39. January 19, 1915 Great Yarmouth, England
“Now can we go?” Elsie whines, her arms crossed on the kitchen table, her chin propped on top of them.
Her mother sighs, a half-peeled potato in her hand. “There’s still too much to do, and the train won’t arrive for another hour.”
“But I’ve done all my chores.”
“So have I,” George agrees from the seat next to hers, swinging his legs beneath his chair.
“We all have,” Ada adds from the corner.
Her soft voice is drowned out by the sudden whistling of the kettle.
Clara quickly pulls it off the stove for her mother and swats Arthur’s hand away from a pie cooling on the rack next to it.
He scowls at her, and John laughs at them both from the doorway.
Beatrix can see from a glance he’s grown again, already taller than the mark his mother drew on the doorframe last month.
Mary glances at Beatrix, and Beatrix nods. The chores have been done in record time, and properly at that. Now all six children have stuffed themselves into the kitchen.
“Well, I still have too much to do,” their mother says. She has declined their help in preparing supper. Today, she wants it to be perfect.
“Shall I take the children for a walk to the station?” Beatrix asks.
“Please,” Mary agrees.
Beatrix pulls off her long white apron and hangs it from the hook behind the kitchen door. “Come along, children. Coats, hats, mittens, and off we go.”
The children file past, jostling one another as they all try to fit through the door at once. Mary pulls Beatrix aside.
“I’m not sure if the Robert who is getting off that train is the same one they saw get on it.” A deep furrow creases her brow.
Beatrix takes her hand. “He’s still their brother, injured or not. They’ll be glad to see him.”
“It’s not his leg that worries me,” Mary says. “The things he’s seen? The horrors he’s lived through?” She shudders. “I can’t imagine.”
Beatrix thinks maybe she can. She has never seen a war like this.
No one has. But she has starved in the cold on the London streets, and she has seen bodies stacked in the gutters.
She has been the only one left behind when everyone else she loved or cared for or hardly knew at all has died.
She has wondered if she should count herself lucky or cursed, or maybe just forgotten.
She squeezes Mary’s hand. “He’ll be glad to see them, too.”
Beatrix walks behind the children as they dart up the road to the train station, her hands shoved deep into her coat pockets.
She ushers them all onto the electric tram before she realizes her mistake.
They will have to wait for the train, and they are buzzing with energy.
She gets off at the next stop, and they follow her like a row of ducklings—through the center of town, past the old medieval wall and the minster.
When the station comes into view, the children race one another toward it.
They still have to wait. The children assure Beatrix numerous times that it is the longest ten minutes of their lives, but the train arrives exactly when it is meant to.
Elsie squeals at the sight of her brother in the doorway of the train car.
He is tall and broad, with close-cropped brown hair and the same brown eyes as Elsie and his mother.
Then all the others are shouting his name, waving him over.
He grins, hoists his pack higher, and limps through the crowd to them.
His siblings rush him, all hugs and questions.
“Give your brother some room to breathe.” Beatrix laughs.
Robert notices her for the first time, standing off to the side, trying to avoid the crush of little bodies.
Elsie looks between them. “That’s Beatrix. She lives in your bedroom.”
Robert laughs. “That is certainly a new development.”
“I’m your mother’s boarder,” Beatrix explains. “I help her with the children.”
Robert’s brow furrows.
“She’s fine,” Beatrix adds quickly. “She’s at the house. She had some things to finish up before you arrived.”
Robert nods. “Pleasure to meet you, Beatrix. You’ve got your work cut out for you with this lot.”
Beatrix smiles. “I think you’re right.”
She sits behind them on the tram ride home.
Robert glances at her occasionally as the children tell him about everything he’s missed in his months at the front.
She smiles politely in return, but that ache has started in her chest, the one that begins as a single pinprick, a stinging reminder of what she cannot have.
And maybe a single pinprick is not so bad, but a hundred—a thousand—hurt.
She excuses herself from dinner. Mary tells her not to talk such nonsense; she has already set a place for her.
She busies herself in the kitchen when the meal is done.
Robert insists he misses the washing up and convinces the others to pitch in, too.
She tries to sneak away when the family gathers in the sitting room.
Elsie begs to sit on her lap in front of the fire so she can watch Arthur and John play cards with the deck Robert has brought them.
Robert smiles fondly as he watches Elsie doze against Beatrix’s shoulder a few minutes later, his injured leg propped on the low coffee table. “Looks like you’re stuck with us.”
When even the older children have begun to nod off, Mary calls an end to the night. “Off to bed,” she says with the first genuinely happy smile Beatrix is sure she’s ever seen her wear.
Mary scoops Elsie off Beatrix’s lap, and the little girl doesn’t stir. “You’ll be ready for your own soon,” she says with a wink. She turns away and carries her daughter up the narrow staircase.
Her words hit Beatrix like a punch in the gut, knock the air out of her lungs. Her face falls, her mask slipping out of place as the truth tears through her, the pinhole perforations giving way.
“Beatrix?” Robert looks at her from the couch, his brown eyes flooded with concern. “Are you all right?”
“Excuse me.” She pulls herself to her feet, takes her coat from the stand, and slips out the front door before he can see the tears shining in her eyes.
The winter air stings her cheeks as she walks to the pier. There is no moon, and the black of the ocean bleeds into the black of the night sky in an endless, inky dark. Beatrix wishes it would swallow her.
It’s all Oliver’s fault. He cracked through the stone walls she had built around her heart. Maybe he weakened them for others, too, each visit leaving her more lonely—more vulnerable—than the last.
She wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand. It has been more than sixty years since he left. He still haunts her.
How pathetic.
She takes a deep breath, fills her lungs with the salty sea air. She’s not in London anymore. He’s not here anymore. She is.
She will rebuild her walls. Brick by brick, she will protect her heart from Mary and Elsie and the memory of Oliver. She’ll be stronger than the regret that sent her running from London, stronger than the sorrow that sent her running from the row house. She has to be.
The house is dark and quiet when Beatrix returns. She slips off her shoes and pads up the narrow staircase to her room. She pushes the door open and steps inside before she realizes her mistake. It’s not her room. It’s Robert’s room.
At least she hasn’t woken him. He looks up when his door creaks, and for a single soaring heartbeat, he could be Oliver, sitting at his desk, hunched over a leather-bound journal.
“Sorry,” Beatrix says sheepishly. “Force of habit.”
Robert closes his notebook. “It’s all right.”
“Well, good night,” she says, pulling the door closed behind her.
“Wait.” Robert stands slowly, leaning heavily on his desk.
Beatrix stops, her hand on the knob. Robert limps closer. He stares into her eyes, searching for something.
“I’m sorry if this is forward of me, but your eyes are…”
“Two different colors?” Beatrix offers.
Robert shakes his head. “Haunted.”
“I’ve seen a lot of ghosts.” She is looking at one right now, isn’t she?
Robert will become a ghost to her. And Mary.
And Elsie, and every single one of her brothers and sisters, every single person trying to survive this war.
Even if they make it. They will all end up nothing but dust and memories, and she will be left behind to remember them all.
“So have I.”
“I know,” she says. Because she saw it in his eyes, too, the moment they met hers at the train station.
Robert waits for her to say something else. When she doesn’t, he gives her a half-hearted smile. “Well, if you want to talk, you know where to find me.”
Beatrix wakes with a start on the sofa. Mary sobs by the front door, and the sound of a freight train thunders overhead. She throws off her quilt and scrambles to her feet.
“What’s wrong?”
The answers come simultaneously, one from Mary, one from Robert.
“Elsie’s missing.”
“A zeppelin’s been sighted!”
Beatrix isn’t sure which is the reply that stops her heart.
Mary sinks down on the couch, on the verge of hysterics. “What was she thinking? It’s black as pitch out there, not even the moon to see by.” She buries her face in her hands.
Robert kneels in front of her, and if it pains his leg, he doesn’t notice. “Think. Where would she go?”
Mary shakes her head.
The rest of the children have gathered in the living room, roused from their beds by the sound of the approaching zeppelin and their mother’s tears. George tugs on Beatrix’s skirt.
She crouches next to him. “What is it, George?”
“Elsie wanted to see the faeries. She said she’d prove they were real. It’s my fault she’s gone.”
Beatrix’s blood runs cold as his words sink in. “It’s not your fault.” It’s hers. The realization hits her like a bolt of lightning. “There’s no moon.”
Robert turns to her. “What?”
“It’s a new moon,” Beatrix says. An utter dark, perfect for seeing faerie dresses made of starlight. She grabs her coat and throws it over her shoulders. “I know where she’s gone.”
“Wait!” Robert calls after her.
But Beatrix is already running.