When the parlor door opened to admit a gentleman and two ladies, all of them somehow already wearing black, Esther corrected her posture and prepared to welcome them as graciously as any hostess should.
“Good morning,” Silas said first, stepping forward and offering a polite bow. “I am grateful all of you were able to come.” Perhaps it was nothing more than habit that made him forget the duty of welcoming guests always fell first to the hostess.
Esther bit her tongue and sank into a curtsy, quickly adding her own words of welcome. “Yes, thank you for visiting with us.”
“Dear Esther,” Hope said, hurrying forward with her arms outstretched. “You poor darling. I wish I could have come the very instant I received the news. But that would not have been proper.” She wrapped Esther in a friendly embrace, the momentary comfort of her kindness overwhelming Esther’s emotions.
“Thank you, Hope.” Esther pulled back, her lips forming a tremulous smile—but Hope had already looked away, and she stepped from Esther’s arms to embrace Silas.
“Oh, Silas,” she said, burying her face in the front of his coat. “Whatever are we to do without him?”
Silas gave Hope a gentle pat on the back, but before Esther could hear what words of comfort he would offer, Grace had come to stand beside her. “I am terribly sorry, Esther,” Grace said in her quiet, solemn way. “The news gave me such a shock. I cannot imagine how you are bearing up.”
Heart softening, Esther took Grace’s offered hand. “It is the most difficult thing in the world. But having Silas at home has helped. I cannot believe Isaac is gone, especially now that all of you are here together.”
“It will never be the same,” Grace agreed, her eyes shimmering with her sorrow. “Isaac was the creative one in our little group. Brave and imaginative.” She turned to offer her hand to Silas after her sister had withdrawn, at the same moment she withdrew a handkerchief. “Silas.” Then she burst into tears and suddenly Silas had an arm around her in support.
Staring at the scene most incredulously, Esther’s mind tried to make sense of the sudden flood of jealousy in her heart. Here they all stood, mourning her brother, yet Silas seemed as content to embrace his friends as he had been to comfort his wife. The hollowness of grief overtook her again, swallowing the jealousy and leaving instead a strange ache in its place.
Firming up her resolve, Esther turned to the last guest. Jacob Barnes, tall and stately in his mourning suit and black cravat. His blond eyebrows were pulled downward, his firm jaw clenched and the muscles in his neck taut. He looked worn and tired, yet he offered her a smile of camaraderie as he stepped forward with outstretched hand.
“I am sorry for this, Esther. I had hoped Isaac would come home and we would celebrate your marriage together. He loved parties.” A forced smile appeared on his face. “We attended any number of them together when we were at university.”
“Some we were even invited to attend,” Silas said from behind Esther, making her start. She looked to see the sisters on the couch, handkerchiefs dabbing at their eyes. Silas stepped nearer; one side of his mouth tipped upward. “We were not always conscientious about whether or not the hosts wanted us.”
“Isaac could get us into any room and any house he wished,” Jacob said with a firm nod. “He was liked wherever he went.”
Hope emitted a watery sort of chuckle. “Wasn’t that always his way? Even as a boy he could get us out of most scrapes.”
Silas gestured to the remaining chairs. “Please, sit. Refreshment will be up shortly.” He waved Esther into a chair while he moved another closer to the group for himself. They formed an odd sort of shape. The twins on the settee, Jacob and Silas directly across from them in chairs, and she at one side, facing no one, hovering between the men and the women.
“Esther was telling me how he tried to cast blame upon her rather than charm his way out of their misadventures,” Silas said, sitting forward in his chair. He made eye contact with her briefly, and giving her a token smile before he sobered again. “I cannot believe this happened. At the very end of the blasted French business. I keep doubting it.”
“The lists have appeared today. Mama was reading them,” Hope said, shaking her head. “Her handkerchief pressed to her mouth the whole time. It isn’t fair. Not at all.” She shot a dark look at Jacob. “I cannot find any comfort in it, no matter what Jacob says.”
All eyes turned to Jacob, including Esther’s. The prospective clergyman would, of course, wish to counsel his friends to find peace. Esther leaned forward slightly, ready to ask what Hope meant—
“It will take time for some of us, I dare say,” Jacob murmured, watching the fiery Miss Everly. “It is difficult to accept loss and the pain it brings to us. There is hope, though, for a brighter tomorrow. Loss is like walking through the dark, hoping for the sunrise. There are times you doubt it will ever come, but eventually the sun must rise. For now, we must count ourselves blessed we do not walk alone. We have each other.”
The words did not quite touch at the pain in Esther’s heart, but she put them aside for future study.
“Doing this alone would be impossible,” Silas said, reaching up to run his hands through his hair. “I would go insane here in this house. I cannot do anything except think of Isaac when I should much rather keep myself busy. I keep trying to find things to do, to occupy my mind with tasks. I wish there was less time in the day, yet I dread going to bed at night.”
Although Esther understood what her husband meant, to a point, her heart twisted within her breast. Had her presence made this loss even more difficult for Silas, forcing him to leave London to come to her side? He could have mourned quite well there, draping the house in black and going about his business. But she could not travel, could not go out, and could not keep her hands busy enough. Not the way a man could.
“I rather hoped to dream about Isaac,” Grace said quietly, her sad smile not reaching her eyes. “Just to say goodbye. But it did not happen.”
“Mother always wished you would develop an affection for him,” Hope said, angling to face her sister more, her back to Esther. “I told her it could never be. He was like a brother to both of us.”
Esther forced back the desire to sob or to shout that Isaac had, in fact, been her brother. They could not understand, not at all, what it had been like to lose a brother. Her hero, her example, her friend.
Grace nodded in easy agreement. “We would not have suited, but I was often curious as to who he might one day choose. If it would be a girl in the neighborhood.” She turned to face Silas. “Our mother was forever matchmaking, at least in conversation. Mother was so certain you would marry Hope.”
An expression of wide-eyed horror momentarily overtook the sorrow in Silas’s face, and had Esther been in a better humor she might have laughed. As it was, she sank a little deeper into her chair.
Silas made his answer quite determinedly. “I mean no offense, Hope, but I would never even consider it. We would not suit.”
“That is exactly what I told Mama.” Hope’s body went limp as she leaned back against the cushions, appropriate posture apparently forgotten. “We have all known each other too long.”
Flicking her gaze to Jacob, Esther saw the barest flinch from him before he nodded in agreement. For such old friends, the four of them did not always seem to understand one another.
The door opened, admitting servants with refreshments. At last, here was something Esther could contribute to the gathering. She stood and directed the footman and the maid, keeping her voice low and authoritative, then she poured refreshment for her guests and prepared small plates of food for them. Everyone accepted the things she handed them with quiet thanks, and she retook her seat feeling—somewhat foolishly—accomplished.
She even hazarded a comment of her own. “I was hoping, while you were all here, you might share something with me about Isaac. Perhaps a favorite memory of him. There were no people in the world he loved so much as those in this room.”
“Oh, I could not,” Hope said, shaking her head almost violently. “Not so soon.”
Jacob leaned forward in his seat, almost as if he wished to go to her. “It could help, Hope. Perhaps bring about some healing.”
Grace wrapped an arm around her twin, who had begun to cry in earnest. Silas stared at the twins, almost as though he did not see them, and then turned slightly away. “Do you remember the box we buried, when we formed our club? I found it today. All of our things still inside.” He stood, not making eye contact with anyone in the room. “I will go and fetch it.”
He disappeared, leaving Esther to stare at his empty chair. Jacob gave up his seat and crossed the rug to kneel before the twins, offering more words of Christian comfort. Words Esther wished someone would give to her. Grace held her sister, who continued to cry and shake her head in denial of all Jacob said.
Esther looked down into her tea, the swirls of steam drifting away from the dirty brown liquid. After a few moments, she put the cup aside and silently left the room. She did not make any excuses, nor did she have any. In the few minutes she had been there, surrounded by people who knew and loved Isaac as well as she did, Esther realized she did not belong. Hope with her angry grief, Jacob with his platitudes, and Grace with her quiet expression of pain, did not want to comfort Esther nor allow her into their grieving.
The situation could be summed up quite simply. They neither needed nor wanted Esther, as they barely knew her. They wanted each other, the familiar faces who had shared Isaac, not his sister.
She took the back stairs to avoid Silas, tucking her hurt further into her heart, and made for her upstairs sitting room. Her drawings, her art, would give her a place to release her emotions. Painting had been her only respite of late. There was never anyone to talk to, to commiserate with. She had held Silas’s attention, his compassion, for a day. Somehow, those few hours had made her think she held more than that. A wish that she might mean more to him had dared to appear, like the faintest lines of a sketch.
Esther pulled an apron over her clothes and flung the curtains open, then the windows, trying to let in light. She dragged a chair beneath the window and found charcoal. Hastily she began to scribble, broad swaths of black appearing on her paper. She wasn’t even sure what she drew, but the act of slashing across the paper in wide arcs was somewhat freeing.
She covered the whole paper in black, her hand and sleeve streaked with the charcoal too, but created nothing. She wadded the paper up and tossed it directly out the window. A breeze caught the loose ball and banged it against the wall before letting it drop to the ground below.
Standing, Esther looked out the window and downward, where the paper rested in a heap on the ground. Something about seeing that paper, free and alone, where it should not be, pulled at her heart. Again she tried to draw, this time purposefully, thinking of her brother’s face.
But it wasn’t right. She’d drawn the eyes she knew from his boyhood, and that was not what she wanted. She threw that paper out the window, too. Tried again. Failed. Threw the paper out.
A sob tore from her throat. Why did everything have to be so difficult? Why didn’t anyone see how much she hurt?
Esther wrapped her arms around herself, heedless of how dirty she was from her drawing attempts. She glared at her paintings, seeing them for what they were—wastes of time. What good did a watercolor painting do anyone? What was the point of them?
She took one which depicted the stormy sky and sea, walked to the window and compared it to the reality before her. Rain clouds were moving in, sweeping across the water. Her painting was nothing like what she saw. She dropped the painting out the window.
The weight on her heart lightened. She took up another painting of the fountain in the garden. Who cared about fountains and gardens when one had but to step outside to see the real thing?
That painting fell from the window and into the bushes, too.
The door behind her opened as she lifted another painting from the mantel, this one of a bird who kept visiting her balcony in the mornings.
Esther looked over her shoulder, her mind pulled from her destructive task just enough that she cringed. Silas. What would he think of her strange display?
He stared at her from the doorway. “What are you doing in here?” he asked, sounding confused. “Our friends are downstairs. I thought you might like to see them go through the box.”
“Friends?” she said, her voice hoarse with all the emotion she had kept at bay. “They are your friends. Not mine.” She turned her back on him and marched to the window. “And you walked out. I did not think anyone would miss me.”
“I only meant to retrieve— Esther! What are you doing?”
She’d thrown the painting out while he spoke, but she jumped when he shouted her name. Esther refused to feel guilty. She tightened her jaw and gestured with one arm to the room. “I am cleaning up my useless mess.”
“Useless?” He came inside and in two great strides stood next to her and leaned out of the window to look down. A roll of thunder in the distance punctuated Silas’s use of a swear word Esther did not think she had heard before. “Esther, those are your paintings. They will be ruined.”
“I know.” She started to turn away from him, ready to retrieve another, but he caught her arm.
“What are you doing?” he asked, trying to force her to turn to him. “Have you gone mad?”
She shook her head, lifting it to glare at him. “No. I finally realized what a waste all of this is. What a waste I am. I wish I had died, too. When my parents died. That would have simplified matters, wouldn’t it? Then Isaac leaving would’ve made sense. He would not have left anyone behind except his friends. And you could all mourn him without having to worry about the sister he had no use for.”
The look Silas wore, one of shock mingled with pain, made her heart tremble. “He loved you, Esther. You know that. None of us wish you away.”
“None of you wish me here, either,” she retorted, keeping her body stiff and as far from his as possible. “Especially you. If Isaac had lived, you two would have enjoyed this connection, I’m certain. Brothers through marriage. With him gone, I am nothing more than extra baggage. Someone to look after.” Her voice broke on the last word and she tried to pull away again.
“Stop this,” Silas said, his voice quiet. Then, in a tone of command, “Stop this at once. We are all hurting, but that is no excuse for this childish display—”
Heat flooded through Esther’s veins. Her anger, embarrassment at knowing he was right, gave her enough strength to pull out of his grasp and stumble backward. “I am not a child,” she shouted.
His sharp response landed like an arrow in her heart. “Then stop acting like one!”
Esther covered her mouth with one hand, yet not before a sob escaped. If only she had not married Silas. If only she had remained at home with Diana and Hugh, overlooked and inconsequential. Of course, even they did not want her. No one did. No one could be bothered with her.
Fleeing the room without looking back, Esther’s grief consumed her thoughts. Keeping Silas at a distance had been so important before the news of her brother’s loss. Perhaps that had always been the best strategy. As much as she feared being alone with her thoughts and feelings, at least she was safer that way. She could disappoint no one, get in the way of no one.
After locking herself in her room, Esther fell into bed fully clothed and wept with shame, loss, and a longing to matter to someone.
∞∞∞
Silas knew his duty lay in making excuses for his wife. Never had he been called upon to make excuses for anyone before. What was he to say? He valued honesty above all else, but sharing Esther’s distraught and illogical behavior felt like a betrayal of trust. As her husband, he was charged with protecting her, even from things such as gossip or the unkind thoughts of others.
He walked into the room where his three friends remained, Hope dabbing at her face with a handkerchief while Grace
stared down at the floor. Jacob had moved away, standing at the window to watch the approaching clouds.
“Esther will not be joining us,” Silas said, bringing their attention to him. Lifting the tin box from the table, he held it out to Hope. “You are welcome to look through it.”
“Our club treasure,” Hope exclaimed, her countenance brightening. “Oh, I remember. It was my idea.”
Silas gave it into her eager hands. Prying the lid open, Hope chuckled and began chattering about the items inside. Grace assisted her in pulling them out and Jacob wandered over, standing behind them, watching mutely as they spoke of the odds and ends inside.
His mind on his wife rather than the box, Silas walked around to stand next to his friend, but his eyes went to the windows. This room faced the same direction as Esther’s sitting room, but it was in a different wing. The approaching clouds, dark and spilling water, would be at the house in minutes. How many of Esther’s creations were in the bushes, waiting for ruination?
He rubbed at his forehead, torn between annoyance at her behavior and the desire to save her work. Perhaps when she felt better, she would regret their loss.
He went to the windows and unlatched one, pushing it open. He could send a servant, but that would mean exposing Esther to their gossip below stairs.
A step at his side alerted him to Jacob’s presence, and then he could feel his friend’s stare upon him. “Where,” Jacob asked softly, “is Esther? She disappeared right after you did.”
Silas took in a deep breath. “I need your help for a moment, if you do not mind?”
Jacob shook his head. “Not at all. Anything you ask, Silas.”
“We need to go outside.” Silas did not explain further, though he told the Everly sisters they would be back in a moment. He led Jacob through the hall to the music room, where the doors opened to the outside. As only the best of friends would do, Jacob followed without question or comment. They arrived beneath the window of Esther’s sitting room, which Silas had closed before returning downstairs.
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