James took charge. “We’ll go in one by one,” he said.
So, as if they had rehearsed together, one after another they stood alone outside the door that had a sign, No Visitors, stood there while patients prepared for surgery or carts of half-eaten lunches were wheeled past, stood and collected their childhood until a nurse noticed and said, “Go in. She wants to see you.” Then each one pushed the door open, went to the high narrow bed, and said, “Edie.”
She may not have known they were there. She had started to be a skeleton. Her skull was pulling her eyes in. Once they had spoken her name, there was nothing more to say. Before leaving, they touched the familiar, unrecognizable hand of shoelaces and hair ribbons and knew it, for the first time, disengaged.
After their separate visits, they assembled again on the hospital steps. It was now they remembered Lady Alice and Lady Anne.
“Where was that castle?” Eliza asked.
“In Kent,” said Jenny.
All at one time, they imagined the girls in their tower after tea. Below them, swans pulled lengthening reflections across the smooth surface of the lake. Lady Alice sat at her rosewood desk, Lady Anne at hers. They were still seven and eight years old. They wrote on thick paper with mother-of-pearl pens dipped into ivory inkwells.
“Dear Edie,” wrote Lady Alice.
“Dear Edie,” wrote Lady Anne.
“I am sorry to hear you are ill,” they both wrote.
Then, as if they were performing an exercise in penmanship, they copied “I am sorry” over and over in flowing script until they reached the bottom of the page. When there was no more room, they signed one letter “Alice” and the other letter “Anne.”
In the midst of all this, Edie died.
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