Chapter Text
-December 5, 1888-
-Cumberland, England-
Yesterday, I had the perfect opportunity to end it all. Adeline fell asleep while we were sitting by the fire, so I took the letter opener and went to my room. She woke up and started calling for me while I was getting into bed. At that point, I was beginning to wonder how I could do it without making a mess. The throat would be the quickest option, but it would leave so much blood to clean up.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized there really was no clean option, and I didn’t want to put Adeline through the same torture I’d gone through after our mother’s death. Her shouts were beginning to get frantic, as if she knew exactly what I planned to do. I had the letter opener against my wrist. I could have ended it then, but for some reason, imagining the look on her face made me hesitate. I couldn’t do that to her, no matter how much I wanted to.
She was getting closer to my room, so I shoved the letter opener under my pillow, lay on my back, and closed my eyes. I tried to keep my breathing even when she opened the door, hoping it was convincing. When she closed the door, I sat up again, turning the tiny blade over and over in my hands.
I wanted to do it so badly, and twice, I have had the perfect opportunity. Ye t, both times, the thought of Adeline’s reaction has stopped me. I simply can’t do it, and I can’t even muster the energy to hate her for it. She has done far too much for me to hate her now. In return, the least I can do is not cause her more distress.
Yet the longing fills me still. I want to be able to hug my son, the way I could when he was alive. The only way for me to do that now is to join him. He haunts me in my dreams, and now I feel his presence even in my waking life. He hasn’t left us yet. The puppet is constantly moving. Just today I went to visit the bathroom where Lucille had ended his life. It was still dark, so I lit the lantern by the door, holding it up to let the glow illuminate the room, and saw it sitting upright inside the bathtub.
I moved forward slowly, too terrified to look away. When I reached the edge, I bent down and set the lantern beside it. The orange/yellow light flickered slightly, casting irregular shadows over the puppet’s face. Inside its eyes, I could feel something else looking back.
“What do you want from me?” I whispered.
A baby’s laugh came from behind me. I grabbed the lantern and spun around.
In the mirror, I could see him. He was covered in red, just like my mother, who held him in her skeletal arms.
I forced myself to turn, to look at them both face to face. Mother turned her head to look at me. The expression on her face was one I recognized well. Lucille and I used to call it the “I told you so.”
“Treat me however you want,” I said. “Haunt me, slap me, push me, destroy my things. Just don’t hurt him. Please.”
She stared at me for a long time. Her solid black eyes felt like knives cutting into my soul, ripping me to pieces with a single look.
Then, to my complete shock, she held him out to me.
At first, I thought it had to be some sort of trick. She wanted me to get closer so she could hurt me. That had to be it.
Only when Edward started crying did I finally set the lantern on the floor and take him from her.
Her icy hands sent cold shivers down my spine, and Edward wasn’t much warmer. He was as cold as the snow collecting on the other side of the window, but the longer I held him, the warmer he started to feel, and his cries began to subside.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
Edward looked up at me as if he understood, and his small, icy fingers wrapped around my thumb. The tears that had been burning behind my eyes finally spilled out, rolling down my cheeks to stain my shirt. Shadows flickered across his face, made more and more distorted by the endless torrent of tears, and the yellow/orange light from the lantern cast him in an ethereal glow. It was like I was holding an angel.
“Thomas?”
Adeline’s voice came from down the hall, and her footsteps were getting closer.
“Don’t leave,” I begged. “Please.”
The door to the bedroom opened, and the light from a second lantern spilled into the open bathroom.
I held Edward to my chest, keeping my eyes only on him, willing him to stay.
“Thomas? Are you in here?”
A few moments later, she closed the door, and her footsteps moved back down the hall.
I closed my eyes and kissed Edward’s forehead.
The weight lifted from my arms. When I finally gathered the courage to open my eyes, Edward and Mother were gone. Only the puppet remained, looking at me with those not so soulless eyes.
I’m not sure how long I stood there after that, but it was long enough for the darkness outside to turn to dawn, and a few thin bars of sunlight streaked through the window.
My feet felt like lead as I made my way back to my room. I didn’t even want to get dressed, but I needed to get out of the house. To spend some time in a place without ghosts. So I dressed as warmly as I could, putting on my thickest black trousers, black shirt, and black coat.
Over the months, my cold headaches have gotten less frequent, but in turn, it seems like my shoulders have grown stiffer. I can hardly stretch my arms or bend my back without resistance, but at least I can finally put on a shirt without feeling that intense pain.
Downstairs, the wind howled against the thick wooden doors, making the knockers rattle. Icy fog swirled through the cracks, wrapping around my boots before vanishing like ghosts in the warmth. Even with some faded gray sun cutting through, the house felt dark and foreboding, as if the shadows were trying to swallow it up. The light itself appeared dusty and old, painting everything it touched in dull, muted colors.
Adeline caught up to me on my way to the door. She still dressed in black as well, which made me wonder if she was really mourning, or if she was simply doing it out of respect to tradition.
“Where are you going?”
“Outside. To do some work,” I clarified.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Have you looked outside today? It’s a blizzard.”
It was, but I couldn’t stay here. The oppressive snow was far more welcoming to me than these oppressive walls.
“If I stopped working every time the weather got rough, I wouldn’t work at all.”
“And your shoulders? Those don’t bother you?”
“Why do you care now? I’ve been out there several times already.”
Adeline crossed her arms, but her voice was gentler when she next spoke.
“I pitied you, so I wanted to let you do something that made you happy. But if you continue to work in weather like this, you’re never going to heal.”
I crossed my arms to mimic her, gritting my teeth against the pain.
“What else would you have me do? I can’t just sit up in the attic all day. Something productive needs to be done.”
“If you want to do something productive, you can start by being my next model.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I wouldn’t exactly call that productive.”
“Well, you would be helping me to be productive, and I’d really appreciate it.”
“How about this. I will model for you, if you come outside with me. I’ll show you how the harvester works so you can run it yourself, then we’ll both have done something useful.”
To my surprise, she nodded.
“All right. Show me.”
My face was hit with a blast of cold and snow the moment I forced open the doors. The snow was piled so high on the other side that I could barely open them enough to fit through. My wool shirt felt like sandpaper against my shoulders, which already felt as if the skin was tearing. Even stepping sideways, they brushed against the edge of the door, and for a single moment, my closed eyes betrayed my pain.
Adeline must have noticed, but I was grateful that she chose not to comment. I helped her over the pile of snow and made sure to walk beside her so neither of us would get lost in the fog.
“Why do you like it out here so much?” she asked. “You could be inside, relaxing and warming yourself by the fire. Why choose to be in the cold?”
That was a fair question, and one I wasn’t sure I had a good answer for. Of course, I could have gone into detail about my childhood and my reasons for hating cramped spaces, but it didn’t exactly seem like the right time.
“Out here I have a purpose. In this house, all I have are distractions.”
“Most people call those interests.”
I cracked a smile even as I shook my head.
“Interests are developed organically, not out of necessity.”
The crimson stained troughs were easy to spot, piercing through the fog like the teeth of a giant beast. Before we went up, I showed Adeline the furnace.
“Here is where the real magic happens,” I said.
“This whole machine is powered by a single flame?”
I smiled.
“Yes it is.”
I shoveled in a stack of coal and lit it with a match, giving us each a moment to warm our hands before I closed the door.
I climbed up first, brushing snow away from each rung as I went. Each stretch and bend of my arms made my shoulders scream. Each brush of the wool against my sensitive skin had me holding back a curse. By the time I stepped onto the platform, I felt ready to jump off.
Adeline had a much easier time of it. I moved as far to the side as I could to offer her room, but even then, we were forced to stand shoulder to shoulder. I found myself a bit mesmerized by her hair as she crouched to observe the various buttons and levers. Where the snow melted, it appeared redder, almost the same shade as the clay.
“How does it start?”
It was more than a little embarrassing when her voice pulled me back to reality. Fortunately, her back was to me. All I had to do was speak as if nothing had happened.
“Push that lever up until you feel it click.”
She hovered her hand over it for a few seconds, as if she was afraid she might somehow break it. I crouched beside her and hovered my hand over hers, slowly inching her forward without touching, until she finally wrapped her fingers around the grip and pushed. I watched her face the entire time, my smile growing along with hers.
The engine rumbled beneath us. Steam whistled out through the vents, cutting lines through the fog and melting the snow as it fell. Her flushed cheeks gave away her embarrassment, but for her sake, I pretended not to notice.
“Show me more.”
I guided her hand to the next lever.
“This one activates the digging mechanism. There are three settings. Slow, medium, and fast. From bottom to top. Try it.”
With a bit more confidence, she wrapped her fingers around the grip and pushed. The platform rumbled, the chains rattled, and the troughs shuddered into motion.
“What’s next?”
“This wheel controls a fan inside the furnace. Spinning it encourages the steam to circulate.”
We spun it together, and steam whistled from the vents.
“Now I can see why you like this so much,” she said with an embarrassed smile.
I surprised myself with genuine laughter. For months, I thought it would be impossible for me to ever laugh again, yet there I was, laughing with her.
“It isn’t just the machine that attracts me here, it’s the majesty of this landscape. When it’s clear, you can see miles beyond the village, even far up into the mountain. There’s a sense of freedom out here, one that can’t be replicated by looking through dusty, mottled glass.”
The way she was looking at me made me question if I’d said something unintentionally insulting.
“Have I offended you?”
“No, not at all. In fact, I find your passion admirable.”
“Really?”
No one has ever said they admired anything about me before. I must have looked rather confused.
“Really,” she paused. “You don’t get compliments much, do you?”
“Only from Lucille.”
Saying it out loud made me wonder just how abnormal all of this really is. My only friend in the world was my sister, and now that I don’t have her, I feel like I’m left twisting in the wind. A moth without a flame.
Most people have more than one friend. Most people have relationships with others that are not their family. Most people don’t rely on one other person to give their lives meaning. Lucille and I are exceptions. I see that every single day, and it makes me unbearably jealous when I see lovers who were free to choose; who weren’t limited by the circumstances of their childhood. And then I feel terrible guilt, as if having these thoughts about others is somehow a betrayal. As if having a normal relationship would be a betrayal to her.
But isn’t what she did a betrayal? She killed our child. She made me think we had a long, happy life ahead of us, and then she took it all away.
I deserve better.
Despite my efforts, some of my emotion must have shown on my face, because Adeline’s expression quickly turned to one of sympathy.
Before she could say anything, I bent down and pulled the lever to shut off the harvester. The machinery creaked a bit as the troughs slowed to a stop, making Adeline squeeze my arm even tighter than before.
“We’ve been here long enough. Let’s go inside.”
Snow had piled in through the doors I’d left open. Despite my protests, Adeline helped me shovel it back out. It seemed like an exercise in futility, given the flurries of snow that kept blowing in, but we finally whittled it down until we could push the doors shut.
For her painting, she took us up to the second floor hallway. As children, Lucille and I refused to go there after dark, fearing that the pointed “teeth” lining the archways would reach out to grab us. Now, I still feel a bit of that initial apprehension, even though the rational part of me knows it isn’t a danger.
The real danger lies in the bathroom at the end of the hall.
Adeline had me stand in the very center, with the gray light from the window at my back. This forced her to keep her back to that door while she painted. Part of me was impressed at her bravery, while the other part was terrified of something unsavory appearing behind her.
She didn’t say anything about it, probably believing that her painting of my mother would keep her safe. But I can’t afford that kind of blind faith.
As she worked, her brow furrowed and her lips tightened. It was the same expression she wore while painting the portrait of Edward, and I finally had to ask why.
“Are you all right?”
Her expression shifted instantly as she looked up, apparently surprised by the question.
“Yes, why?”
“You get this look on your face when you paint, as if you’re upset about something.”
Her cheeks turned pink.
“I’m only focused, but my mother has told me I can look very intense.”
“So this just occurs naturally?”
“Yes. It’s quite unfortunate.”
Adeline painted even as we talked, her head on a constant swivel from me to the canvas. In a way, she reminded me of myself; the way she throws herself into her work and doesn’t stop until she’s finished. This must be how I look to Lucille when she finds me in the attic.
“I find it rather respectable,” I said. “It shows you take yourself seriously.”
She smiled a little.
“It’s nice that someone thinks so. My parents just laugh.”
“Will you be going back to them for Christmas?”
The thought had just occurred to me. Adeline has been at Allerdale Hall for almost two months. Her parents probably miss her terribly, and I’m the one keeping her away.
“I don’t know if I can trust you here by yourself.”
“Finlay would be here, and I don’t plan on dying just yet.”
She raised an eyebrow, as if she thought I was trying to mislead her. Honestly, I can’t even blame her for her skepticism. My own actions have caused this.
“Really? What changed?”
“Well, there are some things I want to do first. Things that would be very difficult to do without a body.”
“What sorts of things?”
I looked down at the floor, ashamed of what I was about to say.
“I want to explore the world. Lucille has always hated traveling, so I couldn’t just leave her here. But now, maybe I have a chance.”
It felt terrible to say out loud, but it would be such a missed opportunity to stay home waiting while Lucille refuses to admit her wrongdoing.
Adeline’s expression was entirely sympathetic, which surprised me quite a bit considering how much trouble I’d caused her.
“Would you like to come back to Paris with me?”
Her offer took me completely by surprise. It electrifies me to think of the possibilities. Is this excitement I feel? I can finally get away from this place; take a real break for as long as I need, and maybe… find someone new to love. Someone who can let me experience the normal side of life. The thing I’ve always wanted the most, and now, it doesn’t seem like such a distant dream after all.
Lucille would never even have to know.
“Yes, I think I would.”
I caught myself feeling something like hope, wondering how long I could possibly stay away.
“Good. I’ll write my parents and let them know you’re coming. They’ll be excited to see you again.”
“Really?”
“Oh, didn’t you know? My father has been trying to get us together since we first met. He’s very enthusiastic about it.”
Perhaps it was rude to laugh, but I couldn’t stop the noise that escaped from my mouth.
“Are they really that desperate for you to be married again?”
“You have no idea. I’ve been hearing about my potential husbands for the past two years now.”
“That’s quite forward of them.”
“It certainly is,” she said, taking a moment to mix some colors on her palette. “Would you mind breaking the bad news to my father when we get back?”
Adeline is a good person, but I don’t even know if I can consider her my friend, especially after how terribly I’ve treated her. I doubt she considers me a friend of hers, either.
Still, it’s no surprise her father feels this way. I’ve turned down women before who only knew me from the papers, probably pressured by families who wanted to use my name for themselves. I always feel terrible turning them down, but it’s for their own good.
I refuse to be like my father.
“Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time I’ve had to turn someone down. People come after the Sharpe name more often than you might think.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“You really think it’s your name they’re after?”
“What else would they want?”
At that, she only sighed.
“What?”
“Thomas, my love may be reserved for another man, but I’m not blind. You attract women like bees to honey. They don’t care about your name.”
My face must have betrayed my doubt, because I simply could not fathom it. All my life I’ve been told I look just like my mother. My mother was the most repulsive woman I’ve ever known, both in personality and appearance. If I am attractive to others, the only reasonable reaction is to worry for them.
Adeline’s response to my apparent cluelessness was to look even more concerned.
“Have you never been complimented before?”
I looked down at my feet, wondering how to tell her the truth without telling her the whole truth. As of right now, she still thinks our mother wasn’t horrible in life, but she doesn’t know a thing about our father. So I simply switched them, while everything else was the truth.
“All my life, I’ve been told I look like my father, and as a child, he was the most terrifying thing in the world. Everything that was meant to be a compliment felt like an insult. Now, all I can see when I look at myself are the worst qualities I saw in him.”
Honestly, that does apply to my father, so in a roundabout way, what I said wasn’t even a lie.
Adeline’s expression was sympathetic when she spoke again.
“I’m sorry, that sounds horrible.”
“It was.”
She worked in silence after that, and I was grateful for the break. When she finished, she had me come over to see it.
I had to take a step back. The portrait she had painted was the opposite of how I’ve always imagined myself.
“I look like that?”
Her lips formed the beginnings of a smile.
“Yes.”
I didn’t want to say it out loud, but Adeline’s painting made me feel more confident about myself than I had in years. Maybe she had exaggerated some things. Or maybe this really is how other people see me.
“You really see this when you look at me?”
Her smile widened.
“Yes, this is what we all see.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t understand. If I were to look in the mirror right now, I would not see that. I would love to; I simply can’t.”
“If you don’t mind, I would like to offer my perspective as an artist.”
“Certainly.”
“As someone who spends their life looking far too closely at others, I’ve learned a few things along the way. Often, when I paint a group of people from the same family, I observe which features they share and which ones they don’t. A family of four could have a few people who share the same jawline, nose, or eyes, but every single person wears them differently.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, a perfect example of this is your mother. She has very distinctive, heightened cheekbones that emphasize her eyes. On her, they serve to heighten the droopiness of her face and create more empty space where her smile lines should be. On you, they make your face look sharper, firmer, and more three dimensional, where hers appears flatter and longer.”
I visibly flinched at the words on you , unable to hold back that primal feeling of disgust. But the more she explained it, the more I started to understand what she meant, and the way she presented this new perspective was fascinating to me. Even now, I can’t stop thinking about it.
Her voice carried a certain level of concern when she spoke next, making me wonder just how long I’d been staring.
“Are you okay?”
“Oh. Yes,” I turned to face her, realizing how absurd I must have looked. “I just wish I’d had this perspective sooner.”
“I wish I could have given it to you sooner,” she said softly.
We stood that way in silence for a long while, neither of us certain how to move forward. The entire time, I couldn’t stop thinking: You’ve seen me this way since the day we met.
All this time, I’ve been thinking she saw me as I did. That Lucille saw me as I did. I never did understand why she could be so attached when I resembled one of the ugliest people we knew. Now that I do, I can’t help but feel cheated.
I turned and headed up to my bedroom, unable to look at the portrait any longer.
Maybe it was vanity, maybe it was desperation, but I spent a considerable amount of time studying myself in the mirror after that, considering all the things she’d said. I’ve spent my entire twenty-one years on this earth hating myself because of how much I look like my mother, and now, knowing how the world really sees me, I feel like I’ve wasted it.
It brings me some comfort knowing that my interactions with those eager women would not have changed. No matter what, I would always have been loyal to Lucille.
I hope she knows that.
-December 6, 1888-
-Cumberland, England-
When I woke up this morning, I felt oddly at peace. This is the first time I’ve felt something other than crushing sadness in months. I suppose the knowledge that I won’t be around the ghosts of my family for much longer has made me feel something like hope.
Perhaps that’s a terrible thing to feel. Perhaps I shouldn’t allow myself to be happy in any capacity. But it’s so hard to not want it. I feel like a dying man in the desert, desperate for water.
I do feel awful for leaving Edward alone. A part of me is tempted to bring his puppet with me to Paris, but I wonder if that would actually bring him with me, or if I would just be taking away his favorite toy.
No, it wouldn’t be right of me to bring my ghosts into Adeline’s world. She deserves to be free of this misery, not to be haunted by it as I am. And, as much as I hate to admit it, I want to take the time to forget. Obviously I won’t ever be able to forget this completely, but if I want to enjoy myself, I need to distance myself. And Edward won’t be alone. Finlay will be here every day, and Mother…
I hope I’m not dooming him to months of misery. The thought of my mother interacting with Edward in any way has filled me with a terrible sense of dread. Even now, she could be making his existence a nightmare, and I have no way of knowing.
And now I can’t stop thinking about it.
Why must I continue to do this to myself? Just once, I would like a day not filled with ghosts and guilt, where I can be happy without the weight of the world crushing down on my shoulders.
Paris will be good for that, I think. The new tower is almost complete, so I’ll get to be there when it opens, and I’ll get to watch some of its construction as well.
Adeline is not so thrilled. She has already expressed disdain for the whole project, wishing it hadn’t happened at all.
“You don’t like it?”
“I dislike its construction. If it could be less loud and intrusive, I might be more enthusiastic.”
I had forgotten how close her home is to that area, and that recollection made me think of the hotel Lucille and I stayed in previously. Now, it would have a perfect view of the tower, but can I really stay there again, without being haunted by all these memories?
I’m not so sure.
-December 7, 1888-
-Cumberland, England-
“I sent a letter to my parents,” Adeline told me during breakfast. “It will take a few more days to get a reply, but we should probably start packing before then.”
I nodded, only partially listening.
“Are you okay? I feel like I haven’t seen you too much.”
I sighed.
“I just can’t stop thinking about what you said, about my portrait. Perhaps it’s a bit dramatic, but I feel like my life has been wasted.”
She nodded.
“I can understand that. All this time you thought you were someone else, only to realize you haven’t been.”
“You say that like you have experience.”
“I do. I still think about it sometimes.”
“Did you ever get angry?”
“Sometimes. Especially when I realized this is how everyone sees me.”
“Yes, I’m certainly experiencing some of that now.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes while the wind whistled against the walls. The pipes rattled, and the floorboards creaked above our heads. I hope it won’t be too much trouble getting down the mountain. I don’t think I can stand to wait here until the snow melts.
“I know it isn’t my business, but what made you feel like this about yourself?”
Adeline has the kind of face most men would fall for at first sight. Angular yet delicate, with sharp cheeks and a straight chin. I’ve noticed that when she isn’t smiling, she often looks as though she’s contemplating something very serious.
I was very curious to know what made her feel negatively about herself.
She shook her head.
“I think it started when I began taking my art seriously. Even early on, I would always strive for perfection. I could spot dozens of the most minor flaws in seconds, and I think, over time, that mindset started carrying over into my perception of myself. It took a long time to stop looking at myself like some flawed artist’s creation and to actually view myself as a person.”
Her blunt openness was a bit of a surprise. Of all the answers she could have given, I had expected one or two words at most. This was probably the longest she’d talked about herself since the day we met.
“Forgive me if this is offensive, but I find your reasons very intriguing. Do you think being less concerned with perfection would have caused a different outcome?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. If it wasn’t through art, I likely would have found some other way, but perhaps the result wouldn’t have been so severe.”
The more that woman speaks, the more I’m inclined to listen. Her conversations are stimulating in a way I’ve rarely experienced before. I find myself wanting to know her better.
“So you think you’re naturally dispositioned to see flaws that don’t exist?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Everyone has flaws. Whether or not they matter is entirely up to them.”
“I feel obligated to disagree with that notion.”
That comment gave her pause.
“Why?”
“Because I’ve been looking at you throughout this entire conversation, and I haven’t spotted anything that could be considered a flaw.”
I only realized what that must have sounded like after the words had left my lips, but I had a feeling that trying to correct things would only make me sound worse.
For her part, Adeline didn’t seem offended. She seemed taken aback, but not in a way that made her look angry or repulsed. Moreso curious. As if she couldn’t find the words to respond.
“I’m sorry, that was inappropriate,” I said when the silence had gone on too long to bear. “If it’s any consolation, I’m not actually attracted to you that way.”
She actually laughed; another reaction I hadn’t expected. It relieved me to know she wasn’t upset.
“It’s always refreshing to know I’m not the most socially inept person in the room,” she said.
I couldn’t help but smile.
“I may be skilled in matters of business, but I’m terrible at conversation.”
“Well, while we’re on the topic of attractiveness, I prefer men who are shorter than me. And blond. Sorry.”
“I’m blond,” the words came out sounding far more dramatic and offended than I felt.
“Not right now you aren’t.”
She had a point.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yes,” she said questioningly.
“Why do you prefer shorter men?”
“Oh,” she laughed. “It’s a bit silly, but my whole family is very tall. I didn’t-I don’t want my children to deal with the same comments I got when I was younger.”
The look on her face then, as if she couldn’t decide what tense to use, broke a little something inside me. Would this be my future as well? I never want to think of Edward as just another part of the past, but in conversation with others, they would certainly expect me to talk that way.
I reached across the table and placed my hand over hers.
“You’re a good mother, Adeline, and worrying about your child’s future is never silly. It just means that you care.”
For a moment, it seemed like she wanted to say something to contradict me, but she merely nodded, taking a long breath and releasing it slowly.
“Grief is a wicked little thing, isn’t it? Turning happiness to horror. Sucking the joy out of everything until we have no choice but to face it.”
“It certainly is.”
She gave my hand a squeez e and stood up.
“I’m going to start packing. You probably should too.”
I nodded and let her go, waiting for her footsteps to fade before I stood up. When all of the dishes were clean, I went to my room to plan for our trip.
Unfortunately, packing enough clothing for several months abroad was a challenge I hadn’t expected. I wasn’t familiar with the different seasons in Paris, or how the weather normally transitioned between them. I considered asking Adeline, but I didn’t want to bother her more than necessary.
I decided to make a list first, hoping that having it on paper would make it easier to visualize. The necessities were the easiest to determine. The clothing took far longer to sort out; I added and removed so many items that I had begun to exhaust myself, but finally, I managed to refine my limited inventory until I felt satisfied.
It took me the entire day to sort and pack all my things. By the time I was finished, it was getting dark, and I was getting tired. Unfortunately, I still had some things left to do.
First, I wrote a letter to my doctor to inform him I would be traveling. I don’t expect him to agree with me, but perhaps he can give me some advice.
After that, I went to find Finlay. I spoke to him about my intentions to leave, and I assured him I wouldn’t be gone for more than a few months. As always, he was very understanding, and even seemed happy that I was planning this trip.
“Will you be all right here?”
“Yes, go enjoy yourself. Take as much time as you need.”
I hugged him tightly, patting him on the back before we withdrew.
Now, as I sit here at my desk, I’m wondering if there’s anything I’ve forgotten. As I wrack my brain for possibilities, I realize I very much regret only lighting one lantern. Beyond the radius of its reddish glow, the room is dark with flickering shadows. The house creaks and groans, pushed about by the force of the winds, and I’m reminded that Lucille refuses to leave. Our uneasy past in these rotting halls does nothing to tarnish her opinion.
The weather outside isn’t any better. It’s still snowing, so fast and so thick that I can’t see anything but dark fog beyond the glass. It feels heavy and oppressive, like it could shatter through and suffocate me at any moment. Still, I should try to sleep; my eyes are getting weaker the longer I stay awake. Maybe the doctor’s new pills will help.