screamed.
“You,” she slurred at Da with accusation. “You did this to me.”
Tears sprang from Anne’s eyes. She could not bear to see Mam, all light and blaze, reduced to embers and delirium.
As Anne stewed in her hellish memories, Ellen lifted a gloved hand at Mr. Taylor, who hastened his approach. Mr. Bonny followed behind him.
“Do you think Mr. Taylor will soon make an offer?” Ellen said through her pearly smile.
Anne blinked. Before she could answer, Ellen and Mr. Taylor were exchanging lengthy greetings.
“And so good to see you too, Mr. Bonny,” Ellen said.
Bonny gave a curt nod. A skullcap covered his hair today. His gray eyes surveyed her. Anne didn’t care to flirt or “act” today. Not with everything going on at home.
“I hear you’re sailing back to the Caribbean. Or is it home to England soon?” Ellen asked the sailors. “I have always longed to see London—so much livelier than this backwater. I wouldn’t mind living there. Wouldn’t that be wonderful, Anne?”
Anne remembered the years she spent moving around with Da and Mam all too well.
The horse dung in the roads. The scorn the English cast in her direction.
How they mocked her Irish accent until it was ground down like wheat into flour.
The overcast days and damp evenings, the never-enough money, the no-jobs-for-the-Irish years for Da.
“London is awful,” Anne said.
Ellen spun, her lips pursed in a warning.
In lightning time, Ellen giggled and played it off like a joke.
Mr. Taylor laughed in response. Anne’s shoulders tightened, and she had the strong urge to abandon Ellen—no matter her urgency to find a husband.
She longed to go back to the place where she was not allowed to be, the place she was banished from: Mam’s sickroom.
“Miss Cormac, Miss Cormac!” came a voice from down the pier.
Everyone turned to see Dr. Ashby’s youthful assistant barreling toward them.
Anne’s stomach plummeted. Her throat constricted.
No.
Please no.
Ellen searched Anne’s face as the assistant stood before them, panting. His heavy gaze lifted.
Not here. Not now.
Never.
Anne felt the earth tilt.
“Your mother,” he said, removing his cap. “I’m sorry.”
Rain fell unceasingly on the day of Mam’s funeral. After a modestly attended service, the priest presided over the burial. The ground turned sticky with mud as onlookers huddled together against the weather and listened to the final rites.
Da was not there. Inconsolable, unrecognizable, and absent.
How could he let me face this alone?
Anne stood, stone-faced in the downpour, listening to the sounds coming from the priest, but not the words. She stared at the wooden cross on his rosary.
“May she need faith no longer, but see God face-to-face,” he said.
“Amen,” the others spoke, moving forward to mutter prayers and drop a handful of sod onto the coffin. Some offered a word of comfort to Anne while others patted her shoulder or squeezed her frozen hands.
All she felt was the rain. The emptiness. Bouts of forgetting why she was there, followed by full-body chills.
“Anne,” came a familiar voice to her right.
Ellen. At least Ellen had come. However strange that friendship, Ellen was—if anything—an example of someone Anne wanted to be: strong and self-assured. And Anne needed these qualities more than ever.
“Would you like to say goodbye?” Ellen whispered.
Anne lifted her quivering chin, catching the pain in Ellen’s violet-blue eyes. No acting. No tricks. No humor. And even then, Anne knew what she would remember most about this day. Not what was said, but who was there.
And who was not.
Da’s absence burned like a hot coal down her throat.
“Come,” Ellen said, gently taking Anne’s arm and leading her to the edge of the grave.
Anne curled her toes inside her boots and swallowed a sob.
Ellen said nothing, just squeezed her hand.
Anne blinked back tears and rain. What could she possibly say?
I didn’t mean to make you sick.
I don’t accept—cannot accept—that you have left me.
What will I do without you?
Then worst of all:
Who am I without you?
Anne’s arm shook as she lifted the clump of dirt in her fist. Mam had crossed lands and oceans, exchanged a cramped jail cell for high-society ballrooms.
Mam. Lovely like Ireland. Wind and air. Water and bread and honey. Life itself.
Anne opened her fist, unclamping her grip finger by finger, and let go.