The English Descendants

4

Edith's handwritten novel sits, untouched in her desk. She has thought about typing it again, especially as her pregnancy comes closer to its end and she knows she will have so little time to sit with her work after she has a newborn in her arms. But there is too much of it that reminds her of Thomas and, despite her dream of being a published author, she lets it rest.

Enola's trunk and Thomas' watchmaker's cabinet and toolbox sit, untouched, in the attic. She knows some day she will want to go through them again, but this is not the time. She will have enough reminders of him when the baby is born. Charlotte Enola. She knows this is who she will meet. She wonders if the child will look like her or look like her father.

A few weeks before the baby is to come, she receives a letter from the village postmaster. They went back to Allerdale Hall to look for bodies after the thaw and they found them in the cellars. All four were interred together, their bodies indistinguishable due to the time in the clay. They want names. Edith retrieves the envelopes from her trunk and writes back with what she knows of their lives and their deaths. She wires money for headstones. And she tells them the baby was Enola's.

Thomas watches, as always, awed by Edith's strength as she endures mornings of nausea and evenings during which she is so warm she cannot share her bed. It has been difficult for him to stay in Edith's present, but by watching her and keeping his focus very narrow, he has managed not to slip too often between times. He has seen the house, though, in the future. It will be seventy years before it begins to look rough. In a century, it will fall to rubble. He does not follow the family that far, though, preferring to see things as they happen. Linear time is, he admits, a hard habit to break, even though he now exists in the past, present, and future.

The final weeks of her pregnancy are miserable. She hardly wants to eat. The thin porridge Alan makes her one morning triggers a memory and she retches, fleeing the room for the bathroom. He finds her sobbing over the toilet. He wipes her mouth, finds a cloth to run under cool water to press on the back of her neck, and waits for her to tell him what he did wrong. She tells him of Lucille's slow, scraping spoon as she lay in bed, unable to lift her head. He promises never to make it again and asks if there are other foods he should know not to make.

"Well she did nearly hit me with a frying pan of eggs, but I don't think those are a problem."

"What on earth did she do that for?"

"It was the morning after we had stayed the night in the spare room at the post. There was a terrible storm...but she knew we'd finally consummated our marriage. So she threw the frying pan. I had no idea why, at the time, but now...she was jealous of having to share Thomas."

"But you were his wife."

"And, apparently, the first one he'd ever made love to."

"She hadn't let him with the others?"

"I woke every morning to find his side of the bed empty. No. So long as he was in Allerdale Hall, his life was not his own." She pauses, wipes her eyes, and sighs, "I'm sorry, this isn't something you need to hear about."

"No, no, don't feel badly. If you want to talk, I am here to listen."

"But about sex and Thomas?"

"If you need to say it, yes."

"But that seems hurtful. You were not the first."

"Nor were you mine, and I have been open about this. It does not hurt to know you enjoyed the more intimate company of your first husband. It hasn't been that long- you're still practically in mourning. And don't say you aren't- you saw a spark of genius and kindness in him few others did. And knowing how tightly she controlled him makes it easier for me to see him through your eyes and not as a mere shell of a person, a villain dark and inhuman."

"Perhaps you should be called Doctor Alan McMichael, Saint, for there are few so patient and understanding."

"You are far too generous in your esteem, my love. Now, come. Let's get you some water and find you something else to eat. Applesauce? Rebecca sent some her sister canned last fall."

Thomas, invisible to either of them, trembles at the thought of Lucille's porridge. He hadn't thought about it before Edith, that she would poison something other than the tea. That the last things the other three had eaten had been so tainted, not even a final meal in peace. He'd only been in the house for Pamela's death- he had held her hand and watched the light fade from her eyes. It had been deeply upsetting, but not to Lucille. She made him dump her body in the clay and after, had taken great glee in having him all to herself again. It had been one of the most miserable nights of his life. When he wasn't there for Margaret and Enola's passings, he returned to find dead shells he disposed of in the clay. Even on those nights, being tugged into Lucille's bed had been incredibly difficult. He wanted time for grief and she had none. But things seemed to go back to normal shortly after. More time together, the unpleasant and jealous Lucille fading into the girl she had always been when alone with him. At least until Edith. Everything was different with Edith. And then that moment he realized that telling her to never drink the tea was useless because she'd found another way to make her take her poison...it was a sinking feeling he vowed to carry with him in his guilt.

She does not know it, but every time Rebecca arrives with old Mother Lebewitz, midwife to most of the Jewish mothers with little children running around Brush Park, Thomas is present, eagerly waiting to hear what she has to say. He is there when Edith tells them that the baby is not Alan's, that she belongs to her first husband, and he watches as both women embrace her and assure her that so long as Alan loves her, he will be father. It is both reassuring to know that his child will be raised by a good man and heartbreaking to think that he will likely never be known to her. Of course, he could travel to the future to find out what she knows, or to appear to her and tell him herself, but he doesn't want to mix up when he is and miss something.

She delivers the baby quickly. Mother Lebewitz wraps the child in a soft blanket and hands her to her exhausted mother. It is a miracle, he thinks, that Edith did not miscarry after the events at Allerdale Hall. She is even stronger than he already knew.

Edith sees her hair first. As she nurses for the first time, she gently brushes her fingers through Charlotte's dark locks and prays that she is right, that there is not inherent madness in the Sharpe blood.