vi. In which Arthur makes a decision, which he may well come to regret #2
Charlotte touched his hand, but now that he’d started, all the fears he’d spent the day suppressing surged over him like a
tidal wave.
“What if I can’t find a house in Port Lorne, even with all that money? Or I do, but when we move in it’s falling apart, and
I didn’t notice beforehand because I know nothing about construction? Or the house is wonderful, but we can’t find clients,
and eventually our money from Mrs. Livingston runs out, and we have nothing left to fall back on and no way to get back here
to start over? Or perhaps—” Arthur spoke faster than ever because if he didn’t he’d never admit it “—perhaps everything in
Port Lorne will be perfectly lovely, but I won’t have any friends, or a wife, because I’m still me.”
In the silence, his chest heaved. At his core, he’d always been afraid to make a change, because he’d always been afraid of
finding that he—not Seacliff, not the loss of his father or brother-in-law or mother, not the lack of money—was the problem.
It was so much easier to make believe, to pretend there were insurmountable obstacles to even attempting a change.
That things would be perfect if only they ever happened, and it was simply a shame they never would.
After a long moment, Charlotte’s fingers curled around his. “You don’t believe that, do you? That you’re . . .”
Arthur wasn’t sure what he hoped she would say. Regardless, he was disappointed. After a pause in which he saw the gears turning
in her head as clearly as if she’d been a clock he’d opened up, all she said was, “What are you going to do?”
It was the worst thing she could’ve asked.
“Don’t you want to tell me what you think?”
She gave another small smile, squeezed his hand, and let go. “I’ve told you what I think.”
“Yes, but—should I go or not?”
“You’ll have to decide yourself. You’re a grown man, Arthur. I’m not making the decision for you.”
Arthur wiped his hands on his trousers. “But—but if you said—you could tell me the forest is too dangerous—that I have to
stay—or—”
His sister shook her head. “I could, but I won’t.”
“What if you don’t like the decision I make?”
“Then I guess I’ll have to live with it.”
Charlotte stood, too quickly. She clamped a hand down on his shoulder and swayed. He stood, too, but she said, as always,
“I’m fine,” and made her slow way to her bedroom alone, calling good-night as she went.
Arthur sat up alone for a long time.
Not this year, son, he heard his father saying, year after year. When you’re older.
He remembered his father knocking on the door of the bedroom he’d shared with Charlotte, the same room his niblings shared now. The way he’d refused to answer, except for a bye, Dad so quiet George hadn’t heard. His father vanishing within the trees by the time he’d run outside.
Arthur had regretted his momentary stubbornness for thirty years.
You think the forest is this beautiful place full of adventure and enchantment, he heard Charlotte saying yesterday, but it’s dangerous, Arthur.
Dangerous it was. He knew that. Technically. He knew about the sickness, the disappearances. Their father’s disappearance
three decades ago.
Yet when Arthur thought of the forest now, all he remembered were his father’s stories.
“It can’t be that dangerous,” he murmured, lost in images of a fairy prince in autumn finery and trees walking from place to place. “Not all
of it, at any rate. Bess Little came from Port Lorne with that friend of hers just a few weeks ago.”
Not this year, son. It occurred to him his father might have kept putting off bringing him along precisely because it had been dangerous. It was an enchanted forest, after all.
But even Charlotte must think the danger couldn’t quite stand up to the money Agnes was offering, or she would have forbidden
him to go. Begged him not to. But she hadn’t.
He grabbed his novel off the side table and meandered up to the attic, mumbling about the forest all the way.
It was a small, cramped space, the attic, crammed with sacks of potatoes and carrots, old clothes, broken furniture they might
repair or repurpose. Arthur’s bed was there, too, shoved up against an exterior wall so cold that he was reluctant to relinquish
the warmth of his quilt on chill autumn mornings. Just now, Freya was curled on his pillow.
Arthur stashed the book in a box under his bed, where he’d kept his romance novels since first hiding one from his mother. She’d caught him with such a book at fifteen and given him an odd look.
Why would you be interested in a book like that? she’d asked, in a tone that had made him crimson with shame. He didn’t remember how he’d responded, only that he’d mumbled
something. After a long moment, Eileen had said, I suppose it might teach you a thing or two about how to treat a lady.
But she’d looked so uneasy every time she’d seen him with a romance novel that he’d gone back to hiding them. Biscuit baking
had been much the same. When Charlotte was eight, their mother had taught her to bake biscuits. Arthur, fifteen, had asked
whether she might teach him, too. Eileen had laughed and told him it wasn’t something a young man needed to know. He’d been
almost glad to make her laugh—she’d rarely laughed since their father’s disappearance—except that it had been at his own expense,
for reasons he didn’t understand. Charlotte had taught him several years later.
Sometimes Arthur wondered how his father would have reacted to these things. George had always been so soft with him, so kind,
so understanding of the ways in which Arthur was different from other boys. But perhaps he’d only been that way because Arthur
had been so young: Eileen had been the same, until Arthur was a fifteen-year-old reading romance and asking how to bake biscuits.
His skin prickled. He’d been a failure all his life.
He’d been afraid all his life, all the while pretending he had nothing to fear.
He’d been afraid to tell his father who had broken his glasses.
He’d been afraid to let his mother see his romance novels.
He’d been so afraid to take the leap and move his family to Port Lorne that, the moment he had anything like enough saved up to manage it, he’d thrown his savings into the hands of the young woman he was supposed to be courting.
For the romance of it all, was what he’d told himself—but wasn’t it true he’d also done it as an excuse?
So he could say, Oh well, such is life, I’m sure I’ll save enough someday, and go peacefully about his dull, lonely existence in the comfort of knowing he couldn’t do anything to change it?
The rising wind howled, rattling the tiny window over his bed. Outside, the dark mass of trees bent lazily in the coming rain.
Their leaves rushed like ocean waves. Arthur sat on his bed, waking the cat, and gazed at the dark forest. That ought to have been what he feared. Instead he feared ridiculous, amorphous, almost nameless things.
No longer. He could do this. For God’s sake, all Mrs. Livingston wanted him to do was buy a clock. He could buy a clock! He
would love to buy a clock! Clocks were his whole thing! Surely he could do that for his family, even if he failed them in
sundry other ways.
He fell asleep imagining a house in Port Lorne and all the friends he would have to fill it. In the morning, over coffee,
he told Charlotte he’d decided to go, then went down into the village and told Agnes the same.