The Winter Garden (IMD #2)

Chapter Seventeen: Tea and Tears

Chapter Seventeen:

 

Tea and Tears

Eliza reclined by the hearth, book in hand, and tea at her elbow. The soft flames flickered and reflected off the cabinets of curiosities, illuminating a cylinder housing a complete human spine and pelvis covered in nodules of nervous tissue. She looked up at the specimen fondly before returning to the pages of Frankenstein. Adam had brought it for Emmeline with the rest of the novels she requested, but after twenty pages, she had abandoned it for Austen. The doctor had forgotten the joy of reading fiction, but something about Shelley’s creation was tantalizingly off-putting when combined with her husband’s profession. Her eyes roved over the love-worn pages until the creaking of boards behind the chair roused her from the creature’s journey through the Alps. She expected to find her husband reminding her of the late hour but instead met the copper and blue gaze of Immanuel Winter as he stood in the doorway with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Is everything all right, Immanuel?”

He shook his head silently, but the heaviness of melancholy that clung to him that morning was gone by the time she and Emmeline arrived home. “Emmeline is crying.”

“Do you know why?” she asked as she tucked the book between the cushion and armrest and stiffly rose from her seat.

“I did not ask. I know she would prefer I not speak to her, and I did not want to make things worse.”

What could be wrong now? She sighed, assuming her tears were for some petty thing like a gown without enough lace or a slipper made of satin rather than silk. As Eliza reached the second landing, she caught a faint but tremulous mewl. Tiptoeing down the darkened hall, the girl’s soft, pitiable cries grew clearer. They were not the exaggerated cries of one who wanted to be discovered but those of pain which were stifled by the awareness that others may hear. Emmeline sat with her back to the door and her knees drawn to her chest under the white cotton of her nightgown as she stared into the breathing tinder of the hearth. Eliza Hawthorne paused in the doorway, watching her niece’s back quiver with sobs, and couldn’t help but feel compassion for the wayward girl for the second time in the same day. With a rap of her knuckle on the molding, Emmeline’s red rimmed, owl eyes gaped up at her. Upon seeing her aunt’s form silhouetted in the fire’s dying light, she pawed at her cheeks with balled hands and fought the pull of hiccupped cries that refused to be smothered by pride.

“Emmeline, what is the matter?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped as another wet whimper leapt from her throat.

“You can lie to me,” the redhead said, softening her tone as she sat at the foot of the bed behind the girl, “but your tears can’t. Why not tell me what the matter is instead of keeping it to yourself?”

“I don’t want to. You wouldn’t understand.”

Eliza’s green eyes fell on the glinting surface of blue enamel petals and diamond faces between the orphaned child’s fingers. “I think I would. You know, I lost my mother when I was thirteen. I know how hard it is to lose your best friend. I cried every day for months because I missed her.”

With a sniff, Emmeline raised her head, never taking her eyes off the hearth. “How did you get over it?”

“I didn’t. You never get over losing your mother, but my father helped me a lot. Some people never talk about their loved ones after they die, but my father spoke about her all the time. At first, we would sit and cry together about some memory we shared of her, and it hurt more than anything to think of her. After a few months, I realized I was smiling when I thought about her laughing or singing. I still missed her terribly, but the pain lessened the more I talked about her.”