Burn (Barlyle) (COMPLETE)

63

The other oddities waited for Anne and Lettie outside the hospital room. Anne made eye contact with her brother, threw her arms around him, and sobbed. W.D. stood stoic and mute, but rubbed her back. He stared at the wall, disbelieving, unblinking.

Lettie shuffled over to a chair and sank down into it. She buried her face in her hands and her shoulders shook, but she didn't cry. Not yet. She hadn't processed everything enough yet to cry.

Barnum was gone.

"How are you?" a deep voice asked. Constantine.

Lettie didn't look up. Didn't respond. Much like Phillip - poor Phillip, lying still in that hospital bed right next to where Barnum had last laid - she found she couldn't say a word. She sank into Constantine's touch and he sighed heavily as he rubbed her shoulder.

The albino siblings wept together in a corner and Charles sat against the wall, knees drawn up to his chin, hands pressed against his eyes. It truly was a sorry sight. Lettie looked up only when she heard a wail come from down the hall - a wail that could only come from a child.

Charity - elegant, proud, beautiful Charity - stood across the hall with bloodshot eyes and disheveled hair. Caroline gripped her hand like a vice and continued to wail. She stamped her foot on the ground.

"He promised!" Caroline screamed. "Daddy promised he'd be here for everything. But he lied! He lied!"

She very nearly collapsed on the ground, but Charity bent over and managed to hold her up.

"I want my daddy," Caroline moaned. Her little body shook with the force of her sobs. "I w-want Daddy!"

Charity looked up and made eye contact with Lettie. The bearded woman very nearly gasped at the tears brimming in the widow's eyes.

"We're going to go get Helen," she croaked in a voice that was not her own.

Helen.

Poor, sweet Helen, barely six years of age.

With no idea what had happened since leaving to visit her grandparents.

Lettie watched Charity go with hollow eyes. Caroline's cries quieted the further they got. Lettie turned to look at each and every one of her fellow devastated performers, then her eyes flicked over to the closed door, where Phillip continued to lie in a state of pain and shock.

The circus was, well and truly, broken.

And with that thought, Lettie Lutz pitched her head forward and finally began to sob.